Between Care and Criminality

"The heart of the book lies in survivors' narratives, which challenge dominant state narratives to reclaim agency, dignity, and community in ways the legal framework fails to acknowledge. By centering their perspectives, Zeweri reveals the gaps between the legal framework of 'forced marriage' and the lived realities of migrant lives. . . . Zeweri's book offers a timely and important critique of a legal infrastructure constructed under the aegis of protection, one that, in practice, facilitates the widespread use of state violence and family separation in the policing of migrant families in Australia."

"This exquisitely nuanced ethnography takes anti-carceral feminism to new heights! In tracing how 'coercive violence' amongst migrant families in Australia comes to be defined and policed, Zeweri demonstrates how Muslim women are still being used to justify anti-immigrant policies, whether they are framed as victim or threat. Most importantly, she shows that intimate forms of violence cannot be understood outside the violence of war, displacement and detention." 
 

"Between Care and Criminality offers unique insights into how social policies are lived on the ground by frontline workers, community leaders, and the young people who they target. The book resists the static portrayals of forced marriage in providing empirical examples of families who negotiate tensions surrounding marriage decisions within the context of family dynamics."

"Between Care and Community, a well-documented, well researched analysis of forced marriage prevention policy, both informs and unsettles. Helena Zeweri makes a real contribution to studies on the anthropology of marriage and biopolitics of intimacy, and poses important questions concerning first generation migrant women and notions of family, culture, and the domestic."