Anti-Muslim texts conflate arranged marriage with forced marriage to indict migrant culture

Evidence

Although forced marriage is the impetus for the book, and the problem to be solved, it quickly becomes clear that the real problem is the culture of Muslim migrants itself. There is a slippage in Human Visas between forced and arranged marriages and little effort is expended to distinguish them. Arranged marriages are declared to be a patriarchal custom and part of the culture of honour and are practised only in those places where women’s status is low. Europe’s own history of arranged marriages for its wealthier classes is acknowledged, but is used to indicate that whereas Europe has freed itself from its feudal past, Muslim societies have not. … The collective history of the family’s reproduction, a history of immigration fraud and arranged marriages, is graphically presented as a chart of cells multiplying; the comparison to disease is inescapable. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 263

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the moral-panic literature and how ‘culture of honour’ discourse pathologizes minority groups—echoes the book’s earlier framing and similar analyses of Islamophobia.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how common is the deliberate conflation of arranged vs forced marriage in anti-immigration policy documents across Europe?