Denmark justified marriage-migration restrictions using marriage-pattern surveys, not violence statistics

Evidence

The Danish emphasis on linking forced marriages to immigration is joined to an argument that forced marriages exacerbate problems of integration. The integration argument is bolstered not with statistics on the number of forced marriages or the number of women killed but rather, as in Living Visas, with surveys of the marriage patterns of immigrant groups living in Europe. For example, citing the figure that 47 per cent of immigrants married persons who resided abroad, a pattern that did not change from 1994 to 1999, the Danish government justified the need for reform of family reunification policy, adding that integration is particularly difficult for families where one spouse comes from outside Denmark. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 300

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: how a policy framed as protecting women from forced marriage was actually justified by marriage-pattern statistics about integration — the evidence says almost nothing about coercion itself.