Forced marriage statistics are infused with Western moral panic and hard to verify

Evidence

While it is difficult to get estimates of the extent of the practice, the very estimates being infused with the moral panic over uncivilized Muslims, the problem clearly exists and is cause for concern. In Britain, conservative estimates are that 1000 women are annually subjected to forced marriages. In France, the minister responsible for the status of women estimated that 70,000 girls between the ages of ten and eighteen are forced into marriage, an extraordinary figure that she bases on discussions with groups working in immigrant communities. Compounding the difficulty of collecting data is the fact that the line between an arranged marriage and a forced one is difficult to draw. It may be useful, as one anthropologist has suggested, to view both types as arranged marriages that fall on a continuum between consent and coercion. Whether the figures are inflated or not, it is difficult to keep in mind their magnitude and to ask at the same time about the social meaning they have been given in Western societies. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 295

In Britain, conservative estimates are that 1000 women are annually subjected to forced marriages. In France, the minister responsible for the status of women estimated that 70,000 girls between the ages of ten and eighteen are forced into marriage, an extraordinary figure that she bases on discussions with groups working in immigrant communities. Compounding the difficulty of collecting data is the fact that the line between an arranged marriage and a forced one is difficult to draw. It may be useful, as one anthropologist has suggested, to view both types as arranged marriages that fall on a continuum between consent and coercion. Whether the figures are inflated or not, it is difficult to keep in mind their magnitude and to ask at the same time about the social meaning they have been given in Western societies. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 295

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the idea that arranged and forced marriages fall on a continuum between consent and coercion rather than being cleanly separable categories.
• QUESTION: For MOC thread: these figures (1000/yr UK, 70,000 girls France) are the kind of policy-outcome data that flows regardless of the definitional dispute — but the wildly inflated French figure (70,000 of ~ages 10-18) raises the question of whether measurement itself is a site of panic.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 295