marriage and employment patterns amongst uk-raised indian, pakistani, and bangladeshi women

Marriage and employment patterns

amongst UK-raised Indian, Pakistani, and

Bangladeshi women

Angela Dale and Sameera Ahmed

(First submission July 2009; First published March 2011)

AbstractDiscussion over marriage migration in the UK has largely focused on theSouth Asian groups, identified in survey data as Indian, Pakistani, andBangladeshi. This paper uses qualitative interviews and national LabourForce Survey data to gain some insights into how UK-born Pakistani andBangladeshi women view marriage and, in particular, marriage to apartner from their country of origin; the extent to which UK-bornIndian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi women and men marry partners fromoverseas and the key factors that influence this; and the effect on the levelof economic activity for Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi women ofmarriage to a UK-born/raised partner versus a partner from overseas.

Keywords: Marriage; migration; South Asian; employment; women; gender.

1. Introduction

Discussion over marriage migration in the UK has largely focused onSouth Asian groups, identified in survey data as Indian, Pakistani, andBangladeshi. Marriage migration has received attention in policydebates and in the popular press in the context of levels ofimmigration and its effect on the ‘integration of those already settledhere’ (Migration Watch 2004, p. 1). Recent government initiatives haveaimed to increase the low levels of labour market participationamongst Pakistani and Bangladeshi women which, in turn, aresometimes linked to factors associated with marriage migration. Thispaper uses nationally representative survey data to examine the extentto which UK-born Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi women andmen marry partners from overseas, the factors associated with this

Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 34 No. 6 June 2011 pp. 902�924

# 2011 Taylor & FrancisISSN 0141-9870 print/1466-4356 onlineDOI: 10.1080/01419870.2011.564058

kind of marriage, and whether there is evidence of a decline over time.We then ask whether UK-born South Asian women who are marriedto a partner from overseas are less likely to be economically active thanUK-born South Asian women married to men born or raised in theUK. These analyses are informed by a small number of qualitativeinterviews with UK-born Pakistani and Bangladeshi women.

2. Marriage patterns amongst South Asians in the UK

There is an important body of anthropological work (Ballard 1990;Shaw 2001, 2006; Charsley 2005a, 2005b) that examines the historical,colonial, cultural, and religious context that relates to marriagemigration among South Asians. This includes the significance offamily status and honour, the role of the individual within the family,as well as gender divisions within the family. The legal contextconcerning spouse migration also impinges on and shapes migrationpractices, whilst socio-economic status and educational attainmentboth influence marriage patterns in the Indian subcontinent and theUK.

The 2001 UK Census showed that people from South Asianbackgrounds (Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis) were the leastlikely of the minority ethnic groups to be married to someone from adifferent ethnic group. Only 6 per cent of Indians, 4 per cent ofPakistanis, and 3 per cent of Bangladeshis had married someoneoutside the Asian group (ONS 2005). Many South Asian communitieshave high marriage rates and, for women in particular, marriage isusually at an early age. Berthoud (2005, p. 240) found that about three-quarters of Pakistani and Bangladeshi women were married by the ageof 25, compared with 67 per cent for Indians and 55 per cent for whitewomen.

Marriage for Pakistani and Bangladeshi women tends to be seenas a family, rather than an individual, affair and is directly related tothe status and honour of the family. Parents may arrange a marriagefor their son or daughter that takes into consideration familyinterests, both social and economic, as well as the interests of thechild. An ideology of putting one’s family’s interests before one’sown individual interest underpins the concept of an arrangedmarriage (Shaw 2001). Parents may want to strengthen family tiesby arranging a marriage between their own child and the child oftheir brother or sister (Charsley 2005a, 2005b), although marriagewith the father’s relatives usually takes precedence over the mother’sside of the family (Shaw 2001). This may also be seen as a ‘safe’choice for their child, or as a good business alliance. However,Charsley and Shaw (2006) point out, in the context of research withMirpuri families, that arranged marriages are not necessarily at odds

Marriage and employment patterns 903

with ‘love’ marriages. Many young people were involved with thechoice of their partner and love and romance often developed beforemarriage. However, reflecting religious and cultural differencesbetween South Asian groups, Berthoud (2005) found that, amongstSouth Asian women who came to Britain aged eleven or over, anarranged marriage was much more likely for Muslims and Sikhsthan for Hindus. Where the respondent was born in Britain or hadcome to Britain before the age of ten, just over a third of Muslimand Sikh marriages had been arranged but for Hindus this was only9 per cent. Beishon, Modood and Virdee (1998), in a smallqualitative study of Pakistani and Bangladeshi households, foundthat all married respondents had had an arranged marriage andabout a quarter had married a cousin. Arranged marriages were,however, less common amongst the Indian and East-African Indians.Ballard (1990) points out that religious requirements influencemarriage patterns; marriage to close kin is barred to Sikhs andHindus whilst Muslims are allowed and indeed encouraged to marryclose kin.

Home Office statistics (Dudley and Harvey 2001) show that inrecent years there has been no obvious fall in the overall level ofapplications for entry for spouses from the Indian sub-continent. In2000, 40 per cent of spouse/fiancee applications were for male partnersand 60 per cent for female partners and these proportions remainedvery similar in 2007 (Home Office 2008). Until the mid-1980s, UKlegislation allowed only women to join a UK-resident spouse � thusthis continued the tradition of women moving into the home of theirhusband upon marriage. In the mid-1980s the UK legislation changedto allow the spouse to be either male or female.

Whilst it is traditional in Pakistan for women to move into theirhusband’s family home on marriage and to adopt the lifestyle of theirhusband’s family (Charsley 2005a), men who migrate to the UKfor marriage are in the unusual situation of joining their wife’s familyand leaving behind their own family, social networks, and employ-ment. Charsley (2005b) suggests that marriage migration may result inthe loss of much of men’s traditional power in the family.

Analysis of official statistics from Bradford by Simpson (1997)estimate that 57.6 per cent of Pakistani marriages between 1992 and1994 were to spouses from Pakistan. Shaw (2001), researchingPakistani families in Oxford, found that fifty out of seventy marriageswere with a spouse from Pakistan, usually a relative and most often afirst cousin. However, she also points out that marriages within theextended family are usual in much of the Middle East and cannot beexplained as a strategy to facilitate economic migration to the UK.She argues the importance of marriage within the family, caste, orbiradari in order to ensure a spouse of equivalent status.

904 Angela Dale and Sameera Ahmed

3. Families, marriage, and women’s employment � evidence from theliterature

In this section we review some of the evidence of employment patternsof Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi women in the UK and thenrelate this to the specific question of how marriage to a spouse fromoverseas affects women’s employment patterns.

It is well established that Pakistani and Bangladeshi women in theUK have very low rates of economic activity � much lower than Indianwomen (Dale et al. 2002; Dale, Lindley and Dex 2006).1 Within theIndian group, Muslim women have lower levels of economic activitythan either Hindus or Sikhs (Modood, Berthoud and Lakey 1997;Brown 2000). These differences in levels of economic activity can beexplained only partly by differences in education and family respon-sibilities.

There are two main sets of explanatory factors: one related tolabour market demand and the other to supply. On the demand side,there is clear evidence that minority ethnic groups face discriminationin accessing jobs in the UK labour market (Modood, Berthoud andLakey 1997; Heath and Cheung 2006). Interview evidence alsosuggests that women who wear religious dress (e.g., a hijab) ortraditional clothes (e.g., shalwaar kameez) face an additional barrierto employment (Dale et al. 2002) and that this has increased since theal’Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center of 11 September 2001.Linked to this are employment-based issues such as workplace culturesthat ignore Muslims’ requirements for prayer breaks or for holidays atEid.

On the supply side, both qualifications and life stage (partnershipand children) have a very big influence on levels of economic activity forPakistani and Bangladeshi women (Dale, Lindley and Dex 2006).These are much larger than for other ethnic groups, including Indianwomen whose employment patterns resemble those of white women(Dale, Lindley and Dex 2006). Pakistani and Bangladeshi women in theUK have lower levels of educational qualifications than other ethnicgroups, with a sharp distinction between those who are UK-born andthose born overseas. Amongst women born overseas, fluency in Englishalso tends to be low (Modood, Berthoud and Lakey 1997). In addition,the gender-based division of childcare is much more apparent forPakistani and Bangladeshi women than for either Indian or whitewomen. However, single, highly-qualified young Pakistani and Ban-gladeshi women in the UK are as likely to be economically active astheir counterparts in other ethnic groups (Dale, Lindley and Dex 2006),demonstrating that it is factors associated with ethnicity rather thanethnicity itself that explain women’s low levels of economic activity. It


also raises the possibility that younger cohorts of women may showgreater labour market attachment than older cohorts.

4. Background and settlement history

South Asians are relatively recent settlers in the UK but withsignificant differences in timing of migration between the key groups.There is a long association between India and Britain, going back tothe East India Company in the seventeenth century. The BritishNationality Act of 1948 gave British citizenship to all residents ofIndia and Pakistan � as well as to other members of the then BritishEmpire and Commonwealth (Peach 2006). The rate of immigrationfrom India was at its highest during the 1960s, with a further boost inthe early 1970s by East African Indians who had been expelled fromUganda. Migration from Pakistan began to grow rapidly in the 1960sin response to labour shortages, with immigration from Bangladeshrather later and at a lower level (Ballard 1990; Peach 2006). Migrationfrom Pakistan and Bangladesh was male-led with many migrantscoming from poor rural areas � for example Mirpur and Syllhet � andsettling in areas of declining industry (for example the industrial areasof north west England as well as parts of London) and taking jobs thatwere not attractive to working-class white men. Women tended tocome to Britain as dependents, from a culture where they wereresponsible for domestic life and men were expected to be thebreadwinners. The 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act imposedvery severe restrictions on entry to Britain from the Asian sub-continent and thus transformed temporary migrants into permanentsettlers who brought over their wives and families. After 1962, thedominant flow of migrants was dependents rather than the economic-ally active (Ansari 2004). However, between 1962 and 1967 primaryworkers were allowed into the UK on a voucher system, particularly ifthey were recruited to specific jobs (Ansari 2004). Amongst people ofPakistani, Bangladeshi, and Indian origin, therefore, the vast majorityof older adults were born overseas, although a growing generation ofyoung people are UK-born (over 70 per cent of 19�25 year old Indianpeople are UK born; over 60 per cent of 19�25 year old Pakistani andnearly 30 per cent of 19�25 year old Bangladeshi people) (Lindley,Dale and Dex 2004).

Until 1997, applicants who wished to join a spouse in the UK had todemonstrate that the primary purpose of their marriage was not formigration reasons. Since 1997 the legislation requires that spousesmust demonstrate an intention to live together permanently as manand wife and that they have ‘adequate maintenance without recourseto public funds’ and also adequate accommodation. Women may takea job in order to demonstrate the adequacy of income, or parents may


provide the necessary assurance for both income and accommodation.Both the UK sponsor and the spouse must be eighteen or over at thetime of entry to the UK. In November 2008 this age restriction wasraised to twenty one, but the analysis here does not include data for2008 and beyond.

5. The empirical analysis

Our empirical analysis uses evidence from a small number ofqualitative interviews conducted with UK-born Pakistani andBangladeshi women and nationally representative data from theUK Quarterly Labour Force Survey. We discuss each data source inturn.

5.1 Data sources

The qualitative dataWe use evidence from eighteen in-depth interviews with Pakistani andBangladeshi women in Rochdale and Manchester (fourteen Pakistanis,three Bangladeshis, and one Kashmiri). Respondents were primarilyrecruited through voluntary organizations and through the employ-ment services. This method of recruitment means that our sample islikely to be biased in favour of women with an interest in findingemployment. The interviews covered questions on educational attain-ment, decisions about careers, seeking employment, actual employ-ment experiences, family and community, and general attitudestowards work. Table 1 gives the educational and employmentcharacteristics of the interviewees.

Interviews were conducted by one of the authors and lasted aboutan hour; all the interviews were fully transcribed. Themes were thenextracted and the interviews re-analysed in the light of these themes.Of the eighteen women interviewed, all had been born in the UK andmost had parents who had migrated to the UK in the 1960s.Respondents had thus obtained the majority of their schooling inthe UK. The respondents were at different stages of their family andworking lives. Nine women were married, of whom seven had had an

Table 1. Profile of interviewees � all women were UK-born

Qualifications Employed Unemployed Scheme Total

Graduate 4 � 1 5A-Level/NVQ 3 4 � 2 6GCSE or below � 4 3 7Total 8 4 6 18


arranged marriage to a spouse from their country of origin. Althoughthe women interviewed are not a representative sample of Bangladeshior Pakistani women, either locally or nationally, they provide insightsinto women’s views of marriage to a partner from their country oforigin and their views about employment and the barriers to gainingpaid work.

Although national-level statistics show that Bangladeshi womenhave rather lower levels of employment than Pakistani women and aremore recent migrants to the UK, research shows that the factors thatinfluence their employment patterns (including both family-relatedand employer-related factors) are very similar. In addition, the issuesraised by the Bangladeshi respondents in these interviews did notsuggest any differences with the Pakistani respondents based on ethnicidentification. Because the focus of the interviews was on under-standing the factors behind the very low employment rates ofBangladeshi and Pakistani women, Indian women were not included.These interviews, together with the literature already discussed, wereused to refine and inform the hypotheses to be tested on thenationally-representative survey data.

The survey dataOur analysis uses nationally-representative data from the QuarterlyLabour Force Survey, conducted by the Office for National Statistics(ONS 2003). Since 1992, the Quarterly LFS (QLFS) has conductedrepeat interviews at each sampled address at three-monthly intervals,with the fifth interview taking place a year after the first. Each quarter,interviews are achieved at about 59,000 addresses with about 138,000respondents. A response rate of about 77 per cent was achieved for thefirst wave of the survey in 2002. All first interviews (with the exceptionof a very small sample located north of the Caledonian Canal) arecarried out by face-to-face interview. Subsequent interviews arecarried out by telephone. We use data for England, Wales, andScotland for sweep 1 of each quarter, for all years from 1998 to 2005.Results are weighted to produce population estimates in line with thelatest census. The QLFS collects family and demographic informationon each member of the household. This allows us to identifyinformation about a woman’s partner and her children. The QLFSalso asks extensive information on employment and qualifications thatare consistent each year. In addition, questions on ethnicity, country ofbirth, and year of arrival in the UK are asked. Whilst changes inquestion-wording have caused difficulty in comparisons over time forsome ethnic groups, this has been minimal for people of Indian,Pakistani, and Bangladeshi ethnic origin. Although the QLFS asksabout timing of entry to the UK it does not ask about the reasons for


migration, nor the date of marriage. We cannot, therefore, directlyidentify whether immigration was associated with marriage.

5.2 Analysis strategy

We start by reporting evidence from the qualitative interviews. Viewsabout marriage to a spouse from their country of origin usually arosewhen women were asked about their family and what support theywere given with respect to employment choices. We therefore identifiedas a theme how our respondents, all UK-born, believed marriage to apartner from their country of origin affected a woman’s ability to takepaid work and contrasted these accounts with the women’s accounts offamily influences on their own employment choices. Finally, we reportour analysis of the survey data to establish the factors that influencemarriage to a spouse from overseas and, for women, how this relatesto their likelihood to be economically active.

6. Results from qualitative analysis

Of the nine Pakistani and Bangladeshi married women, seven had anarranged marriage whereby they went to Pakistan/Bangladesh tomarry � often to a relative � and then returned to the UK with theirspouse. In the context of questions about education, marriage, andemployment, respondents talked about the circumstances of theirmarriage and their views on marriage more generally.

6.1 Views on marriage to a man from the country of origin

There was a widely expressed view that life in the UK was moreforward looking and less traditional than life in Pakistan orBangladesh. Women tended to characterize men from ‘back home’as traditional � which usually meant an assumption that womenshould be responsible for the home and childcare, should not go out towork, and should be subservient to the wishes of their husband. Thus,one respondent who, in response to demands from her parents, hadstopped her education to marry a man from Pakistan to whom she wasrelated, described how her younger sister’s employment was restrictedby her Pakistani-born husband:

Well, my younger sister, she . . . she actually doesn’t work � herhusband’s like a bit strict � he doesn’t really want her to work or . . .I think maybe it depends on the husband as well � because they’refrom back home, they think differently. Pakistani, aged 28, marriedwith two children, NVQ2 education (interview 2)


Her sister had been taken back to Pakistan for marriage before she hadfinished school. Her younger brothers, however, were resisting marriageto a girl from Pakistan. She argued that, even though marriage to acousin may seem a safe bet, such marriages did not always work out.

Similarly, another woman emphasized the traditional values of menfrom Pakistan:

I think a lot of the girls that get married from back home, their husbandswould like them to sit at home and have the family � the children.Pakistani, 23, married with daughter, NVQ2 qualifications(interview 7)

She went on to explain:

They work until they [spouse from Pakistan] come over and then theman wants to work. They have a village mentality, where the manworks and the woman sits at home. They want a wife that wears a hijaband not step foot out the house.

One respondent had been taken back to Pakistan to be married atsixteen to a cousin and had had her first child one year later. She wasconcerned that her mother-in-law wanted the same for her thirteen-year old daughter:

and my mother-in-law’s like ‘Oh, what’s the point in taking her toschool?’ She wanted to take her back home; I go ‘No!’ They did thesame to me, I don’t want her to go through that. I want her have a life,that’s why I think education is very important. Pakistani, 32, fourchildren, no qualifications (interview 11)

Similar resistance to children marrying a spouse from the country oforigin was voiced by a Bangladeshi woman who explained that she andher sister and brother had all married from ‘back home’. She insisted,however, that it was particularly important for her daughter to marry aman from the UK because:

they [men from back home] just don’t understand, the guys refuse tounderstand, I think if my son married a girl from over there, shewould... She would try to adjust, whereas men won’t. They’re just stayin their own ways, and they just won’t, so I think she should marrysomeone from here. Bangladeshi, 30, two children, NVQ level 3(interview 13)

All the women held strong views about the traditional values of menfrom their country of origin, including, for example, a desire for their


wives to stay at home and not take paid work. Similar views arereported by Dale et al. (2001) in interviews with a larger sample ofPakistani and Bangladeshi women in north west England. These viewsare relevant to assertions made by Migration Watch, that marriage toa spouse from the Indian sub-continent impedes ‘the integration ofthose already settled here’ (Migration Watch 2004, p. 1); they alsorelate to government attempts to increase the number of Pakistani andBangladeshi women in paid work.

However, in the course of answering questions about their ownemployment the same respondents almost uniformly characterizedtheir husbands as supportive of them working and different from mostmen from Pakistan and Bangladesh. The quotations below are fromthe same respondents who are quoted above:

My husband, he’s alright � he’s quite good. I mean, he’s my best friendas well � I can talk to him about anything and I can tell him I want towork and he won’t mind if I study. Pakistani, aged 28, married withtwo children, NVQ2 education (interview 2)

I’ve always had loads encouragement from my family. My husband,too, he’s been brilliant, he has never stopped me doing anything.Pakistani, 23, married with daughter, NVQ2 qualifications (inter-view 7)

I’ve always wanted to be a teacher since I was small, so I’m hoping togo for it now. My husband’s supporting me, he goes ‘Go for it!’Pakistani, 32, four children, no qualifications (interview 11)

The complexity of the situation, and the danger of making simplisticassumptions about the dynamics of a transnational marriage isbrought home by another respondent who married in Pakistan agedseventeen and then returned to the UK with her husband. However,she had continued her education after marriage and was now a fully-qualified teacher working full-time. She had one child and shared allthe domestic work and childcare with her husband:

We decided to have equal gender roles, rather than saying, ‘Ok youbring all the money home and I’ll cook and clean and stuff.’ We said,‘Ok, we’ll both bring the money home and we’ll both have an equalshare in the house. We’ll both have an equal role, we’ll make decisionstogether’. Pakistani, 25, one child, graduate (interview 15)

In this case, her three siblings all had professional jobs and, althoughthe marriage was arranged, her parents and her husband’s parents had


a shared understanding about the value of education and supportedher return to education after marriage.

These interviews highlight the way in which marriage to a spousefrom overseas often interrupts women’s education, although where awoman’s family valued education, ways were found to allow her tocontinue her education after marriage. While the women interviewedused rhetorical statements about the traditional attitudes of men bornoverseas, the evidence shows that there is no straightforward relation-ship between traditional attitudes and being born overseas; andbetween wearing Islamic dress (scarf or veil) and whether or not awoman is keen to work and encouraged to work.

7. Evidence from survey data

We now move on to use nationally-representative survey data to assessthe factors that are associated with marriage to a partner fromoverseas and whether UK-born women of Indian, Pakistani, andBangladeshi ethnic origin have lower levels of economic activity iftheir husband came to the UK as an adult rather than being born orbrought up in the UK. Although our qualitative work has onlyinterviewed women, the QLFS analysis allows men to be included andwe have therefore done so where appropriate. This adds to the depthand understanding of transnational marriage migration.

We have pooled data between 1998 and 2005 in order to obtain asufficiently large sample size. The sample comprises men and womenfrom India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh aged 19�44 at the time of thesurvey. We have constructed a variable to identify whether arespondent was:

- born in the UK;- came to the UK as a child under eighteen;- came to the UK at the age of eighteen or older.

The age of eighteen has been used because, before eighteen, childrenmay join their family as a dependent; spouse immigration laws (until2008) required the migrant spouse to be at least eighteen upon entry tothe UK. Where a UK-born respondent is married to a spouse whocame to the UK at age eighteen or older, it is likely that this migrationwas for marriage but the LFS does not record the reason for migrationand so we do not have firm evidence.

Table 2 provides the distribution for men and women aged 18�44 ineach ethnic group by whether they were UK-born, born overseas butcame to the UK before eighteen, or came to the UK at eighteen orolder.


7.1 Background analyses

Before addressing our two main questions we briefly review some ofthe differences in terms of country, age, qualifications, and employ-ment status between men and women born in the UK; those who cameto the UK before the age of eighteen; and those who came to the UKat eighteen or older.

Overall, just over a third of men and women from the Indian sub-continent aged 19�44 in our LFS sample were born in the UK, but forboth men and women this was much lower for Bangladeshis than forPakistanis or for Indians (see Table 2). Of the 60 per cent or so of menand women who were born overseas, about half entered the UK beforethe age of eighteen and half entered at eighteen or over. It is this lattercategory which has been identified as likely to be mainly marriage-migrants and, amongst women aged 19�25, nearly 90 per cent aremarried and a further 8 per cent are separated, divorced, or widowed.2

By contrast, levels of marriage are much lower for women who cameto the UK before eighteen and even lower for those born in the UK(table not shown).

Both men and women who were UK-born were more likely to havehigher qualifications than those who were born overseas and came tothe UK before the age of eighteen. This group, in turn, were morelikely to have higher qualifications than those who came to the UK ateighteen or older. The latter were most likely to have ‘other’qualifications which include qualifications obtained overseas. Asexpected, levels of economic activity for women were highest forIndians who were UK-born (83 per cent) and lowest for Bangladeshiwomen who came to the UK at eighteen or over (9 per cent).

Table 2. South Asian women and men, 19�44, by where born/age came to UK

WomenRow% UK-born

Overseas-born,came before 18

Came toUK 18�

Total(unweighted n)

Indian 41 29 30 100 (3,019)Pakistani 41 29 30 100 (2,070)Bangladeshi 17 47 36 100 (716)Total 38 31 31 100 (5,805)

MenRow% UK-born

Overseas-born,came before 18

Came toUK 18�

Total(unweighted n)

Indian 46 28 26 100 (2,761)Pakistani 38 29 32 100 (1,842)Bangladeshi 17 51 32 100 (729)Total 40 32 29 100 (5,332)

QLFS 1988�2005, weighted, includes FT students


Differences were much more limited for men but, for both men andwomen, those who were UK born were much more likely to be full-time students than those born overseas (table not shown).

In Table 3 and subsequent analyses we combine those who are UK-born with those who came to the UK before eighteen and use the term‘UK born/brought up’ to describe them.

Table 3, showing the percentage of UK-born/brought up womenwho are married by level of qualification and age group, suggests thatboth Indian and Pakistani/Bangladeshi women with higher qualifica-tions (degree and A levels) are delaying marriage. For example, lessthan 40 per cent of those aged 19�30 with degree-level qualificationsare married in comparison with over 60 per cent of those with noqualifications. However, amongst women aged 31�44 there are noclear differences by level of qualification. We now move on to assessthe factors that are associated with marriage to a partner fromoverseas.

7.2 Who married spouses from overseas?

We might expect that UK-raised women with higher qualificationswould find it easier to delay marriage and to negotiate a marriage-partner of choice than less educated women (Shaw 2001) and, indeed,our interviews show that marriage overseas tends to disrupt education.Thus, we would expect less educated women to be more likely to bemarried to an overseas-born man than better educated women. Wemay also expect that daughters would find it harder than sons to resistfamily wishes for a transnational marriage and thus women may bemore likely than men to have a spouse from overseas. Evidence alsoshows that marriage to a spouse from overseas is more prevalentamongst Pakistani and Bangladeshi families than Indian (Ballard1990). We can therefore hypothesize that qualifications, gender, and

Table 3. Percentage of women (UK-born or came to UK before 18) who aremarried by qualification level and age

Indian Pakistani/Bangladeshi

Highestqualification 19�30 31�44 19�30 31�44

Degree 33.5 75.7 38.6 70.5A-level 22.2 78.1 30.9 76.3O-level 47.3 80.2 50.9 79.6Other 62.5 86.1 69.3 66.4None 64.5 79.1 74.0 75.2

QLFS 1998�2005, incl. FT students, weighted


ethnic group will all be significantly associated with the likelihood ofmarriage to a spouse from overseas.3

We have used a logistic regression model to address the question:what is the relative importance of age, education, and ethnic group inpredicting whether a UK-born/brought up woman will marry a manfrom overseas or a UK-born/brought up man, and is this changingover time? The outcome variable is binary: whether or not therespondent is married to a partner who arrived in the UK at ageeighteen or later.

Respondents included in the model therefore have to be married andto be UK-born/brought up. Models have been run separately for menand for women and Table 4 shows the marginal effects. These representthe percentage change in the probability of marrying a partner fromoverseas by moving from the base category (age 19�25; no qualifica-tions; Pakistani/Bangladeshi) into the specified category. An interac-tion term has been included to allow the effect of ethnicity to vary withqualifications.

Table 4 shows that, for women, the oldest two age groups were lesslikely to marry a husband from overseas than younger age groups �probably explained by the fact that male spouses were not eligible tomigrate to the UK for marriage until the mid-1980s. There is nosignificant age effect for men. Results that are statistically significantare marked in bold.

The effect of qualifications has to be interpreted in association withthe interaction term. For men, this is simple because interaction termsare not significant and the table shows that a degree reducesthe probability of marriage to a spouse from overseas by about16 percentage points and an A-level (or equivalent) qualificationreduces the probability by about 9 percentage points (in comparisonwith the reference category � no qualification). For men, being Indian,rather than Pakistani or Bangladeshi, reduces the probability ofmarriage to a spouse from overseas by about 23 percentage points.Thus, an Indian man with a degree-level qualification has a probabilityof marrying an overseas spouse that is 39 (16�23) percentage pointslower than the reference category � no qualifications and Pakistani orBangladeshi.

For women, the results are more complicated to interpret becausesome of the interaction terms � being Indian and having qualifications(at O-level or higher) � have a very big negative effect on the outcomevariable. Thus, being Indian and having a degree-level qualificationreduces a woman’s probability of having a partner from overseas byabout 30 percentage points � in comparison with the referencecategory � whereas being Indian with no qualifications is notsignificantly different from being Pakistani/Bangladeshi and havingno qualifications. For Pakistani and Bangladeshi women, a degree


level-qualification is not significantly different from the referencecategory � no qualifications � although women with A-level andO-level qualifications are rather more likely to be married to a partnerfrom overseas. For ease of understanding, Table 5 shows the predictedprobabilities from this model for Indian and Pakistani/Bangladeshimen and women by level of qualification. This clarifies the interactioneffect by showing that, for Indian women, there is a marked gradientby level of qualification; Indian women with degrees are much lesslikely to marry a spouse from overseas than Indian women with no

Table 4. Marginal effects (%) from logistic regression to predict whether apartner came to the UK at age 18�

Women Men

% Marg.effect

Sterror

% Marg.effect

Sterror

Age 26�30 0.13 2.9 �0.4 4.3Age 31�35 �2.3 2.9 �3.3 4.2Age 36�40 �8.1 3.1 1.5 4.3Age 41�44 �20.4 3.0 6.7 4.5Degree or equivalent �2.6 3.4 �15.9 3.9A level 14.3 4.3 �9.3 4.5O level 12.7 3.5 3.0 4.6Other qualification 7.8 4.4 2.5 4.7Indian �4.3 3.9 �23.2 5.0Indian*degree �23.1 4.2 7.4 6.1Indian*A-level �25.0 3.5 6.1 7.3Indian*O-level �18.1 4.1 3.5 7.1Indian*other quals �10.3 5.5 9.8 7.9Year �0.11 0.4 �0.9 0.5

N cases 2160 2030Loglikelihood �1230 �1280Psuedo R2 0.114 0.064

Predicted probability for basecategory

55% 56%

Base �age 19�25, no qualifications, Pakistani/Bangladeshi

Population: married women and men who were born in the UK or came before age 18, age

19�44

Dependent variable: spouse came to UK at age 18 versus spouse UK-born or brought up

Calculated at the mean; significant effects in bold

QLFS, 1998�2005, unweighted

Degree or equivalent: higher qualifications � NVQ 4&5 � gained at university or college of

higher education

A-level: NVQ 3 � typically gained at age 18

O-level: NVQ 2 � typically gained at age 16 at the end of compulsory schooling

Other qualification � low level qualifications, or overseas qualifications

No qualifications


qualifications. There is no clear gradient for Pakistani and Banglade-shi women. Women with A- and O-level qualifications are more likelyto be married to a spouse from overseas than either women withdegree-level qualifications or women with no qualifications.

For men, there is a 1 per cent decrease in the likelihood of marryingfrom overseas for each year between 1998 and 2005 that just reaches a.05 level of significance, but this is not present for women. Thisanalysis shows that gender, ethnic group, and qualifications are allassociated with whether men and woman marry a partner from thecountry of origin � but that the relationship with qualifications isdifferent for Indian women than for Pakistani/Bangladeshi women.This is contrary to our expectations, discussed above. Although thereis evidence that both Indian and Pakistani/Bangladeshi women withhigher qualifications delay marriage (see Table 3) this result suggeststhat, when they marry, Pakistani/Bangladeshi women with degrees areas likely to marry a spouse from overseas as women with lower levelsof qualification.

7.3 How does marriage to a husband from overseas relate to women’semployment?

Our qualitative work suggested that UK-born women who marry menfrom ‘back home’ may be more constrained in terms of employmentthan women who marry men from the UK. For example, womensaid that men from ‘back home’ were more traditional and would notallow them to work, although all evidence cited referred to otherfamily or friends rather than the respondents themselves. Table 6categorizes married women by whether they and their partner came to

Table 5. Predicted percentage of married UK-born/brought up Indian, Pakis-tani and Bangladeshi men and women whose spouse came to the UK at 18�

Men Woman

IndianPakistani &Bangladeshi Indian

Pakistani &Bangladeshi

Degree 24 (489) 38 (218) 11 (351) 40 (136)A-level 29 (196) 46 (120) 18 (196) 61 (132)O-level 38 (184) 60 (146) 26 (277) 59 (247)Other 46 (96) 61 (135) 29 (151) 52 (117)None 33 (135) 58 (311) 31 (192) 42 (361)All 30 (1100) 52 (930) 21 (1167) 50 (993)

QLFS 1998�2005, predicted probabilities based on model in table 4. () number in each cell

Population: married women and men who were born in the UK or came before age 18, age

19�44


the UK at age eighteen and over or not. It suggests that for Pakistaniand Bangladeshi women, the real difference lies with whether or nota woman is UK-born/brought up, not whether her partner is. ForIndian women, levels of economic activity are much higher althoughwomen who were UK-born/brought up are more likely to beeconomically active than those who came to the UK at eighteen andover and this is amplified for women whose partner is also UK-born/brought up.

Again, we use logistic regression to test whether a partner fromoverseas appears to have a negative effect on a woman’s probability ofbeing economically active, after taking into account other possiblefactors. The differences identified between Indian women andPakistani/Bangladeshi women in Table 6 suggest that the relationshipbetween the explanatory variables and the outcome variable may differfor these groups and therefore we have run separate models. Table 7reports the marginal effects for Indian women and Pakistani andBangladeshi women. To test the effect of marriage to a partner fromoverseas we have set up a variable that combines information onpartnership and age at arrival in the UK for both the respondent andher partner. This takes the following categories:

(1) Single, UK-born/arrived before 18;(2) Single, came to UK 18� ;(3) Married, both UK-born/brought up;(4) Married, UK-born/brought up; husband came to UK 18� ;(5) Married, came to UK 18� ; husband UK-born/brought up;(6) Married, both came to UK at 18�.

As expected, Table 7 shows that higher qualifications have a very bigpositive effect on economic activity, in comparison with no qualifica-tions, for both Indian and Pakistani/Bangladeshi women. For Indianwomen there is an increase in the probability of being economically

Table 6. Level of economic activity for married women by timing of settlementin UK

% economically active IndianPakistani/

Bangladeshi

Woman and partner UK-born/brought up 79.5 33.6Woman UK-born/brought up, husband arrived

18�66.8 35.8

Woman arrived 18�, husband UK-born/brought up

62.8 13.3

Woman and partner arrived in UK at 18� 57.2 19.3

QLFS 1998�2005, age 19�44, weighted, omits FT students


active of 25 percentage points for women with degree-level qualificationsin comparison with women with no qualifications and, for Pakistani/Bangladeshi women, this rises to 44 percentage points. The presence ofchildren, particularly those under 5, has a large negative effect incomparison with women with no children and, again, this is greater forPakistani/Bangladeshi women than for Indian women. Year has nosignificant effect, suggesting no change in women’s probability of beingeconomically active holding constant all other variables in the model.

By taking UK-born women with a husband also UK-born/arrivedbefore eighteen as the reference category, we obtain a directcomparison between UK-born women married to UK-born/broughtup men and UK-born women married to men from overseas.

For Indian women, with relatively high levels of economic activity,all partnership categories are slightly less likely to be economicallyactive than the base category � married women where both partnersare UK-born/brought up (consistent with Table 6). However, this onlyreaches significance for married women who came to the UK ateighteen or over. For the particular group of interest, UK-born womenmarried to men from overseas, levels of economic activity are 5 percent lower than the reference category but this does not reachstatistical significance.

For Pakistani and Bangladeshi women, for whom the incidence ofmarriage to a partner from overseas is much higher, and whereconcerns about levels of economic activity are much greater, there is nosignificant difference in levels of economic activity between UK-born/brought up women with a UK-born/brought up husband and theircounterparts with a husband from overseas. Thus, the timing of thehusband’s arrival in the UK is not significantly associated with thewoman’s own likelihood of being economically active, holdingconstant other factors. For women who came to the UK at eighteenor over, levels of economic activity are lower than the referencecategory irrespective of partnership status and the partner’s timing ofmigration to the UK � although this is not statistically significant forwomen who are married to men who came to the UK aged eighteen orover.

Thus, it is clear that women who are come to the UK at eighteen orover have lower levels of economic activity than women who are UK-born/brought up but that whether their husband is UK-born/broughtup or comes to the UK at eighteen or over makes no difference to thewoman’s own probability of being in the labour market. The surveyevidence does not, therefore, support the commonly-held view thatmarriage to a man from overseas has a negative effect on South Asianwomen’s likelihood of being economically active � after controlling forother factors. It is, however, important to remember that thequalitative interviews suggested that marriage to a partner from


overseas may curtail women’s education and therefore there may be aconcealed effect operating through qualifications.

Table 7 does, however, indicate that Pakistani and Bangladeshiwomen who came to the UK at eighteen or over (we assume formarriage) and are either married to a UK-born man or single (90per cent of these single women are divorced, widowed, or separated) �are significantly less likely to be economically active than UK-born/brought up Pakistani and Bangladeshi women. This negative

Table 7. Marginal effects (%) from logistic regression to predict women’seconomic activity

Indian WomenPakistani and

Bangladeshi women

% Marg. effectSt

error% Marg.

effectSt

error

Age 26�30 0.14 2.8 5.4 2.3Age 31�35 4.2 2.8 10.3 2.6Age 36�40 �1.9 3.0 5.4 2.8Age 41�44 �6.3 3.4 4.9 3.2Degree or equivalent 24.8 1.6 43.7 2.7A-level 17.8 1.8 33.3 2.9O-level 15.9 1.8 24.4 2.4Other qualification 9.2 1.8 16.5 2.2Year 0.45 0.4 �0.45 0.4Child under 5 �13.2 2.8 �20.6 2.6Child 5�15 �2.4 2.6 �11.9 2.3Number of children �6.8 1.1 �5.2 1.0Single came 18� �7.3 4.9 �8.9 3.6Single, UK-born/brought up �5.3 2.8 2.0 2.4UK-born/brought up; husband

came 18��5.4 3.0 2.9 2.3

Came to UK 18� ; husbandUK-born/brought up

�5.8 2.4 �8.9 2.3

Came to UK 18� ; husbandcame 18�

�13.0 3.0 �3.6 3.2

N cases 2722 2545Loglikelihood �1314 �1076Psuedo R2 0.17 0.33

Predicted probability for basecategory

69.2% 37.5%

Base�age 19�25, no qualifications, no child, woman and husband both UK-born/came

before 18

Calculated at the mean; significant effects in bold

QLFS, unweighted, women aged 19�44, omits FT students


effect � of about 9 percentage points � is in addition to the largenegative effect of low qualifications and having children.

8. Discussion and conclusions

What does the earlier evidence suggest for the continuing flow ofspouses from the Indian sub-continent to the UK and what are theimplications for women’s levels of economic activity? Consistent withother evidence, we find that Indian men and women are much lesslikely to marry a partner from overseas than either Pakistani orBangladeshi men and women. This may be related to a lowerprevalence of arranged marriages amongst Indian Hindus (Berthoud2005) than either Sikhs or Muslims and also to the differences betweenthe Hindu, Sikh, and Muslims religions in the extent to whichmarriage to close kin is favoured (Ballard 1990).

Although official figures do not report a decrease in immigration formarriage from the Indian sub-continent, there are reasons to suggestthat, over time, these flows may decrease. Indian men and women, andPakistani/Bangladeshi men with higher qualifications, are much lesslikely to marry a partner from overseas and as levels of qualificationincrease for these groups, we may expect a related decrease in marriageto an overseas spouse. While the strong relationship with higherqualifications found for Indian women was not present for Pakistaniand Bangladeshi women, Table 3 suggested that more highly-educatedPakistani and Bangladeshi women, and Indian women, are delayingmarriage. Whilst there is evidence in the literature of a continuingdesire amongst the more traditional Pakistani population to maintainfamily ties through marriage (Shaw 2001; Charsley 2005a; Charsleyand Shaw 2006), our interviews suggested that women wanted theirown children to have more freedom to choose a partner and avoid thedisruption to education that they, themselves, often experienced. Inthis respect, the 2008 legislation raising the age of UK sponsor andspouse entry from eighteen to twenty one may reduce the likelihood ofan interrupted education � and may affect levels of marriagemigration. Second-generation men and women may also have looserties with families in Pakistan or Bangladesh (for example, siblings areusually also in the UK).

Although the respondents to our qualitative interviews portrayedUK-born Pakistani and Bangladeshi women who married men fromoverseas as constrained in their ability to take paid work, the modelsbased on survey data show no evidence that overseas-born men have anegative effect on their wives’ levels of economic activity. The biggestimpact on a woman’s likelihood of being economically active iswhether she has qualifications, whether she has young children, andwhether she, herself, was born or brought up in the UK. After all these


factors are included in the model then whether or not her husbandcomes from overseas makes no difference. We need, however, toremember that if a woman’s education is interrupted by returningoverseas for an early marriage, then the strong effect of qualificationsevident in our analyses may, in some part, be masking the effect ofmarriage to a man from overseas. There is a need for fuller analysisusing longitudinal data that records not only when education stoppedbut the reasons for termination.

Charsley (2005a, 2005b) suggests that men who migrate to the UKfor marriage lose much of the traditional power base they would havein their home country and may start married life dependent on theirwife and her family. In this situation women may be in a good positionto renegotiate traditional gender roles. The evidence here suggests thatany concerns by the UK government that marriage to an overseaspartner will impede the employment of UK-born Pakistani andBangladeshi women are not well founded. However, Pakistani andBangladeshi women who came to the UK aged eighteen or over (weassume for marriage) are significantly less likely to be economicallyactive than UK-born/brought up Pakistani and Bangladeshi women.In general, educational qualifications and the presence of youngchildren have a much greater effect on women’s levels of activity thanthe timing of their arrival in the UK and thus these two factors providean immediate point of entry for policy interventions aimed atincreasing women’s economic activity levels.

Acknowledgements

Much of the work on which this paper is based was funded by theLeverhulme Foundation. We are also grateful to Joanne Lindley andHisako Nomura for work on data extraction and deriving variables.We would like to acknowledge the role of the Office for NationalStatistics in collecting the Labour Force Survey and the Economic andSocial Data Service for supplying it. We are grateful to both. We arealso grateful to our interview respondents. Finally, we would like tothank our anonymous referees for some very helpful and perceptivecomments.

Notes

1. The economic activity rate is the percentage of people of working age who are either in

employment or unemployed.

2. The term ‘married’ is used here to include all those with a partner. Of the South Asian

women who came to the UK at eighteen or over and are so categorized, 99 per cent are

‘married’ and 1 per cent with a ‘partner’.

3. We have not included religion in our analysis because the question was not asked on the

QLFS until 2002 and well over 90 per cent of UK Pakistanis and Bangladeshis describe


themselves as Muslim (Dobbs, Green and Zealey 2006) thus conflating religion with

ethnicity for this group.

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marriage and employment patterns amongst uk-raised indian, pakistani, and bangladeshi women

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