by Ala Sirriyeh, Lecturer in Sociology
A few days after Valentine’s Day, I stood in the supermarket queue contemplating who might be so confident as to buy a reduced priced Valentine's Day card from the display for next year. Coming straight after Christmas and New Year, some people find themselves faced with a gauntlet of public celebrations that centre heavily on the themes of family and love. Even if they share my sentiments on such over-commercialised, over-sentimentalised events, it must be difficult for those who have to endure these days while living apart from their partner or family. While a number of people do, to some extent, choose to engage in living-apart-together (LAT) relationships, for others separation is of a more enforced nature. This is currently the situation facing a number of British citizens and residents who are in a relationship with a partner from a non-EEA country (European Economic Area).
On the 9th of July 2012 the Conservative-Liberal
Democrat Coalition government's new
family migration rules came into force. These new rules introduced a steep
rise in the minimum income threshold for UK citizens and residents who are
seeking to sponsor their (non-EEA national) partners and children to join them
in the UK for family formation or family reunification. Until the new
rules came into force British citizens and residents who were settled
permanently in the UK and were sponsoring family members to join them were
required to show that they had an income that was equivalent to the level of
Income Support that a family of that size would receive in the UK. This would
demonstrate that the sponsor could provide for
these dependents who would not have recourse to public funds. Building on
existing conditionalities for family formation and family reunification
migration, the 2012 family migration rules impose further conditionalities including,
in particular, a sharp increase in the minimum income threshold levels from the
previous level of £5,500 per annum to a new minimum level of £18,
600 per annum. This threshold rises further according to the number of
dependents being sponsored with an additional income of £3,800 for the first
child and an additional £2,400 for each further child. This means that the UK now has one of the highest
minimum income thresholds (second only to Norway). Unlike many other
countries, in the UK this income must be
gained from the employment of the sponsoring partner in the UK and cannot include benefits, property assets,
the foreign partner's overseas income, subsidies from a third party or loans.
The new rules have attracted sustained criticism
over the past year and a half from those families who have been affected by
these changes and their supporters, and the rules have recently been
the subject of an inquiry by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Migration. The APPG observed that in 2012
47 per cent of the UK's
working population
would not have qualified to
sponsor a non-EEA partner to join them in the UK. Some minority ethnic populations, those living
outside London, young people and women are disproportionately
affected. Family migration and, in particular 'marriage migration' has long been a
policy theme through which anxieties around ethnicity, identity and
‘integration’ are channelled. However, the new family migration rules indicate
that class is now more explicitly weaved into the picture (although it has
always to some extent been a significant factor in its intersections with
ethnicity). It is not simply the
immigration of particular ethnic groups or nationalities that is restricted,
controlled or discouraged. The changes introduced by the new family migration
rules also throw into question the citizenship status and inclusion of some
British nationals, including white
British citizens as well as those minority ethnic citizen populations who have
long been a focus of such debates. In addition to ethnicity and nationality,
the hierarchical organisation of acceptable and less acceptable international
partnerships and family reflects class-based inequalities and a connected
moralising discourse about valued family life.
