The matrimonial web of migrants: The economics of profiling as a new form of ethnic business

Abstract

This article investigates the matrimonial web of migrants by first focusing on the economy of ethnic profiling which underlies it. Such ethnicization of the ‘love’ encounter is closely dependant on a complex articulation of gender, nationality and mobility (migration), which is called here an ‘international distribution of gender’. Finally, the migrant matrimonial web suggests a new form of ‘ethnic business’, in which the source of value does not result from the activation of pre-existing networks but from the very creation of ethnic networks.