Are They Married?: Muslim Marriages and the Interrelationship between Transnationalism and Ethnonationalism in the Gulf

In recent years marriages among Muslims of different ethnonational backgrounds have developed in the Gulf region. While proponents of these “Muslim marriages” depict them as transnational alternatives to ethnonational forms of affinity and belonging, as I discuss in this article these marriages are shaped and constrained by the very ethnonational processes they are often juxtaposed against. Based on over eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted on foreign resident women’s Islamic in Kuwait, sites where “Muslim marriages” are deliberated and discussed, I argue that “Muslim marriages” constitute transnational forms that are not simply marked by the extension or diffusion of kinship networks, ethnonational forms, and religious piety movements across borders. They reveal how transnationalism constitutes a dynamic field in which kinship, ethnonationalism, and religious movements are invoked and reworked, configured and reconfigured together in often complex and contradictory ways.