Care and Resistance

Summary I consider the ways in which acts of kinship among British South Asians such as the suitable arrangement of a child’s marriage can be rejected by the child as an act of care and reframed as acts of force. Drawing on ethnographic research with people who have experienced “forced marriage,” I examine the processes through which they come to re‐examine the meanings of kinship and care from their own perspective and through their own life course. I argue that acts of care are not stable givens but rather constitute a constantly shifting set of configurations evolving through changing life experiences.