Conceptualising Coercion in Child/Forced Marriage Through an Intersectional lens: Narratives of Survivors and Practitioners in the US

This article examines the nature and the forms of coercion in the forced marriage of minors in the United States. We explore: (i) direct emotional or physical force exercised by parents which is commonly underpinned by dominant constructions of gender and sexuality, a well-rehearsed theme in existing scholarship; (ii) the hitherto unexamined role of intersecting socio-economic disadvantages in vitiating consent; and (iii) how state policies/practices create conducive contexts for child/forced marriage, which is elided in existing scholarship. In extending existing conceptualisations of coercion in child/forced marriage, we explicate the ‘total burden of coercion’ through a focus on the contexts within which consent is constructed at the intersection of social relations of power based on gender, age, race/ethnicity, poverty, sexuality, and state policy/practice. Our analysis also illuminates the complex nature of survivors’ girlhood decision-making in the face of coercive constraints within which their agential capacities are formulated and exercised, and risk negotiated and managed.