1. Introduction: Transnational Cross-Cultural Marriage in Australia’s Multicultural Society -- 2. Histories of Spousal Migration -- 3. ‘An Ocean of Fishes’: Negotiating Love Online -- 4. Creating Intercultural Families.

" Marriage Migration, Intercultural Families and Global Intimacies connects moral panics over the centuries. From settlement, Australian society has stereotyped women who move to marry, or marry as they move. Here, Robinson’s weaves together a deft review of the literature with vignettes from interviewees in cross-cultural marriages. Traversing the centuries, and technologies, her analysis reveals why the circumstance of a couples’ courtship is an unreliable indicator of a companionate marriage." —Deirdre McKay, Professor of Sustainable Development, Keele University, UK This book brings an innovative study of marriage migration in Australia, offering new insights into issues of intimacy and authenticity online. In doing so, it delivers on five main objectives: exploring emotional attachment and personal life in global spaces; interrogating stereotypes and their pervasive influence on personal relations; analysing attitudes and social practice within the institution of marriage; investigating immigration policy, marriage, and citizens’ rights; theorizing gender and class relations in the current global order. The analysis moves between ‘online’ and ‘offline’ social relations and processes, with comparative data enabling a critical framing of the data on marriage relationships developed online. This important contribution places contemporary forms of transcultural marriage and marriage brokering in a historical context of ‘marriage’ in the ‘Anglosphere’ tradition, and in particular historical forms of marriage migration in settler colonial and now multicultural Australia—including histories of colonial era ‘bride ships’ and post WW2 ‘proxy brides’ from southern Europe. Kathryn Robinson is Professor Emerita in Anthropology at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University.