This paper discusses policy initiatives aimed at preventing forced marriage through the use of educational policies in France and Great Britain, placing them in the broader context of the British and French approaches to immigrant incorporation. The comparison begins with a consideration of French and British national rhetoric and policies against forced marriage from 1997 to 2011 to develop an adequate framework for the study of the preventive role attributed to educational policies implemented at the local level in four major localities (the capital cities, Paris and London, and the second two largest cities per population size, Lyon and Birmingham). Despite differences in the policies and rhetoric adopted by multicultural Britain and republican France to tackle forced unions, the paper hypothesizes a common trend in the ways French and British public authorities conceptualize the practice of forced marriage - intended mainly as the product of cultural difference. Similarities in the conceptualization of the practice, in turn, have contributed to the identification of similar policy tools despite dissimilar institutional contexts. In both countries, indeed, policy solutions have focused on tools aiming at tackling the practice by either controlling cultural pressures at the point of marriage, or by discouraging transnational marriages through the implementation of restrictive immigration measures. Such a hypothesis contrasts with one of the key claims of historical institutionalism, according to which dissimilar institutions lead to different policy outcomes across different countries. Thus, this paper will introduce the role of ideas – in the form of frames (Bleich 2003) – as a tool to explain the reasons why French and British policies aimed at the prevention of forced unions have led to similar policy outcomes - represented by the adoption of similar policy tools - despite dissimilar institutional contexts.
