Social Citizenship and Divorce: Migrant Women’s Experiences of the Dutch and Belgian Welfare Systems

Marriages between partners with different nationalities and/or ethnicities are continuously attracting the controlling gaze of many states at the global level. Studies have demonstrated how states govern the intimate lives of their citizens and their foreign partners through their migration and social policies as well as their family laws. When ‘mixed’ couples break up, how do states regulate this conjugal dissolution and how does it affect the lives of the ex-partners, notably migrant ones? To address these questions, I examine through the prism of social citizenship the case of Filipino migrant women who underwent divorce in Belgium and in the Netherlands. Semi-structured interviews with thirty women in these countries shows how the divorce process revealed to them the extent of their social exclusion or inclusion in their receiving countries. Many study participants were able to face the consequences of divorce thanks to their access to social welfare services. However, this access did not take place without certain conditions, which structured migrant women’s decisions and strategies to move forward in their lives. Hence, these women’s divorce is not only a story of a ruptured intimacy but also an experience of ‘tying the knot’ with the State.