ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns marriage as a strategy for mobility. The analysis is based on qualitative material, consisting of around 30 interviews with Russian women and Norwegian men, in addition to data and analysis of family immigration and marriage patterns from Statistics Norway. In general, transnational marriages have had a steady increase over the past 15 years. In the present work we are more concerned with analysing the marriage patterns between Norway and Russia at a macro level, as well as at the level of everyday life. We are particularly interested in exemplifying some of the complexities and the multi-directedness of the flows across the Russian/Norwegian border within the frame of transnational marriages. The chapter focuses on the political economy illuminates the circumstances that made this particular mobility possible the political relationship between the former Soviet Union and the Western world at present and the current economic situation in Russia as well as in Norway.
