‘An Irish solution to an Irish problem’: constructing legitimate intimacy in tax marriage and migration marriage in Ireland

Abstract

In Ireland, the extension of rights to same-sex citizen couples coexists with the restriction of rights to transnational heterosexual couples. This article contrasts dual constructions of materially motivated marriages as a celebration of national belonging and threat to national integrity. Drawing on twenty-eight texts from the Irish press, it analyses the discursive construction of a tax-motivated marriage by two Irish citizen men in 2017, dubbed ‘the marriage of convenience with love at its heart,’ against portrayals of unions involving heterosexual couples with non-citizen spouses, which were cast as a criminal threat. The analysis highlights how discourses legitimise instrumentality in some cases while condemning it in others, depending on racialised, sexualised and citizenship-related criteria. Drawing on Anthony Giddens’s conception of the ‘pure relationship’, this article examines how marriages that depart from this ideal are constructed as ‘instrumental’ or ‘impure’, and how such classifications are unevenly applied. The findings demonstrate that media and political discourse evaluate these so-called ‘impure’ marriages differently: tax-related same-sex citizen unions are discursively embraced as pragmatic and legitimate, while immigration-related heterosexual unions are discursively criminalised. These contrasts reveal that the boundaries of legitimate intimacy are contingent and socially constructed, mediated through intersecting hierarchies of sexuality, race, and citizenship.