Legislating love: Norwegian family reunification law as a racial project

Love is often portrayed as helping us overcome racism and other forms of prejudice, yet this article argues that imperatives towards love and romance-based marriage in Norwegian family reunification law constitute a racial project. Through a detailed reading of the 2004 Green Paper on a new Immigration Act, and a particular focus on the use of immigration law to combat forced marriages evident there, the centrality of romantic love in constructions of national subjects is considered. These constructions are seen to render some groups of Norwegian citizens simultaneously invisible as national subjects and hyper-visible as objects of national management.