Document Type : Research Article
Authors
1
PhD student in sociology, Faculty of Humanities, Islamic Azad University, North Tehran Branch, Tehran, Iran
2
Department of sociology. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Iran
3
Department of Social Sciences, East Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
10.22059/jisr.2026.408974.1703
Abstract
The present study aims to analyze the formative contexts, reasons for continuity, consequences, and strategies adopted in endogamous marriages in border regions. Endogamous marriage in border areas is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon that emerges from the intertwining of social life and borderland existence among populations living on both sides of political boundaries. This interconnection produces specific conditions that have largely been overlooked in studies of family, borderland life, and ethnicity.
The study adopts an integrative theoretical framework to understand endogamous marriage in culturally and socially shared border regions, drawing on Schmidt and Gerbner’s Cultural Circle Theory, Cultural Schema Theory, and Young Yun Kim’s Theory of Interethnic Communication Contexts. Methodologically, the research employs a grounded theory approach. Data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews with 26 couples and key informants from the Horaman-e Lehoun region—specifically the villages of Haneh-Garmaleh in Iran and Byara in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
The findings indicate that historical conditions, shared cultural traits, and border proximity constitute the contextual conditions shaping endogamous marriage on both sides of the border. Flexible survival mechanisms, along with economic and service-related opportunities, have created the causal conditions for this type of marriage, while increasing cross-border mobility, the emergence of new educational and occupational opportunities, and modern communication technologies function as intervening factors that accelerate and facilitate this process. The outcome of this process is the formation of a transborder social system; that is, these marriages lead to the creation of cross-border networks of security and support, a reduction in the perceived restrictiveness of borders, an increase in economic exchanges, and the facilitation of mediation during politically sensitive periods.
Residents ensure the continuity and strengthening of this self-constructed system through strategies such as the continuous reinforcement of a kinship-based moral economy and the redefinition of marriage from a purely economic transaction into an “ethnic-supportive action.” Ultimately, it can be argued that border endogamous marriage functions as a politics of life for residents living under unstable, complex, and turbulent border conditions.
Keywords
Main Subjects
)