Romance on the Global Stage :Relationship Sequences Between French Men and Postsoviet Women

French-Russian marriages are on the rise since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. These marriages are gendered and they take place in the new marriage-scape (Appadurai, 1990): Western men and non-Western women connecting all over the world, create mixed couples. This new fact raises the question of power within relationships. Who are the individuals that meet “on a global stage” (Constable, 2003)? French-Russian marriages deserve particular attention since Russian brides come in third position of foreign brides in France (Ined, 2013). Moreover, Russian women get married to Western men in many other countries as well, as we observe in the literature (Niedomysl and al. 2010 ;Levchenko and Solheim, 2013). Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data (French Census and Saint Petersburg’s and Lyon’s marriage registration), this paper intends to unravel the specificity of this type of marriage, especially its heterogamy. Men and women meet after different experiences of socialisation in different countries, but at the same time most of them are highly educated, preserving thereby some type of social homogamy. In this respect, we find that French-Russian marriages cannot be seen as a “survival strategy” for women. These are not desperate brides who escape from poverty and backwardness into the wealthy and advanced West. Yet, we do suspect other vectors of unequal power in the relationship as suggested by the large age gaps between partners (men always being older than women) and the high proportion of unemployed women after these couples settled in France. To better understand this new kind of marriage, we detail the three main ways Western men and Russian women meet: international matchmaking (Internet, matrimonial agencies), romance on the global stage (people working, studying or traveling abroad), and personal networks (spouses having met through mutual friends). The first two ways are most frequent. They offer a new perspective in the formation of current unions on the global stage. If the ways of meeting are important, more interesting is the total sequence of meeting because international relationships require high motivation and long proceedings. Many years separate generally the first meeting from marriage – as already observed by Yvonne Riano (2007). These relationships outline “gendered geographies of power” (Pessar & Malher, 2001), but highlight at the same time new “arrangements between the sexes” (Goffman, 1977) on a global scale.