Negotiating Respectable Masculinity: Gender and Recognition in the Somali Diaspora
TL;DR: This paper explored how Somalis negotiate respectable masculinity in the Diaspora, arguing that men's difficulties are articulated as a transfer of male authority to the welfare state, reflecting female empowerment and male misrecognition.
Abstract: Following years of civil war, many Somalis are displaced in Western countries as refugees or family re-unified persons. This situation has caused multiple losses of social position and upheavals in gender relations. Although both men and women are subject to these changes, Somalis describe the situations of men as more difficult. Taking departure in multi-sited fieldwork in Copenhagen, Somaliland and London, this article explores how Somalis negotiate respectable masculinity in the Diaspora, arguing that men’s difficulties are articulated as a transfer of male authority to the welfare state, reflecting female empowerment and male misrecognition. However, the focus on men’s loss can also be understood as processes of positioning and of re-instituting a ‘traditional’ gender baseline in which the positions of respectable versus failed masculinity are established. Finally, the article argues that Somali men negotiate and enact respectable masculinity through associational and community involvement, creating alternative social spaces of recognition.
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01 Jan 1992
TL;DR: The body politics of Julia Kristeva and the Body Politics of JuliaKristeva as discussed by the authors are discussed in detail in Section 5.1.1 and Section 6.2.1.
Abstract: Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics
1,125 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a qualitative, mainly in-depth interview-based study with Somali parents and key informants, they argue that a collective re-imagining of Somali society is a key to the way people go about coping and managing current change.
Abstract: Refugees are known to use narrative and draw on their memories of a homeland when displaced/in exile in an unfamiliar country to re-affirm their identities, and build a life in the new country. Nevertheless, little is known about how Somali refugees distinctively construct narratives in a new country as a means of coping in the present. In analysing narratives of Somali refugees who attended educational events in Melbourne, Australia, we examinedstories and memories as they relate to adapting to the new country. Drawing on a qualitative, mainly in-depth interview-based study with Somali parents and key informants, we argue that a collective re-imagining of Somali society is a key to the way people go about coping and managing current change. Despite experiencing the intense social disruption of civil war, idyllic stories of past family and community life are told, providing both a contrast to disconnection, individualism and risk inAustralia, as well as a thread back to a mythical Somalia.We argue that the particular narrative constructions put forward by participants are an important form of agency, counterbalancing narratives of oppressed refugees in a new country.
48 citations
TL;DR: The authors used qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with Pakistanis in the United Kingdom and Turks in Denmark to explore gendered challenges for Muslim migrant husbands and demonstrate experiences inconsistent with the assumptions that underpin regulation.
Abstract: In both Denmark and Britain, legal and policy discourses have relied on a range of problems implicitly or explicitly linked to transnational marriages involving ethnic minorities in order to control and change the character of spousal immigration. These discourses often focus on the vulnerability of Muslim women, while Muslim men appear as patriarchal figures abusing their power over co-ethnic women. In this article, we use qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with Pakistanis in the United Kingdom and Turks in Denmark to explore gendered challenges for Muslim migrant husbands and demonstrate experiences inconsistent with the assumptions that underpin regulation. Attention to intersecting identities reveals weaknesses in such men’s relational positions and multiple arenas in which their masculinity is problematized or denigrated. In combination, these representations function to limit such men’s ability to give voice to their vulnerabilities and the challenges they face and thus to reinforce as...
41 citations
Cites background from "Negotiating Respectable Masculinity..."
...Recently, however, intersectional studies on, or including, men have also started to appear (Dyer, McDowell, and Batnisky 2010; Batnisky, McDowell, and Dyer 2008; Alcalde 2011; Kleist 2010; Näre 2010)....
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...Several did, however, use the interview situation to present alternative constructions of their identities—constructions according to which they, themselves, should be perceived as ‘‘respectable’’ rather than as ‘‘failed’’ men (Gallo 2006; Kleist 2010)....
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...These men’s experiences can be drawn upon to demonstrate the destabilizing effects that (marriage) migration may have upon masculinity and upon men’s lives (Alcalde 2011; Kleist 2010)....
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...Recently, however, intersectional studies on, or including, men have also started to appear (Dyer, McDowell, and Batnisky 2010; Batnisky, McDowell, and Dyer 2008; Alcalde 2011; Kleist 2010; Näre 2010)....
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Dissertation•
28 Feb 2020
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine marriage and masculinities in motion through the experiences of Pakistani migrant husbands in Birmingham, UK, and argue that migrant husbands experience a "liminal" [in-between] masculinity.
Abstract: The thesis examines marriage and masculinities in motion through the experiences of Pakistani migrant husbands in Birmingham, UK. Drawing on the detailed life history narratives of sixty-two migrant husbands, and fourty-three community member interlocuters who were aware of and/or in contact with migrant husbands, over a thirty-month period (February 2016-August 2018), the thesis explores and is organised in three key sections: (a) aspirational masculinity, (b) liminal masculinity, and (c) (re)assertive masculinity. The first section of the thesis traces the shifts in the aspirations of migrant husbands before and after marriage and migration, showing that these shifts are experienced in relation to the masculine ideal of ‘transnational patriarch’. The second section explores the impact of marriage and migration on the experiences of masculinity. I trace the ways that migrant husbands can experience precarity, heightened levels of vulnerability, and domestic violence. As a result, I argue that migrant husbands experience a ‘liminal’ [in-between] masculinity. The final section of the thesis explores the ways in which migrant husbands practice agency and resistance. Three significant arenas of agency and resistance are highlighted: (1) engaging with Songs of Sorrow, a musical form that extends from Sufi Qawwali, (2) by engaging in religious practices that are unique to Birmingham’s ‘Sufi-scape’ in which migrant husbands develop a ‘prophetic masculinity’, (3) and by way of appearing financially secure in order to maintain their identity as ‘transnational patriarch’. The thesis engages with and contributes to the field of men and masculinity studies, migration studies, human geography, and the anthropology of Islam. The research also contributes to and paves a way forward for the ‘decolonization of Muslim men’.
41 citations
Cites background from "Negotiating Respectable Masculinity..."
...Similarly, Kleist (2010) explores the masculinity of Somali fathers in Canada and finds that they feel the state has taken over their roles as fathers due to being able to offer welfare payments to their wives and families....
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...For instance, Kleist (2010) demonstrates the complex interactions between gender, transnational social networks, and state policies, which construct masculinity in a specific way....
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01 Jan 2017
TL;DR: In this article, the authors have conducted qualitative interviews with Somalis living in Scandinavia about themes where matters of welfare and security emerge: the qualitative approach allowed me to underline the variety of experiences and solutions adopted by my interlocutors to reconstruct a meaningful safety net.
Abstract: Issues of welfare entitlements and “deservedness” are increasingly permeating political debates in present-day Scandinavian welfare states, which are worldwide renowned for their comprehensive safety net. The Somalis especially, are oftentimes singled out in political debates about immigration and integration policies as the “least integrated” group in the entire region, or as a “burden” for public finances. Against this background, this study emphasizes that issues of welfare and security exist also among the Somali diaspora in Scandinavia, although they have attracted considerably less attention. Therefore, I explore constructions as well as negotiations of the safety net, reflecting on the encounter between the Somali society, which is definable to a good extent as stateless, and the countries of the so-called Nordic model, which display conversely a crucial component of both “statism” and nationalism in their social security arrangements. In this manner, this study intends to account for historical patterns of integration from the specific point of view of welfare and security. In order to pursue this aim, I have conducted qualitative interviews with Somalis living in Scandinavia about themes where matters of welfare and security emerge: the qualitative approach allowed me to underline the variety of experiences and solutions adopted by my interlocutors to reconstruct a meaningful safety net. The study concludes that the Somalis are experiencing relevant changes in the way they think and formulate expectations about the safety net, often embracing elements of both welfare systems; at the same time, not all of the integration measures set up by Scandinavian states are conducive for alleviating Somalis’ security issues, especially in the immediate time after the resettlement. This dynamic can open up for considerably degrees of insecurity and thus long-term social vulnerability among the Somalis.
31 citations
References
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Book•
01 Jan 1990
TL;DR: The body politics of Julia Kristeva and the Body Politics of JuliaKristeva as mentioned in this paper are discussed in detail in Section 5.1.1 and Section 6.2.1.
Abstract: Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics
21,123 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, an emergent methodological trend in anthropological research that concerns the adaptation of long-standing modes of ethnographic practices to more complex objects of study is surveyed, in terms of testing the limits of ethnography, attenuating the power of fieldwork, and losing the perspective of the subaltern.
Abstract: This review surveys an emergent methodological trend in anthropological research that concerns the adaptation of long-standing modes of ethnographic practices to more complex objects of study. Ethnography moves from its conventional single-site location, contextualized by macro-constructions of a larger social order, such as the capitalist world system, to multiple sites of observation and participation that cross-cut dichotomies such as the “local” and the “global,” the “lifeworld” and the “system.” Resulting ethnographies are therefore both in and out of the world system. The anxieties to which this methodological shift gives rise are considered in terms of testing the limits of ethnography, attenuating the power of fieldwork, and losing the perspective of the subaltern. The emergence of multi-sited ethnography is located within new spheres of interdisciplinary work, including media studies, science and technology studies, and cultural studies broadly. Several “tracking” strategies that shape multi-site...
4,905 citations
4,749 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored the social theory and consequent methodology that underpins studies of transnational migration and pointed out that assimilation and enduring transnational ties are neither incompatible nor binary opposites.
Abstract: This article explores the social theory and consequent methodology that underpins studies of transnational migration. First, we propose a social field approach to the study of migration and distinguish between ways of being and ways of belonging in that field. Second, we argue that assimilation and enduring transnational ties are neither incompatible nor binary opposites. Third, we highlight social processes and institutions that are routinely obscured by traditional migration scholarship but that become clear when we use a transnational lens. Finally, we locate our approach to migration research within a larger intellectual project, taken up by scholars of transnational processes in many fields, to rethink and reformulate the concept of society such that it is no longer automatically equated with the boundaries of a single nationstate. Social scientists have long been interested in how immigrants are incorporated into new countries. In Germany and France, scholars’ expectations that foreigners will assimilate is a central piece of public policy. In the United States, immigration scholars initially argued that to move up the socioeconomic ladder, immigrants would have to abandon their unique customs, language, values, and homeland ties and identities. Even when remaining ethnic became more acceptable, most researchers assumed that the importance of homeland ties would eventually fade. To be Italian American or Irish American would ultimately reflect ethnic pride within a multicultural United States rather than enduring relations to an ancestral land. Now scholars increasingly recognize that some migrants and their descendants remain strongly influenced by their continuing ties to their home country or by social networks that stretch across national borders. They see
2,141 citations
TL;DR: The authors provided a critical analysis of the concept of hegemonic masculinity, arguing that although this concept embodies important theoretical insights, it is insufficiently developed as it stands to enable us to understand how men position themselves as gendered beings.
Abstract: In this article we provide a critical analysis of the concept of hegemonic masculinity. We argue that although this concept embodies important theoretical insights, it is insufficiently developed as it stands to enable us to understand how men position themselves as gendered beings. In particular it offers a vague and imprecise account of the social psychological reproduction of male identities. We outline an alternative critical discursive psychology of masculinity. Drawing on data from interviews with a sample of men from a range of ages and from diverse occupational backgrounds, we delineate three distinctive, yet related, procedures or psycho-discursive practices, through which men construct themselves as masculine. The political implications of these discursive practices, as well as the broader implications of treating the psychological process of identification as a form of discursive accomplishment, are also discussed.
970 citations