No Arranged Marriages Here: Migration and the Shift from Relations of Descent to Consent in the Lebanese Diaspora

ABSTRACT

Although frequently debated in the media, few ethnographic studies have examined the dynamics between arranged and love marriages in immigrant communities in Australia. Drawing on Sollors’ theory of Consent over Descent and Bourdieu’s theory of Masculine Domination, this paper examines the cultural transformation brought about by second-generation daughters in Maronite, Lebanese immigrant families from Hadchit who increasingly choose their own spouse based on love and gender equality. This paper theorises women as subjects, not objects of marriage and asks: how does cultural identity change when women have greater agency in the negotiation of marriage? The study finds three dialectical processes of social change. First, the relation of male domination between the sexes has been destabilised. Second, although marriage contracts based upon female consent have led to a growing preference for exogamous love marriages over endogamous arranged marriages within the village, religious endogamy has remained significant. Last, the study finds an overall decline in village identification; ‘Lebanese-Australian’ has become the most common form of cultural identification.

KEYWORDS:

• Lebanese diaspora
• second-generation migrants
• gender equality
• marriage
• endogamy
• exogamy
• cultural identity

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the St. Raymond’s Charities of Hadchit, Sydney for their assistance with the fieldwork and the Hadchit Household Survey, as well as all participants in this study who generously gave their time to be interviewed. I also thank Dr. David Hyndman for his comments on the draft article and Professor Kerry Jacobs for his valuable insights into the theoretical orientation of the article. I also thank Dr. Assa Doron for his insights and comments. Lastly, I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their perceptive criticisms, which improved the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Note on contributor

Nelia Hyndman-Rizk is a Lecturer in Cross Cultural Management in the School of Business at The University of New South Wales, Canberra. Her research specialises in migration studies, gender and intercultural dynamics, with a focus on the Lebanese diaspora.

Notes

1. In the 1890s the state of Lebanon didn’t exist so ‘Lebanese’ were then known as ‘Syrians’, as they came mostly from Mount Lebanon which was located in the ‘Syrian province’ of the Ottoman Empire.

2. All names are Arabic pseudonyms.