From son to father: memory, fatherhood and migration in the life stories of Muslim men married outside their religious group in Belgium and Italy

ABSTRACT

Based on biographical interviews held in Italy and Belgium with migrant-Muslim men married outside their own religious group, the article argues for the importance of including memory as part of the theoretical framework in which to locate and interpret migrant fatherhood. Looking at mixedness as a social laboratory in which to study the intersection of gender, migration and parenthood, the findings suggest that the rupture with the polygamous model of their fathers lay behind the decision of some of these men to marry a woman from the majority group and adhere to the model of fatherhood of the new country of settlement. However, for the majority of the participants, the findings demonstrate that fatherhood is much more complex than the dominant binary division between traditional and Western models of fatherhood assume. These fathers experience ambivalent emotions and constantly struggle in mediating their double presences and absences as fathers: on the one hand, they have established, thanks to the native partner, a privileged closer relationship with the new context, but, on the other, they may experience a sense of ‘dissonance’ in the management of their masculinity and of ‘loss’ in the transmission of the self to their children.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotions
• masculinity
• Muslim masculinity
• migrant fatherhood
• memory
• symbolic borders

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The notion of ‘mixedness’, far from being uncontested and unproblematic, refers to a cultural process which involves not only the way partners manage their differences but also to the social perception of difference and the related social norms within a specific social context. Although both the terms ‘mixed’ and ‘mixedness’ are less precise than others (inter-ethnic, interracial, interfaith), in accordance with other authors (e.g. Collet, 2012; Edwards, Caballero, & Puthussery, 2009), I use these terms to encompass the multiple differences (regarding race, ethnicity and faith) that characterise the participants in my study.

2 These interviews were part of three projects conducted by the author at the University of Padua (Italy) and at KU Leuven (Belgium). Details are reported in the funding section of this article. The aims of and data gathered in these projects are manifold. They included also fieldwork in France and interviews with women and children of these families. The analysis is here limited to Italy and Belgium because in these two countries I have deeply inquired into masculinity (an aspect that was only marginally addressed by my research in France). Moreover, in light of the article’s focus on the role of memory in the construction of masculinity, I have narrowed my analysis, considering only the narratives of men.

3 For Italy, the minority partners came from Morocco (15), Senegal (5), Egypt (5), Palestine (4), Algeria (3), Tunisia (2), Syria (2), Lebanon (1) and Turkey (1); and for Belgium, from Morocco (8), Tunisia (2), Bangladesh (1), Senegal (1), Algeria (1), Egypt (1), Pakistan (1), Gambia (1), Mauritania (1), Congo (1) and Ivory Coast (1).

Additional information

Funding

The research of Francesco Cerchiaro was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie [grant number 747592], and the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) [grant number 12X6120N].

Notes on contributors

Francesco Cerchiaro

Francesco Cerchiaro is assistant professor at the Radboud Social Cultural Research Institute, Faculty of Social Sciences, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He is a cultural sociologist with a specific interest in the intersection of family, migration and religion. His research is characterised by the use of qualitative methods, in particular of ‘life stories' and ethnography. He holds a PhD in Social Sciences (2013) from the University of Padua (Italy). Before moving to Nijmegen Francesco has worked at KU Leuven as FWO senior fellow (2020-2022) with the project “Fighting for Love. Mixed/Christian-Muslim Families' Associations in Belgium, France and Italy” and as Marie Curie fellow (2018-2020) with the project “ReMix”, “Christian-Muslim families dealing with religious pluralism in everyday family life”. His focus on mixed families and, in particular, on Christian-Muslim families, represents a way to examining cultural diversity and the wider social changes related to family, Muslim migration and religious pluralism in Europe. On these topics he has extensively published peer-reviewed journal articles in leading journals of religion (Social Compass and Journal of Contemporary Religion), gender (Journal of Gender Studies), migration (Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Ethnicities, Identities), sociological theory (Sociology), several book chapters, an Edited Special Issue and the book “Amori e confini. Le coppie miste tra islam, educazione dei figli e vita quotidiana” [Love and borders. Mixed couples amongst Islam, children’s education and everyday life] (Guida Ed., 2016).