Agentive suspension of oppressive structures: self-concept and emotion-work among Muslim mothers who study at a Jewish university

ABSTRACT

This article aims to highlight the significance of self-concept and emotion-work in the everyday experiences of Muslim mothers who are students at a Jewish university. This research objective was achieved by means of in-depth interviews with mothers who are all studying to earn master’s degrees. Our study reveals three main findings. The first is an ‘inundated self’ that experiences frequent phenomenological preoccupation with the dialectic between structure and agency, as well as acute internal transitions between space-affiliated self-concepts, thus making it difficult to establish narrative coherence. The second is the agentive suspension of the structure. And last is the emotion-work (characterized by experiences of aloneness, which is dissimilar from loneliness) and management of emotional tension. The discussion section suggests pondering the unique interaction between structure and agency, especially the agentive strategies that enable creative inventions.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion-work
• self-concept
• Muslim women
• aloneness
• suspension
• agency

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Avihu Shoshana is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Israel. Avihu's area of research includes social psychology; discourse and subjectivity; ethnicity, race and social class; anthropology of education.

Sahar Shchada is an MA student at the Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Israel. Sahar's area of research includes gender and education; culture and education; higher education; self and culture.

Notes

1. The expression ‘Jewish university’ was proffered by the interviewees. With this in mind, we chose to use this expression throughout the article.

2. According to Kim et al (2010, 404), traditional students generally ‘attend college directly after completing high school and … are 18 to 22 years of age, full-time students, and living on campus’. In contrast, nontraditional students are defined by different attributes such as age (25 years old or order) and familial status as parents or single parents.

3. This is the university with the highest rates of Arab students in Israel: Arabs make up 25% of undergraduate students and 19.7% of graduate students. The rate of undergraduate students in other universities ranged between 2.2% and 9.9% and the rate of graduate students ranged between 2% and 6%.

4. Our findings revealed no differences in relation to self-concepts and emotion-work between students who wore head coverings, and students who did not. In another article, we reveal differences in relation to everyday racism.

5. The interviewees were also asked about the extent of unspoken support on the part of their families, such as pride or praise when they were not present. Most of the interviewees did not report this type of support.

6. The interviewees did not describe similar prices in their bachelor degree studies. Many of their bachelor’s degree studies took place in teaching-instruction colleges in the proximity of their family residences, in which many female Arab students study. Master’s degree studies in a university with a Jewish majority, geographically far from the village in which their families live, is particularly disturbing to their family members. In other words, the interviewees describe tensions within their families that are unique to master’s degree studies. We would like to thank one of the reviewers for considering this component.

7. The interviewees reported different instances of everyday racism, like disrespectful service in university coffee shops, racist expressions (used ‘humorously’) by Jewish students (such as: ‘You have Arab taste’ as an expression of inferior esthetic taste), and curses following terrorist actions.