Gender, family negotiations and academic success of young Moroccan women in Spain

Abstract

This article examines the lives of pioneering young women from Morocco, the first to enjoy educational and social success in Catalonia, by analyzing the family negotiations entered into during this process. The study is based on the life stories of these young Moroccan women and on ideas that emerge from discussion groups involving the women themselves and experts in education and other fields. We report that the young women perceive a certain degree of flexibility on the part of their families in their intra-family relations and the model of woman they are prepared to accept. However, our study also provides evidence of the fact that their success is associated with a constant process of negotiation, the women having to exercise their agency above and beyond their parental expectations and control, leaving them in a position of solitude.

Keywords:

• academic success
• young Moroccan women
• family negotiations
• gender relations
• Muslim femininity
• Spain

Acknowledgements

We thank all the young Moroccan women who participated in this project. We also thank the other members of the project team, namely, Vicenç Casalta, Mustapha Alaoui and Laia Narciso and Dr Angela Valenzuela and Brenda Rubio at the University of Texas at Austin.

In memory of Vicenç Casalta.

Additional information

Funding

Funding. The writing of this article was undertaken as part of the project ‘Trajectòries d’èxit i les joves marroquines a Catalunya. Una anàlisi qualitativa des d’una perspectiva comparada’, funded by the Secretaria para la Inmigración and the Dirección General de Investigación de la Generalitat de Cataluña (ARAFI 2010, ARAF1).