@phdthesis{8725802,
  abstract     = {{The main question this ethnographic research seeks to answer is how to move beyond the dominant ‘structure versus agency’ in the study or analysis of marriage migration, gender and integration in Flanders (Belgium). On an international level, this binary thinking shapes the debate on migrant women, who are regarded as passive victims of men, patriarchy, religion, and the need for them to be liberated, empowered or educated in order to better fit in to society. These representations have given rise to a consensus in the West: that Muslim women need to be rescued, which is propagated by human rights groups, liberal feminists, right-wing politics and the media. In the Belgian national context of family reunification and marriage migration, marriage migrant women are believed to be held back or constrained by their husbands, family and/or religion from integrating and partaking in (regular) citizenisation and Dutch courses, which denies their agency both as wives and citizens. Additionally, their personal choices to become mothers are believed to exacerbate their position as passive citizens. Furthermore, becoming a mother supposedly leaves them little time to invest in integration courses, especially since day-care services are an important financial and cultural threshold.  

As these representations and policies are often not based on rigorous research that consults these migrant women directly, this research aims to fill this knowledge gap by bringing together the gendered representations and policy views on marriage migration and the narratives of lived experiences and desires, as articulated by migrant women themselves. Another aim is to find out how exactly Moroccan migrant women navigate these structures as affective migrant mothers, and the role of religion in this.

The main findings show how marriage migration as a form of migration is increasingly characterised by multiple, variable and complex processes and meanings for migrant women themselves. In contrast to class and race, gender for example was rarely referred to by the participating women as a form of inequality or constraint. Rather, a first finding is that gender-inequality was more present within the narratives of ‘mediators’ or key informants with a migration background, who contend that the legal conditions for family reunification rather maintain or reinforce gender-inequality due to migrant women’s positions of legal dependency. Secondly, the migrant mothers’ capacity to navigate and cope within their complex and often (legally) precarious situations depended mainly on previous experiences with migration, the length of their residence to date, and their socio-economic and educational level. Thirdly, and contrary to popular belief, I found that migrant women are motivated to partake in citizenisation courses segregated on the basis of gender and greatly benefit from it. An important condition, however, is the opportunity to have free and/or accessible day-care services for their children. Also, engaging with both first generation and newcomer migrant mothers’ own narratives, desires and lived experiences led to my discovery of several discrepancies between dominant discourses about integration and citizenisation, and migrant mothers’ own views and experiences. Finally, I found that becoming a mother and investing in care and mothering was experienced as a rewarding investment of migrant women’s time spent in precariousness.}},
  author       = {{Miri, Amal}},
  keywords     = {{marriage migration,gender,motherhood,affective citizenship,lived religion}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{176}},
  publisher    = {{Ghent University. Faculty of Arts and Philosophy}},
  school       = {{Ghent University}},
  title        = {{Working 'with' or 'on' Moroccan migrant mothers : mediating structure versus agency in the analysis of marriage migration, gender and integration}},
  year         = {{2021}},
}