Wellbeing of Transnational Muslim Families

Marriage, Law and Gender

Marja Tiilikainen, Mulki Al-Sharmani, Sanna Mustasaari, Marja Tiilikainen, Mulki Al-Sharmani, Sanna Mustasaari

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351866668
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book examines the needs, aspirations, strategies, and challenges of transnational Muslim migrants in Europe with regard to family practices such as marriage, divorce, and parenting. Critically re-conceptualizing 'wellbeing' and unpacking its multiple dimensions in the context of Muslim families, it investigates how migrants make sense of and draw on different norms, laws, and regimes of knowledge as they navigate different aspects of family relations and life in a transnational social space. With attention to issues such as registration of marriage, civil versus religious marriage, spousal roles and rights, polygamy, parenting, child wellbeing, and everyday security, the authors offer national and comparative case studies of Muslim families from different parts of the world, covering different family bonds and relations, within both extended and nuclear families.

Based on empirical research in the Nordic region and further afield, this volume affords a more complete understanding of the practices of transnational migrant families, as well as the processes through which family relations and rights are negotiated between family members and with state institutions and laws, whilst contributing to the growing literature on migrant wellbeing. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and social policy with interests in migration and transnational communities, wellbeing, and the family.

1 Introduction

Wellbeing, family life, and transnational Muslims in the West

Mulki Al-Sharmani, Marja Tiilikainen and Sanna Mustasaari

For an increasing number of migrants in Europe and North America, family life is embedded in a transnational social field (Baldassar and Merla, 2014; Bryceson and Vuorela, 2002). Common to such transnational family lives is organizing and navigating intimate relationships such as marriage, divorce, and parenting through the interplay of multiple norms and laws and through processes and practices cutting across national borders. In the case of transnational Muslim families, this has often meant state scrutiny of their marriage, divorce, and parenting practices since Islam − often being a legal and normative system pertinent to these family practices − becomes the focus of political and cultural contestations in many European public discourses (Razack, 2004; Schmidt, 2011; Rytter, 2012; Charsley, 2013; Grillo, 2015).

There is considerable scholarship in the social sciences on the family practices of Muslims in Europe. Broadly speaking, this literature has tackled marriage and divorce and their transnational dimensions, the generational and gender-based changes in family norms and practices, and state governance of marriage practices (particularly those related to migration) and individuals’ and families’ strategies in dealing with the challenges and marginalizing effects resulting from state policies (Shaw, 2001; Charsley, 2005; Charsley and Liversage, 2013; Tiilikainen, 2013; Al-Sharmani, 2015; 2017; Tiilikainen, 2015; Vora, 2016; Al-Sharmani and Ismail, 2017; Akhtar, 2018).

A notable gap in this scholarship, however, is multidimensional and multi-sited research on transnational Muslim family practices in the West through the conceptual lens of individual and family wellbeing. The aim of this book is to fill this gap. The chapters in the volume investigate how family practices such as marriage, divorce and parenting become part and parcel of (sometimes elusive) pursuits of individual and family wellbeing in diverse national and political contexts in Europe and North America.

By using a processual and multidimensional conceptualization of wellbeing, we seek to capture not only the needs and challenges of individual Muslims and their families as they navigate marriage and family life in a transnational social space, but also their aspirations and their understandings of the material, relational, and ethical dimensions of what constitutes for them a good life. We investigate how individuals and their families in selected contexts make sense of and/or draw on different norms, laws, regimes of knowledge, and values in the course of different family practices, as well as the role of the larger socio-political contexts in these processes. In addition, we examine how law (whether codified or uncodified, religious or secular) functions as a national and transnational site for governance of Muslims’ intimate relationships as well as a resource by which individuals − often in differentiated, gendered, and uneven ways − can attend to their family relations and their own needs and aspirations as spouses and/or parents.

Our inquiry into the transnational family practices of Muslims and their families in selected contexts is also part of an effort to contribute to a more robust understanding and use of the concept wellbeing.

As such, our inquiry proceeds from two angles. The first is from the perspectives, experiences, and strategies of individual family members such as spouses, parents, and children. Second, we seek an understanding of the wellbeing of these individuals and their families from the perspectives and practices of institutions that are pertinent to their family lives such as state legal systems regulating marriage and recognition of family relationships, school officials working with Muslim migrant children, mosques carrying out a variety of family welfare activities including marriage solemnization and family dispute resolution, etc. By bringing in these two angles, we wish to highlight the interconnectedness of the private/family life and the public sphere of policy and governance of religious minorities, and we explore the convergences and the divergences among different individual and institutional understandings and pursuits of wellbeing in relation to Muslim family life.

The book draws on research conducted in the Nordic countries of Finland, Sweden, and Denmark that share a Nordic welfare model, but also differ as regards their history of migration. For example, Finland is quite a recent country of immigration compared to its Nordic neighbours. In addition, some of the chapters present research on countries that have a long history of immigration such as the Netherlands, the UK, and Canada.

Wellbeing and Muslim family practices

Theoretical background

Wellbeing has been written about in a number of fields in social sciences (Hall, et al., 2010). However, few conceptual studies have focused on family wellbeing (McKeown and Sweeney, 2001; Zimmerman, 2013). In addition, legal discourses addressing wellbeing have mainly focused on welfare, social justice, and children’s rights as well as the different uses of the best interest doctrine in legal fields such as family law, administrative law, and medical law (Nathan, 2010; Herring and Foster, 2012). Relational approaches to wellbeing and rights have also gained ground in legal thinking (Nedelsky, 2011).

On the whole, conceptualizations of wellbeing in social sciences have tended to be both utilitarian and unidimensional. It was only in the first decade of the new millennium that multidimensional conceptualizations of wellbeing emerged. This was also the aim of two interconnected research projects in the United Kingdom. The first project was titled Measuring Human Well-being and was conducted by UNU-WIDER. In the context of working on this project, McGillivray (2007) explored multiple dimensions and measurements for the concept of human wellbeing. The second project was titled Wellbeing in Developing Countries (WeD), and was undertaken by the ESRC Research Group at the University of Bath. It is the anthropologist Sarah White at the University of Bath and a leading member of the ESRC research group who is credited with a systematic development of the concept of wellbeing in a series of writings and publications that she has produced since 2008.

Working in the field of social development, White (2008) conceptualized wellbeing as processual, dynamic, and having three dimensions: material, relational, and subjective. The material, according to White, denotes those aspects of wellbeing that are concerned with tangible welfare needs such as education, housing, employment, safe neighbourhood, etc. The relational dimension refers to the personal and social relations in which individuals’ pursuit and experiences of wellbeing are embedded. As for the subjective dimension, it is concerned with the individual’s values, perceptions, and experiences. In a 2010 article, White modified her conceptualization, classifying the three dimensions of wellbeing as material, social, and human. The first dimension, in this modified model, was still concerned with the individual’s practical welfare such as income and assets, whereas the second dimension referred to social relations and access to public services and goods. The third dimension consisted of the individual’s capabilities (e.g. education), personal relations (such as family relations), and his/her value systems. Each dimension, White argued, included an objective aspect referring to the indicators listed in this dimension as well as a subjective aspect referring to the individual’s perceptions and experiences of this dimension (White, 2010, p.163). In the 2015 volume, which White edited with Chloe Blackmore, the work on wellbeing further evolved into examining how different academic accounts of wellbeing are constructed and the role of the different methodologies that researchers use in these constructions (White and Blackmore, 2015).

In the field of migration, the concept of wellbeing has not been systematically conceptualized or investigated. A number of studies focusing on the issue of care work in migrant families, particularly in relation to children, have presented some cursory definitions and/or explanations of the concept (Abrego, 2009; Heyman, et al., 2009; Graham and Jordan, 2011; Mazzucato and Schans, 2011). In these studies, wellbeing is primarily perceived as outcomes (e.g. psychological, educational, and health in Mazzucato and Schans, 2011) that are achieved or hindered due to a number of factors. These approaches, however, fail to address the role that individual and collective agency plays in creating and maintaining the manifold material and cultural elements of wellbeing. An adequate conceptualization of wellbeing would need to take into account, for instance, how wellbeing happens in reciprocal relations as a process of meaningful engagement with the different structures of one’s environment.

Katie Wright (2010; 2012) noted this gap in the literature. She pointed out that while the scholarship in the field highlights the attachments that migrants maintain with people, traditions, and causes in their homeland and beyond, it says little about the goals that migrants set for themselves, their feelings about whether their needs and goals are met, and the strategies that they adopt in different domains of their lives. According to Wright, a more explicit focus on the needs and goals of transnational immigrants and barriers that they themselves identify is necessary. Drawing on the conceptual framework for wellbeing that was developed by the ESRC Research Group (McGregor, 2007; McGregor and Sumner, 2010; White, 2008), Wright proposed the concept of human wellbeing. She used this concept to examine the multidimensional aspects of remittances (i.e. economic, social, etc.) and their impact on migrants and their family relations and lives. Wright’s aim was to bring together different dimensions of immigrants’ transnational engagements. She argued that

a human well-being approach has the potential to fill these gaps, first, by focusing on: how migrants’ needs and goals are formed and transformed as part of the international migration process; the obstacles to “living well” that migrants identify; and by suggesting that these barriers are linked to a mismatch between aspirations and achievements (Wright, 2010, p.368).

This volume builds on Wright’s efforts; we seek to develop a holistic understanding of the wellbeing of transnational Muslim (migrant) families. We draw on (and modify) Sarah White’s conceptualization of wellbeing to investigate Muslim migrants’ intimate relationships and family life, as they take form through transnational family ties and practices as well as through encounters with multiple laws and norms in transnational space. By employing wellbeing as our key heuristic lens, we seek a holistic and multidimensional understanding of two interrelated issues: the first is the politics and lived realities of the family practices and relationships that are the focus of investigation in the different chapters; and the second is the meanings ascribed (by different actors) to wellbeing in relation to these family relationships and practices and the ways in which both issues are shaped by the governance of Muslim minorities in the different researched contexts.

Our approach to wellbeing

We envision wellbeing as encompassing three broad dimensions: material, relational, and ethical. We propose these three classifications as a simple heuristic tool to enable us to understand and capture needs, aspirations, and challenges pertaining to marriage and family life; relationships both within the family domain and outside it in which individual and family needs, goals, and struggles as well as strategies and choices are embedded; and the normative systems that give meaning to these different aspects of family lives.

In our understanding, the material dimension of wellbeing refers to the tangible needs and resources of individuals and families, and the public goods and services that they access or lack, all of which are relevant to their welfare and their families. They include, for instance, individual capabilities such as education and knowledge; resources such as employment and housing; public goods and services such as health care, places of worship, safe neighbourhoods; institutions and mechanisms needed for marriage and divorce; support services for families; and also invisible material structures, such as territorial borders, that affect the mobility of individuals and populations.

The relational dimension refers to the belonging and personal relations and ties, for example with family members, local networks, and religious and cultural communities. This dimension also refers to the individual Muslims’ as well as families’ interactions and relations with authorities, state officials, service providers, and other actors in the larger society as well as with the hierarchical positioning of different groups in society.

And lastly, the ethical dimension is concerned with values, norms, and systems of meanings that are pertinent to people’s lives. They include religious beliefs, cultural norms and practices, general attitudes and discourses (e.g. on racialized minorities), laws and regimes of knowledge that shape, influence, or regulate (e.g. through state institutions) people’s lives.

We see each of the above dimensions of wellbeing (or ill-being) as involving a subjective aspect that has to do with individuals’ feelings and experiences as well as an objective aspect, which is related to the external structures in which experiences (or lack of experiences) of wellbeing are embedded. In this volume, we are interested in capturing the ways in which the three dimensions are interconnected and influence one another in varied, contested, and dynamic ways. We have investigated wellbeing at the level of individual family members, communities, and the state.

Similar to White, we approach wellbeing not as an outcome measured by a list of indicators, but rather as multidimensional processes (in this case of transnational Muslims) of strategizing to fulfil needs, confront challenges, and pursue aspirations in the context of family relationships, and through encounters with multiple laws, norms, and value systems that regulate and give meaning to these relationships. The multidimensionality of the needs and aspirations that constitute individual and family wellbeing is emphasized in the various case studies covered in this volume. Mulki Al-Sharmani, for example, studies, in chapter 4, a mosque-led programme for Somali Muslim families in Finland. The programme promotes a holistic and multidimensional reform of marriages and spousal and parental roles, aiming at what the mosque calls the ‘good of the family’, and the ‘positive integration’ of Somalis into Finnish society. The programme grounds both goals in Islamic norms. Iris Sportel, Betty de Hart, and Friso Kulk, in chapter 6, show how Dutch Moroccan and Dutch Egyptian couples navigate law in the pursuit of material and relational needs in the context of their transnational marriages and family life between Morocco, Egypt, and the Netherlands. Also, Rannveig Haga, in chapter 7, examines Somali parents’ perspectives on the multidimensional good life that they aspire to for their children. According to the parents, this pursued ‘good life’ for children encompasses a number of things. It entails securing material resources such as a good education and jobs. It involves cultivating close and interdependent relations between children and other family members. It also necessitates navigating a syncretic system of ethical values and meanings that draws from Islamic teachings, selected Swedish norms on raising children, and certain Somali cultural norms, which together emphasize family solidarity and Islamic ethics while at the same time allow children space for autonomy and claims to multiple identities.

By conceptualizing wellbeing as processual, we focus on time and place as factors shaping people’s strategies and negotiations within these processes. We highlight and analyse how and why these needs, challenges, and aspirat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Content
• Table
• Acknowledgements
• Series Editor’s Preface
• List of contributors
• 1. Introduction: wellbeing, family life, and transnational Muslims in the West
• 2. Converts, marriage, and the Dutch nation-state: contestations about Muslim women’s wellbeing
• 3. Wellbeing, law, and marriage: recognition of NikĀh in multicultural Britain and the Finnish welfare state
• 4. A mosque programme for the wellbeing of Muslim families
• 5. Polygamy, wellbeing, and ill-being amongst ethnic Muslim minorities
• 6. Transnational families navigating the law: marriage, divorce, and wellbeing
• 7. Somali parents in Sweden: navigating parenting and child wellbeing
• 8. Transnational Finnish–Somali families and children’s wellbeing
• 9. Raising children of Somali descent in Toronto: challenges and struggles for everyday security and wellbeing
• 10. Childhood, wellbeing, and transnational migrant families: conceptual and methodological issues
• Glossary
• Index