Marriage, Gender and Refugee Migration: Spousal Relationships among Somali Muslims in the United Kingdom 9781978805576

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Marriage, Gender and Refugee Migration

The Politics of Marriage and Gender: Global Issues in Local Contexts Series Editor: Péter Berta The Politics of Marriage and Gender: Global Issues in Local Contexts series from Rutgers University Press fills a gap in research by examining the politics of marriage and related practices, ideologies, and interpretations and addresses the key question of how the politics of marriage has affected social, cultural, and political processes, relations, and boundaries. The series looks at the complex relationships between the politics of marriage and gender, ethnic, national, religious, racial, and class identities and analyzes how these relationships contribute to the development and management of social and political differences, inequalities, and conflicts. Joanne Payton, Honor and the Political Economy of Marriage: Violence against Women in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq Rama Srinivasan, Courting Desire: Litigating for Love in North India Hui Liu, Corinne Reczek, and Lindsey Wilkinson, eds., Marriage and Health: The Well-­Being of Same-­Sex Couples Sara Smith, Intimate Geopolitics: Love, Territory, and the Future on India’s Northern Threshold Rebecca Joubin, Mediating the Uprising: Narratives of Gender and Marriage in Syrian Television Drama Raksha Pande, Learning to Love: Arranged Marriages and the British Indian Diaspora Asha L. Abeyasekera, Making the Right Choice: Narratives of Marriage in Sri Lanka Natasha Carver, Marriage, Gender and Refugee Migration: Spousal Relationships among Somali Muslims in the United Kingdom

Marriage, Gender and Refugee Migration Spousal Relationships among Somali Muslims in the United Kingdom

NATASHA CARVER

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW BRUNSWICK, CAMDEN, AND NEWARK, NEW JERSEY, AND LONDON

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­P ublication Data Names: Carver, Natasha, author. Title: Marriage, gender and refugee migration : spousal relationships among Somali Muslims in the United Kingdom / Natasha Carver. Description: New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, [2021] | Series: Politics of marriage and gender: global issues in local contexts | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020029106 | ISBN 9781978805538 (paperback ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781978805545 (hardcover ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781978805552 (epub) | ISBN 9781978805569 (mobi) | ISBN 9781978805576 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Somalis—­Great Britain—­Social conditions. | Muslims—­ Great Britain—­Social conditions. | Marriage—­Great Britain. | Sex role—­Great Britain. | Muslim families—­Great Britain. | Immigrant families—­Great Britain. | Somalis—­Cultural assimilation—­Great Britain. | Great Britain—­Emigration and immigration—­Social aspects. Classification: LCC DA125.S56 C37 2021 | DDC 306.872089/9354041—­dc23 LC record available at https://​lccn​.loc​.gov/​2020029106 A British Cataloging-­in-­P ublication record for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2021 by Natasha Carver All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by US copyright law. ♾ The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-­1992. www​.rutgersuniversitypress​.org Manufactured in the United States of America

For Matthew

CONTENTS

List of Transcription Symbols

ix

Series Foreword by Péter Berta

xi

1

Introduction

2

Context and Narrative: Speaking With and Speaking About

25

3

Atrocity Stories about Divorce

42

4

Personal Accounts of Relationship Breakdown

70

5

Being Responsible: Providing for Family

100

6

Doing Responsibility: Caring for Family

131

7

Somalinimo: An Existential Crisis?

163

8

Regendering Somaliness in the British Context

189

9

Conclusion

215

1

Acknowledgments

233

Notes

235

References

245

Index

267

vii

TRANSCRIPTION SYMBOLS

[ . . . ] “words”

Text omitted. Quotation marks with italics used to indicate non-­audio-­recorded speech.

“words”

Quotation marks without italics used to indicate audio-­ recorded and transcribed speech.

words

Used to indicate emphasis in delivery by speaker.

[

Speakers speak at the same time.

,

Micropause.

(.) (2)

Short pause of less than one second. Indicates a pause—­time in seconds to the nearest second.

wor:ds

Speaker draws out sound preceding colon.

>wordsI noticed a lot of places in here,

1

my husband tell me about it
you have to respect her as well not just the woman< So: the woman actually when she argue with him ( 1 ) she throw his bag and his: (.) shoes away [(.)

ABDI :

                                          [Yeah, be[cause

HASSAN :

                                                    [So you know, he can’t,      he can’t,           he can’t argue with her if he arg-­    try to argue with her or sort the problem she gonna call 99 you know↑

NATASHA : HASSAN :

                                                 hmm. and you going to be in trouble, you know↑ (.) So in here as they say “Ladies first!” Heh, heh,

NATASHA :

     Heh, heh, heh.

HASSAN :

So. You know. So there’s going to be trouble.

In her study of Somalis in the United States, Abdi (2014) found a similar pattern whereby male participants saw the use—­or misuse, as Hassan and

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others perceived it—­of recourse to state protection as significantly greater than the actual occurrence. Abdi’s male participants were notably more vocal about their condemnation of the state as an interloper in the affairs of the family, perhaps in part due to her positioning as an insider. To me, this story was rendered with ambivalence by all participants. Whereas the khat-­chewers were perceived as morally in the wrong, both male and female participants struggled to either condemn or celebrate what they saw as problematic paternal interference by the state and an admirable go-­getting but ultimately selfish response by women (note Hassan’s hesitations, including the use of “you know” and stutters above, as well as the laughter). Many expressed sympathy with the protagonist and asserted that she was reacting to her husband’s vice (particularly excessive and unearned authoritarianism), praising the potential for women to leave abusive relationships once in the United Kingdom. But many also felt that while state benefits were liberating for the individual woman, they had a negative impact on the community as a whole, making it too easy for women to leave a marriage. In the story, the protagonist (an everywoman from Somalia/land) is instantly spoiled by the legal rights—­seen as harbingers of power and freedom—­afforded her in the West. Stanza 1 SUCDI :

I tell you something Natasha (.)

Abstract

and it’s true things about er our culture. (.) Stanza 2 The Somalian woman when she, she coming from Somalia (.) her mind is like, the man is abusing her. (2) The man is abusing her (.)             he doesn’t give her money↑ an:             he doesn’t give her anything she want↑ Stanza 3 When she come to the Britain (.) a:nd she will get (.)     house↑            she will get     benefits               (1) for her     kids.     She feel like she has a     power,                    and she’s     strong.

Orientation and complicating action



A trocity S tories about D ivorce 5 5

Stanza 4 SUCDI :

So she say to him

Resolution

[clap, clap] “Get out.” NATASHA:

                                 hmm.

SUCDI:

This is our culture—­ a lot of people do this [clap, clap] “GET OUT!”              “I don’t want you!”              “You’re not going to help me.” Stanza 5 He say, “Really↑” She say [cheerfully], “Ok, bye.”

Accounts of this story were far less “fully formed” (Riessman, 2008:84) and included embedded evaluation throughout. Sucdi prefaces her telling with two stock narrative devices: the first signaling that a story is about to be told (“I tell you something Natasha”) and the second asserting its veracity (“and it’s true things about er our culture”). Addressing one’s audience directly is a linguistic tool employed to increase persuasion (Burnkrant and Unnava, 1995). In addition, by using my name and an imperative form of sharing this tale (“I tell you” rather than “let me tell you,” for example) she is commanding me, the audience, into active participation, reducing the social distance between herself and me and increasing the social distance between us and the protagonist. “I tell you” is also a phrase that in itself asserts that what the speaker is saying is true. From the outset, then, this narrative, like with Hafsa above, is asserted as so shocking as to be nearly unbelievable but nevertheless true. This theme is present through the telling. From the second stanza, she shifts into a narrator voice that deemphasizes the storyteller’s role in the creation of the narrative (Rosulek, 2015)—­thus, once again, an assertion of its truth independent of Sucdi herself. Speakers use this narrative device “to send the message that they are just naturally representing the world as it is rather than how they want it to be” (Rosulek, 2015:32). By the fourth stanza, she is using a character voice, thereby maintaining social distance between herself and the protagonist but also bringing a sense of immediacy to the story.

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Sucdi uses parallelism to bring out the evaluation of the story so that “he doesn’t give her money↑” is coupled with “he doesn’t give her anything she want↑.” While the husband has failed in his duty to provide, the female protagonist is presented as demonstrably immoral: money is the only thing she wants and the reason behind her migration. But as the tale continues, ambivalence and ambiguity creep in, along with a certain degree of admiration for the protagonist. In stanza 3, the repetitious sequence produces an overarching message that house + benefits + kids = power and strength, but this is undermined by its own disruptions (e.g., “for her kids” rather than a third “will get . . .”; “feel like” rather than “has”; and “a power” rather than “power”), which produce narratorial doubt of the message. Unlike Hafsa, who was relatively new to the United Kingdom and whom I recruited through the college and therefore was not known to me, Sucdi had come to the United Kingdom as a child, and by the time of our interview, which took place in her living room, we knew each other well. Even so, she shows the same concern with “the teller’s problem” (Riessman, 1990)—­with the need to convince her audience. Some went on to observe that the woman came to regret her hasty actions, contemplating the reality of life as a single mother living on benefits and questioning the cost of independence. The freedom of the West (for women) was understood as an intoxicating power that could easily mislead women into thinking they could dispense with the additional burden of a husband. The woman in the story was both admired for her spirit and courage and pitied for the hardship and loneliness of her subsequent life. A moralizing element was never far beneath the surface. In this sense, the tale was told as a failure of adaptation: while chewing khat was a refusal to accept a world in which the male is not automatically accepted as “king of the house” (ABDIRASHID), the freedom junkie misunderstands the nature of her freedom. She believes she has gained independence, but comes to understand she has swapped dependence on an individual patriarch for dependence on a paternalistic state. In all the tellings of this story, the protagonist was portrayed as reacting abruptly, throwing the man out of the house for minor misdemeanors and seemingly without much forethought. This was perceived not as a straightforward character flaw (or if so, one that was found in all women—­notice how Sucdi expands the “she” of the story in stanza 4 to three different female



A trocity S tories about D ivorce 5 7

voices concurrent with her claim that “a lot of people do this”)—­but as a structural difference. This meant that in Somalia/land, women took divorce “serious[ly]” (ZEYNAB) because of the economic and social consequences, having “a lot of issues they need to consider before they decide to leave” (ABDIRASHID), whereas in the United Kingdom, she was (and could be) brusque and impetuous to the point of frivolity: “Ok, bye.” Her parting words to her husband are delivered with relish and flippancy rather than anger. The protagonist was always presented as reasoned, pragmatic, and apparently unemotional, and the story included a comment on the betrayal of her supposed feminine quality of care. Conducting research among Somalis in the United States, Abdi (2014:466) was told “you would think the woman of this age had no vaginas”: the independence made available to women in the West, as represented in this story, desexes rather than masculinizes women. It threatens to free women from their reproductive role and, therefore, their very function as women. The Khat-­Chewers story was dramaticized minimally, if at all, but the tale of his female counterpart was usually recounted with voiced and embodied characters and often with physical gestures. The use of a character renders the storyteller as an animator (Goffman, 1981), maintaining distance between the actions and discourse of the protagonist and narrator herself, but it also brings a sense of immediacy and heightened drama to the story. The Khat-­Chewers entailed a disappointing but somewhat inevitable fall for “out-­of-­place” Somali masculinity; The Freedom Junkie, on the other hand, was a surprising and shocking transformation of Somali femininity. My positioning—­as a White Western, non-­Muslim female—­no doubt contributed to the different reflections on this story by the participants. Participants felt confident in their disapproval of the khat-­chewer (a family-­failing, unemployed drug-­taker), which resonates with many political and media discourses on failed fathers, benefit-­scroungers, and drug users. They were clearly less comfortable with how to tell the tale of The Freedom Junkie, unsure exactly how the tale would be received and the narrator subsequently judged. Many of the participants (most commonly women from previously well-­to-­do families from powerful clans, but also well-­educated men) included caveats about the woman’s right to throw out an abusive husband or explained how such abuse would never be tolerated (by wider family) in Somalia/land. The least gate-­keepered participants showed less dilemma, either knowingly

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M arriage , G ender and R efugee M igration

putting across non-­politically-­correct opinions on women who behaved like the freedom junkie or revealing such attitudes without apparent awareness that they might be taken negatively. While the dialogical context should never be underplayed, the different approach in performative aspects to the two tales is nonetheless revealing. Riessman’s (1990:78) study of individual divorce narratives in the United States demonstrates how, with divorce, the speaker has an additional burden in their “teller’s problem,” which is the need to convince the listener not just that what they are saying is true but that they were morally right to leave the marriage: “tellers must render their divorce decisions justifiable or reasonable to their listeners.” In the story of The Freedom Junkie, the individual telling the story is not the protagonist, who is not even known personally to the storyteller. The additional burden here is to convince the listener that the protagonist was wrong to leave the marriage. Evidence of this story’s circulation in the public domain of the participants is reflected in its commonly disembodied telling, along with recurrent references by female participants to its talked-­about existence as well as documented in variation by other researchers (Kleist, 2010; Lindley, 2010; McGown, 1999). It was also brought up within religious preaching. Nafisa recalled hearing an Islamic lecture in which the sheikh’s topic was the difficulty of being a good/dutiful Muslim woman in the face of apparent Western empowerment: NAFISA :

[the sheikh said] >“One of the difficulties that Somali families fa:ce (.) is that women feel empowered here: (.) and they are ready to dominate the relationship. (.) so if a man doesn’t fall in line↑ (.) they throw him out.”< (.) >So he said for example< >“if, over a petty argument, rather than persevering with your relationship (.) you pack your husband’s clothes in a little black bag (.) and throw him out↑ (.) don’t ever expect that relationship will, will recover from that.” (.) That level of humiliation↑ (.) it-­it-­you know, your relationship will not recover from it.