Negotiating Masculine Identities as Dependents of High-Achieving Female Migrants in the UK (original) (raw)
Related papers
Negotiating Masculinity: Migrant Husbands and Cross-Border ‘Marrying-Up’
Routledge eBooks, 2023
This chapter examines how South Asian migrant husbands who are married to Korean women negotiate their masculinity and gender roles throughout their integration into the contemporary Korean family. In East Asia, migration scholars have researched the ‘feminization of migration’ (sex workers, domestic workers, and female marriage migration) to examine global systems of gender and racial inequality. However, scholars have paid very little attention to migrant husbands despite the increasing number of migrant husbands from low-income countries. Drawing upon ethnographic research on migrant husbands from Bangladesh and Nepal, this article argues that migrant husbands actively adapt and pursue new ways of understanding their gender roles – from traditional patriarchal to liberal urban-middle-class ideals. At the same time, however, they struggle between new and old gender roles in their nuclear Korean family and their extended families back in Bangladesh or Nepal. By addressing conceptions of ‘flexible and strategic masculinity,’ this article will highlight migrant husbands’ shifting gender roles and masculine identities in the new family environment, one in which the Korean wife holds greater economic and social influence. This article will contribute to expanding the discussion on gender and global migration by filling the gap between male migrants’ gender strategies and masculinities. This topic is rarely discussed in the study of migration in East Asia. This article also illustrates how global economic hierarchies in migration are intertwined with the locally specific gender strategies of male migrants.
Contesting Integration, Engendering Migration, 2013
With this paragraph the journalist Martina Salomon ended a newspaper article on migration politics in Austria. In the article she vehemently criticized Austrian migration politics of earlier decades for having been too lax and argued for the need for a modern, rational approach, as the then discussed (and explained further below) Red-White-Red-Card would be. I cite this paragraph as it is typical of a particular discourse on the need for modern migration and integration policies in Austria and beyond. This discourse particularly employs notions of culture, dif- ference, gender and sexuality to make its case for a modern politics of migration and integration. And, as I want to show in this chapter, it is notions of dangerous, patriarchal migrant masculinity that are often employed to articulate the dangers of migration if not governed correctly.
Silenced Husbands: Muslim Marriage Migration and Masculinity
In both Denmark and Britain, legal and policy discourses have relied on a range of problems implicitly or explicitly linked to transnational marriages involving ethnic minorities in order to control and change the character of spousal immigration. These discourses often focus on the vulnerability of Muslim women, whilst Muslim men appear as patriarchal figures abusing their power over co-ethnic women. In this article, we use qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with Pakistanis in the UK and Turks in Denmark to explore gendered challenges for Muslim migrant husbands, and demonstrate experiences inconsistent with the assumptions that underpin regulation. Attention to intersecting identities reveals weaknesses in such men’s relational positions, and multiple arenas in which their masculinity is problematized or denigrated. In combination, these representations function to limit such men’s ability to give voice to their vulnerabilities and the challenges they face, and thus to reinforce assumptions of male hegemony.
Hexagon Series on Human and Environmental Security and Peace, 2013
Men are seldom a topic of concern in migration research as gendered subjects who experience the implications of social justice, for instance in aspects relating to lives in their families such as fairness of representation, consequences of material redistribution, and management of emotions. Economic migrants in particular, who are seen as matching the role of breadwinners and confirming the status of dominant patriarchal men, are a particularly underrated case. Using the experiences of Wolof men who emigrate from Senegal to become the main providers for their families, this chapter questions this assumption by drawing insights from a theorization on 'transnational families', 'intersectionality' and 'masculinity' as developed within migration and gender studies. The chapter discusses how male gender roles become interlocked with other categories, as asymmetries (be they real or perceived) intervene between the migrant and the stay-behind, and as geographic distance forces them to revisit the propriety of arrangements that enable them to enact their gendered responsibility within families. Caught between pressures deriving from their economic and moral obligations towards family and kin on the one hand, and personal aspirations of fitting the part of successful men on the other, the ethnographic research presented in this chapter shows that migrants engage in an emotional journey that may challenge, rather than confirm, their expectations of 'hegemonic' masculinity.
"Men are seldom a topic of concern in migration research as gendered subjects who experience the implications of social justice, for instance in aspects relating to lives in their families such as fairness of representation, consequences of material redistribution, and management of emotions. Economic migrants in particular, who are seen as matching the role of breadwinners and confirming the status of dominant patriarchal men, are a particularly underrated case. Using the experiences of Wolof men who emigrate from Senegal to become the main providers for their families, this chapter questions this assumption by drawing insights from a theorization on ‘transnational families’, ‘intersectionality’ and ‘masculinity’ as developed within migration and gender studies. The chapter discusses how male gender roles become interlocked with other categories, as asymmetries (be they real or perceived) intervene between the migrant and the left-behind, and as geographic distance forces them to revisit the propriety of arrangements that enable them to enact their gendered responsibility within families. Caught between pressures deriving from their economic and moral obligations towards family and kin on the one hand, and personal aspirations of fitting the part of successful men on the other, the ethnographic research presented in this chapter shows that migrants engage in an emotional journey that may challenge, rather than confirm, their expectations of ‘hegemonic’ masculinity."
Most research on rural masculinity focuses on sedentary and agricultural lifestyles. Based on fieldwork and interviews with 18 male newcomers, this article explores constructions of masculinities among in-migrants engaged in several occupations and entre-preneurial activities in Finnmark, in Northern Norway. Building on the concept of hegemonic masculinities, we show how a specific combination of compact geography, a changing labour market and the Nordic dual-earner family model and welfare state create a rural space of opportunities in which male in-migrants construct themselves as men for the future. The respondents emphasise the importance of intensive fatherhood, being a supportive spouse, and commitment to leisure activities as well as their professional identities. Contrary to studies of rural masculinities emphasising 'macho' traits, our analysis demonstrates the prevalence of novel nonhegemonic masculinities among in-migrants in northernmost Norway.
2014
This chapter contributes to the emerging literature on men who do 'women's work'. It focuses on the 'feminine' occupation of domestic worker and on how male and female migrant workers balance their gender identities at the intersection of class, race, and immigration status. It addresses the related research gap in the Netherlands by focusing on the situation of migrant domestic workers from the Philippines with irregular status. From the perspective of hegemonic gender identities, male migrant domestic workers, too, are subjected to gender injustices. These injustices are rooted in the devaluation of everything coded as 'feminine', including their occupation. The resulting 'male femininities' are threatening male domestic workers' sense of self-worth and their societal recognition. This misrecognition adds to the exploitative economic circumstances that both female and male migrant domestic workers experience and has negative repercussions on male migrants' access to employment. Ironically, workers themselves contribute to reproducing these symbolic and material injustices and, hence, consolidate them. Redressing these injustices requires changes both in the economic structure and in society's ordering of status. When the demands for respect for domestic workers and for their labour rights are combined, this necessity is reflected in workers' national and international campaigns. They need to be complemented by national regulation that will protect all workers effectively, independent of the location of their work, their gender, their race, or their immigration status. Last but not least, given their crucial role in societal reproduction, domestic workers should be included in the categories of migrant workers who are welcome in European labour markets in redefined and relaxed transnational migration regimes.
Introduction Men and Masculinities in the IDRL 2016.pdf
This innovative book analyses the role gender plays in the relationship between globalisation, migration and reproductive labour. Exploring the gendered experiences of migrant men and the social construction of racialised masculinities in the context of the 'international division of reproductive labour' (IDRL), it examines how new patterns of consumption and provision of paid domestic/care work lead to forms of inequality across racial, ethnic, gender and class lines. Based on an ethnographic analysis of the working and family lives of migrant men within the IDRL, it focuses on the practices and strategies of migrant men employed as domestic/care workers in Italy. The authors highlight how migrant men's experiences of reproductive labour and family are shaped by global forces and national public policies, and how they negotiate the changes and potential conflicts that their 'feminised' jobs entail. They draw on the voices of men and women of different nationalities to show how masculinities are constructed within the home through migrant men's interactions with male and female employers, women relations and their wider ethnic network. Bridging the divide between scholarship on international migration, care work and masculinity studies, this book will interest sociologists, anthropologists, economists, political scientists and social policy experts.
Hegemonic Masculinity of the Immigrant Other
Academia Letters, 2021
Hegemonic masculinity is a term first coined by Raewyn Connell (1995) as "the culturally idealised and dominant form of masculinity, used to legitimate and maintain masculine domination of a specific group of men over women and other men".[1] The term "hegemony" is borrowed from Antonio Gramsci (1926) which is defined as the "system of class alliance in which a hegemonic class exercised political leadership over subaltern classes by winning them over".[2] Similar to Gramsci, Connell also forms a hierarchical structure of genders by which proves the existence of plural forms of femininities and masculinities. Furthermore, according to Bourdieu's (1977) notion of habitus, the upbringing of the children and the parental role in this action can have a part in the children's future actions. The background of the habitusdefined by him as the past which survives in the present-is formed by some notions such as social class, religion, nationality, education and ethnicity. Particularly, among the immigrant subaltern groups, the ethnic habitus plays an important role in development and interaction of the children within the dominant group, since the cultural baggage of these immigrants shapes their prejudices and manners towards the hegemonic ethnicity. Elif Shafak's novel Honour (2012) issues an immigrant family's struggle to adapt themselves into the conditions in London; the family's first generation members are reluctant to leave their cultural baggage behind whilst the second generation seems more adopted to the present novelties in life conditions. Iskender, the elder brother character, has undertaken the role of paterfamilias which leads him to display hegemonic masculinity. As Bourdieu suggests, the marginalised groups construct and perform situated dominant masculinity.[3] Depending on, not only in his household but also among his friends where Iskender becomes the leader of his all-boy-gang since he is the representative of the heterosexual, dominant, strong, handsome male figure. Moreover, Connell[4] claims that hegemonic masculinity is the dominating power not only over women but also the alternative, marginalised masculinities and the