Marriage, Gender and Refugee Migration

Spousal Relationships among Somali Muslims in the United Kingdom

By Natasha Carver

SERIES: Politics of Marriage and Gender: Global Issues in Local Contexts

Rutgers University Press

Winner of the 2022 BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize

This ethical and poetic ethnography analyses the upheavals to gender roles and marital relationships brought about by Somali refugee migration to the UK. Unmoored from the socio-cultural norms that made them men and women, being a refugee is described as making "everything" feel "different, mixed up, upside down." Marriage, Gender and Refugee Migration details how Somali gendered identities are contested, negotiated, and (re)produced within a framework of religious and politico-national discourses, finding that the most significant catalysts for challenging and changing harmful gender practices are a combination of the welfare system and Islamic praxis. Described as “an important and urgent monograph," this book will be a key text relevant to scholars of migration, transnational families, personal life, and gender. Written in a beautiful and accessible style, the book voices the participants with respect and compassion, and is also recommended for scholars of qualitative social research methods.

Attentively observed and provocatively argued, this book explores the dynamic inter-relationship between culture, religion, ethnicity, and gender, and how migration remakes people’s understandings of their relationships. It is not only brilliant but beautiful too, capturing the creativity in struggles to craft places in the world. Truly inspirational reading. Bridget Anderson, co-editor of Citizenship and Its Others

In this sensitively-described and expertly analysed ethnography of marriage among Somalis in Bristol, Natasha Carver shows how migration has unsettled Somali cultural norms of womanhood and masculinity. Marriage, Gender and Refugee Migration is an exemplary transnational sociology of how identities are constituted. Seán McLoughlin, co-editor of Diasporas: Concepts, Intersections, Identities

An exciting insight into marriage, gender, and refugee migration. Weekendavisen

NATASHA CARVER is a lecturer in international criminology at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.

List of Figures
List of Transcription Symbols
Series Foreword by Péter Berta
1: Introduction
2: Context and Narrative: Speaking With and Speaking About
3: Atrocity Stories about Divorce
4: Personal Accounts of Relationship Breakdown
5: Being Responsible: Providing for the Family
6: Doing Responsibility: Caring for the Family
7: Somalinimo: An Existential Crisis?
8: Regendering Somaliness in the British Context
9: Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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