CFP: "Marriage and Migrations: Emerging Perspectives on Conjugal Relationships in the Middle East and North Africa"

Call For Papers:
Marriage and Migrations: Emerging Perspectives on Conjugal Relationships in the Middle East and North Africa

Migration has long been a prominent feature of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, characterized by a wide range of mobilities. Historically, this phenomenon includes trade migrations such as those along the cross-Sahara trade routes and the Silk Road, as well as movements related to Ottoman expansion, European colonialism, and decolonization. In more recent times, other events and circumstances have driven significant migration in the region including the creation of the state of Israel in 1948; irregular cross-Sahara migration; student migration to diverse MENA countries; labor migration to the Gulf countries; and substantial forced migrations propelled by conflicts within the MENA region in the twenty-first century—such as those in Syria, Libya, and Yemen—as well as in neighboring regions like the Horn of Africa and South Asia.

Different types of migration bring significant challenges across various levels—socio-economic, political, and cultural. While it is believed that migration impacts existing family structures and gender roles defined by the religious and cultural norms of both the newcomers and their host societies, the full extent of these effects is not yet well understood.

This special issue seeks to examine how different forms of mobility shape understandings of family structures and relationships within historical and contemporary religious and socio-economic contexts. Different to other studies on marriage and (forced) migration, this themed issue will: a) link two currently distinct MENA research areas together: women in Islam and migration studies; and b) consider issues such as family, sexuality, love, law, and citizenship through new perspectives beyond religious and gender essentialism and neo-orientalist stereotypes.

Although there is a growing body of research on gender, marriage, and sexuality in the MENA region that covers both historical and contemporary perspectives as well legislative and judicial approaches to Islamic family law, most studies have focused predominantly on the experiences of female Muslim citizens. As a result, the perspectives of males, non-Muslims, and non-citizens remain underexplored, leaving a gap in understanding how significant migratory flows contribute to the emergence of new norms and practices regarding conjugal relationships in a region where religion plays an important role in the formal and informal regulation of marriage. Similarly, in migration studies, the focus has largely centered on outgoing MENA migration, with less attention paid to incoming and intra-MENA migration. Additionally, existing research tends to focus on irregular migration, consequently overlooking other significant forms of migration, such as student, marriage, and labor migration.

This themed issue aims to examine possible changes in marriage and other related questions within the following interlinked levels:

1. as defined and renegotiated within Muslim legal traditions and cultural norms and values which have been the sources of authority in regard to determining gender rights, duties, and relations;
2. as laid out through legal and political frameworks with their local, transnational, and historical particularities;
3. as described and practiced by people themselves through memories, oral narratives, and representations of their lived experiences, with a focus on people from both the Global North and Global South.

We invite article proposals from various academic disciplines and fields (such as Anthropology, Law, Sociology, Religious Studies, Migration and Diaspora Studies, Gender Studies, Management and Organizational Studies etc.) with diverse theoretical perspectives. We intend to bring together researchers whose work is grounded in solid empirical research in relation to broader societal developments. We are, however, also interested in conceptual and methodological discussions on marriage and migration within the MENA region. We, therefore, welcome submissions discussing a variety of research approaches and unconventional research methods in gender and migration studies such as art, film, theatre, music, and new technologies.

We invite consideration of questions which may include some of the following:

• What are the national legal and religious provisions regulating marriage and divorce practices of migrants? How are they dealing with lived realities of migrants, such as lack of documentations, non-presence and non-response of spouses, and the challenges in operating transnationally with the legal and political systems in the migrants’ home countries?
• How are migrants, through their marriage and other family practices, negotiating, challenging, or redefining the socio-religious and legal frameworks governing marital affairs in their countries of residence?
• What is the role of (national and transnational) religious institutions and/or new religious actors in changing the public perception of normative marriage practices within and among host and migrant communities?
• What roles do local, national and international humanitarian aid agencies play in changing migrants’ and host societies’ understandings of matrimonial norms, including interpretations of spousal rights and roles and the notion of guardianship?
• How have religious, state and human rights actors alike sought to approach and resolve problems arising from unregistered (religious) marriages, including marriages with minors, stipulations of divorce, and issues of custody and inheritance?

Submission

To be considered for this special issue, interested authors should submit a 300-word abstract via Mashriq & Mahjar’s submission portal. Authors may wish to consult the journal’s guidelines for writing effective abstracts. Abstract submissions are due November 22, 2024.

Authors of selected abstracts will be invited to submit papers of 8,000–10,000 words, excluding endnotes, by March 15, 2025. Please note that our journal uses Turabian citation style.

Questions may be directed to the journal’s managing editor at mashriq_mahjar@ncsu.edu.

This special issue is part of:

1. The British Academy funded project: Negotiating Relationships and Redefining Traditions: Syrian and Iraqi Women Refugees in Jordan which was based at the University of Birmingham (UK). For further information on the project, contact Yafa Shanneik (PI), email: yafa.shanneik@ctr.lu.se
2. The Dutch Research Council funded project: Living on the Other Side: A Multidisciplinary Analysis of Migration and Family Law in Morocco based at the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance, and Society, Leiden University (the Netherlands). For further information on the project, contact Nadia Sonneveld (PI), email: n.sonneveld@law.leidenuniv.nl