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Gender, Conflict and Subordination

within the Household: Turkish Migrant

Marriage and Divorce in DenmarkAnika Liversage

a

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To cite this article:Anika Liversage (2012): Gender, Conflict and Subordination within the

Household: Turkish Migrant Marriage and Divorce in Denmark, Journal of Ethnic and Migration

Studies, 38:7, 1119-1136

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Gender, Conflict and Subordinationwithin the Household: Turkish MigrantMarriage and Divorce in Denmark

Anika Liversage

The European-raised children of Turkish immigrants often marry spouses from

their parents home country. This article investigates the interplay between gender and

residency when such transnational couples develop the culture of their newly formed

households. While migration scholars state that such household culture is constructed

as abricolageof elements from both the country of cultural origin and the present host

country, they pay little attention to the influence of both gender and power on this

process. Drawing on a body of life-story interviews, the article compares the narratives of

one male and one female marriage migrant to Denmark, both of whose marriages ended

in divorce. Life in these households, as well as their processes of dissolution, shows

how Danish residency may empower the European spouse, regardless of gender. Althoughethnic minority women raised in Europe may seek to use this power to shape their

household culture into a more gender-equal bricolage, they may remain embedded

within the broader patriarchal structures of the immigrant community.

Keywords: Marriage Migration; Transnational Marriage; Gender Conflict; Turkish

Immigrants; Denmark

Introduction

Since the early 1990s, migration studies have seen a proliferation of research taking

a transnational approach in which the lives of immigrants are seen as unfolding

within transnational social spaces that span the boundaries of two (or more) nation-

states (Baschet al. 1994; Glick Schilleret al. 1992). Empirically, much of this research

concerns immigrant communities that maintain strong ties to specific towns and

villages in their country of origin (Levitt 2001).

Anika Liversage is Senior Researcher at SFI*the Danish National Centre for Social Research, Copenhagen.

Correspondence to: Dr A. Liversage, SFI, Herluf Trolles Gade 11, DK 1052, Copenhagen, Denmark. E-mail:

[email protected].

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

Vol. 38, No. 7, August 2012, pp. 11191136

ISSN 1369-183X print/ISSN 1469-9451 online/12/071119-18 # 2012 Taylor & Francis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2012.681455
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2012.681455http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2012.681455

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The norms and practices of such transnational villages, to use Levitts apt term,

are not wholesale transplantations of the norms and practices of the original sending

country; instead, new norms and practices are created in the post-migratory context.

Regarding this process, Peter Kivisto writes that[t]ransnational migrants forge their

sense of identity and their community, not out of a loss or mere replication, but assomething that is at once new and familiar*a bricolage constructed of cultural

elements both from the homeland and the receiving nation (Kivisto 2001: 568,

emphasis in original). Discussing the same phenomenon, migration scholar Thomas

Faist states that such immigrant communities link [across borders] through

exchange, reciprocity, and solidarity to achieve a high degree of social cohesion,

and a common repertoire of symbolic and collective representations (2000: 208).

With such a choice between differentcultural elementsfrom both the sending and

the receiving countries, however, what determines which elements are chosen? This

question is important, as it may have implications for the differing power andprivileges of men and women. The two genders may thus have different interests in

what form ofbricolageis forged in such transnational immigrant communities.

Gender Relations in Transnational Social Spaces

How migration affects gender relations and the status of women has for years been a

topic of academic interest. Over time, initial optimism about the gains that migration

and entry into paid work would confer on all immigrant women lessened (Pessar

1999), and today we know that, in many immigrant communities, women may,instead, be consideredguardians of traditions, with their conduct subject to greater

scrutiny and more restrictions than in the country of origin (Alicea 1997; Mooney

2006; Yuval-Davis 1997). In other contexts, however, women may gain autonomy

after migration and be less likely than men to wish to return to their former home

country (Hirsch 1999; Mahler and Pessar 2006).

As Parrado and Flippen have pointed out, the social and cultural processes that

determine how gender relations and expectations evolve during the process of

migration remain poorly understood(2005: 606). Contributing to our knowledge on

the evolution of gender relations and expectations in transnational communities, thisarticle investigates the gender aspect of the bricolageprocess of cultural formation in

greater detail.

To do so, I apply a place lens through which to ground my analysis in the daily life

of immigrant communities (Gielis 2009). Thus I follow anthropologist Karen Fog

Olwigs call for transnational research to focus not only on ethnic organisations and

diasporic cultural expressions but also on the practices of home, as a household or

domestic unit, in which many migrants also engage (Olwig 2002: 216). The

distribution of activities (e.g. household chores) within, and mobility relative to, such

households is one way of investigating the gendered geographies of power that

Mahler and Pessar (2001) place as a central research topic in migration studies.

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I investigate only households formed through transnational marriages*marriages

in which people born or raised in a Western country marry spouses from their

parents country of origin. Considerable research has gone into investigating the

reasons behind and the processes involved in creating transnational conjugal units

(e.g. Beck-Gernsheim 2007; Charsley 2006; Coleman 2004). Yet much less work hasfocused on what happenswithinsuch marriages, including their dissolution. Indeed,

only few studies concern themselves with immigrant divorces in Europe (Akpinar

2003; Darvishpour 1999; Guru 2009; Mand 2005).

In transnational marriages, we know that the marriage-migrant spouse*regardless

of gender*is often in a relatively weak position in the marital relationship (Charsley

2005a, b; Gallo 2006). These marriage-migrant spouses not only lack country-specific

skills such as the ability to speak the local language but also have mostly limited

personal networks in their new country. Furthermore, their legal position may be

precarious: if the marriage fails, marriage-migrant spouses may have to return to

their country of origin. When combined, these factors can put such spouses in a

situation of marital dependency which can potentially affect how the bricolage of

norms and practices in their households develops.

The structure of the article is as follows. First, I discuss my method of life-story

interviews and the choice of interviewees. Second, I select and compare the narratives

of one male and one female marriage migrant, using the boundaries surrounding

domestic space to structure the analysis. Third, I discuss how gendered relations can

be differentially affected and transformed in transnational social spaces.

Method: Life-Story Interviews

Turkish immigrants and their descendants living in Europe display a strong proclivity

for transnational marriages, with 50 to 80 per cent of young European Turks having

married transnationally (Hooghiemstra 2001; Lievens 1999; Strassburger 2004;

Timmerman 2008; Vassenden 1997). In Denmark, Turkish immigrants form the

largest ethnic minority and, from the late 1980s until 2002, about 80 per cent of

marriages among them were transnational (Celikaksoy-Mortensen 2006). In 2002,

Denmark passed a new law demanding, among other things, that both spouses be at

least 24 years old before one can bring the other from another country. While theprimary consequence of this legal reform has been a postponement of marriages and

an (albeit limited) increase in the number of marriages between two spouses both

raised in Denmark (Schmidt et al. 2009), transnational marriages remain a central

family form among Turkish immigrants in Denmark.

The empirical base of this article is 26 interviews with women and men of Turkish

descent who were divorced after having been transnationally married. The inter-

viewees, who had Turkish or Kurdish ethnic backgrounds, were either born or raised

in Denmark (or both), or had arrived as marriage migrants.

With an interest in gender, I wanted to interview both men and women. I found

that, while interviewees were generally difficult to find, the highly private and very

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Interviewee Background and Analytical Approach

In line with many transnational marriages, both Ayse and Halil were introduced at a

young age to their partners-to-be through family networks. Each had a say in

accepting the marriage; each was engaged to the future spouse for a year or two,

communicating long distance, and each married into a couple in which the wife was

18 years old and the husband a few years older. This young age-of-marriage pattern

has been characteristic of Turkish immigrants in Denmark (Celikaksoy-Mortensen

2006).

Other similarities between the two protagonists are that both came from rural

lives in Turkey, both had only the five mandatory years of Turkish schooling, and

both married unskilled spouses in Denmark. This class element of little education

and low-to-no skills is central to the events that subsequently occurred in their lives.

Following Olwigs (2002) call to investigate domestic life, I use the bounded space

of the household as a frame for the analysis, for it is within this space thattransnational couples over time develop their own household culture. Here is where

they largely settle issues of making and spending money, of doing dishes, and of

deciding whom to invite for dinner and where to go on holiday. Unless they separate,

it is within such households that the next generation grows up.

With a focus on the construction of household culture, including gen-

dered divisions of work between private and public space, I structure the analysis

by making four distinct sets of comparisons. The first concerns the types of

household that Ayse and Halil entered when they came to Denmark. The second is

the gendered division of work within the households. The third is gendered access topublic space*a contested issue in both narratives. The fourth comparison is between

how Ayses and Halils households were dissolved through divorce and what

subsequently happened to their spouses. The article ends with the findings and the

conclusions.

Comparison 1: The Constitution of the Households

Central to the development of household culture is how the households are

constituted. While married couples in Europe today predominantly live in nuclearhouseholds, extended household living is more common in Turkey. Indeed, a Turkish

survey from 1993 shows that over 60 per cent of married couples under the age of

24 live in extended families. Ninety-five per cent of these extended families are

patrilocal, i.e. composed of the young married couple and the parent(s) of the

husband (Aykan and Wolf 2002). A study among Turkish immigrants in Denmark

also shows extended household living to be common for marriage migrants in

the 1990s, with 78 per cent of young female and 38 per cent of young male marri-

age migrants starting married life in Denmark in this way (Liversage and Jakobsen

2010). When Ayse arrived in Denmark in 1996, she moved into such an extended

household.


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Ayse

Coming to Denmark in 1996, Ayse moved in with her mother-in-law (Ayses father-

in-law had died several years ealier) and became part of an extended household for

the next eight years. While extended households can act as a source of economic and

practical support for newlywed couples, they may also socialise young brides into

their husbandsfamilies, sometimes through harsh subordination. Ayse found herself

in such unwelcoming surroundings. She said: My mother-in-law was very bad. But

we were forced to be in the same house. Thus Ayse discovered that she was not to live

solely with her spouse but as a newcomer to an already established family entity,

within which Ayse found it difficult to affect household conditions in her own favour.

Speaking in a voice thick with emotion, she said that her husband so much did what

his mother told him to do. He did not ask me about anything. He listened only to his

mother*because his mother was always right.

A strong bond between mothers and grown sons at the expense of the marital bondhas also been observed in Turkish family studies (Fisek 1982). Pitted against her

husbands deference to his mother, Ayse held little power to have her own way. This

situation was only exacerbated by Ayses not working. She was thus fully economically

dependent on her spouse and her mother-in-law.

Halil

Upon arriving in Denmark in 2001, Halil also came to an extended household. As he

was living with his wifes parents, he thus entered a matrilocal extended household(as opposed to the conventional patriarchal constructs), which is rarely found in

Turkey (Aykan and Wolf 2002). Such families, instead, spring from the migratory

context*a practical solution to the housing situation of young newlywed couples

with a male marriage-migrant spouse (Charsley 2005a; Liversage and Jakobsen 2010).

Even though Halils parents-in-law treated him well, he nevertheless found the

situation awkward. When sharing accommodation with in-laws You cannot be

comfortable. You cannot have your meal in peace. You cannot relax when you have

had a shower. . .. You cannot walk around in a towel or a bath robe, as [the parents-

in-law] are present.The extended household living also interfered with his wifes transfer of loyalty to

her new husband. After all, both she and Halil were expected to show deference to her

father, the most senior male in the household. As a man, however, Halil had the

resources to change his situation for the better. As he had found unskilled work upon

arriving in Denmark, and as his Danish-raised wife was also working, they were

a dual-earner couple. Such couples are commonly formed when the man, not the

woman, is the arriving marriage migrant (Jakobsen and Liversage 2012). Halil

also found an evening job to augment their income, soon enabling the young couple

to buy a flat of their own, so that, within a few months of Halil s arrival, they had

established their own nuclear household.

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However, as they remained in the neighbourhood, Halils parents-in-law lived

nearby. Given this proximity, Halil repeatedly felt that his male authority was

undermined by the presence of his parents-in-laws, stating thatEvery time [my wife]

was with her parents, it was as if she would not know me. It was her mother and

her father who became her boss. Within their own nuclear household, however, onlyHalil and his wife made the decisions about shaping their household lives and

considering their future.

Comparison 2: Life Within the Households

Central differences exist between Denmark and Turkey regarding gender and

household work. In rural Turkey, in particular, from where the majority of the

initial Turkish immigrants to Denmark originated (Mirdal 1984), household space

and household chores are gendered in feminine terms.In Denmark, however, both public and private spaces are far less gendered, and

both men and women are expected to actively engage in activities in both domains.

This difference between the two countries is also evident in general female

employment rates: while 25 per cent of women in Turkey are in the labour market,

the Danish figure is, at 75 per cent, among the highest in the world (ILO 2008).

Furthermore, although men in Denmark still do less housework than women, they

nevertheless participate to a large degree, making the distribution of household

chores more gender-neutral than in Turkey (Bolak 1997; Deding and Lausten 2008).

These differences had clear implications for both Ayse and Halil.

Ayse

Ayse was not only a minority in her extended household but also a newly arrived

migrant with few resources. As she put it herself, I had no relatives and I spoke no

Danish*I had just arrived. Regarding her marriage, she said that she was treated like

a maid*not an uncommon experience for daughters-in-law who enter extended

households (Delaney 1991; Yakal-Camoglu 2007). Not surprisingly, then, Ayse made

the following statement about the distribution of household work:

Everything was left to me. Both of them [the husband and the mother-in-law] actedas if they were guests in the house. I did everything. They would come and mightnot like what I had been doing. And then they would say That is not good enough,and they would shove me and beat me. They treated me very badly.

Ayses household thus appeared to be little influenced by Danish norms and

practices of a gendered sharing of household work. It was instead shaped according

to a Turkish rural norm by which a young bride (gelin) performs services (gelinlik)

for her conjugal family. Ayses life may well have become harder in Denmark than it

would have been in Turkey, as her having left behind all her social networks and not


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speaking the majority language placed her in a situation of isolation and dependency.

Dependent on her new husband and his kin, she was even subjected to physical abuse,

with the husband beating her either of his own accord or on his mother s orders. In

sum, she had little ability to affect the bricolageculture of her household.

Halil

The situation was both similar to and different in Halils two-person household.

As a marriage migrant, Halil had also left much of his social network behind upon

migration; furthermore, his lack of Danish skills made him need his wife s aid for

actions such as contacting the Danish authorities. But he was also a man and thus

expecting to be head of the household.

In contrast to Ayses husband, however, Halil had a wife who strongly tried to

shape life in her and Halils household. As Halils wife was also working, she expected

some sharing of household tasks. Halil followed his wifes wishes to some extent, but

grudgingly:

When she [Halils wife] washed dishes, I dried them. But there was not the res-pect there should have been. I quoted a saying*partly in fun, partly seriously:If the woman is really a woman, her husband should not be allowed to enterthe kitchen. Because the woman rules in the kitchen*no man wants to bethere.

Despite their both working, Halil nevertheless questioned the legitimacy of hiswifes household demands on him. He also said that Danish-raised wives generally

failed to provide properly for their husbands*e.g. through daily cooking*and

stated that this failure often caused marital discontent. When a marriage-migrant

husband returned from work, Halil said, a common exchange with his Danish-raised

wife could be:

Husband: Have you cooked?Wife: I had no time for that*make something yourself.Husband: Okay. And the next day is the same and the same and the same. And in

the end you say: Wife, cook me a meal. So I dont have to eat a coldmeal when I return from work. But then the wife says: I will not cookfor you. And then the marriage becomes cold.

This dialogue, as created by Halil, can be read as the conflict-laden collision between

different (stereotypically Danish and Turkish) gender norms, constructed from Halils

male Turkish viewpoint: the man shows patience but eventually (and, in Halils view,

fully justifiably) becomes frustrated over not having his gendered expectations met

and demands hismale rightof female service in the home. In this construction, it is

the womans refusal to live up to his expectations which causes the marriage to

deteriorate.

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Halil, instead, longed for a relationship free of such marital conflicts. In his view,

he would have no reason to battle over chores had he married a good wife*i.e. one

who would voluntarily live up to his understanding of female subservience:

There are [Turkish] women in Denmark who are like angels, who will die for theirhusband:I will die for you*are you hungry? Is there anything I can do for you?I will be to you like a sacrificial lamb [a common Turkish expression]; ShouldI make you some tea? Are no such women born? Yes, they are*but it is notpossible to find them.

According to Halil, neither the majority of Turkish women raised in Denmark nor

his wife lived up to such expectations, the legitimacy of which he never questioned.

This example thus epitomises the very different views and expectations that can

be brought together in the households of transnational married couples. Halil in

effect said that his wife was not a good wife, having been corrupted by life inthe West. This desire to marryuncorruptedwives is indeed one motivation for male

migrants wishing to marry wives from their former home country (Timmerman

2006).

Halil also stated that a man can only take so much of what he considered

unwifely behaviour. As his wife presumably found her own demands justifiable and

thus stuck to them, the couple began continually quarrelling*as he put it*all

through the night. Halil even hinted at having occasionally acted violently towards

his wife, as he said that the police had been called on several occasions.

While Halil retained his physical power and male sense of entitlement, Halils wife,on her part, called on whatever resources she could muster. Halil reported not only

that his wife drew support from her family but also that, during their conflicts, both

his wife and her family told him the following:

You wont get the residency permit. We can expel you. We can make a complaint.The [marriage migrant] man is under that kind of pressure. . .. I have many friendsand we talk about what we experience. And being threatened with the card*Do aswe say: leave, come; stay at home; leave!*that happens all over.

Halil in essence states that threats of not receiving the card can make a marriage

migrant man behave almost like a well-trained dog. This marriage clearly illustrates

the coexistence of power geometries on different scales that, in his case, contradicted

one another. In transnational marriages, one spouse can draw on the power of the

country of residence, and control whether the marriage-migrant spouse will be

allowed to stay or not. While in many European countries independent residency is

achieved after two or three years of marriage, thus alleviating this power differential

relatively early in a marriage, Denmark is different. After a tightening of migration

regulations in 2002, a marriage migrant must wait seven years to obtain an

independent residence permit.1 During this period the gendered power often held by

males may be undermined if they are marriage migrants.


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The new legal restrictions had implications for Halils marriage, which ended in

2005. While, a few years earlier, his four years of marriage would have resulted in an

independent residency permit, this was no longer the case. The consequences of the

legal changes were also evident in the broader sample, which included women who

had endured violent relationships for years. They feared what would become of themif they were forcibly returned to Turkey due to an early divorce. Such experiences

illustrate how the laws of nation-states continue to hold great importance in the lives

of immigrants with transnational ties.

Comparison 3: Gendered Access to Public Space

Similar to the gendering of private space in feminine terms, in rural Turkey public

space is seen as a predominantly masculine domain. The issue of mobility into public

space was a contested issue in both Ayses and Halils stories, revealing again thecomplex interplay between gender and migratory status.

Ayse

In Ayses extended household, she found not only that she had to do all the chores

but also that her mobility outside the household was strongly circumscribed. For her,

work*for which she had few marketable skills in any case*was out of the question,

because her husband and her mother-in-law did not even permit me to leave the

house.While most other female marriage migrant interviewees in this research project

had experienced greater personal autonomy than Ayse, her experience of having been

kept away from language school and other outside activities is not unique (Kelek

2006; Liversage 2009b). In her ethnographic book about Turkish village life, Delaney

(1991) describes how young women may not be autonomously mobile, because they

usually need izin*permission*to venture into public space. This need for izin is

part of a larger system in which younger females are always under the protection and

control of a man. For unmarried young women, this man is usually the father, and

after marriage this control passes to the husband and his family, including his

mother. Womens need for male izin was formerly embedded in Turkish legislation:

until 1991, a married woman needed her husbands permission to seek employment

outside the house (Muftuler-Bac 1999).

In addition to Ayses being barred from independent access to public Danish

space, including from attending publically available Danish language classes, she

was also unable to prevent her husband from spending much of his time in that space:

He had a pizza shop. He left in the morning, after sleeping until the opening hour.Often he left to go to work, or he would go to a friend. . .. I began to get suspiciousabout his having a Danish [female] friend. But I could not prove it. He said thatpeople who said so were lying.

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While Ayses husband could severely restrict her access to public space, Ayse could not

even learn where he went when he left the house, much less keep him from leaving.

HalilAs a man, Halil likewise wanted to venture into public space. Halil s wife, however (in

stark contrast to Ayse), had entirely different resources for affecting Halils mobility.

Halil said that marriage migrants were dependent on their wives, so that:

You cannot go out the way you want. You sit with three friends and chat, and thenthe phone rings. I pick it up*it is my wife: Where are you?*I am sitting herewith my friends, chatting. And then she yells so loudly in the phone that my friendscan hear it*and they pretend they dont hear it so as not to embarrass me. . .Andshe insults me and uses hard words, and I say, Okay, darling*Ill be back in five

minutes; Im coming. . .

That is something that puts you in a bad mood. You stayat home, but as time passes, you have had enough. Because you are a man. It is yourrightto go out.

In rural Turkey, men spend a great deal of time away from the household, usually in

the company of other men (Delaney 1991). Halil, too, wanted to enjoy the male

privilege of spending time with male friends in public space. However, his wife felt

otherwise and had the power to pull him back to the household, especially with the

ever-present threat of his not getting the card.

Comparison 4: Household Dissolution Through Divorce

Retrospectively coloured by their viewpoints as present-day divorcees, both Ayses

and Halils stories were of lives in unhappy marriages that did not fulfil their

expectations. According to the interviews, they both acted to end their marriages.

Such action was not always the case, as the broader sample also included several cases

of marriage migrants being divorced by their Danish resident partner, sometimes

even through being dumped in Turkey (stories about what Turks in Denmark call

dumpinginclude leaving a spouse in Turkey while on holiday after having first taken

his or her passport and papers to prevent their return to Denmark). In the stories ofhow their two divorces came about, both their civil similarities (as marriage

migrants) and their gender differences play important parts.

Ayse

For Ayse, neither unhappiness nor maltreatment led her to divorce: it was her

husbands infidelity. Although she was mostly confined to the home, mysterious

phone calls and gossip gradually convinced Ayse that her husband had a second

family with a Danish woman. She even learned that her husband had fathered a

child, who was born between his and Ayses two children*

information that also


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made it back to her parents in Turkey. Isolated in Denmark, Ayse could do little.

However, when her father moved to Germany in 2004, her position changed, showing

that mediated communication cannot replace physical proximity:

I phoned my father, and explained the situation. But he did not want me to leavemy husband. He wanted me to continue:Do try, Ill talk to him, itll be all right,stuff like that, he said. No, it wont be all right to continue. Either you come[to Denmark] or else. . .Ill find some pills, Ill do something, Ill commit suicide,I said. When I said that, he had to [come and help].

Rather than leave the marriage without her fathers support, Ayse threatened suicide.

Because this strategy obtained her fathers (albeit reluctant) support, Ayse not only

received practical help with leaving her husband (and mother-in-law) but also

avoided fully breaching patriarchal structures. Obtaining such parental support is not

a given when Turkish immigrant women wish to divorce (Akpinar 2003).Ayses father helped her and her two children to move into a refuge for battered

women. Having thus left her husband, Ayse could now obtain social and legal

support from the Danish authorities, both for the divorce and for managing her life

thereafter as a single mother. Having arrived in 1996, she had already obtained a

permanent residency permit by 1999 and was thus not affected by the legislative

changes of 2002.

Halil

As time passed, Halils married life became increasingly acrimonious. In the

household both spouses clamoured for a superior position, one based on gender

domination and the other on the power of residency. With both remaining unwilling

to accept the other spouses model of marital life (with its corresponding set of

expectations), the conflicts escalated until, according to Halil, the situation came to

the following head:

[My wife] threatened me all the time about getting the card. Pressure, pressure,all the time . . .. One time, as she said it, I took out my wallet and drew out myJ-card*that is a temporary card. I showed it to her and said: See: it is valid for onemore year. Now I will rest my head for a year. So

*you keep it [the residency

permit], and keep the child. I do not want you. And I do not want the card .And then I left the house with just the clothes I was wearing.

As an independent male, Halil did not seek anybodys support for leaving his wife.

As an able-bodied male he had no recourse to public support, and as he had no social

support network, his exit from the marriage put him in a vulnerable situation.

He spent about three month homeless: I slept in the car. I slept on the beach. I had

nobody, and I did not want to trouble anybody. Halil then found a job as a truck

driver and used the vehicle for accommodation until he finally found a flat

of his own. At the time of our interview*

about 10 months after he had left his

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wife*he was in a battle over custody of their young son. He hoped at least to gain

visiting rights, which might also improve his chances of remaining in Denmark

despite his having been divorced before the end of the seven-year probationary

period. Otherwise, he would have to return to Turkey permanently.

The Post-Divorce Situation of Ayses Husband and Halils Wife

Issues of gender and power are also salient when we look at how life changed for the

two Danish-resident spouses*Ayses ex-husband and Halils ex-wife*after their

spouses had divorced them.

Ayses ex-husband initially tried to win her back, and other members of the

Turkish transnational network also pressured her to return to the marriage.

This pressure led the couple to live together again (albeit, on Ays es insistence, in

a flat of their own), but when Ayse soon witnessed her husbands continued infidelity,the marriage irrevocably ended. Ayses ex-husband then moved in with his Danish

girlfriend and their child, thus forming a new, mixed (Danish and Turkish)

household. Since the divorce, Ayses ex-husband has had only irregular contact

with the two children he fathered with Ayse.

The case of Halils ex-wife was different: while she had held considerable power

within her and Halils nuclear household, the divorce also (as in Ayses case)

implicated a renewed importance of her fathers authority over her. Once the

separation took place, Halil said:

My father-in-law became scared: I left her, and then she is alone. She can doanything. So he made a marriage for her that he can accept*with a man inHolland. She should move over there*she had to, because her new husband isthere. He is born there. He is a big man with shops. He does not travel for awoman. So she left with the child. . .. But it didnt work out with the new husband.He was much older then her*over 40 years old. And he beat her and the child.It lasted only about a month.

In a gendered geography of power, the termination of Halils marriage and the

concomitant dissolution of their nuclear household had relocated Halils (now

former) wife back into a position of dependency upon her birth family, where sheheld little power. In Turkish rural society, a divorced woman is not only an anomaly

but also a possible threat to her familys honour and standing. To prevent any

possibledisgracefrom a divorced daughter who*as Halil put it*can doanything

(i.e. have liaisons with men outside marriage), her father quickly arranged a new

marriage. Halils ex-wife apparently had little say in this decision. The new husband

need not travel for a woman as Halil had done, as he already held European

residency. Thus Halils ex-wife had to comply with the customary picture of being

the one moving to her (new) husbands place of residence. Consequently, she went

to the Netherlands, where she experienced both the hardships of marriage migration

and harsh treatment from her new husband. As the marriage lasted only about


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a month, she soon returned to Denmark and moved in with her parents. She pleaded

for Halil to take her back but to no avail.

Gender, Migration and Household Culture

As illustrated throughout this article, the two households*Ayses and Halils*were

very different indeed. Ayse lived in an extreme (re)construction of a rural Turkish

household, while Halil lived in a household that*to his dissatisfaction*had

elements of the Danish dual-earner household.

The marriages of Ayse and Halil mirror one another: Ayse aspired to live in

a household where the husband and wife spent time together and even shared

chores*an aspiration that was partly the reality in Halils marriage. For his part,

Halil longed for a life where he was free from unmanly reproductive household

chores, and could socialise in public space whenever he wanted*

an aspiration thatwas the reality for Ayses husband. Thus Ayses and Halils marital experiences reveal

how the imagery ofthe good marriagemay be strongly shaped by gender, regardless

of migratory background. Feminist researchers have long pointed out that the

imagery of home as a haven is typically a male construction, while women more

commonly experience hard work and even repression within it (Mallett 2004).

A common factor shaping the life experiences of both Ayse and Halil were their

social backgrounds: both moved from little-educated lives in rural Turkey to live with

unskilled spouses in Denmark. More-resourceful Turkish couples may have better

communicative skills, and be better able to reach viable compromises. They may alsosimply hire outside help to perform household chores (Akalin 2007; Fransehn and

Jansson 2008). In better-matched marriages, little-educated husbands may also better

adjust to sharing both chores and time with their wives in the space of their mutually

constructed household (Jensen and Liversage 2007).

A central observation in this article is that, regardless of their gender, the

transnational marriages gave the two Danish-raised, Danish-citizen spouses con-

siderable power in their relationships. Belgian demographer John Lievenshypothesis

that such a power differential may be one impetus for women raised in Europe

to form transnational marriages (1999) was indeed supported by Halils narrative.

As Halil said:

Most [Turkish men in Denmark] are married to women from Turkey. And why?Because the women who are born here cannot stand the men who are born here:If you go to the discotheque, I will go to the disco, too*because they have bothbeen raised here. If you work, and bring back money, I will also work. Andconsequently, they cannot get along together. That is why the women who are bornhere marry someone from the home country. Because they have the upper handover the men they bring here.

Halil clearly states that European-raised males and females with Turkish parents may

have a hard time compromising with one another. This observation is supported by a

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survey on young Danish-Turks (Necef 2000). Asked whether they prefer Turkish

or Danish views on various issues, both men and women give similar responses

on topics such associal securityandchildrearing, where both genders prefer Danish

and Turkish views, respectively. However, on issues such as womens rights

and divorce, substantially more women prefer Danish views. These gendereddifferences indicate a gender struggle among Turkish youth in Denmark (Necef

2000: 28).

Conclusion

Taken together, Ayses and Halils stories give us insights into some of the tensions

and conflicts that may arise when households, formed through transnational

marriages, are to construct their own bricolage household culture. While the two

households were private spaces deeply influenced by social practices from Turkey,they were also*albeit in different ways*affected by Denmark, the country of

residence. The comparison between Ayses and Halils stories also demonstrates that,

while the Turkish patriarchal structures empower husbands, the Danish residency

status empowers the non-migrant spouse.

In the case of Ayses marriage, the husband held both these positions of power,

placing him in the dominant role. In the case of Halil s marriage, the two spouses

each held one dominant and one subordinate position, leading to a stalemate of

protracted and intense conflict. Thus this analysis illustrates how different social

categories intersect in specific ways, with gendered experiences interdependent on

individual embedding within other systems of categorisation and other power

geometries.

As to gendered practices within the households, Ayses husband was able to use his

doubly dominant position to keep Danish egalitarian practices well outside his

household, thus safeguarding his own privileged position. By contrast, Halils wife

sought to promote such egalitarian practices, actively fighting for the creation of a

household culture in which household work was shared. In this way, Halils wife tried

to avoid the double shift that migrant women often suffer when host-society

structures mandate their entry into paid work, even though their household

responsibilities largely remain unchanged (Alicea 1997; Bolak 1997).Certainly the comparison of the two cases shows, first, the complexities and

conflicts that may be implicated in constructing thebricolageof household culture in

such marriages and, second, the centrality of the gender of the marriage migrant.

Returning to Parrado and Flippens (2005) observation that we must still learn more

about the processes that determine how gender relations and expectations evolve

under conditions of migration, this article reveals that patriarchal structures may be

simultaneously reinforced and undermined, depending on specific micro-contexts.

While partially supporting the findings that women can be subject to high levels of

patriarchal subordination in post-migratory transnational villages, this article also

shows that local circumstances can partially reverse this situation. As individual


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women draw on available resources to shape their scope of agency in their own

household, they may achieve results*although not always the desired ones.

Note[1] If employed, divorcing Turkish marriage migrants may be able to remain in Denmark before

the probationary period expires, due to a little-known agreement between Turkey and the

European Communities dated 12 September 1963 (Ministry for Refugees, Immigrants and

Integration 2010).

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