Education and divorce - Investigating trajectories of female immigrants in Denmark

Anika Liversage, senior researcher

SFI – the Danish National Centre for Social Research

ani@sfi.dk

Structure of presentation

• Background: Post doc research project

• Conceptual approach: trajectories

• How do these marriages begin?

• Divorce and education – different narratives and patterns

• The importance of societal structures

Interviews for post doc project

• All divorcees and spouses: Turkish backgrounds

• Men and women (but men are hard to get)

• Interviewed in either Danish or Turkish

• ”2nd generation immigrants” vs. family migrants

”Triple biography approach” (de Courgeau, 1990)

First: Discover the three separate histories of a person: - Family trajectory (S.P.: marriage, children, divorce)- Education/ work trajectory (S.P.:entering ed., graduating)- Migration trajectory (S.P.: migrating, moving)

Then explore: ”the relationships between these three histories to discover which is connected to, or determines which, at what times and in what contexts” (King, 2004, p.29; Courgeau, 1990)

Does educating make women divorce, does divorcing make women educate, or are both these trajectory changes part of same process?

Trajectories at status passage of marriage – for marriage migrant woman

Migration

Family

Ed./work

Turkey Denmark

Unmarried Married

Home maker

Time

Status passage – marriage and migration

Age: 16-19 years

Trajectories at status passage of marriage – for 2nd generation woman

Migration

Family

Ed./work

Denmark

Unmarried Married

8th grade Unskilled work / home maker

Time

Status passage – marriage and school drop-out

Age: 16-19 years

Divorce -> eduation. Example: Ebru, 34 yrs old (Marriage migrant)

Migration

Family

Ed./work

Turkey Denmark

Unmarried Married

”Home maker”

Time

S.P. Divorce (age 21)

– then enters education

High School

Divorced

Student

S.P. marriage (age 18)

Eduation, other changes -> divorce Example: Alev, 39 yrs old - (2nd generation)

Migration

Family

Ed./work

Denmark

Unmarried Married

”Home”

Time

8th grade

Divorced

Student Work

Marriage (17) Education Divorce (age 32)

Eduation and divorce intertwinedExample: Dilek (2nd generation)

Migration

Family

Ed./work

Denmark

Unmarried Married

”Home”

Time

8th grade

Divorced

Student

Education and divorce – some quotes

• ”…..he wanted me to stop the education and become the old Dilek. He threatened me to choose, because he thought I would choose the marriage. But I did not”. (Dilek, 2nd G).

• ”I entered the pedagogue study – and then, 3 month later, I got divorced (laughs)” (Nilgün, marriage migrant)

• ”…Men have said: ’Do you want to be like Manolya?! Because Manolya got divorced!’ And, really, it is the other way around: I educated after I got divorced’”. (Manolya, marriage migrant)

Education and divorce – some quotes II

• ”He studied [at university] when we met, but he dropped out. I really moved ahead [ín education]… He did not want me to study – he was unskilled and the woman should not be ahead of him. Turkish tradition says that the wife should be 100 meters behind the man. Hell, it does not! It is his brain that says so” (Güler, 2G woman, divorced from 2G man).

Education and divorce – some thoughts

Narratives I – female considerations

• Dissatisfaction with (married) life change through education

• From here-and-now to longer-term

• From wife as earner / service provider to childrens’ role model

• From woman-in-family to individual in society (”integration”)

Narratives II – family experiences

• Husbands seek to prevent entry into education

• Disappointments over lack of support for educational project

• Conflicts over women’s outside life, less cooking, worse econonmy

• Husband’s violence and infidelity – also tied to concepts of masculinity?

Precondition for education: Societal structures - residency and education

Migration

Family

Ed./work

Turkey Denmark

Unmarried Married

High school

Time

marriage divorce

Turkey

Unmarried

Home maker In home

Case: Selma, 29 yrs old. (Married at 18, divorced at 19)

Where is the study to go from here?• Education undermines male power through financial and

personal independence

• Individualization vs. (only)-part-of-family

• Education and divorce part of same process of increased female self-determination

• E.g. infidelity as male responses to ”changing” women – or female strength to stop living with it

• Men do not seem to educate…

• But also high costs of divorcing – stigma and a hard single-mother life

Comments welcome: ani@sfi.dk