Mixed Race Studies

“Marrying Out” for Love: Women’s Narratives of Polygyny and Alternative Marriage Choices in Contemporary Senegal

African Studies Review
Volume 59, Number 1, April 2016
pages 155-174

Hélène Neveu Kringelbach, Lecturer in African Studies
University College London

This article examines the ways in which childhood and youth experiences of living in polygynous households shape the aspirations of middle-class Muslim Senegalese women to companionate marriage. Increasingly, such aspirations are fulfilled through marriage with European men. In contrast to an enduring popular discourse according to which women live happily with polygyny throughout the Senegambian region, this article shows how some middle-class women’s choice to “marry out” is explicitly linked to family narratives and personal experiences of suffering. In a context in which many of these women face strong familial opposition to marriage with non-Muslim European men, this article suggests that the women’s narratives provide moral legitimacy to their “alternative” choices.

Cet article examine comment et de quelles manières les expériences des enfants et des jeunes qui vivent dans des ménages polygames, façonnent les aspirations des femmes sénégalaises musulmanes de la classe moyenne au mariage de compagnonnage. De plus en plus, de telles aspirations sont satisfaites par le mariage avec des hommes européens. Contrairement à un discours populaire qui perdure selon lequel les femmes vivent heureuses dans la polygynie dans toute la région de Sénégambie, cet article montre comment le choix de certaines femmes de la classe moyenne à «se marier en dehors» est explicitement lié à des récits de famille et des expériences de souffrances personnelles. Cet article suggère que les récits des femmes assurent la légitimité morale à leurs choix “alternatifs” dans un contexte où beaucoup d’entre elles font face à une forte opposition familiale au mariage avec des hommes européens non-musulmans.

Read or purchase the article here.

Multinational families, creolized practices and new identities: Euro-Senegalese cases

Oxford University
The Oxford Diasporas Programme
2011-01-01 through 2015-12-31

Hélène Neveu-Kringelbach, Oxford Diaspora Programme Research Fellow, African Studies Centre Junior Research Fellow
St Anne’s College, University of Oxford

The Oxford Diasporas Programme is a five-year research programme involving various centres at the University of Oxford and led by the International Migration Institute.
 
The research consists of 11 projects focusing on the impact of diasporas.
 
The programme is funded by the Leverhulme Trust from 1 January 2011 to 31 December 2015.

One of the effects of the global intensification of mobility is the formation of multicultural and transnational families involving spouses with different citizenships, as well as linguistic, religious and cultural backgrounds. In many parts of coastal West Africa, there is a long history of marriage with Europeans, dating back to the transatlantic slave trade. With a focus on bi-national families involving a Senegalese and a European partner as a case study, this project explores processes of family making in a diasporic context, from a gendered and cross-generational perspective. This project will contribute to our understanding of the relationship between the resilience of diasporas over time and their integration into ‘host societies’.

For more information, click here.