Losing Women: How Gender Shapes Trajectories of Embeddedness Among Second Generation American Muslims

• In Event: 1239 - Immigration and Gender

Abstract

Using seventy life history interviews with second generation Muslim Americans, this paper explores two questions. First, how is immigrant parenting gendered? Second, what are the consequences of gendered parenting patterns for community reproduction? This paper is a slice of a larger project that traces second generation Muslim Americans’ relationships with Muslim communities across the life course and identifies gendered differences in these pathways. Here, I focus on the experiences of children who were embedded in Muslim communities during childhood but who distanced themselves during adolescence and emerging adulthood (AEA). I find that among this group, which I call “experimental,” Muslim women were more likely to gradually exit the Muslim community, whereas men eventually returned. I argue that parents’ reactions to initial experimentation diverge dramatically by the gender of the child. Experimental women face intensive monitoring and surveillance, leading to intergenerational conflict. Women react to this conflict by distancing themselves both physically and ideologically from parents. Parents react to experimental men, on the other hand, with a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach, which gives men space to compartmentalize their Muslim and non-Muslim social spheres. When men are ready to re-prioritize Muslimness, usually via marriage, their ties to Muslim communities remain strong and salient, facilitating their re-integration into normative Muslim life. I discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of community reproduction, especially among immigrants.

Author

• Eman Abdelhadi, University of Chicago