Immigrant youth reject both majority and parental framings of arranged marriage

Evidence

If we pay attention to young people’s narratives of cultural survival, as Bredal does, we find them understanding forced marriages as the response of parents seeking to provide them with cultural community and continuity but going about it in unrealistic ways. When parents turn to their communities of origin for marriage partners for their Norwegian-raised children, Bredal suggests, the risks are high that marriages really will involve men who are simply seeking a residence permit. As young people fear, their own happiness is imperilled under these conditions. While young people fear the outcome of marriages arranged by their parents with partners in their countries of origins, they do not automatically endorse ‘free will.’ Their position on arranged marriages, if a collective one is even possible, is summed up by Bredal as two messages: ‘[To majority culture]: What our parents are doing is not right, or even the real, version of our culture – our difference. To the parents: what you are doing is neither true to our culture nor is it sensible if you want our culture to survive.’ Young people find a number of covert ways to convey their positions, Bredal suggests. For example, they circulate stories of divorce, and of young people driven to desperate measures in order to escape unhappy marriages. These convey their sense of peril and their critique. Above all, minority youth negotiate their lives within culture and community, and do not inhabit, as majority Norwegians often imagine, an unproblematic position as victims of their families and communities, although it is certain that there are also victims. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 321 (#expands, via linked claim)

The concept of dueling identities is captured most clearly among the category of separated and assimilated immigrants. These individuals have chosen to move or stay close to one identity and forsake the other. Again, there may be a multitude of reasons for why these individuals have chosen one identity over the other, but one possible interpretation originates with the needs for inclusion or differentiation: separated immigrants perceive the superordinate identity as being too inclusive and thus they reject that identity in favor of their subgroup identity, and assimilated immigrants perceive their subgroup identity as lacking inclusiveness (perhaps they have emigrated from a country for which no community exists in their new culture) and thus they reject their subgroup identity and assimilate fully to their new culture. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 748 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Minority youth reject both forced marriage and the majority’s free-will framing — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 321; The forced-marriage debate’s individual-versus-collective polarity misrepresents youth experience — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 319; Culture-centric condemnation closes off how community peril shapes arranged marriage — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 302 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Minority youth reject both forced marriage and the majority’s free-will framing #expands (0.93) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 321
• Immigrants reject whichever identity fails their inclusion or differentiation needs #complicates (0.74) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 748