Abducting Children Abroad: Gender, Power, and Transnational Mobility in Immigrant Family Conflicts

2021 ◽  
pp. 107780122199943
Author(s):  
Anika Liversage
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Immigrant Woman ◽  
Immigrant Family ◽  
State Support ◽  
Family Conflicts ◽  
Male Control ◽  
Transnational Mobility ◽  
Gender Power ◽  
Life Story Interviews

Utilizing life story interviews of immigrant women whose children were abducted by abusive (ex-)husbands, the article unpacks a three-part pattern of transnational mobility: first, husbands apply strategies of coercive control to dominate wives in Denmark; second, wives draw on Scandinavian “woman-friendly” state support to challenge men and seek divorce; and third, men try to regain control through abducting children to the Middle East, seeking to blackmail mothers into leaving Denmark and resubmitting themselves to male control. While some wives accede to their husband’s demands, others skillfully manage to “re-abduct” children back to Denmark, thereby belying the trope of the victimized immigrant woman.

Having the Lower Hand—Investigating Interaction in the Life Course Narratives of Immigrant Women Exposed to Partner Abuse

2021 ◽  
pp. 088626052110051
Author(s):  
Anika Liversage
Keyword(s):  
Life Story ◽  
Immigrant Women ◽  
Partner Abuse ◽  
Immigrant Woman ◽  
Abusive Relationships ◽  
Frontline Workers ◽  
Residency Status ◽  
Life Story Interviews ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Life Course

Research has documented the considerable hardships immigrant women often face if they want to leave abusive relationships, but the cumulative impacts of such experiences have received insufficient scholarly attention. In response, this study investigates women’s difficulties leaving abusive relationships based on life story interviews with 35 immigrant women who experienced partner abuse. Almost all the women originated from “patriarchal belt” countries in, for example, the Middle East and all arrived in Denmark as adults. Using a model of gendered geographies of power, this study examines key interview passages in which the women use dramatized speech to tell about their younger selves’ interactions with significant others. These dramatized episodes of interactions emerge as crucial for the interviewees to communicate why they remained in abusive relationships for years and how most finally managed to leave their husbands. The narrated episodes reveal how the women’s frequent lack of success in various interactional situations can be attributed to women “having the lower hand”—holding disadvantaged positions in the familial, social, and national hierarchies of power. These hierarchies reinforce each other, for example, when insecure residency status limits immigrant women’s options to solicit help from Danish society. The analysis demonstrates that—in contrast to the stereotype of the abused immigrant woman as a passive victim—micro- and macro-level processes may work together to undermine immigrant women’s possibilities to act independently at important junctures in their lives. The results also stress the importance that frontline workers have sufficient understanding of immigrant women’s predicament and the ability to extend qualified and timely support. Such support can be crucial for abused immigrant women to become able to move away from their violent home environments.

Struggle for Inclusion

2016 ◽  
pp. 282-295
Author(s):  
Ambreen Shahriar
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Symbolic Violence ◽  
The Social ◽  
Life Story Interviews ◽  
At Home

The chapter explores the struggle for inclusion at home and society faced by four young people when they quit the religion they inherited from their parents. Using life-story interviews, it discusses reactions of their families about their decision to quit religion. Furthermore, the chapter sheds light on the ways these young individuals coped with the social problems that they faced after they made a difficult, socially unacceptable choice of switching from their inherited religion. The promotion of symbolic violence in the field and its use by the agents around the participants of this study is discussed through Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and field. The chapter aims to understand and highlight the dilemma faced by the participants due to their decision of conversion in a society which is still not ready for this.

What oral historians and historians of science can learn from each other

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 673-688 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAUL MERCHANT
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Life Story ◽  
The Other ◽  
British Library ◽  
National Life ◽  
Life Story Interviews ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis paper is concerned with the use of interviews with scientists by members of two disciplinary communities: oral historians and historians of science. It examines the disparity between the way in which historians of science approach autobiographies and biographies of scientists on the one hand, and the way in which they approach interviews with scientists on the other. It also examines the tension in the work of oral historians between a long-standing ambition to record forms of past experience and more recent concerns with narrative and personal ‘composure’. Drawing on extended life story interviews with scientists, recorded by National Life Stories at the British Library between 2011 and 2016, it points to two ways in which the communities might learn from each other. First, engagement with certain theoretical innovations in the discipline of oral history from the 1980s might encourage historians of science to extend their already well-developed critical analysis of written autobiography and biography to interviews with scientists. Second, the keen interest of historians of science in using interviews to reconstruct details of past events and experience might encourage oral historians to continue to value this use of oral history even after their theoretical turn.

scholarly journals The Linkage Between Aging, Migration, and Resilience: Resilience in the Life of Older Turkish and Moroccan Immigrants

2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (5) ◽  
pp. 1113-1123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia S Klokgieters ◽  
Theo G van Tilburg ◽  
Dorly J H Deeg ◽  
Martijn Huisman
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Country Of Origin ◽  
Community Networks ◽  
Life Stages ◽  
Host Society ◽  
Access To Resources ◽  
Older Immigrants ◽  
Life Conditions ◽  
Life Story Interviews

Abstract Objectives Older immigrants are affected by an accumulation of adversities related to migration and aging. This study investigates resilience in older immigrants by examining the resources they use to deal with these adversities in the course of their lives. Methods Data from 23 life-story interviews with Turkish and Moroccan immigrants aged 60–69 years living in the Netherlands. Results The circumstances under which individuals foster resilience coincide with four postmigration life stages: settling into the host society, maintaining settlement, restructuring life postretirement, and increasing dependency. Resources that promote resilience include education in the country of origin, dealing with language barriers, having two incomes, making life meaningful, strong social and community networks, and the ability to sustain a transnational lifestyle traveling back and forth to the country of origin. More resilient individuals invest in actively improving their life conditions and are good at accepting conditions that cannot be changed. Discussion The study illustrates a link between conditions across life stages, migration, and resilience. Resilient immigrants are better able to accumulate financial and social and other resources across life stages, whereas less resilient immigrants lose access to resources in different life stages.

The role of grandparents when parents part or die: some reflections on the mythical decline of the extended family

1999 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAUL THOMPSON
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
Emotional Closeness ◽  
The Family ◽  
Sources Of Support ◽  
Generational Study ◽  
Life Story Interviews ◽  
Statistical Trends

Belief that the extended family is in terminal decline has proved to be a remarkably persistent myth. It is currently being revived as a result of recent statistical trends. The belief has been closely connected to sociological enquiries undertaken over the course of the century. The validity of the belief, and in particular the significance of grandparents within the extended family, is explored in two sets of life story interviews recently undertaken with adults in Britain; one set are people in their thirties who had become step-children, and the second set participants in a multi-generational study of social mobility. The analysis addresses questions of contact after parental loss, sources of support within the family, the involvement of grandparents, the importance of co-residence, conflict, emotional closeness and communication within a family.

Approaching life story interviews as sites of interaction

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-187
Author(s):  
Stig-Börje Asplund ◽  
Héctor Pérez Prieto
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Analysis Methodology ◽  
Interview Research ◽  
Life Story Interview ◽  
The Face ◽  
Life Story Interviews

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore what conversation analysis has to offer when analysing a series of life story interviews aiming to capture how reading and texts are used in a rural working-class man’s identity construction. Design/methodology/approach The conversation analysis methodology with its explicit focus on embodied social action, activity and conduct in interaction is integrated with a life story approach when analysing and describing the identity constructing processes that take place in life story interview settings. Findings Through a close and detailed analysis of the interaction between interviewer and interviewee, and by focusing and highlighting the phenomena and identities that are oriented to in the face-to-face interaction here and now (and in relation to there and then), descriptions of the complex and dynamic identity constructing processes that are set into play in the life story interview are possible. Research limitations/implications It is argued that the approach has a lot to offer when approaching life story data, and thus is a method that can increase the transparency in life story interview research. Originality/value The paper explores the intersection of what is often seen as diametrically opposed forms of analysis: conversation analysis and narrative inquiry.

scholarly journals Inner change and sustainability initiatives: exploring the narratives from eco-villagers through a place-based transformative learning approach

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. R. Pisters ◽  
H. Vihinen ◽  
E. Figueiredo
Keyword(s):  
Transformative Learning ◽  
Narrative Inquiry ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Intentional Communities ◽  
Learning Approach ◽  
Fourth Dimension ◽  
Empirical Results ◽  
Sustainability Initiatives ◽  
Life Story Interviews

AbstractIn an earlier work, we suggested that connection, compassion and creativity could be used as key analytical dimensions of transformative place-based learning (Pisters et al. in Emot Sp Soc 34(8):100578, 2019). This analytical framework was created to study processes of place-based transformative learning which evoke shifts in our consciousness. This inner change might well be critical in the development of regenerative practices and places. This article aims to critically investigate the framework empirically using life-story interviews with people living in three different ecovillages. Ecovillages are so-called intentional communities which aim to develop sustainable, regenerative ways of living. Methodologically, the research is grounded in an ethnography and narrative inquiry. Following the empirical results, we will reflect on the merits and shortcomings of the analytical framework. The article concludes that the framework proved useful for its purpose if it includes a fourth dimension of 'transgression' and portraits the dimensions as continua.

Mid-life Chinese women’s understandings of sporting pain and injury: A non-Western cultural analysis via the Confucian concept of ‘ren’

2020 ◽  
pp. 101269022090638
Author(s):  
Lucen Liu ◽  
Richard Pringle
Keyword(s):  
Life Story ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Table Tennis ◽  
Observation Study ◽  
Tennis Players ◽  
Gender Culture ◽  
Immigrant Identity ◽  
Confucian Philosophy ◽  
Life Story Interviews

This study explored middle-aged Chinese female table tennis players’ experiences of pain and injuries in the context of life in a foreign country (New Zealand). Data were collected in two table tennis clubs via a year-long participant observation study and through life-story interviews. The Confucian concept of ren, which has similarities to new-materialist theorising, was drawn upon to frame our interpretations of the participants’ experiences of pain and injury. The concept encourages individuals who have been raised in Chinese communities to value social connections, have sympathy for others and strive for harmony. Our study correspondingly examined how aspects of age, gender, culture, immigrant identity and Confucian philosophy interlink to shape experiences of table tennis pain and injury. Results illustrated that our participants were willing to tolerate moderate pain during participation as they were motivated to enhance community solidarity. In contrast to studies that have examined ageing athletes from western countries, our participants did not tolerate pain with the desire to prove one’s individual capability. This study contributes to a non-Western cultural reading of sports pain and injury to illustrate how broader cultural dynamics shape such experiences.

Stepping Out of the Fish Tank

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (16) ◽  
pp. 2368-2392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nasima Mohamed Hoosen Carrim
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
South African ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Identity Conflict ◽  
Indian Women ◽  
The Status ◽  
Life Story Interviews ◽  
Fish Tank

This article explores the ethnic identity work in which Indian parents engage with regard to allowing their daughters to pursue a tertiary education and a career. Life story interviews were conducted on a purposive sample of 12 sets of South African Indian parents. The results indicate that these parents, especially mothers experience tremendous inner identity conflict, as they are torn between ensuring that daughters maintain their honor and dignity as respectable Indian women, and allowing daughters the freedom to venture away from the protective space of the home and family. The study highlighted that although parents were living in the postapartheid era ethnic identity work was still influenced by the lingering impact of apartheid regarding the status of women. Daughters were still not accorded the same status as sons although they were perceived as future breadwinners in their natal families.

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