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Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

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Gender, Conflict and Subordination

within the Household: Turkish Migrant
Marriage and Divorce in Denmark
Anika Liversage

SFIthe Danish National Centre for Social Research, Copenhagen

Version of record first published: 18 May 2012.

To cite this article: Anika Liversage (2012): Gender, Conflict and Subordination within the
Household: Turkish Migrant Marriage and Divorce in Denmark, Journal of Ethnic and Migration
Studies, 38:7, 1119-1136
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2012.681455

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Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

Vol. 38, No. 7, August 2012, pp. 11191136

Gender, Conflict and Subordination

within the Household: Turkish Migrant
Marriage and Divorce in Denmark
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Anika Liversage

The European-raised children of Turkish immigrants often marry spouses from

their parents home country. This article investigates the interplay between gender and
residency when such transnational couples develop the culture of their newly formed
households. While migration scholars state that such household culture is constructed
as a bricolage of elements from both the country of cultural origin and the present host
country, they pay little attention to the influence of both gender and power on this
process. Drawing on a body of life-story interviews, the article compares the narratives of
one male and one female marriage migrant to Denmark, both of whose marriages ended
in divorce. Life in these households, as well as their processes of dissolution, shows
how Danish residency may empower the European spouse, regardless of gender. Although
ethnic minority women raised in Europe may seek to use this power to shape their
household culture into a more gender-equal bricolage, they may remain embedded
within the broader patriarchal structures of the immigrant community.
Keywords: Marriage Migration; Transnational Marriage; Gender Conflict; Turkish
Immigrants; Denmark
Introduction
Since the early 1990s, migration studies have seen a proliferation of research taking
a transnational approach in which the lives of immigrants are seen as unfolding
within transnational social spaces that span the boundaries of two (or more) nationstates (Basch et al. 1994; Glick Schiller et al. 1992). Empirically, much of this research
concerns immigrant communities that maintain strong ties to specific towns and
villages in their country of origin (Levitt 2001).

Anika Liversage is Senior Researcher at SFI*the Danish National Centre for Social Research, Copenhagen.
Correspondence to: Dr A. Liversage, SFI, Herluf Trolles Gade 11, DK 1052, Copenhagen, Denmark. E-mail:
ani@sfi.dk.
ISSN 1369-183X print/ISSN 1469-9451 online/12/071119-18 # 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2012.681455

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A. Liversage

The norms and practices of such transnational villages, to use Levitts apt term,
are not wholesale transplantations of the norms and practices of the original sending
country; instead, new norms and practices are created in the post-migratory context.
Regarding this process, Peter Kivisto writes that [t]ransnational migrants forge their
sense of identity and their community, not out of a loss or mere replication, but as
something that is at once new and familiar*a bricolage constructed of cultural
elements both from the homeland and the receiving nation (Kivisto 2001: 568,
emphasis in original). Discussing the same phenomenon, migration scholar Thomas
Faist states that such immigrant communities link [across borders] through
exchange, reciprocity, and solidarity to achieve a high degree of social cohesion,
and a common repertoire of symbolic and collective representations (2000: 208).
With such a choice between different cultural elements from both the sending and
the receiving countries, however, what determines which elements are chosen? This
question is important, as it may have implications for the differing power and
privileges of men and women. The two genders may thus have different interests in
what form of bricolage is forged in such transnational immigrant communities.

Gender Relations in Transnational Social Spaces

How migration affects gender relations and the status of women has for years been a
topic of academic interest. Over time, initial optimism about the gains that migration
and entry into paid work would confer on all immigrant women lessened (Pessar
1999), and today we know that, in many immigrant communities, women may,
instead, be considered guardians of traditions, with their conduct subject to greater
scrutiny and more restrictions than in the country of origin (Alicea 1997; Mooney
2006; Yuval-Davis 1997). In other contexts, however, women may gain autonomy
after migration and be less likely than men to wish to return to their former home
country (Hirsch 1999; Mahler and Pessar 2006).
As Parrado and Flippen have pointed out, the social and cultural processes that
determine how gender relations and expectations evolve during the process of
migration remain poorly understood (2005: 606). Contributing to our knowledge on
the evolution of gender relations and expectations in transnational communities, this
article investigates the gender aspect of the bricolage process of cultural formation in
greater detail.
To do so, I apply a place lens through which to ground my analysis in the daily life
of immigrant communities (Gielis 2009). Thus I follow anthropologist Karen Fog
Olwigs call for transnational research to focus not only on ethnic organisations and
diasporic cultural expressions but also on the practices of home, as a household or
domestic unit, in which many migrants also engage (Olwig 2002: 216). The
distribution of activities (e.g. household chores) within, and mobility relative to, such
households is one way of investigating the gendered geographies of power that
Mahler and Pessar (2001) place as a central research topic in migration studies.

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Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

1121

I investigate only households formed through transnational marriages*marriages

in which people born or raised in a Western country marry spouses from their
parents country of origin. Considerable research has gone into investigating the
reasons behind and the processes involved in creating transnational conjugal units
(e.g. Beck-Gernsheim 2007; Charsley 2006; Coleman 2004). Yet much less work has
focused on what happens within such marriages, including their dissolution. Indeed,
only few studies concern themselves with immigrant divorces in Europe (Akpinar
2003; Darvishpour 1999; Guru 2009; Mand 2005).
In transnational marriages, we know that the marriage-migrant spouse*regardless
of gender*is often in a relatively weak position in the marital relationship (Charsley
2005a, b; Gallo 2006). These marriage-migrant spouses not only lack country-specific
skills such as the ability to speak the local language but also have mostly limited
personal networks in their new country. Furthermore, their legal position may be
precarious: if the marriage fails, marriage-migrant spouses may have to return to
their country of origin. When combined, these factors can put such spouses in a
situation of marital dependency which can potentially affect how the bricolage of
norms and practices in their households develops.
The structure of the article is as follows. First, I discuss my method of life-story
interviews and the choice of interviewees. Second, I select and compare the narratives
of one male and one female marriage migrant, using the boundaries surrounding
domestic space to structure the analysis. Third, I discuss how gendered relations can
be differentially affected and transformed in transnational social spaces.

Method: Life-Story Interviews

Turkish immigrants and their descendants living in Europe display a strong proclivity
for transnational marriages, with 50 to 80 per cent of young European Turks having
married transnationally (Hooghiemstra 2001; Lievens 1999; Strassburger 2004;
Timmerman 2008; Vassenden 1997). In Denmark, Turkish immigrants form the
largest ethnic minority and, from the late 1980s until 2002, about 80 per cent of
marriages among them were transnational (Celikaksoy-Mortensen 2006). In 2002,
Denmark passed a new law demanding, among other things, that both spouses be at
least 24 years old before one can bring the other from another country. While the
primary consequence of this legal reform has been a postponement of marriages and
an (albeit limited) increase in the number of marriages between two spouses both
raised in Denmark (Schmidt et al. 2009), transnational marriages remain a central
family form among Turkish immigrants in Denmark.
The empirical base of this article is 26 interviews with women and men of Turkish
descent who were divorced after having been transnationally married. The interviewees, who had Turkish or Kurdish ethnic backgrounds, were either born or raised
in Denmark (or both), or had arrived as marriage migrants.
With an interest in gender, I wanted to interview both men and women. I found
that, while interviewees were generally difficult to find, the highly private and very

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A. Liversage

stigmatising nature of divorce among many Turks made finding male interviewees, in
particular, extremely difficult. Consequently, the material consists of seven male and
18 female interviews. In line with other divorce studies, for practical reasons I did not
attempt to interview both parties to a dissolved marriage (Hopper 1993).
As a methodology I use life-story interviews. I asked interviewees to tell me your
story, leaving them ample space for creating their own narrative constructions
(Liversage 2009a). Subsequent questions developed from the interviewees own
narratives, as I asked them to elaborate on topics that they had posited themselves.
The interviews were conducted in either Turkish or Danish, and taped and
transcribed.
Life-story interviews are retrospective constructions. They are shaped both by
the narrators knowledge of subsequent developments (e.g. that the marriage they
had expected to last had failed) and the narrators desire to present him- or herself in
a positive way (Holstein and Gubrium 2000). The body of narratives nevertheless
provides a base for investigating how household culture construction varies according
to, and depending on, gender and migratory status. This approach yields insights into
processes unfolding in domestic space, processes that are otherwise methodologically
difficult to investigate given their inherently private nature.
With interviewees aged between 24 and 55 years, the material spans from
women who married labour migrants in the 1970s to young men and women
entering established immigrant communities in the early 2000s. Their experiences
naturally differ, as some marriages lasted for years before souring, while other
couples separated after a short time, having barely created a household culture of
their own. Social, geographical and individual differences likewise mark the
individual stories.
In many interviews, conflicts over the construction of household culture*narrated
from differently gendered perspectives*were evident, spurring the focus of this
article. In my investigation of this issue, I chose not to present a number of shorter
extracts from the larger body of interviews so as to avoid dismembering and
homogenising individual experiences (Gullestad 1996; Inowlocki and Lutz 2000).
Instead, I select and analyse two interviews in depth, as this focus on two individuals
enables me to show the complexities of two single lives as they develop over time,
starting with the years around the wedding and migration to those following the
divorce.
The two protagonists in this article*a woman and a man*bear the pseudonyms
Ays e and Halil. Both arrived in Denmark to marry spouses raised in that country.
They thus share the position of newcomers to Denmark, even though they speak
from differently gendered positions. In the interviews, Ays e and Halil both talk about
their spouses. These two people*Ays es husband and Halils wife*consequently also
figure centrally in the analysis, as constructed in the narratives of their former
spouses. Given that household space is gendered in feminine terms, Halils wife in
particular (more so than Ays es husband) plays a prominent part in the analysis.

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

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Interviewee Background and Analytical Approach

In line with many transnational marriages, both Ays e and Halil were introduced at a
young age to their partners-to-be through family networks. Each had a say in
accepting the marriage; each was engaged to the future spouse for a year or two,
communicating long distance, and each married into a couple in which the wife was
18 years old and the husband a few years older. This young age-of-marriage pattern
has been characteristic of Turkish immigrants in Denmark (Celikaksoy-Mortensen
2006).
Other similarities between the two protagonists are that both came from rural
lives in Turkey, both had only the five mandatory years of Turkish schooling, and
both married unskilled spouses in Denmark. This class element of little education
and low-to-no skills is central to the events that subsequently occurred in their lives.
Following Olwigs (2002) call to investigate domestic life, I use the bounded space
of the household as a frame for the analysis, for it is within this space that
transnational couples over time develop their own household culture. Here is where
they largely settle issues of making and spending money, of doing dishes, and of
deciding whom to invite for dinner and where to go on holiday. Unless they separate,
it is within such households that the next generation grows up.
With a focus on the construction of household culture, including gendered divisions of work between private and public space, I structure the analysis
by making four distinct sets of comparisons. The first concerns the types of
household that Ays e and Halil entered when they came to Denmark. The second is
the gendered division of work within the households. The third is gendered access to
public space*a contested issue in both narratives. The fourth comparison is between
how Ays es and Halils households were dissolved through divorce and what
subsequently happened to their spouses. The article ends with the findings and the
conclusions.

Comparison 1: The Constitution of the Households

Central to the development of household culture is how the households are
constituted. While married couples in Europe today predominantly live in nuclear
households, extended household living is more common in Turkey. Indeed, a Turkish
survey from 1993 shows that over 60 per cent of married couples under the age of
24 live in extended families. Ninety-five per cent of these extended families are
patrilocal, i.e. composed of the young married couple and the parent(s) of the
husband (Aykan and Wolf 2002). A study among Turkish immigrants in Denmark
also shows extended household living to be common for marriage migrants in
the 1990s, with 78 per cent of young female and 38 per cent of young male marriage migrants starting married life in Denmark in this way (Liversage and Jakobsen
2010). When Ays e arrived in Denmark in 1996, she moved into such an extended
household.

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A. Liversage

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Ayse
Coming to Denmark in 1996, Ays e moved in with her mother-in-law (Ays es fatherin-law had died several years ealier) and became part of an extended household for
the next eight years. While extended households can act as a source of economic and
practical support for newlywed couples, they may also socialise young brides into
their husbands families, sometimes through harsh subordination. Ays e found herself
in such unwelcoming surroundings. She said: My mother-in-law was very bad. But
we were forced to be in the same house. Thus Ays e discovered that she was not to live
solely with her spouse but as a newcomer to an already established family entity,
within which Ays e found it difficult to affect household conditions in her own favour.
Speaking in a voice thick with emotion, she said that her husband so much did what
his mother told him to do. He did not ask me about anything. He listened only to his
mother*because his mother was always right.
A strong bond between mothers and grown sons at the expense of the marital bond
has also been observed in Turkish family studies (Fisek 1982). Pitted against her
husbands deference to his mother, Ays e held little power to have her own way. This
situation was only exacerbated by Ays es not working. She was thus fully economically
dependent on her spouse and her mother-in-law.

Halil
Upon arriving in Denmark in 2001, Halil also came to an extended household. As he
was living with his wifes parents, he thus entered a matrilocal extended household
(as opposed to the conventional patriarchal constructs), which is rarely found in
Turkey (Aykan and Wolf 2002). Such families, instead, spring from the migratory
context*a practical solution to the housing situation of young newlywed couples
with a male marriage-migrant spouse (Charsley 2005a; Liversage and Jakobsen 2010).
Even though Halils parents-in-law treated him well, he nevertheless found the
situation awkward. When sharing accommodation with in-laws You cannot be
comfortable. You cannot have your meal in peace. You cannot relax when you have
had a shower . . .. You cannot walk around in a towel or a bath robe, as [the parentsin-law] are present.
The extended household living also interfered with his wifes transfer of loyalty to
her new husband. After all, both she and Halil were expected to show deference to her
father, the most senior male in the household. As a man, however, Halil had the
resources to change his situation for the better. As he had found unskilled work upon
arriving in Denmark, and as his Danish-raised wife was also working, they were
a dual-earner couple. Such couples are commonly formed when the man, not the
woman, is the arriving marriage migrant (Jakobsen and Liversage 2012). Halil
also found an evening job to augment their income, soon enabling the young couple
to buy a flat of their own, so that, within a few months of Halils arrival, they had
established their own nuclear household.

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

1125

However, as they remained in the neighbourhood, Halils parents-in-law lived

nearby. Given this proximity, Halil repeatedly felt that his male authority was
undermined by the presence of his parents-in-laws, stating that Every time [my wife]
was with her parents, it was as if she would not know me. It was her mother and
her father who became her boss. Within their own nuclear household, however, only
Halil and his wife made the decisions about shaping their household lives and
considering their future.

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Comparison 2: Life Within the Households

Central differences exist between Denmark and Turkey regarding gender and
household work. In rural Turkey, in particular, from where the majority of the
initial Turkish immigrants to Denmark originated (Mirdal 1984), household space
and household chores are gendered in feminine terms.
In Denmark, however, both public and private spaces are far less gendered, and
both men and women are expected to actively engage in activities in both domains.
This difference between the two countries is also evident in general female
employment rates: while 25 per cent of women in Turkey are in the labour market,
the Danish figure is, at 75 per cent, among the highest in the world (ILO 2008).
Furthermore, although men in Denmark still do less housework than women, they
nevertheless participate to a large degree, making the distribution of household
chores more gender-neutral than in Turkey (Bolak 1997; Deding and Lausten 2008).
These differences had clear implications for both Ays e and Halil.

Ayse
Ays e was not only a minority in her extended household but also a newly arrived
migrant with few resources. As she put it herself, I had no relatives and I spoke no
Danish*I had just arrived. Regarding her marriage, she said that she was treated like
a maid*not an uncommon experience for daughters-in-law who enter extended
households (Delaney 1991; Yakal-Camoglu 2007). Not surprisingly, then, Ayse made
the following statement about the distribution of household work:
Everything was left to me. Both of them [the husband and the mother-in-law] acted
as if they were guests in the house. I did everything. They would come and might
not like what I had been doing. And then they would say That is not good enough,
and they would shove me and beat me. They treated me very badly.

Ayses household thus appeared to be little influenced by Danish norms and

practices of a gendered sharing of household work. It was instead shaped according
to a Turkish rural norm by which a young bride (gelin) performs services (gelinlik)
for her conjugal family. Ayses life may well have become harder in Denmark than it
would have been in Turkey, as her having left behind all her social networks and not

1126

A. Liversage

speaking the majority language placed her in a situation of isolation and dependency.
Dependent on her new husband and his kin, she was even subjected to physical abuse,
with the husband beating her either of his own accord or on his mothers orders. In
sum, she had little ability to affect the bricolage culture of her household.

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Halil
The situation was both similar to and different in Halils two-person household.
As a marriage migrant, Halil had also left much of his social network behind upon
migration; furthermore, his lack of Danish skills made him need his wifes aid for
actions such as contacting the Danish authorities. But he was also a man and thus
expecting to be head of the household.
In contrast to Ays es husband, however, Halil had a wife who strongly tried to
shape life in her and Halils household. As Halils wife was also working, she expected
some sharing of household tasks. Halil followed his wifes wishes to some extent, but
grudgingly:
When she [Halils wife] washed dishes, I dried them. But there was not the respect there should have been. I quoted a saying*partly in fun, partly seriously:
If the woman is really a woman, her husband should not be allowed to enter
the kitchen. Because the woman rules in the kitchen*no man wants to be
there.

Despite their both working, Halil nevertheless questioned the legitimacy of his
wifes household demands on him. He also said that Danish-raised wives generally
failed to provide properly for their husbands*e.g. through daily cooking*and
stated that this failure often caused marital discontent. When a marriage-migrant
husband returned from work, Halil said, a common exchange with his Danish-raised
wife could be:
Husband: Have you cooked?
Wife:
I had no time for that*make something yourself .
Husband: Okay. And the next day is the same and the same and the same. And in
the end you say: Wife, cook me a meal. So I dont have to eat a cold
meal when I return from work. But then the wife says: I will not cook
for you. And then the marriage becomes cold.

This dialogue, as created by Halil, can be read as the conflict-laden collision between
different (stereotypically Danish and Turkish) gender norms, constructed from Halils
male Turkish viewpoint: the man shows patience but eventually (and, in Halils view,
fully justifiably) becomes frustrated over not having his gendered expectations met
and demands his male right of female service in the home. In this construction, it is
the womans refusal to live up to his expectations which causes the marriage to
deteriorate.

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

1127

Halil, instead, longed for a relationship free of such marital conflicts. In his view,
he would have no reason to battle over chores had he married a good wife*i.e. one
who would voluntarily live up to his understanding of female subservience:

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There are [Turkish] women in Denmark who are like angels, who will die for their
husband: I will die for you*are you hungry? Is there anything I can do for you?
I will be to you like a sacrificial lamb [a common Turkish expression]; Should
I make you some tea? Are no such women born? Yes, they are*but it is not
possible to find them.

According to Halil, neither the majority of Turkish women raised in Denmark nor
his wife lived up to such expectations, the legitimacy of which he never questioned.
This example thus epitomises the very different views and expectations that can
be brought together in the households of transnational married couples. Halil in
effect said that his wife was not a good wife, having been corrupted by life in
the West. This desire to marry uncorrupted wives is indeed one motivation for male
migrants wishing to marry wives from their former home country (Timmerman
2006).
Halil also stated that a man can only take so much of what he considered
unwifely behaviour. As his wife presumably found her own demands justifiable and
thus stuck to them, the couple began continually quarrelling*as he put it*all
through the night. Halil even hinted at having occasionally acted violently towards
his wife, as he said that the police had been called on several occasions.
While Halil retained his physical power and male sense of entitlement, Halils wife,
on her part, called on whatever resources she could muster. Halil reported not only
that his wife drew support from her family but also that, during their conflicts, both
his wife and her family told him the following:
You wont get the residency permit. We can expel you. We can make a complaint.
The [marriage migrant] man is under that kind of pressure . . .. I have many friends
and we talk about what we experience. And being threatened with the card*Do as
we say: leave, come; stay at home; leave!*that happens all over.

Halil in essence states that threats of not receiving the card can make a marriage
migrant man behave almost like a well-trained dog. This marriage clearly illustrates
the coexistence of power geometries on different scales that, in his case, contradicted
one another. In transnational marriages, one spouse can draw on the power of the
country of residence, and control whether the marriage-migrant spouse will be
allowed to stay or not. While in many European countries independent residency is
achieved after two or three years of marriage, thus alleviating this power differential
relatively early in a marriage, Denmark is different. After a tightening of migration
regulations in 2002, a marriage migrant must wait seven years to obtain an
independent residence permit.1 During this period the gendered power often held by
males may be undermined if they are marriage migrants.

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A. Liversage

The new legal restrictions had implications for Halils marriage, which ended in
2005. While, a few years earlier, his four years of marriage would have resulted in an
independent residency permit, this was no longer the case. The consequences of the
legal changes were also evident in the broader sample, which included women who
had endured violent relationships for years. They feared what would become of them
if they were forcibly returned to Turkey due to an early divorce. Such experiences
illustrate how the laws of nation-states continue to hold great importance in the lives
of immigrants with transnational ties.

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Comparison 3: Gendered Access to Public Space

Similar to the gendering of private space in feminine terms, in rural Turkey public
space is seen as a predominantly masculine domain. The issue of mobility into public
space was a contested issue in both Ays es and Halils stories, revealing again the
complex interplay between gender and migratory status.

Ayse
In Ays es extended household, she found not only that she had to do all the chores
but also that her mobility outside the household was strongly circumscribed. For her,
work*for which she had few marketable skills in any case*was out of the question,
because her husband and her mother-in-law did not even permit me to leave the
house.
While most other female marriage migrant interviewees in this research project
had experienced greater personal autonomy than Ays e, her experience of having been
kept away from language school and other outside activities is not unique (Kelek
2006; Liversage 2009b). In her ethnographic book about Turkish village life, Delaney
(1991) describes how young women may not be autonomously mobile, because they
usually need izin*permission*to venture into public space. This need for izin is
part of a larger system in which younger females are always under the protection and
control of a man. For unmarried young women, this man is usually the father, and
after marriage this control passes to the husband and his family, including his
mother. Womens need for male izin was formerly embedded in Turkish legislation:
until 1991, a married woman needed her husbands permission to seek employment
outside the house (Mu ftu ler-Bac 1999).
In addition to Ays es being barred from independent access to public Danish
space, including from attending publically available Danish language classes, she
was also unable to prevent her husband from spending much of his time in that space:
He had a pizza shop. He left in the morning, after sleeping until the opening hour.
Often he left to go to work, or he would go to a friend . . .. I began to get suspicious
about his having a Danish [female] friend. But I could not prove it. He said that
people who said so were lying.

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

1129

While Ays es husband could severely restrict her access to public space, Ays e could not
even learn where he went when he left the house, much less keep him from leaving.

Halil

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As a man, Halil likewise wanted to venture into public space. Halils wife, however (in
stark contrast to Ays e), had entirely different resources for affecting Halils mobility.
Halil said that marriage migrants were dependent on their wives, so that:
You cannot go out the way you want. You sit with three friends and chat, and then
the phone rings. I pick it up*it is my wife: Where are you?*I am sitting here
with my friends, chatting. And then she yells so loudly in the phone that my friends
can hear it*and they pretend they dont hear it so as not to embarrass me . . . And
she insults me and uses hard words, and I say, Okay, darling*Ill be back in five
minutes; Im coming . . . That is something that puts you in a bad mood. You stay
at home, but as time passes, you have had enough. Because you are a man. It is your
right to go out.

In rural Turkey, men spend a great deal of time away from the household, usually in
the company of other men (Delaney 1991). Halil, too, wanted to enjoy the male
privilege of spending time with male friends in public space. However, his wife felt
otherwise and had the power to pull him back to the household, especially with the
ever-present threat of his not getting the card.

Comparison 4: Household Dissolution Through Divorce

Retrospectively coloured by their viewpoints as present-day divorcees, both Ays es
and Halils stories were of lives in unhappy marriages that did not fulfil their
expectations. According to the interviews, they both acted to end their marriages.
Such action was not always the case, as the broader sample also included several cases
of marriage migrants being divorced by their Danish resident partner, sometimes
even through being dumped in Turkey (stories about what Turks in Denmark call
dumping include leaving a spouse in Turkey while on holiday after having first taken
his or her passport and papers to prevent their return to Denmark). In the stories of
how their two divorces came about, both their civil similarities (as marriage
migrants) and their gender differences play important parts.

Ayse
For Ays e, neither unhappiness nor maltreatment led her to divorce: it was her
husbands infidelity. Although she was mostly confined to the home, mysterious
phone calls and gossip gradually convinced Ays e that her husband had a second
family with a Danish woman. She even learned that her husband had fathered a
child, who was born between his and Ays es two children*information that also

1130

A. Liversage

made it back to her parents in Turkey. Isolated in Denmark, Ays e could do little.
However, when her father moved to Germany in 2004, her position changed, showing
that mediated communication cannot replace physical proximity:

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I phoned my father, and explained the situation. But he did not want me to leave
my husband. He wanted me to continue: Do try, Ill talk to him, itll be all right,
stuff like that, he said. No, it wont be all right to continue. Either you come
[to Denmark] or else . . . Ill find some pills, Ill do something, Ill commit suicide,
I said. When I said that, he had to [come and help].

Rather than leave the marriage without her fathers support, Ays e threatened suicide.
Because this strategy obtained her fathers (albeit reluctant) support, Ays e not only
received practical help with leaving her husband (and mother-in-law) but also
avoided fully breaching patriarchal structures. Obtaining such parental support is not
a given when Turkish immigrant women wish to divorce (Akpinar 2003).
Ays es father helped her and her two children to move into a refuge for battered
women. Having thus left her husband, Ays e could now obtain social and legal
support from the Danish authorities, both for the divorce and for managing her life
thereafter as a single mother. Having arrived in 1996, she had already obtained a
permanent residency permit by 1999 and was thus not affected by the legislative
changes of 2002.

Halil
As time passed, Halils married life became increasingly acrimonious. In the
household both spouses clamoured for a superior position, one based on gender
domination and the other on the power of residency. With both remaining unwilling
to accept the other spouses model of marital life (with its corresponding set of
expectations), the conflicts escalated until, according to Halil, the situation came to
the following head:
[My wife] threatened me all the time about getting the card. Pressure, pressure,
all the time . . .. One time, as she said it, I took out my wallet and drew out my
J-card*that is a temporary card. I showed it to her and said: See: it is valid for one
more year. Now I will rest my head for a year. So*you keep it [the residency
permit], and keep the child. I do not want you. And I do not want the card.
And then I left the house with just the clothes I was wearing.

As an independent male, Halil did not seek anybodys support for leaving his wife.
As an able-bodied male he had no recourse to public support, and as he had no social
support network, his exit from the marriage put him in a vulnerable situation.
He spent about three month homeless: I slept in the car. I slept on the beach. I had
nobody, and I did not want to trouble anybody. Halil then found a job as a truck
driver and used the vehicle for accommodation until he finally found a flat
of his own. At the time of our interview*about 10 months after he had left his

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

1131

wife*he was in a battle over custody of their young son. He hoped at least to gain
visiting rights, which might also improve his chances of remaining in Denmark
despite his having been divorced before the end of the seven-year probationary
period. Otherwise, he would have to return to Turkey permanently.

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The Post-Divorce Situation of Ayses Husband and Halils Wife

Issues of gender and power are also salient when we look at how life changed for the
two Danish-resident spouses*Ays es ex-husband and Halils ex-wife*after their
spouses had divorced them.
Ays es ex-husband initially tried to win her back, and other members of the
Turkish transnational network also pressured her to return to the marriage.
This pressure led the couple to live together again (albeit, on Ays es insistence, in
a flat of their own), but when Ays e soon witnessed her husbands continued infidelity,
the marriage irrevocably ended. Ays es ex-husband then moved in with his Danish
girlfriend and their child, thus forming a new, mixed (Danish and Turkish)
household. Since the divorce, Ays es ex-husband has had only irregular contact
with the two children he fathered with Ays e.
The case of Halils ex-wife was different: while she had held considerable power
within her and Halils nuclear household, the divorce also (as in Ays es case)
implicated a renewed importance of her fathers authority over her. Once the
separation took place, Halil said:
My father-in-law became scared: I left her, and then she is alone. She can do
anything. So he made a marriage for her that he can accept*with a man in
Holland. She should move over there*she had to, because her new husband is
there. He is born there. He is a big man with shops. He does not travel for a
woman. So she left with the child . . .. But it didnt work out with the new husband.
He was much older then her*over 40 years old. And he beat her and the child.
It lasted only about a month.

In a gendered geography of power, the termination of Halils marriage and the

concomitant dissolution of their nuclear household had relocated Halils (now
former) wife back into a position of dependency upon her birth family, where she
held little power. In Turkish rural society, a divorced woman is not only an anomaly
but also a possible threat to her familys honour and standing. To prevent any
possible disgrace from a divorced daughter who*as Halil put it*can do anything
(i.e. have liaisons with men outside marriage), her father quickly arranged a new
marriage. Halils ex-wife apparently had little say in this decision. The new husband
need not travel for a woman as Halil had done, as he already held European
residency. Thus Halils ex-wife had to comply with the customary picture of being
the one moving to her (new) husbands place of residence. Consequently, she went
to the Netherlands, where she experienced both the hardships of marriage migration
and harsh treatment from her new husband. As the marriage lasted only about

1132

A. Liversage

a month, she soon returned to Denmark and moved in with her parents. She pleaded
for Halil to take her back but to no avail.

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Gender, Migration and Household Culture

As illustrated throughout this article, the two households*Ays es and Halils*were
very different indeed. Ays e lived in an extreme (re)construction of a rural Turkish
household, while Halil lived in a household that*to his dissatisfaction*had
elements of the Danish dual-earner household.
The marriages of Ays e and Halil mirror one another: Ays e aspired to live in
a household where the husband and wife spent time together and even shared
chores*an aspiration that was partly the reality in Halils marriage. For his part,
Halil longed for a life where he was free from unmanly reproductive household
chores, and could socialise in public space whenever he wanted*an aspiration that
was the reality for Ays es husband. Thus Ays es and Halils marital experiences reveal
how the imagery of the good marriage may be strongly shaped by gender, regardless
of migratory background. Feminist researchers have long pointed out that the
imagery of home as a haven is typically a male construction, while women more
commonly experience hard work and even repression within it (Mallett 2004).
A common factor shaping the life experiences of both Ays e and Halil were their
social backgrounds: both moved from little-educated lives in rural Turkey to live with
unskilled spouses in Denmark. More-resourceful Turkish couples may have better
communicative skills, and be better able to reach viable compromises. They may also
simply hire outside help to perform household chores (Akalin 2007; Fransehn and
Jansson 2008). In better-matched marriages, little-educated husbands may also better
adjust to sharing both chores and time with their wives in the space of their mutually
constructed household (Jensen and Liversage 2007).
A central observation in this article is that, regardless of their gender, the
transnational marriages gave the two Danish-raised, Danish-citizen spouses considerable power in their relationships. Belgian demographer John Lievens hypothesis
that such a power differential may be one impetus for women raised in Europe
to form transnational marriages (1999) was indeed supported by Halils narrative.
As Halil said:
Most [Turkish men in Denmark] are married to women from Turkey. And why?
Because the women who are born here cannot stand the men who are born here:
If you go to the discotheque, I will go to the disco, too*because they have both
been raised here. If you work, and bring back money, I will also work. And
consequently, they cannot get along together. That is why the women who are born
here marry someone from the home country. Because they have the upper hand
over the men they bring here.

Halil clearly states that European-raised males and females with Turkish parents may
have a hard time compromising with one another. This observation is supported by a

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

1133

survey on young Danish-Turks (Necef 2000). Asked whether they prefer Turkish
or Danish views on various issues, both men and women give similar responses
on topics such as social security and childrearing, where both genders prefer Danish
and Turkish views, respectively. However, on issues such as womens rights
and divorce, substantially more women prefer Danish views. These gendered
differences indicate a gender struggle among Turkish youth in Denmark (Necef
2000: 28).

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Conclusion
Taken together, Ays es and Halils stories give us insights into some of the tensions
and conflicts that may arise when households, formed through transnational
marriages, are to construct their own bricolage household culture. While the two
households were private spaces deeply influenced by social practices from Turkey,
they were also*albeit in different ways*affected by Denmark, the country of
residence. The comparison between Ays es and Halils stories also demonstrates that,
while the Turkish patriarchal structures empower husbands, the Danish residency
status empowers the non-migrant spouse.
In the case of Ays es marriage, the husband held both these positions of power,
placing him in the dominant role. In the case of Halils marriage, the two spouses
each held one dominant and one subordinate position, leading to a stalemate of
protracted and intense conflict. Thus this analysis illustrates how different social
categories intersect in specific ways, with gendered experiences interdependent on
individual embedding within other systems of categorisation and other power
geometries.
As to gendered practices within the households, Ays es husband was able to use his
doubly dominant position to keep Danish egalitarian practices well outside his
household, thus safeguarding his own privileged position. By contrast, Halils wife
sought to promote such egalitarian practices, actively fighting for the creation of a
household culture in which household work was shared. In this way, Halils wife tried
to avoid the double shift that migrant women often suffer when host-society
structures mandate their entry into paid work, even though their household
responsibilities largely remain unchanged (Alicea 1997; Bolak 1997).
Certainly the comparison of the two cases shows, first, the complexities and
conflicts that may be implicated in constructing the bricolage of household culture in
such marriages and, second, the centrality of the gender of the marriage migrant.
Returning to Parrado and Flippens (2005) observation that we must still learn more
about the processes that determine how gender relations and expectations evolve
under conditions of migration, this article reveals that patriarchal structures may be
simultaneously reinforced and undermined, depending on specific micro-contexts.
While partially supporting the findings that women can be subject to high levels of
patriarchal subordination in post-migratory transnational villages, this article also
shows that local circumstances can partially reverse this situation. As individual

1134

A. Liversage

women draw on available resources to shape their scope of agency in their own
household, they may achieve results*although not always the desired ones.
Note
[1]

If employed, divorcing Turkish marriage migrants may be able to remain in Denmark before
the probationary period expires, due to a little-known agreement between Turkey and the
European Communities dated 12 September 1963 (Ministry for Refugees, Immigrants and
Integration 2010).

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