Between “Here” and “There”. Premarital Relationships, Family Control and Masculinities Among Migrants

The article analyses how Moroccan Muslim migrants in Europe define their heterosexual premarital experiences and construct their masculinities by trying to combine two main social and educational scenarios: the context of the native country on one side, and their life abroad on the other. The contribution is based on results from qualitative research (based on semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observations) involving young Moroccan migrant men aged 19-30 years old living in France and Italy. Through studying the case of different heterosexual mixed couples (formed by a Moroccan Muslim man with a non- Muslim European woman), the article shows how young migrant men cope with the fact of engaging in premarital relationships with a European girl abroad. Pre-conjugal sex, indeed, is presented by the interviewees as one of the practices which is the most difficult to reconcile with their identity as Muslims and with their Moroccan family socialisation. The paper especially analyses how, abroad, heterosexual young men elaborate specific arrangements with both sexual and religious norms, as well as with family bonds, in order to deal with a hegemonic model of “conjugal masculinity”.