‘I am still waiting for my papers but ʾinna Allāha maʿa al-ṣābirīn’: on religious temporality and agency in female marriage migrants’ precarious migration experiences

Abstract

Building on postcolonial, feminist and gendered migration theories and the ‘turn to mobility’ this article aims to explore the agency of so-called low-skilled Moroccan female marriage migrants in Flanders (Belgium). More precisely, it aims to study how religious temporality plays a role and how it shapes their experiences in a specific context of migration and precariousness. It questions how these women invoke a religious temporality in confronting the uncertainties and difficulties of which motherhood and a precarious residency status are the most challenging and stigmatising. Firstly, focussing on two ethnographic vignettes this article empirically analyses their nonlinear, risky and often undocumented trajectories laying bare a politico-discursive temporality in marriage migration, motherhood and belonging. Secondly, it analyses how exactly these women tend to challenge this bureaucratic temporality. The analyses show that through their active engagement with sabr (patience) and tawakkul (reliance on God) these women become agents.