Challenging Muslim Family Practices - Investigating a Danish Policy Initiative's Reception by Its Target Group

Abstract

Nation states want to control their populations, including how they reproduce. In the present era of migration, this involves not only restricting marriage migration from ethnic minorities' countries of origin, but also involves attempts to affect Muslim marriages within their borders, as some such marriages can be considered 'anti-modern' and a potential threat to the state. Taking a governmentality approach - how states seek to shape 'the conduct of conduct' of its citizens - I explore the workings of a Danish policy initiative entitled the 'Dialogue Corps'. The Corps members, who all have an ethnic minority background, conduct workshops with the particular aim of reducing parental involvement in ethnic minority youth's partner choices. Based on observations and interview data, I document how workshop participants may actively resist Corps members' problematisation of their intimate practices. Instead, participants both challenge the view that majority Danish practices are inherently superior and point out that state interference may make lives worse, rather than better, in ethnic minority families. While the policy initiative has the stated aim of improving the lives of ethnic minority youth, it may instead (re)produce notions of these youth as 'Other', thus positioning them unfavourably within hierarchical schemes of cultural and racial difference.