How to Protect Your Daughters from “Stranger Marriage”: Palestinian Families in Germany Betwixt Kinship Endogamy and Intercultural Exogamy

Abstract

This article is about marriage stories collected from Palestinian Muslim families making a new life in Germany while seeking to retain their transnational ties and cultural roots. They belong to the Arab and Muslim diaspora whose disposition to integrate into the fabric of European society has been persistently questioned. Arab and Muslim immigrants and their offspring largely seem to prefer staying amongst themselves, taking spouses from their home countries rather than intermingling with the local population. However, faced with transnational exchange and intercultural crossover in much the same way, those who do intermarry and those who do not may have more in common than often suggested. Combining narrative inquiries with quantitative comparisons, three issues are addressed in this article: the impact of migration histories on marriage preferences and prerogatives, intergenerational dynamics of marriage stories unfolding at the family level, and shifting boundaries of “protection” and “strangeness” evolving in the course of change from below.