Maghrebi Migrants Research Articles

Mainstream acculturation in superdiverse settings: The beneficial role of intergroup contact with ‘other‐cultures’ individuals

AbstractThis work focuses on migrants’ ‘other‐cultures’ intergroup contact – contact with individuals belonging to neither their heritage ingroup nor the mainstream outgroup. We test the overarching hypothesis that other‐cultures contact is positively associated with mainstream acculturation, especially when contact in the mainstream group is scarce. Study 1 results show that frequent other‐cultures contact is positively associated with mainstream identification among Maghrebi migrants to Quebec. This effect is stronger for participants with infrequent, versus frequent, mainstream contact. In Study 2, conducted among Russian migrants to Canada, having more other‐cultures friends is positively related to mainstream acculturation only for participants with few mainstream friends. Further, the entry of other‐cultures friends into migrants’ network takes place later than heritage friends but earlier than mainstream friends. The current work expands the traditional mainstream–heritage acculturation framework by moving away from binary conceptualizations of intergroup relations and considering other‐cultures contact in superdiverse contexts.

General or Situational? Exploring Cultural Identification Patterns Using Entropy Among Maghrebi Immigrants to Canada

Migrants and members of cultural minorities must negotiate their identification with multiple cultural groups. Many studies have investigated associations between general questionnaire–based cultural identity patterns and psychological adjustment. Research on situational cultural identity patterns—context-bound, momentary identification with a given cultural group—is scarcer. Furthermore, we know little about how variability in identification across contexts and situations may be associated with psychological adjustment. This study addresses these issues by (a) comparing the relative ability of general questionnaire–based and situational diary–based cultural identity patterns in statistically predicting psychological adjustment among Maghrebi migrants to Canada, and (b) introducing and testing cultural identity entropy, a novel approach to characterizing variability in a person’s multiple cultural identities during daily interactions. Drawing on concepts in thermodynamics and information theory, cultural identity entropy indexes greater balance in one’s multiple identifications during an interaction and reflects greater flexibility in cultural ways in that moment. Participants were 93 Maghrebi migrants to Canada who completed baseline questionnaires and daily diaries on situational identification during interactions for 7 days. Results show that situational diary–based cultural identity patterns accounted for substantial variance in psychological adjustment, above and beyond general questionnaire–based patterns, and that greater entropy in heritage cultural contexts was associated with greater psychological adjustment. These results underscore the importance of going beyond general characterizations of multicultural identity by investigating the shifting and contextual ways in which migrants mobilize and negotiate their cultural identities in daily life.

Construct Validity of the Attitudes towards Maghrebis in Education Scale (AMES).

The current article describes the validation of the Attitudes towards Maghrebis in Education (AMES) scale in the Spanish context and examines the relation with other psychosocial variables. A Spanish sample of 807 participants aged between 18 and 80 years old completed the AMES. The analyses were performed using CFA, mainly considering the statistical indices of CFI, RMSEA and Pearson’s correlation. The external validity of the scale was tested using measures, such as social dominance orientation (SDO), empathic concern, warmth, competence and contact with Maghrebis. The results indicated that the AMES showed an adequate fit to the data. The AMES was found to be negatively correlated with SDO, whereas it was correlated positively with the rest of the variables. The results demonstrate that the AMES can be used as a reliable measure to evaluate attitudes towards Maghrebi migrants in education in Spain. The implications of the psychosocial variables studied are discussed as possible factors to consider for promoting more intercultural socio-educational environments.

Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France, Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp (2015)

Review of: Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France, Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp (2015) Liverpool University Press, 226pp., ISBN: 9781781381984 (hbk), $120.00

Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France

Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France

Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France by Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp

Reviewed by: Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France by Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp Greta Bliss Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp. Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015. Pp. 226. This book fills a lacuna in previous scholarship on immigration and ethnicity in French cinema. Building on work in feminist and film studies, sociology, and ethnography, Kealhofer-Kemp shifts the historic focus by documenting cinematic depictions of the generation of Algerian, Moroccan, and Tunisian women who migrated to France in the 1960s and 1970s, usually as the spouses of economic migrants or of harkis, and many of whom became parents to the more highly visible "beur" generation. Though first-generation women have often been consigned to a real or imagined status of invisibility due to the intersectional barriers they faced, their influence is perceptible at myriad levels in cinema and contemporary culture. Through careful examination of a broad corpus of over sixty films produced between 1978 and 2014, Kealhofer-Kemp traces the figure of the Maghrebi woman migrant across multiple genres, whether as documentary subject or as recurrent fictional character. Collectively, these depictions form a complex picture of first-generation Maghrebi women migrants' historical agency. The concept of voice, which Kealhofer-Kemp adroitly defines from the outset, structures her inquiry. In close, concise readings of a wide range of films, the author demonstrates how directors, actors, and storylines combine to reflect or challenge mainstream discourse on ethnic identity and cultural assimilation in France. This analysis dovetails with her discussion of recurrent intergenerational themes, such as tensions between first-generation mothers and their "beur" children. Yet even as Kealhofer-Kemp attends to the overarching sociological and historical conditions influencing both filmmakers and the public, her close readings reveal important nuances in how films have variously positioned Maghrebi woman migrant characters in relation to their households, families, and communities. The study's four chapters are organized by genre, each offering a different angle on the question of voice. Chapter one emphasizes the constructedness of documentaries, situating examples according to the degree of narrative autonomy directors accord to their subjects. In Chapter Two, on short films, Kealhofer-Kemp theorizes how some filmmakers deploy objects, rather than melodrama or dialogue, to symbolize women's agency in navigating complex linguistic, cultural, and physical boundaries. Chapter Three draws on spectatorship data and reception theory to highlight the influence of films within the previously less-studied genre of téléfilms (made-for-TV full-length movies), which can reach up to 8–10 million viewers. In Chapter Four, treating a selection of well-known feature films (such as Yamina Benguigui's Inch'Allah dimanche) alongside some less well-known ones, Kealhofer-Kemp considers how verbal and non-verbal forms of communication further enlarge and differentiate the concept of voice. Rounded out with the author's suggestions for future research and a generous appendix classifying the film corpus by archival location and level of access, this study offers a rich compendium of resources and analyses for scholars working on French film and cultural studies across an array of disciplines. [End Page 145] Greta Bliss University of North Carolina Wilmington Copyright © 2018 L'Esprit Créateur

Leslie Kealhofer - Kemp, Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France

Leslie Kealhofer - Kemp, <i>Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France</i>

The transnational career aspirations of France’s high-achieving second-generation Maghrebi migrants

ABSTRACTThis article examines the mobility aspirations of France’s high-achieving second-generation Maghrebi migrants. Drawing on in-depth, open-ended interviews with students and graduates of grandes ecoles, prestigious higher education institutions, it delves into the career trajectories they intend to embark on beyond the French borders. Three distinct mobility projects are envisioned by the respondents. While some contemplate intensifying their ties with their parents’ homeland, others envisage moving to a ‘third space’ in which they have commonly lived during their studies and established strong connections. Another group of informants seek to set up hyper-mobile careers spanning multiple global-cities. The article suggests that the threat of discrimination and the desire to defy the nation-based assimilationist rhetoric frame the desire to set up transnational pathways. It further disentangles the role of educational resources, social capital in the places envisioned, as well as gender processes in informing these distinctive ways of engaging with the transnational among second-generation migrants. Lastly, the article examines the specific trajectories of respondents who intend to remain in France.

Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France. By Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp

Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France. By Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp

Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France by Leslie Kealhoffer-Kemp

Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France by Leslie Kealhoffer-Kemp

Incisor avulsion, social identity and Saharan population history: New data from the Early Holocene southern Sahara

After an extended occupation hiatus the Sahara Desert was re-populated during the Early Holocene humid phase, a process that likely involved groups from multiple distinct source populations in northern Africa. Previous research has used material culture and craniometric analyses to infer population movements into and throughout the Sahara. Here, we present new data on Saharan population history using an independent data type: the presence and pattern of incisor avulsion, documented for the first time at sites in the southern Sahara Desert. At Gobero (Republic of Niger) both males and females were affected with no side or arcade preference. The frequency of affected individuals did not change through time; however the practice became exclusively male-focused and expanded to include the lateral incisors during the Middle Holocene. Comparison of the pattern and prevalence of avulsion at key Late Pleistocene sites from throughout northern Africa indicates the practice was restricted to the Maghreb. Our interpretation of these data suggests some Maghrebi migrants re-settled the southern Sahara, but over time, new groups entered the Sahara initiating a complex, multi-ethnic community dynamic in which some individuals enhanced the signal of social identity by extracting a greater number of teeth, thus producing a highly visibly modified countenance.

Mothers, daughters, and the transmission of memory in documentaries directed by women of Maghrebi origin in france

ABSTRACTThis article compares the treatment of memory and the transmission of memory in Yamina Benguigui's Mémoires d'immigrés: l'héritage maghrébin (1997) with the treatment of these themes in five other documentaries directed by Maghrebi-French women—all of which were released after Mémoires d'immigrés: Yasmina Kherfi's Mes voisines mes copines (2002), Djamila Sfaxi's À ma mère (2003), Rahma Benhamou El Madani's Du côté de chez soi (2003), Soraya Nini's 24 heures dans la Life de ma mère (2007) and Fatima Sissani's La langue de Zahra (2011). It argues that in contrast to Benguigui's foregrounding of collective experiences of Maghrebi migrant women in Mémoires d'immigrés, these five documentaries highlight the specificity of the memories and experiences of the directors' mothers and in doing so problematize the very idea that there exists a collective trajectory or set of experiences with regard to Maghrebi migrants in France. When considered together, these films reflect a shift away from the universalizing and collective view of Maghrebi migration that is set forth in Benguigui's documentary.

Kosher in New York City, halal in Aquitaine: challenging the relationship between neoliberalism and food auditing

Previous work in the agri-food tradition has framed food auditing as a novelty characteristic of a shift to neoliberal governance in agri-food systems and has tackled the analysis of food “quality” in the same light. This article argues that agri-food scholars’ recent interest in the contested qualities of food needs to be situated alongside a much longer history of contested cultural attributions of trust in food relations. It builds on an earlier discussion suggesting that, although neoliberalism has undoubtedly opened up new spaces for audit activity, older political and social dynamics operating around food audits were established long before the neoliberal historical moment. Breaking new ground (as far as is known) by looking further back than the early history of the organic social movement, it examines intersections of religious food auditing, migrant food culture, and commercial dynamics in food systems. Based on secondary sources, two contrasting case studies are presented to illustrate the flux and complexity for: New World Diaspora migrants to New York City of assuring food was kosher; and more recent Maghrebi migrants to southwest France of assuring food is halal. The article concludes by noting that the neoliberal moment stands not as the unique progenitor of a new style of food authority, but rather as the latest response to a wider rupture in the historically contingent arbitration of new forms of trust in food.

Maghrebi Migrants and Writers: Liminality, Transgression and the Transferal of Identity

Migration research has generally neglected the individual, sacrificing him/her to macrosociological analyses. Some anthropologists, however, offer more analytically productive frameworks within which to comprehend the migrants’ experiences by considering them in terms of hybridity and liminality. I argue for the insight recognition of a liminal imaginary may bring to an understanding of transnational North African’s experiences by exploring the novelistic space-time constructed and shared by Francophone Maghrebi authors, including Tahar Ben Jelloun and Mehdi Charef. Recognizing in the Moroccan context the pertinence of a hegemonic patriarchal master-disciple matrix, in addition to a certain idea of liberty in regard to international relations and borders, I perceive these Francophone Maghrebi authors as pursuing a distinctive kind of freedom, one linked to their liminal positions. I take Victor Turner’s conception of the liminal a step further by pointing to the relevance of barzakh, an Arabic word theorized by the 13th century Andalusian philosopher Ibn al-Arabi as an isthmus and womb. I further build on this concept by focusing on the inarticulatable aspects and transgressive possibilities outside transnational structures and traditions.

Cultural Displacement in Brussels with Maghrebi Women

This article explores the relationships between the spatial conditions and the behavior of migrant Maghrebi women in Brussels. It traces the dichotomy of private versus public space and the transformations of these notions in the immigrant community. In light of the strong, rich original culture, which is undergoing a sort of revival with the young generation of Maghrebi migrants, displacements of different kinds affect women who are no longer completely submerged in traditional and religious structures. Therefore, the spaces occupied or rejected by Maghrebi women in Brussels are laden with additional and new values, which lead to a reconsideration of the dichotomy of private and public in European cities today.