Of Love and Family, States and Borders
De l’amour et des familles, des États et des frontières
Comparative Perspectives on Afro-European Couples and Families
Perspectives comparées sur les couples afro-européens et leurs familles
Published on Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Abstract
Over the last twenty years, European states have become increasingly concerned with what are commonly referred to as “marriages of convenience”, that is marriages that are contracted with the sole aim of acquiring citizenship. As a result, in many European countries bi-national marriages are today the object of extraordinary state scrutiny and intervention. The current political stakes and visibility of contemporary bi-national marriage tend to occlude the fact that the policing of bi-racial couples and their métis children was once characteristic of colonial administrations throughout Africa as well. Thus, we examine these issues with attention to the way these dynamics change not only across space, but also time.
Announcement
Argument
Over the last twenty years, European states have become increasingly concerned with what are commonly referred to as “marriages of convenience” -- that is marriages that are contracted with the sole aim of acquiring citizenship. As a result, in many European countries bi-national marriages are today the object of extraordinary state scrutiny and intervention. Across the European Union, the last ten years have seen the passage of a veritable deluge of laws and circulars meant to regulate bi-national marriage, as well as the emergence of political collectives like Les Amoureux Au Ban Public whose primary aim is to protect the rights of bi-national couples. At the same time, anthropologists and sociologists working in various parts of the developing world have documented a flourishing transnational sexual, romantic and kinship economy around these bi-national, bi-cultural, and very often bi-racial relationships.
This workshop seeks to explore the social, cultural and political dynamics of bi-national couples and families in terms of both their formation and their everyday functioning. In order to limit the scope of our inquiry, and because these couples raise issues of racial boundaries with particular clarity, we focus especially on African-European couple and family formation. The basic premise of the workshop is that because of the intense nature of contemporary state policing, these couples and families offer a privileged site through which to examine both generative processes of cultural mixing and exclusion simultaneously. As men and women come together to build intimate relationships across lines of difference, they also rework the nature of race and gender, blur and reinforce class boundaries, and make possible new horizons of expectation. Yet the current political stakes and visibility of contemporary bi-national marriage tend to occlude the fact that the policing of bi-racial couples and their métis children was once characteristic of colonial administrations throughout Africa as well. Thus, we examine these issues with attention to the way these dynamics change not only across space, but also time.
Program
10:00-12:00 : Panel 1 : Mixed Marriage and Métissage in Historical Perspective
Discussant: Catherine Coquery Vidrovitch
- Amandine Lauro, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Love, Lust and the Colonial Making of Interracial Disorders: Afro-European Couples in the Belgian Congo
- Francis Simonis, Université Aix-Marseille, Les couples mixtes coloniaux étaient-ils vraiment des couples ? L'exemple du Soudan Français
- Violaine Tisseau, Institut des Mondes Africains, Les horizons pluriels des couples mixtes et de leur descendance à Madagascar, pendant la colonisation (1896-1960)
13: 30-15:00: Panel 2: Regulating Love
Discussant / Discutant: Jennifer Cole
- Hélène Neveu Kringelbach, Oxford University, The paradoxes of ‘parallel lives’: Immigration policy and transnational polygyny between Senegal and France.
- Anne Lavanchy, Université de Neuchâtel, Suisse, Regulating the nation in registry offices: Love, Marriage & Racialization in Switzerland
15:30 - 17:30: Panel 3 : Mixité and New Horizons
Discussant/Discutant: Maurice Bloch
- Christian Groes Green, Roskilde University, Appreciated or exploited? The moral grammar of intimate exchange, gender and patronage in African-European relationships in Maputo, Mozambique
- Altaïr Despres, Musee du Quai Branly, Carrières d'artistes contemporains africains au prisme de la conjugalité Nord-Sud. Penser les transactions culturelles intimes
- Julie Kleinman, Oberlin College, ‘‘L’homme de l’aventure” and “la fille d’Amiens”: Encounters at the Gare du Nord
Subjects
Places
- University of Chicago Paris Center - 6-8 rue Thomas Mann
Paris, France (75013)
Date(s)
- Saturday, December 13, 2014
Attached files
Keywords
- migration, famille, métissage
Contact(s)
- Violaine Tisseau
courriel : tisseau [at] mmsh [dot] univ-aix [dot] fr
Information source
- Violaine Tisseau
courriel : tisseau [at] mmsh [dot] univ-aix [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Of Love and Family, States and Borders », Study days, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, December 10, 2014, https://doi.org/10.58079/rlv
