Muslim Fathers and Mistrusted

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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN STUDIES IN
FAMILY AND INTIMATE LIFE

Muslim Fathers and

Mistrusted Masculinity
in Danish Schools

Anne Hovgaard Jørgensen

Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family
and Intimate Life

Series Editors
Lynn Jamieson
University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh, UK

Jacqui Gabb
Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
Open University
Milton Keynes, UK

Sara Eldén
Lund University
Lund, Sweden

Chiara Bertone
University of Eastern Piedmont
Alessandria, Italy

Vida Č esnuitytė
Mykolas Romeris University
Vilnius, Lithuania
‘The Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life series is
impressive and contemporary in its themes and approaches’
– Professor Deborah Chambers, Newcastle University, UK, and author
of New Social Ties.
The remit of the Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life
series is to publish major texts, monographs and edited collections focus-
ing broadly on the sociological exploration of intimate relationships and
family life. The series encourages robust theoretical and methodologically
diverse approaches. Publications cover a wide range of topics, spanning
micro, meso and macro analyses, to investigate the ways that people live,
love and care in diverse contexts. The series includes works by early career
scholars and leading internationally acknowledged figures in the field
while featuring influential and prize-winning research.
This series was originally edited by David H.J. Morgan and
Graham Allan.
 Anne Hovgaard Jørgensen

Muslim Fathers and

Mistrusted Masculinity
in Danish Schools
Anne Hovgaard Jørgensen
Department of Sociology and Social Work
Aalborg University
Aalborg & Copenhagen, Denmark

ISSN 2731-6440     ISSN 2731-6459 (electronic)

Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life
ISBN 978-3-031-21625-1    ISBN 978-3-031-21626-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21626-8

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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Dedicated to Selma
 Acknowledgement

This book would not have been possible without the kindness and open-
ness of the pupils and teachers at Rosendal School,1 the fathers and fami-
lies connected with the school, and the project coordinators in the different
fathers’ groups who showed interest for my project and opened the door
to the fathers’ groups, where fathers showed me the world from their per-
spective. The fact that someone is willing to share his or her time and place
with someone is a necessity for fieldwork. I am grateful to all the fathers
who trusted me and shared their everyday paradoxes, aspirations, feelings
and vulnerabilities. Without you, this book would not have been possible.
I sincerely hope that I have been able to bring your voices forward in a fair
and wholesome way.
This book is a rework of my PhD thesis, and I wish to thank my previ-
ous advisors: Tekla Canger from Copenhagen University College who,
besides inspiring ideas and comments, has provided me with an important
insight into the teaching profession; Bodil Selmer from the Anthropology
department at Aarhus University who, besides being my co-advisor, has
been a great source of inspiration since I started studying the field of
migration as an undergraduate anthropology student. Moreover, an enor-
mous thanks to Laura Gilliam, my main advisor who has helped me make
my arguments sharper, for including me in her own research as well as
various research groups, seminars, etc. Following, thanks to all my

1
All personal, place and institutional names have been changed due to anonymity and all
interlocutors have agreed to participate in the study. At all times, I followed the ethical stan-
dards advised by the AAA (American Anthropologist Association 2012).

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

previous colleagues at the “anthropology corridor” at Department of

Education, Aarhus University. I am grateful to Marcia Inhorn for her
efforts and hospitality during my visit at the Department of Anthropology
at Yale University, as well as for encouraging me to write this book,
together with guiding me along the way of writing it. Thanks to my great
colleagues at Yale University, Lizzy Berk and Henry Llewellyn. I also own
my editor Linda Braus and project coordinator Chandralekha Mahamel
Raja from Palgrave Macmillan an enormous thank for their work regard-
ing the publication. Also, I want to thank Mia Esma Talarico for a thor-
ough proof-reading. Finally, I owe my family and friends an enormous
thanks for supporting me in the process of doing research for, as well as
writing, this book.
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

2 Social Alertness 41

3 Fathers and School 77

4 Struggling Along101

5 The Constraining Jobs  125

6 Construction of the “Dangerous Man”145

7 Mistrusted Masculinity165

8 Concerned Fatherhood201

9 Conclusion  219

References237

Index255

ix
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

“They think I’m violent (…) but I’m a good man; I’m a gardener!” These
are the words of the father Omar, who migrated from Morocco and now
lives with his family in Denmark. I met Omar on a warm June afternoon
in 2015, visiting the fathers’ group of Skovlunden. I had recently started
my research on migrant fathers’ relations to their children’s school, and at
that very moment I was not aware that the mistrust Omar told me about
would turn out to be the central theme of this book and lead me to the
concept of “mistrusted masculinity.” The fathers’ group was placed in the
neighbourhood of Skovlunden, more precisely, in the project-house in
one of the concrete blocks, which together with many similar blocks con-
stituted the housing estate. The fathers of the fathers’ group shared similar
social positions; being fathers with a migrant background and being
Muslim gave the fathers a common point of reference of holding a minor-
ity position in society. Omar, a forty-seven-year-old father of five, joined
the fathers’ group to strengthen the community of fathers in the area and
share and discuss his best advice on fatherly issues. Some of the fathers
needed guidance to successfully navigate the Danish child-institutions;
Omar told me, however, he saw a bigger problem—that the “Danish sys-
tem,” for many, many years, had taken the responsibility away from “the
immigrant man.” Omar thought that both the municipality, the school
and teachers did not show these fathers trust, and that they did not actively
include these fathers in the work concerning their children.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
A. H. Jørgensen, Muslim Fathers and Mistrusted Masculinity in
Danish Schools, Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate
Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21626-8_1
2 A. H. JØRGENSEN

Omar underlined to me how important the father is for the child, how
the child had listened to its father’s voice since it started growing in the
mother’s womb and how psychologists stress the importance of the father
in a child’s life. However, a negative stereotype of a strict, controlling—
maybe even violent—immigrant man had led some teachers to exclude
fathers. “Some [immigrant] fathers shout at their teenagers, these are the
child-rearing tools they know, but it’s meant by love—they do not want to
be laissez-faire. They are not dangerous; they want to be clear parents, but
these fathers are being misunderstood.” Omar continued to tell that
sometimes the child would get the vibe from the teachers that they should
not listen to their father, and exemplified: “It is not your parents who
decide at home. It is not your father who decides. Come, we will support
you in a good and proper way,” reflecting how some teachers have a per-
ception of “the Muslim father” and “Muslim childrearing” as too con-
trolled and backward which conflicts with ideals about democratic
individualism as a key part in the idea of the civilising project of “Danish
child-rearing.” Omar emphasised that it was not all teachers or welfare-­
professionals who shared such prejudices, but some did, and when fathers
met such attitudes, they would withdraw, sometimes from anger and
despair, sometimes in fear of “the system.” Omar’s experiences are some
of many experiences of migrant school-fathers, which this book sheds light
on. Based on a fieldwork in a Danish public school, Rosendal School and
various groups of migrant fathers, this book explores the social lifeworlds
of Muslim migrant fathers and their experiences of encounters with teach-
ers and pedagogues.1 These fathers are engaged actors individually gov-
erning their own lives; they are complicit in their own fate and not simply
insignificant and impotent creatures of circumstances (Jackson 2013). Yet,
as we shall see, in addition to the fathers’ own intentions for self-­
representation and aspirations for fatherhood, there are complex forces at
work, which has consequences for their fatherhood practices, their involve-
ment in school and in some cases relation to their children.

1
In Danish pædagoger, which are specially trained social educators mainly working with
social aspects of schooling, the social well-being and development of children.
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

A Dangerous Man
Omar’s story reveals many of the themes taken up in the chapters that fol-
low. First and foremost, Omar is a Muslim migrant living in Denmark, and
his narrative tell us how he feels mistrusted due to a certain negative ste-
reotype of “the immigrant man.” These are not-seldom feelings amongst
the Muslim migrant fathers of this book and has to do with rather harsh
political debates on Muslim migrants. For decades, Muslims in Denmark
have faced being othered due to an anti-Muslim-immigrant sentiment,
which was felt most vehemently in the anti-Muslim/Arab aftermath of
9/11 and has further intensified during the Danish cartoon crisis in 2005,
as well as the 2011 Middle Eastern uprisings and the subsequent growth
of ISIS. These events have entangled with terror attacks in bigger European
cities, for which Islamist terror-organisations have taken responsibility.
Such events and the following political debates, highlighting Islam in the
risk of terrorism, have resulted in a broad backlash against the growing
presence of Muslim immigrants and are part of a broader narrative of “us
versus them” which circulates widely in parts of Europe—a narrative which
has excluded huge segments of the Muslim population from feeling that
they are part of society (Bowen 2007, 2016). The problematisation of the
Muslim migrant has been reinforced by neo-nationalist streams in
Denmark as well as throughout Europe, entangled in the debates on mass-­
migration. Along these lines we have seen an increasing nation-state rhet-
oric and practice in the Danish welfare system, where a neo-nationalist
security and integration effort has gained ground as part of the war on
terror (Johansen 2013; Pedersen and Rytter 2011). Within this rhetoric,
Muslim men are associated with danger and constructed as a potential ter-
rorist, whereas female- and child-migrants are constructed as safe and “to
be saved” (Abu-Lughod 2013).
Contemporary integration-policy has caused many heated debates and
disputes between political actors on the issues of nationality, Islam/reli-
gion, democracy, “Danishness,” etc. Within these debates Muslim
migrants have been categorised in many ways including “Muslims,”
“Arabs,” “Middle Easterns” or different versions of the “ethnic other,”
for example, people with “another ethnic background” or “non-ethnic
Dane” (ikke etnisk dansk). These classifications are all constructed in oppo-
sition to “Danes” or “ethnic Danes,” leaving an impression of deeply
rooted ethnic differences, characterising how notions of culture and eth-
nicity work in essentialised ways to maintain the dichotomy between “us”
4 A. H. JØRGENSEN

and “them.” Although most immigrants in Denmark actually come from

European countries such as Poland, Germany, Norway and Sweden
(Danmarks Statistik 2017), these European immigrants are habitually not
included in the ethnic-other-categories mentioned above, due to a cultur-
ally constructed division between immigrants from the Global North and
South. In recent years, this tendency has been strengthened with the cat-
egory of “non-western immigrants, refugees and their descendants.” This
category has moved from statistical research into media, political debates
and law, and today, the term is frequently used in newspapers, such as in
the headline: “Non-western descendants perform badly in school”
(Wandrup 2017, my translation). The illustration accompanying this arti-
cle is a picture of a girl wearing a presumably Muslim headscarf reading a
book at a school-desk, exemplifying the constant entanglement between
the term “non-western” and Islam. Thus, although the countries within
the official definition of the category of “non-western” is very diverse
regarding religion,2 “non-western” is mostly used in relation to countries
with a Muslim majority, and Professor Christian Albrect Larsen has stated
that “the best, I can say about it [the category], is that it is a nicer category
than Muslim/non-Muslim and white/non-white. As such, it has a more
neutral sound to it” (Spillemose 2017, my translation).3 This book sheds
light on how the construction of the “non-western person” is embedded
in certain political and historical processes of Islamophobia with strands
back to Orientalism, where the West is constituted as the civilised nations
in opposition to “the rest,” the non-West (Said 1986; Asad 1995). This
Orientalist gaze on the “Middle Eastern alias Muslim man” has influenced
both popular and political discourses. One such example is the previously
run “Rights Campaign” (Rettighedskampagne) enacted by the former
Minister of Gender Equality. Although equality of gender is a general
Danish matter, the campaign exclusively focuses on “immigrants in
Denmark,” a category used interchangeably with “Muslims” and “ethnic
minorities” (see Graversen 2018). The campaign was framed as a means
for “immigrant women,” and their need to be informed about their rights

2
“Western countries” include all EU countries as well as Andorra, Iceland, Lichtenstein,
Monaco, Norway, San Marino, Switzerland, Great Britain, Vatican City, Canada, the US,
Australia and New Zealand. “Non-western countries” includes all other countries (Danmarks
Statistik 2020).
3
The article also exemplifies how the category of “non-western” is generally problema-
tised, as well as how it used to define children, who possibly were born in Denmark, and thus
prevent them from belonging to the category of “Danes.”
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

to make decisions regarding their own money, the right to an education

and the right to divorce. In relation to the campaign the former Minister
of Immigration pronounced: “It is completely unaccepted in a democratic
society as the Danish that there are ethnic-communities, where Danish
values and freedoms are not in compliance, where middle-age values are
dominant, and where women are suppressed and subjected to social con-
trol” (Udlændinge- og Integrationsministeriet 2018, my translation).
This framing makes the Muslim migrant man stand out as an “absent pres-
ent figure,” as this type of man is not directly mentioned yet figures as a
suppressor of both women and children. A type of “immigrant man” is
constructed here as the antithesis of the modern, progressive, “Danish
man,” and appears to practise an obsolescent, patriarchal and old-­fashioned
masculinity; and as the problem, and thus women and children as victims.4
This social construction needs to be understood in light of the majority-­
Danish self-understanding of “an exceptional community,” where gender
equality is an “essential feature in being Danish,” something to which
Muslim immigrant men have failed to accustom (Walle 2004). The Muslim
migrant fathers of this book tell us how they must navigate according to
this negative image of the “Muslim immigrant man,” and how this nega-
tive image, in unforeseen ways, entangles in meetings with the child-­
professionals of their children’s school. To grasp this gendered mistrust, I
suggest the term “mistrusted masculinity”—which is a term to capture the
mistrust that Muslim migrant fathers feel sticks to them and their mascu-
linity. In this book, I examine mistrusted masculinity as a social phenom-
enon present in both media and political discourse (Chap. 6) as well as in
micro-intersubjective interactions between teachers and fathers (Chap. 7).
We explore how mistrust is a social phenomenon difficult to grasp and
therefore also hard to counterwork; how it by its tacit, yet disturbing pres-
ence, affects the fathers’ relations in different ways.

Where They Came From?

As mentioned above the category of “non-western immigrant and refugee”
is a social constructed category, influenced by means of Neo-­Orientalist
assumptions (Inhorn 2012) to categorise essentially Muslim migrants.
These migrants mainly originate from what have been glossed as “the

4
Hoel (2016, 8), Charsley and Liversage (2015, 2–3), Christensen et al. (2017) and Jaffe-­
Walter (2016).
6 A. H. JØRGENSEN

traditional immigrant and refugee countries of Denmark” (Als Research

2011, 19–20), which encompass very different migration histories. The
first so-called guest workers came to Denmark from Turkey in the late
1960s, where the fast growth of industry made the Danish government
invite workers to take employment in Denmark (Pedersen and Selmer
1991, 23). The Danish government offered work in unskilled, low-wage
jobs in labour-intensive, often precarious and unregulated manufacturing
industries. This invitation only lasted a few years, as the government in
1973, like most other EC countries, closed the borders to further immigra-
tion (ibid., 26). As the oil crises took effect in the 1970s, the Danish gov-
ernment expected the mainly Turkish, but also Pakistani, Moroccan and
Yugoslavian guest workers to leave Denmark. However, and despite an
increase in unemployment, many decided to stay and applied for family
reunification. In 1979, Denmark joined the UN agreement on a perma-
nent resettlement programme for refugees, hereafter commonly known as
“quota refugees.” From this time quota refugees have fled to Denmark
from different parts of the world. After 1980, refugees came to Denmark
on a large scale due to conflicts mainly in the Global South. Central con-
flicts that caused these flights include the Iran–Iraq war (1980–1988) and
the Israeli–Palestinian war, where Palestinians were automatically granted
asylum until 1989, along with many stateless Palestinians who fled the civil
war in Lebanon during the 1980s. From 1988 onwards, Somalis fled the
civil war in Somalia. Furthermore, many Kurdish refugees came to Denmark
due to the war in Iraq in 1990–1991, as well as many ex-Yugoslavians, who
fled the civil war in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Since the
1990s, many other migrants and refugee-groups have sought a life in
Denmark, such as from Afghanistan and Syria. In 1999, the Danish gov-
ernment enacted the “Integration Act” as the first intensified political focus
on the notion of “culture.” Since then, numerous regulations and acts have
been implemented to create so-­ called successful integration (Johansen
2013, 53–56; Pedersen and Rytter 2011). Hereafter, many regulations
have reflected an obligation to assimilate into Danish norms rather than
establish a multicultural society (Rytter 2018).
When I use the term “migrant” I refer to fathers who at some point in
their lives have crossed international borders to live in Denmark (IMO
2019). It includes both immigrants and refugees, a difference that could
have a great impact on the fathers’ lives. The fathers navigate the school-­
home collaboration differently, depending on, amongst other factors,
their own individual school experiences—and in a broader perspective,
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

their diverse horizons of experience. Some fathers came as children and

had attended Danish school. Overall, the Muslim migrant fathers in this
study are a heterogeneous “assembly of men,” in terms of origin, cultural
and national background, educational capacities, language, upbringing,
and so on. The diversity of the fathers is embraced by describing the
fathers’ characteristics and life-circumstances by the empirical examples,
which show both differences and similarities within this broad classifica-
tion. Thus, the classification of “Muslim migrant father” is highly com-
plex. Nevertheless, as we shall see, these fathers meet similar obstacles in
their lives in Denmark.

The New Role of the Father

Masculinity can be defined as “men as men” (Gutmann 1996), whereas
fatherhood can be understood as “men as fathers” (Jørgensen 2017).
Thus, being a father is related to ways of being a man within society. In
early feminist anthropological studies in the 1970s, the earliest approaches
to studying masculinity seemed to depict an overly dichotomised world in
which men were men and women were women, and women contributed
as little to “making” men as men did to “making” women (Isidoros and
Inhorn 2022). These early anthropological feminist studies of women
addressed women’s previous “invisibility” in anthropology studies, where
contrary men have never been invisible in ethnography or theories of
“mankind” (ibid.). Thus, anthropology has always involved men talking
to men about men; however, until around the mid-1990s, very few within
the discipline of the “study of man” had truly examined “men as men”
(Gutmann 1997). Although early feminist studies include some of the
most important theoretical and empirical work in the discipline of anthro-
pology, generally, gender studies or feminist studies have habitually been
equated with women’s studies, which has caused an awkward avoidance of
feminist theory on the part of many anthropologists who study manhood
(ibid.). Recently, however, we have seen a movement from early feminist
anthropology’s “writing women back in” to now new work on masculin-
ity, which also includes important studies on Muslim men (Isidoros and
Inhorn 2022; Inhorn 2012; Naguib 2015; Gustavo 2022; Elliot 2021;
Suerbaum 2020; Isidoros 2022). In accordance, this book is joining a new
body of anthropology of men and masculinity seeking to revisit the previ-
ous androcentric record of men, to now revise that and rethink/re-write
8 A. H. JØRGENSEN

men back into the new post-feminist era, where men are approached as
engendered and engendering subjects.
Most research within the field of migration and gender in Denmark
have investigated masculinities among youth,5 generally omitting adult
men and fatherhood. However, a recent study of migrant men living in a
multiethnic neighbourhood of Denmark (Christensen et al. 2017) con-
cludes that these men struggled with a low-class position in society due to
migration, along with experiences of othering and racism, which further
worked to block labour market opportunities, providing painful challenges
to their male identity. These factors are found to degrade and disqualify
these men as having a “marginalised masculinity” (ibid.) with reference to
gender scholar Raewyn Connell’s theory on “marginalised masculinity”
from 1995 (Connell 2012). Inspired by Marxist sociology, Connell defines
marginalised masculinity as constructed in contrast to the hegemonic,
“correct” superior and dominant masculinity. It is a social mechanism
through which various groups develop the “will to confirm” with a leading
group’s way of being, thereby facilitating class-based domination (Isidoros
and Inhorn 2022, 6). In the American context, this manifests as Afro-
American working-class masculinity being suppressed by the white “hege-
monic” middle-class masculinity, maintaining an institutional oppression
and physical distress that has framed the making of masculinities in black
communities. Although extremely important and ground-­ breaking,
Connell’s theory has the consequence that we focus on structural power,
with the danger of creating a dualistic and overly fixed picture of masculin-
ity as either hegemonic or marginalised, whereas subordinate men can
only aspire to elements of hegemonic masculinity as the ideal type—which
may not reflect men’s actual social realities and gender relations in practice
(Inhorn 2012). Consequently, I only use Connell’s concept to inform the
discourses around Muslim migrant men, that is, how the construction of
the “non-western man” in political rhetoric and documents reflects a mar-
ginalised form of masculinity, which ought to aspire (and assimilate with)
the hegemonic masculinity of the Danish man and father (Chap. 6). Yet,
Connell’s theory falls short when put to analyse the lived lives of the
migrant fathers of this book. Instead of seeing these fathers’ masculinities
as being “formed” by suppression, I argue for approaching both mascu-
linities and fatherhoods as emergent (Inhorn 2012). The concept of

5
Gilliam (2009, 2017, 2018), Jensen (2007, 2010), Mørck (2006), Soei (2011), Hviid
(2007), Gitz-Johansen (2006) and Staunæs (2004).
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

“emergent masculinities” (Inhorn 2012, 300) is a concept produced to

encompass the emergence of new masculinities of Middle Eastern men in
present times—a term that attempts to capture the transformative aspects
of men’s embodied personhood, and how masculinity is affected by influ-
ences and life-circumstances beyond men’s individual control (ibid., 300).
By approaching masculinity as emergent, the analyses embrace resistance
and social change, as I faced fathers’ alertness and opposition against being
othered or marginalised. It also allows us to grasp the unpredictability and
dynamism of the ethnographic material, along with the diverse masculinity
practices of the interlocutors.
Despite a rising focus on men and masculinity, the role of fathers as a
separate site of research is still quite limited within the field of anthropol-
ogy, although anthropologists have started to focus more on this role
(Inhorn et al. 2015; Ingvarsdóttir 2014). Along these lines, anthropolo-
gists Haldis Haukanes and Tatjana Thelen (2010) argue that the cultural
construction of the “modern Western childhood” is intimately linked to
the historical development of motherhood. However, they find that there
has, in recent years, been an increased focus on fathers’ involvement in
child-rearing and child welfare services in both policymaking and research.
For example, recent studies have focused on how active fathering has been
found to be beneficial for psychological well-being, growth and develop-
ment of the child (Haukanes and Thelen 2010, 17; Lewis and Lamb 2003).
Fatherhood as a separate site of research within so-called western soci-
eties has to a greater extent been studied within the field of sociology and
social psychology, and here the focus on fatherhood has also grown.6
Sociological studies of mainly white middle-class men find how “the west-
ern father-role” has changed from the “moral overseer” in the 1930s to
“the distant breadwinner” in the 1950s. During the post-war period, the
father-role ventured into the role of the “playing dad,” and subsequently,
fathers became more involved in child-rearing (Dermott 2013). Back in
the 1990s, British and American studies of middle-class white men sug-
gested that the new social movements stemming from the industrial revo-
lution have resulted in the man no longer being the only breadwinner in
the family, which has worked to generate a new father-role that is more
involved in parenting practices (O’Brien 1992; Griswold 1993). Besides
the change of the labour market, the spread of the contraceptive pill, free
abortion and, not least, the education boom among younger women have

6
Featherstone (2003), Gupta and Featherstone (2015), Nielsen and Westerling (2016),
Miller (2011) and Madsen (2003, 2008).
10 A. H. JØRGENSEN

not only expanded the scope of opportunity for women but also changed
men’s lives. In the American context, Stuart Aitken (2009) examines how
Anglo-American fathers are “becoming-other”—other than their own
father and other than the dictates of patriarchy. This “becoming-other” is
related to what has been termed the “crisis of masculinity,” where the role
of the father as solely the breadwinner, supplier and potentially the patri-
arch is, in many contexts, no longer a culturally celebrated role (ibid.).
Such social and cultural changes have resulted in the phenomenon of
“new” or “modern” fathers: fathers are doing fathering differently com-
pared with just a generation ago, being more family and child-oriented
(Eydal and Rostgaard 2016, 6). Here the Nordic welfare model and the
ideal of gender equality have encouraged fathers to take a greater part in
childcare, and studies find tendencies for some Danish men to venture
into a field of intimate fathering. These “pioneering fathers” (Nielsen and
Westerling 2016, 189) are entering more intimate parts of child-rearing,
which was earlier seen as an area belonging to the mother. This generates
more opportunities for these fathers and a possible split and separation of
the dyadic mother–child relationship, which may result in new common
ground in families (ibid., 205). The studies above generally focus on rela-
tively highly educated, middle-class, majoritised fathers. Thus, “white
middle-class fathers” have dominated the research on fatherhood in
Northern Europe and Scandinavia, whereas migrant fathers’ experiences
of fathering are still a quite unexplored field.7 As a consequence, the afore-
mentioned “new roles of the father” is found to be a phenomenon in
white middle-class families, which may have the effect that such fathers
stand out as progressive and resource-strong, nearly as an ideal type, or
what could be termed as a “hegemonic fatherhood” living out the ide-
alised value of gender equality. One question that arises here is to what
extent this image is due to a lack of research on fathers who do not fit
these specific characteristics.8

7
Liversage (2016, 209), Inhorn et al. (2015, 3), Featherstone (2003), Gupta and
Featherstone (2015) and Hoel (2016).
8
Senior researcher Anika Liversage (2016) is one of the few Danish researchers who has
studied specifically fatherhood among so-called ethnic-minority men. Liversage finds that her
interlocutors, fathers who are first-generation immigrants from Turkey, are more inclined to
understand the roles of men and women in the family as complementary—the role of the
father is closer to the breadwinner’s role; yet it was difficult for some interlocutors to main-
tain this role after emigration, owing to the high rate of un-/underemployment of immi-
grants. Many of Liversage’s interviews were done with divorced fathers who were struggling
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

My approach to fatherhood is inspired by the concept of “emergent

fatherhood” (Inhorn et al. 2015, 7), which draws upon the aforemen-
tioned concept of emergent masculinities, where “emergent” should be
understood as new meaning and values, new practices, new relationships
of men and fathers, with a focus on the ongoing, relational and embodied
processes of change in the way that men enact being a father (ibid., 7–8).
In doing so, this book captures the creativity and transformations appar-
ent in the practices of fatherhoods amongst migrant fathers and how the
roles of fathers emerge due to migration and societal change in a trans-
forming globalised world; and furthermore, how such emergent ways of
practising fatherhood also implicate new forms of fatherly affect and care-
giving (ibid.). In Chap. 5, I demystify the so-called “father absence” by
examining how precarious, time-consuming, low-paid jobs constrain
migrant fathers from performing active “Danish” parenthood at school,
with the result that these fathers’ supportive parenting practices remain
invisible to teachers. Thus, as many Muslim fathers of this book embrace
affectionate and involved parenting styles, these might stay as “invisible
fatherhood” in the eyes of teachers.

A “Race-Blind Ideology”
This volume is also about the role racism plays in Muslim migrant fathers’
lives. I explore how the fathers of this book, who had darker skin colour,
black hair, or other Middle Eastern, South Asian or African characteristics,
felt that these characteristics “meant something.” Their physical appear-
ance—especially in combination with a low command of Danish, an accent,
an Arab or Muslim name or other Muslim symbols—acquired salience in
their everyday lives. In recent years Nordic scholars have pointed out the
hegemony of Nordic whiteness, examining how assertions of anti-racism
and colour-blindness go hand in hand with the silencing and exclusion of
racialised minorities.9 One of these scholars is anthropologist Peter Hervik,

or failing to be present fathers. However, most of my interlocutors lived in a family, thus not
struggling to “hold on to” their father-role. Despite some of the fathers of this book experi-
enced that their fatherhood practices were circumscribed by challenges posed by their
minority-­status and lower-class position, this book tells a multifaceted story of fatherhood
practices, which includes stories of fathers’ aspirations for fatherhood, fatherly agencies and
love of their children, and brings in new nuances to the broad category of Muslim migrant
fathers.
9
Lapin ̧a (2017), Andreassen and Ahmed-Andresen (2014) and Hervik (2015).
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Ventureta: (amb joia) A tu, curt de geni, pobre d’esperit! Això no has
conegut fa temps? Que no vaig fer-t’ho entendre prou per la festa
major, que amb mil escuses i mentides em vaig enginyar per no
ballar més que amb tu?

Ciset: (amb esclat) I és cert? Ai, Ventureta, vals tota la gloria del
cel!… Perquè no m’ho havíes dit mai això que’m dius ara? Perquè no
vas parlar abans?

Ventureta: Jo, tot justament? Tu eres el que havíes de parlar.

Ciset: Jo? Sabent que t’havíen promesa al Cintet? Si per cas era ell
qui havía de parlar, ja que no’t volía.

Cintet: Jo? Això el pare, que va manegar-s’ho tot ell, sense ni

demanar-me el meu parer!

Cinto: Qui, jo? El Mero era el qui havía d’haver parlat desseguida.

Mero: Tot justament jo? I què sabía jo? (Pel Tano.) Aquest era el que
havía d’esbotzar la grua.

Tano: Jo? I a mi què’m feia! A mi no m’hi anava ni venía rès. Això sí,
el que se l’endugués un castellà ho tenía entravessat aquí. Ara… que
siga el Ciset tant se me’n dóna.

Cinto: Calleu tots.

Gibert: (rient) Al revés, parleu tots, parleu força, que aixís arribareu
a entendre-us.

Quirze: Aixís, aprofiteu-vos ara, que heu recobrat la paraula.

Cinto: (crit) Calleu, torno a dir-vos, que vui enraonar jo. Ja
enraonareu després fins que se us acabi la corda. (Silenci.) Què’t
sembla, Mero? Lo dit, dit, i com si no hagués passat rès?

Mero: No t’entenc.

Cinto: Que ja que no té d’ésser pel Cintet sigui pel Ciset?

Mero: Ja que ells dos ho volen…

Ciset: Gracies, Mero. (Li besa la mà)

Cinto: Doncs, fet?

Mero: Fet. (Encaixen amb força.)

Ventureta: (radiosa) Ai, com se m’aixampla el cor!

Ciset: (agafant-li la mà) I a mi!

Cinto, Mero i Tano I a mi! (Riallada general perllongada.)

Cinto: Vaja, mai haguera dit que el parlar fos una cosa tan sanitosa!

Gibert: Gracies a Déu que s’han negat les tristeses!

Quirze: Aixís, d’ara en endevant, de la vostra barca en lloc de dir-ne

“la barca dels afligits”…

Gibert: En direm “la barca de les alegríes”…

Cinto: Amb el ben entès, que dés d’avui el primer que munti a la
meva barca amb mala cara, d’un cop de rem el clavo al aigua.
(Tots) Molt ben dit!

Cinto: I al que’n duga alguna al pap i en lloc d’abocar-la se la guardi a

dintre… no’l vui més a bordo… Per alguna cosa ens ha donat Déu la
llengua.

Mero: Visca el patró!

(Tots) Visca!

Fi

27 de Juliol del 1913

 *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LA BARCA
DELS AFLIGITS ***

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