Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

The “three ages” of left‐behind Moroccan wives: Status, decision‐making power, and access to resources

The “three ages” of left‐behind Moroccan wives: Status, decision‐making power, and access to... INTRODUCTIONWith an estimated diaspora of approximately 4 million, Morocco has become one of the world's leading emigration countries (Berriane, de Haas, & Natter, ). Male emigration to Western European countries—France in particular—started during colonial times and intensified after the country's independence in 1956, driven by the recruitment of low‐skilled workers to offset postwar labour shortages in Europe. Although the mid‐1970s oil crises put a halt to this economic migration of mostly rural men, it was followed by family reunification programmes and an increase in irregular labour migration to the traditional destinations and to Spain and Italy from the 1980s. Transnational families therefore remain an important feature of Moroccan society, particularly in the historical regions of international emigration—the Berber areas of the Northern Rif, the Southwestern Sous, and the Southern oases.Although there is strong evidence of a positive impact of international migration and remittances on the living standards of the households staying behind in Morocco (Bouoiyour & Miftah, ), the social and gendered effects of those flows in the origin communities have been relatively neglected. This is linked to the tendency to portray those staying behind as an homogenous category of people with little agency (Archambault, ; Mondain & Diagne, ), which may be compounded by the use of the expression “left behind” to refer to these populations, suggesting powerlessness and “involuntary immobility” (Carling, ). This is especially true for women, who tend to constitute a very large proportion of the population staying behind in countries like Morocco, where emigration flows have been predominantly male. In contrast to the female migrant regarded as potentially empowered by her migration to a country of destination associated with an idea of progress and emancipation, the women staying behind in societies conceived as stagnant and traditional are thought to be excluded from such dynamics (Archambault, ). It is in response to this belief that a recent strand of the migration and development literature has endeavoured to reveal the dynamics of change in origin households and communities. And it often tests one hypothesis: Can male emigration lead to the empowerment of women staying behind?This article explores this hypothesis in the context of Morocco, a country characterised by a salient Arab Muslim patriarchal order (Joseph, ). It analyses how migration and remittances impact the bargaining and decision‐making power of migrants' wives within the left‐behind household, in a region of historic emigration to France. This question is investigated using in‐depth interviews with 12 women staying behind, providing accounts of gendered power dynamics in the household and how migration affects them.The paper starts with a theoretical account of how migration can lead to women's empowerment in origin communities, focusing more specifically on how it affects the mediating factor of the household structure. It then provides contextual elements on transnational families and women left behind in Morocco and describes the data. By adopting a diachronic perspective generally absent from previous studies, the analysis then shows how shifting power configurations in the local and transnational households determine the wives' access to the empowerment benefits of migration. Based on the analysis of changes in status following the important stages of the domestic cycle and migratory trajectory of their husbands, this article distinguishes three “ages” for wives left behind, mirroring Sayad's () typology of Algerian emigration to France. The first age corresponds to the initial period living with the in‐laws and the second to the wife's formation of a nuclear household. The third age—usually overlooked in the literature—refers to the changes following the migrant's return and/or eventual death. The insights gained through this biographic approach and the implications for future research are discussed in Section 6.THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON MIGRATION AND EMPOWERMENT OF WIVES LEFT BEHINDAlthough long neglected (Hugo, ), gender and women's empowerment issues are now largely researched in migration studies. A survey of the growing literature on women left behind shows that this is often a core concern for researchers: Although referring to different terms of women's “empowerment” (McEvoy, Petrzelka, Radel, & Schmook, ) such as “emancipation” (Abadan‐Unat, ; de Haas & van Rooij, ), “autonomy” (Yabiku, Agadjanian, & Sevoyan, ), “status” (Brink, ; Louhichi, ), or “position” (Hadi, ), various studies focus on similar indicators pertaining to women's situation in intrahousehold dynamics and, to a lesser extent, to their status in the local community. Since Abadan‐Unat's () seminal article on the impact of migration on the emancipation of Turkish women at origin and abroad, scholars have investigated migrant wives' decision making (economic or not), access and control over financial resources, changes in the gendered division of labour, and the new responsibilities women have to assume following the migrant's departure.These indicators reflect women's agency and what the majority of writers see as the essence of empowerment, that is, “the ability to formulate strategic choices and to control resources and decisions that affect important life outcomes” (Malhotra & Schuler, ). This is in keeping with the definition of empowerment as developed by Kabeer () and adopted here, that is, “the expansion in people's ability to make strategic life choices in a context where this ability was previously denied to them” (ibid.: 437). This term suggests a process of change in which women are the agents, not just the beneficiaries. The concept of agency, understood as the ability to define one's goals and act upon them, is therefore central to this definition. Kabeer's definition refers explicitly to the strategic life choices, which are critical for people to live the lives they want (e.g., decisions relating to marriage, education, employment, and childbearing). Such life choices are however rather infrequent in people's lives (Malhotra & Schuler, ), and in contexts of strict sociocultural norms, decisions regarding “smaller” choices (e.g., moving freely in the community) or the ability to develop a critical perspective on the social order can also be indicative of empowerment. As highlighted by Malhotra and Schuler (), in this process, profound change in institutions supporting patriarchal structures is often required and women's sources of disadvantage, as well as the resources to fight it, tend to be found in household and intrafamilial relations.The link between emigration and women's empowerment is not straightforward and can be seen as a two‐way relationship (Hugo, ). If we focus on how the migration of household members can affect the agency of the women staying behind, different mechanisms can be distinguished, each of them reinforcing or contradicting each other. The various components of the process through which male emigration can impact female empowerment outcomes in origin communities are modelled in Figure  (the most important channels, factors, and outcomes being represented in bold). How the channels (represented in the top box) affect women's empowerment varies according to who migrates, the duration of migration, frequency of visits, and the type, frequency, and amounts of remittances, as shown by Bennett, Clifford, and Falkingham () with respect to children's education. These effects are also conditioned by social and cultural norms and by the degree to which the local socioeconomic situation provides a favourable structure for change to occur. This study focuses more specifically on the impacts of male emigration and remittance flows on women's decision making and access to resources, and how this is mediated by household structure.Mechanisms of influence of migration and remittances on women's empowermentChanging division of labour and greater access to resources and decision makingThe status of an international migrant's wife can be regarded as enviable, as “successful” migration tends to improve a household's welfare and to benefit the women through improved material living conditions and better access to a range of services and public goods. However, remittances do not always ensue from migration, or at least not in the short term and a more immediate effect of the emigration of one or more household members is that women may have to replace this lost labour and possibly take on tasks and responsibilities previously assumed by men, especially in agriculture (Biao, ; Brettell, ; Datta & Mishra, ). In the absence of their husbands, women also have to carry out activities outside of their home, such as going to the market and interacting with organisations and institutions they had not frequently visited before, such as banks and administrations (Abadan‐Unat, ; Louhichi, ). Such tasks can increase their mobility and self‐confidence and can be empowering, even if a possible source of discomfort in places characterised by strict gender norms.Male absence and de facto female headship can also empower women by giving them control over resources and opportunities to make household and budgeting decisions. In Egypt, Brink () observed that migrants' wives became responsible for daily expenditures and even major ones and allocated money for ongoing expensive projects such as house construction. In rural areas, new responsibilities include deciding about agricultural matters such as crop selection (Datta & Mishra, ) or hiring labourers and supervising their work (McEvoy et al., ). Such changes challenge the traditional division of labour and can be empowering if they lead to enhanced self‐confidence and the wider recognition of women's competencies by the community. Yet they can be limited if the men remain responsible for major decisions at a distance.The role of sociocultural norms and household structureAs suggested in Figure , whether emigration may be conducive to empowerment gains or not is dependent on the social and cultural norms and the degree to which the local socioeconomic situation provides a favourable opportunity structure for change to occur. These factors are of particular significance when considering the situation of women staying behind in Arab Muslim contexts—including the Mediterranean Arabo‐Berber communities—where the patriarchal order is characterised by “the prioritising of the rights of males and elders (including elder women) and the justification of those rights within kinship values which are usually supported by religion” (Joseph, : 14). In the social and economic spheres, this order is enacted in legal and customary rights favouring men over women and concentrating material resources in the hands of the former, for instance, through the unequal inheritance and property rules that preclude female access to land. This system also reinforces men's role as breadwinners and discourages female paid employment outside the house, thus increasing women's dependency on male members of the family for their subsistence (ibid.). Generally speaking, these traditional customs and the code of honour imposed on women tend to be stronger in rural than in urban areas (Sadiqi & Ennaji, ).The generational, kinship, and religious aspects of this system of male domination determine the gendered assignation of roles and power in the family. In extended patrilocal households (the ideal type of Arab family organisation), the domestic hierarchy is dominated by the patriarch who has power over all members, other men have power over women (at least formally), and older women take precedence over younger ones. This system also imposes the physical separation of men and women, the latter being confined to the domestic sphere. The power dynamics between women within the households are therefore central to their status and well‐being. Within these dynamics women's power is of an indirect nature because largely derived from their relationship to the men. Being a mother, especially of sons, bestows great power on a woman, often at the expense of the daughter‐in‐law (Lacoste‐Dujardin, ). The predominance of this system also explains that in extended patrilocal households with current international migrants, remittances are usually sent to the household head, that is, the migrant's father or another of his relatives, not his wife (Bourqia, El Melakh, Abdourebbi, & Nafaa, ; Sadiqi & Ennaji, ). As in other contexts (Mondain, Randall, Diagne, & Elliott, ), coresidence with the in‐laws therefore appears to be a crucial factor undermining the empowerment process of wives staying behind. It is therefore essential to understand how migration affects household structure.Male migrants' departure can be motivated by the desire to build or buy a house for himself and his family in the place of origin (Brettell, ). Migration can therefore accelerate the household nuclearisation process, thus allowing the migrant's wife and children to move out from the in‐laws and form a nuclear family of which she becomes the de facto household head. Doing so, she escapes her in‐laws' supervision and gains much greater power over the allocation of resources (Brink, ; Hajjarabi, ). The link between these phenomena is not straightforward, however: although most studies point to international migration accelerating this process (Brink, ; de Haas & van Rooij, ; Louhichi, ), other studies suggest otherwise. This study further investigates this link in the Moroccan context.MOROCCAN EMIGRATION AND WOMEN LEFT BEHINDMorocco has a sizeable population of women staying behind, although there are no available estimates of their numbers. Possibly due to a dearth of information on subsequent waves of migration, the phenomenon of “wives left behind” is mostly associated with the period spanning from the beginning of the 20th century to the mid‐1970s. This period was characterised by the absolute predominance of male migration from clearly defined regions, the effectiveness of the migratory networks and channels, the poor qualifications of the migrants, and a strong attachment to the family and the home society. These migrants' profiles mirrored those of the “first age” of Algerian emigration to France, as described by Sayad (). These men usually left either when newly married or, more often, single. In the former case, they left their spouse in care of their parents, and in the latter, an endogamous marriage was often arranged by the family during a holiday within a few years of their first migration. At that time, migration was generally regarded as a temporary livelihood strategy by these men and their families (Barou, ), facilitated by the ease of circulation between Europe and Morocco due to the high labour demand in Europe during the postwar boom years.When things changed in the 1970s, with the economic crisis and the ensuing halt to labour migration, those who had not yet returned were faced with the options of either continuing to live separately from their families or applying for family reunification. Although many chose the latter, others could not or did not want to, for reasons including an inability to meet the minimum income and housing conditions necessary for reunification,In France, applicants for family reunification must satisfy certain requirements relating to the migrant's length of legal residence in France, level of resources (excluding social benefits), type and size of accommodation (commensurate with the size of the reunited family), and the age of the spouse (18 or above) and children (under 18). Details of the current legal conditions can be found at https://www.service‐public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F11166. administrative difficulties, a desire to continue saving the money earned at destination in order to invest at home in preparation for an eventual return, and the men's reluctance to bring wives and children to a society viewed as hostile to the affirmation of their authority as fathers and husbands (Barou, ). Some men, initially opposed to this possibility or constrained by the need to care for elderly parents at origin, eventually applied for reunification but did not always succeed because of the increasingly stringent conditions or because it was too late (e.g., their children were over 18, they had invested too much at origin, or the family did not want to leave). As a result, many Moroccan migrants, including many retired ones, have been living a transnational family life for decades. This population is overrepresented among residents of migrant worker hostels (Hunter, ) and continue providing at a distance for families with whom they have only ever cohabitated during their holidays, usually a month or so during the summer (ibid.).In France, only limited quantitative data are available on these transnational family arrangements. However, in 2003, a large‐scale survey on the “Transition to Retirement of Immigrants” (PRI) found that out of the 77,198 men living in migrant worker hostels (Foyers de Travailleurs Migrants), only 32% had remained unmarried and just 28% were childless. According to the 1999 Census, 15% of these hostel residents originated from Morocco (Gallou, ). Although it was often commented during fieldwork that the practice of leaving wives and children behind is on the wane, there is evidence of a continuation of this practice among more recent male migrants to Spain and Italy (Eddouada & Anbi, ; Pennetti, ).This is also visible in the sex ratios of households left behind calculated from the 2006–2007 Morocco Living Standard Measurement Survey (MLSMS). This survey allowed analysing the structural characteristics of different kinds of households according to their migratory status and their urban or rural place of residence. As presented in Table , the sex ratios show the feminisation of households staying behind, because households with international migrant(s) present a slight imbalance in favour of female members, in both urban and rural areas, compared to nonmigrant households (78 compared to 97 men per 100 women in urban and 81 compared to 99 in rural areas). The table also indicates their more “traditional” structure, with larger proportions of three‐generation and complex families among international migrant households. It suggests that they are less concerned by the general trend towards household nuclearisation at work in Morocco (Abdelmajid & Benohoud, ), a finding consistent with Steinmann's () observation in the Todgha valley that the dissolution of the extended family structure was stronger among nonmigrant households. Logically, these households also have higher proportions of women aged 15 to 54 living with their parents‐in‐laws in both urban areas (25% against 11% in nonmigrant households) and rural areas (42% against 24%).Household characteristics by migration status—2006–2007 Morocco Living Standard Measurement Survey (MLSMS)No migrant (69.2%)Internal migrant (16.5%)Current international migrant (11.6%)Past or return international migrant (2.7%)URBANSex ratio (N man for 1 woman).97.81.78.89Household structure: Generations One generation10.97.711.914 Two generations77.769.566.669 Three generations11.422.821.417Household structure: Family types Single headed nuclear7.517.719.710.8 Complete nuclear62.839.935.748.1 Complex18.735.932.526.2 Other116.512.114.9 Women 15–54 living with parents‐in‐law11.42624.824RURALSex ratio (N man for 1 woman).99.87.81.82Household structure: Generations One generation9.37.711.313.3 Two generations69.361.556.848.9 Three generations21.530.831.937.9Household structure: Family types Single headed nuclear4.912.86.81.9 Complete nuclear58.539.339.940.6 Complex27.84044.444.9 Other8.77.9912.5 Women 15–54 living with parents‐in‐law23.740.542.349.1Source: 2006–2007 MLSMS—Author's analysis.As household nuclearisation is considered as an important enabling factor for women's empowerment, these descriptive statistics challenge the oft‐repeated assumption that migration accelerates this process. It is this link that our study aims to further explore qualitatively, in order to better capture the effects of migration on women staying behind over time. In doing so, it aims to deepen the understanding of this phenomenon in Morocco, where only limited research has been conducted on this topic. This study is in line with previous research that has focused on this phenomenon in relation to migrants' wives and in rural areas (Hajjarabi, , ; Steinmann, ; Aït Hamza, ; de Haas & van Rooij, ). Based on women's life narratives, it analyses the effects of migration on wives' bargaining and decision‐making power over time within the household in the context of an Arab patriarchal society.DATASemistructured in‐depth interviews were conducted in 2012 with 12 women (some interviewed twice) living in international migrant households, in a small town in the Berber Sous region in Southwestern Morocco. This town of about 6,000 inhabitants is situated in a rural and mountainous region characterised by relatively long‐established emigration to France of low‐skilled men who generally have regular status at destination. Although emigration originating from the town has feminised and diversified to destinations like Spain or the Gulf States, emigrants to France have had a lasting impact on the local economic development, as visible in the numerous properties and local businesses they own (shops, garages, and taxis).A review of the building permits issued between 2000 and 2012 by the town council revealed that approximately a third of them had been granted to family members of international migrants originating from the town or neighbouring villages.The women interviewed were selected by purposive sampling, the selection criteria being current or past experience of living in a household with an international male migrant (preferably as migrant's wives in order to compare with the existing literature on the topic), and residence in the town chosen for the case study. They were accessed through key informants (a migrant association and local contacts) and snowballing. Characteristics of the sample are provided in Table , and all the names indicated are pseudonyms. Ten of these women were or had been married to a migrant to France. These life narratives reflect the respondents' profiles (i.e., rural background, mainly illiterate, middle‐aged to older for most of them) and the particular location where they are set (a small town in a rural region). By definition, these families have not been reunited by the migrant at destination, which could be an indication of a traditional mentality likely to restrict female empowerment at origin. Moreover, some of these testimonies span almost 40 years and may appear to belong to a distant past where patriarchal social norms were not yet challenged. Yet, by adopting a biographical approach, their analysis reveals how migration interacts with determinants of women's intrahousehold bargaining power, following the important stages of the women's domestic life cycle and of the migrant's trajectory.Characteristics of the intervieweesNameAgeMarital statusInternational migrationCurrent migrantReturn migrantDeceased migrant1Leila59MarriedX (husband)2Khadija47WidowX (husband)3Fatima47MarriedX (daughter)4Souad36MarriedX (daughter)5Myriam65WidowX (1st husband)6Keltoum57MarriedX (husband)7Zakia42DivorcedX (siblings & ex‐husband)8Mahjouba64MarriedX (husband)9Zohra58MarriedX (husband)10Fatim‐Zahra65WidowX (husband)11Aicha57WidowX (husband)12Asna49MarriedX (husband)THE THREE “AGES” OF MIGRANTS' WIVESMarrying a migrant has long been an enviable prospect for women in Morocco, due to the actual or perceived advantages attached to this position. Yet the women's narratives show that such expectations were not always realized and that benefiting from the migration of a spouse was highly dependent on their position in the household. This tended to change over time, and it is possible to distinguish three ages of the wives staying behind, corresponding to stages of the domestic cycle and of their husbands' migration: the initial period living with the in‐laws, the wife's formation of a nuclear household, and the changes following the migrant's return and eventual death.The first age: living with the in‐lawsMost women reported marrying at an early age (between 15 and 19) with an older man generally unknown to them and who was already a migrant in France and returned during a holiday to get married. Half of these marriages were endogamous, and arranged through relatives, acquaintances or at the initiative of the migrant himself. Some women were asked for their consent, but as was common then, most had no or very little say in the arrangements. The wedding ceremonies usually followed swiftly, and in accordance with the patrilocal residence rule, the new wife went to live with her in‐laws in her husband's family house. This new residence could be in the same neighbourhood as the women's parents, or far away, in which case marrying meant a real uprooting for those young women who had generally never travelled anywhere before. Having married a migrant, they became migrant themselves, but not as trailing wives. It was common for the new wife to spend only a few days or weeks with the husband before he returned to France, and she was then left alone with his extended family.The women's testimonies reflected Kandiyoti's () description of the status of the young bride in her ideal–typical model of the “classic patriarchy”: Upon entering her husband's house, she must obey not only all the men but also the more senior women in the family, especially her mother‐in‐law. For most interviewees, their initial position in the household power matrix meant that they drew few or no benefits from being married to a migrant. Indeed, their youth, complete illiteracy, lack of assets, and the traditional expectation for a young bride to show submissiveness and obedience made their subservience complete.The situation could be even worse for those who entered from a lower social position, such as women who had been previously married, in a traditional context where widows and especially divorced women are devalued on the marriage market. This was the case of Aicha, who at 18 was freshly divorced when her parents married her to a migrant in France who was recently widowed and almost 40 years older than her. In her husband's house, she had to cohabit with the children from the first marriage who were the same age as her and showed her outright hostility. Although the prospect of marrying an international migrant had initially been a consolation for being married without her consent, she was soon disillusioned:When I heard that my husband was an emigrant, I imagined that I was going to have it all, that I would go to France, that I would travel, have a good life. I thought about all that. But unfortunately, what I found was a hole, I fell into an inescapable hole.[Aicha, 57, widowed]The women lived with their in‐laws for periods ranging from a couple of years to decades. The rarity of the migrants' visits, once or twice a year at best, and the lack of means of communication at the time meant that the wives could not really complain nor turn to their husbands in cases of conflict, especially in a cultural context where conjugal intimacy and emotional attachment are shunned (Lacoste‐Dujardin, ). The occasional letters, tape recordings (from the 1980s), and phone calls received first in local convenience shops and then on landlines at home did not allow any intimate exchanges between husband and wife as these were rarely private communications and more often intended for the whole family. It is only with the recent arrival of mobile phones that women have started having unsupervised conversations with their husbands, a change that has brought both the possibility of greater intimacy between husband and wife but has also enhanced the migrants' capacity to exert social control on their spouses (Hannaford, ). Yet, before that, the lack of advanced communication technologies meant that women could not really use their conjugal relationship to better their position within the household if they did not get on well with their in‐laws (the mother‐in‐law in particular) or if they were treated merely as maids, as often seemed to be the case. Likewise, it prevented migrants from effectively intervening in the intrahousehold dynamics back home, had they wanted to.Living with their in‐laws, women were also generally deprived of access to remittances, one of the main benefits of being a migrant's spouse. Remitting practices are governed by social and cultural norms (King, Dalipaj, & Mai, ), which are likely to prevail, independently of the migrant's own preferences. Carling () showed how migrants and nonmigrants' behaviour, sense of obligation, or entitlement are imbued by moralities of transnationalism, and, in order to “repay the gift of communality,” migrants can feel compelled not only to remit but also to do so in absolute compliance with the social and cultural norms of their community of origin. In Morocco, it is generally considered shameful (Hchouma) and an offence to his patrilineal family if a husband sends money directly to his wife if she is living with his parents or brothers. The remittances are usually addressed to the father, or if he is dead or sick, the mother or a brother, making the woman dependent on her in‐laws' good will to redistribute the money. The interviews suggested that this could be a source of tension and conflict. Leila was living with her husband's sick father and brother, and it was the latter who received the remittances. She recalls thatEvery time I asked him [the brother‐in‐law] for money—if I needed to buy something, like some clothes for example—he would always say no and would reply ‘Wait for the idiot [donkey] you married. When he'll come, he'll buy you everything you want!’. He received the money from my husband but he would not give me any. Just food, that's it. And not even good food.[Leila, 59, married]Such stories were common to almost all the interviewees, including those who had children, for as long as they lived with their in‐laws. And although women tend to progressively assert their position in the domestic unit with time and with the production of male offspring, in the Arab patriarchy model prevalent in North Africa (Lacoste‐Dujardin, ), migrants' wives were disadvantaged by their lack of control over resources. However, the births of their children enhanced their status and legitimised their claims to their husbands' remittances by the need to look after their progeny. As the children's main carer, many also started receiving child benefits from the French administration (made possible following the Franco‐Moroccan social security agreement of July 9, 1965 and limited to four children aged 0 to 18). But as long as they lived with their in‐laws, they often could not exert decision‐making power in relation to their own children's health or schooling. Their husbands sometimes took issue with how their families treated their wives and children, but they were themselves constrained by the strict cultural norms. Those wanting to help their spouse had no choice but to leave some money with them during their occasional visits or to send it through intermediaries, unknown to the rest of the family.Unfair treatment and lack of access to resources explain why women generally yearned for their own nuclear household. However, this process can only be initiated when a woman has become a mother and is secure in her marriage. Moreover, it is not necessarily facilitated by migration.The second age: residential independencyRole of international migration in the nuclearisation processAs highlighted above, the role of migration in the household nuclearisation process is debated. The interviewees' testimonies were consistent with the hypothesis that male migration and remittances may, in fact, favour the maintenance of the more traditional model of the patriarchal extended family rather than its demise, at least for a while. This may be especially true in rural areas where household nuclearisation is less common than in urban areas, as shown in Table . Although all the interviewees eventually obtained their own house, usually built or purchased thanks to their husbands' remittances, this process was fraught with pitfalls linked to the migrant's absence and to the power dynamics in the in‐laws' household.First, care arrangements can hinder nuclearisation as patrilocal residence rules mean that the daughters‐in‐law are traditionally in charge of looking after their husbands' elderly parents. In the absence of other women in the household who can act as caregivers, the wife is entrusted with that responsibility and is unlikely to get to live independently as long as she has to fulfil that function, usually until the death of the migrant's parents. Besides, a wife's attempts to live independently are often met with strong resistance from her in‐laws, because remittances are unlikely to be addressed to her as long as she lives with her husband's family. Her presence and that of the migrants' children in the household constitute the in‐laws' best guarantee of the continuity and magnitude of transfers as their role as carers for the migrant's family legitimises the financial support they receive. Incidentally, this also explains why migrants may pursue nuclearisation as a way to escape the heavy financial burden of supporting larger households (de Haas, ). In the face of this resistance, many women explained that they only managed to live independently after leaving the house due to a violent dispute with the in‐laws. However, such moves were only likely to succeed for those who had some intrahousehold bargaining power, derived from their own family's support, or from the fact that their marriage was secure after having had children with the migrant. In order to avoid such outcomes and continue benefiting from the migrant's remittances, in‐laws sometimes initiate the nuclearisation process, but to their own benefit. Two women reported being left behind in the village to work in the fields and take care of the family house and livestock for many years while the in‐laws moved to urban houses bought by the migrants. Being able to initiate the nuclearisation process therefore appeared to be determinant of the benefits to be expected from that change and was itself largely influenced by the woman's position in the household power matrix.Changes following nuclearisationAll women reported that their life changed dramatically when they started living on their own with their children. They felt a new‐found sense of freedom derived from not being constantly supervised and from being able to organise their time as they wished, without the constraints of a schedule imposed by the needs of extended households. Apart from those who were constrained to stay in remote villages or sidelined from such benefits by their in‐laws, the main positive change was the direct access to their husband's remittances. They obtained their nationality cards immediately after getting their own house, allowing them to go and collect the money orders themselves at the Post Office, usually every month. All women expressed their satisfaction at this change, which allowed them to spend the money as they wanted, apart from one who said she did not like the responsibility and found it hard to manage the money. The amounts received were relatively limited, however (between 1,000 and 2,000 MAD1 GBP = approx. 14 MAD. per month), thus necessitating good management.The women also mentioned the new tasks and responsibilities they had to assume, especially when there was no adult male in the house. Besides financial management, they sometimes assumed tasks that are not regarded as typically feminine, such as supervising the construction of a house, paying the workers, or buying the construction materials. They also reported travelling sometimes on their own, to get an administrative document for instance or to collect the rent on property. However, they did not have to deal with farm work as most families have withdrawn from this activity in the town. These new responsibilities positively change the way they perceive themselves. When asked how she felt about assuming many different tasks following her husband's departure, one woman, for instance, replied, “I feel like I have a personality”, suggesting the empowering role of this experience. Yet, in a context where gender roles remain strictly defined, assuming men's traditional tasks appeared as both a source of pride (“the other women just cannot do anything on their own”) and of discomfort. As previously observed by de Haas and Van Rooij (), many women complained about their burdensome workloads and responsibilities, raising children without their father often being mentioned as the most difficult one.Limitations, new demands, and asymmetries in the transnational householdHowever, new responsibilities came with many restrictions. Although some women reported that they had been directly in charge of initiating and supervising construction works, the management of housing and productive investments remained the man's prerogative, sometimes delegated to his father or brother. The strong patrilocal extended family often allows the absent male to manage the family resources and investments by proxy, only leaving decisions on small expenditures to the women. The husbands of Leila and Asna for instance remained in charge of their real estate investments by managing them during their annual holidays, only delegating to their wives or oldest sons what they could not do themselves.Moreover, although managing the household budget proved a source of profound satisfaction, not being consulted for bigger investments generated frustration, especially when the women felt that the detrimental consequences of migration on their family life had not really been offset by long‐term financial security. Leila, for instance, could not understand why her husband kept buying plots of land and houses and starting new construction projects that he never completed, matters that he refused to discuss with her.He does not listen to what I say. I ask him ‘why have you bought so many houses, why have you bought so many land plots? We have only two children.’ But he says that I don't understand, that he knows what he is doing. He told me it's in his blood: whenever he sees something [a house or a plot to build] on sale, he needs to buy it.[Leila, 59, married]Having acquired a certain control over remittances, the women may also have to satisfy new demands, especially from their own families. For instance, since moving into her house, Leila had to constantly invite members of her family and used a large share of the remittances towards meeting the expenses incurred by her obligation to show hospitality to her family. Indeed, as observed in Senegal (Mondain et al., ), the family and larger community's expectations regarding the level of remittances received by international migrants' wives and their degree of control over the way they are spent can be in sharp contrast with reality and represent a burden for these women.Finally, migrants' wives are penalised by the clear power imbalance characteristic of transnational conjugal relations. As highlighted by Carling (), asymmetries are important features of transnational relations between migrants and their nonmigrant counterparts; they are multifaceted and can be a source of frustration for both sides. The single‐sited research methodology used in this study did not allow us to uncover the migrants' sources of frustrations and vulnerabilities, although these should not be understated, as has been shown in other studies (Hunter, ). However, the women's testimonies demonstrated the multiple asymmetries contributing to their disadvantage in the transnational space. Indeed, besides the remittance flows, other flows and resources appeared to be largely controlled by the migrants. First, the interviews suggested an imbalance in terms of information and communication. As mentioned earlier, in the past, women could not easily contact their husbands and even when landlines were installed, the migrant was usually the one calling, with the family behind waiting for his calls. Likewise, the interviewees appeared to have very partial knowledge of their husbands' situation in the country of destination, with many seemingly not knowing exactly in which city he was living or what job he was doing, notwithstanding decades of marriage. Although such ignorance may be feigned, their access to such information is clearly constrained. Although the migrant husband could easily know the whereabouts of his wife if he wanted to, no such possibility was given to her, her only option being to try and piece together rare and sometimes contradictory pieces of information. None of the women had ever visited their husbands in France and were thus left imagining their husband's life there.This latter point relates to what Carling () refers to as “mobility resources,” that is, the entitlements the migrants possess, such as citizenship or residence permits in the country of destination. The migrants' wives usually lack control over them, and this proved a major source of tension and dissatisfaction as many had wished to migrate themselves or ensure that their children could do so. This desire was met with strict refusal from the husband, generally without any discussion. Khadija, for instance, remembers:My husband used to tell me he would like to take us to France to visit, but he would then also say ‘I am afraid you will run away’ (laugh), he'd say ‘I am afraid you are just like the others [his first wife and daughters in France who refused to return to Morocco with him], so no, you stay here, it's better. Here, you are a respectable woman, but if I take you to France, you will run away, and start wearing a skirt like that … So, no no no![Khadija, 47, widowed]Frustration at the husbands' attitude was often expressed, especially in relation to what the women saw as lost opportunities for their children (sons especially), that is, the promise of a good education and job prospects that they associate with emigration to Europe. Many seemed angered that their husband either precluded such opportunities or sent contradictory messages regarding migration prospects to the children. Asna's sons, for instance, long hoped that they would join their father in France, and as they saw their future there, they never invested in their education in Morocco. Her husband never clearly denied that possibility until they reached the age of majority and could no longer apply under family reunification. One son developed mental health issues, and none of her seven adult children were working or studying at the time of the interview.The third age: after the migrant's return or deathThe literature on women left behind usually focuses on the two ages described above. Yet, for women staying at origin, the consequences of a husband's migration can be felt long after his return and/or eventual death, especially in cases where elderly migrants have much younger wives and school‐age children at the time of retirement, which is quite common in Morocco. This last section sheds light on some of the issues facing these women in this “third age,” and the implications for their level of empowerment.Migrant's return: lasting changes?Do the empowering changes that wives may experience continue after the migrant's return? This question remains largely open in the literature, with some studies arguing that they are lasting (Yabiku et al., ), and others that they are not (Brink, ; de Haas & van Rooij, ). The women's testimonies are in line with the latter studies' conclusions, suggesting a loss of power upon their husbands' return. Although many women acquired management responsibilities and control of finances during their husband's migration, these were delegated to them out of necessity and were generally reclaimed by the husbands on their return. Still, as many returned migrants circulate between Morocco and France in order to maximise their pension income, some women continue exercising some responsibilities while their husbands are away.Although expressing satisfaction at the prospect of seeing their family reunited, the wives of returnees resented the loss of control over household resources and the need to constantly ask for money, as exemplified by Mahjouba who was in charge of the budget and investments during her husband's migration. On his return, he initially let her manage the expenditures relating to the children, but stopped giving her or the children any money after a while.I saw a big difference when he came back. Before I had the money and I decided how to spend it, and I could buy home decoration, rugs, etc. Now that he is here, he only buys food, that's it. And if we want to buy some clothes or something for the house, he says no. If you want something, you have to ask him once, twice, again and again, and he gives you maybe 100 Dirhams. 100 Dirhams and he leaves. It's not like before.[Mahjouba, 62, wife of returned migrant]Communication between husband and wife also seemed to be limited, which may be unsurprising given the geographical and emotional distance imposed for decades by migration and culture. Therefore, wives of returned migrants could often only speculate as to the reasons behind their husband's behaviour. A certain frustration could also be expressed about the limited long‐term benefits they felt migration had brought to the family:All that remains is what I have done [the houses built for their children], but as soon as he came back, his only interest was working in the fields. He works in the fields everyday. He spends all the money on the fields. But he hasn't done anything else, nothing that could provide us with an income.[ibid.]Besides these financial considerations, return also seemed to bring about a difficult readjustment to conjugal life for both husband and wife, as they were not used to living with each other.Although increasingly discussed in the migration literature, it is worth mentioning that no evidence of social remittances, that is, the ideas, practices, and social capital that migrants can transfer to their countries of origin through visits and communication (Levitt, ), was found in the interviews. There was, for instance, no indication that migrants had encouraged their children to pursue education or that they came back with more progressive ideas regarding gender relations and women's role in the family and society. In addition to the effect of the small sample, we did not expect to observe such influences because attachment to traditional values and gender order underlies the refusal of certain migrants to apply for family reunification at destination, leading to their eventual return. The strength of the gendered labour division in rural areas, traditional background, and possibly older age may also explain why these men, who had sometimes lived alone for decades, taking care of their own cooking, washing, and cleaning, came back to take on the role of the patriarch in a traditional family order.After the migrant's deathFinally, an issue rarely mentioned in studies of women left behind emerged from the field: the difficulties specific to international migrants' widows. Due to the age difference between husband and wife, especially in cases of the man's remarriage, women can become widows at a relatively young age in Morocco, with implications for themselves and their children (two interviewees became widows with children aged under five). Due to the weakness of the social safety nets and the low levels of pensions in Morocco, widowhood can mean an abrupt descent into poverty for women and they may be forced to move back with relatives. In this respect, widows of international migrants find themselves in a better position because of the assets they inherit and the surviving spouse's pension they can claim in the country of destination.Indeed, they tended to inherit substantial assets, which endowed them with some degree of material security, as was the case for Khadija who inherited the unfinished house her late husband had built, and to a lesser extent Aicha, who inherited half of the family house in the remote village. However, the extent to which they benefit in financial terms from their deceased husband may be very limited as many women prefer not to claim their rights for fear of conflicts with their in‐laws or because the process seems too difficult. A social worker working with elderly Moroccan migrants in France reported that it was common for the French bank accounts owned by deceased migrants to become escheat either because the heirs ignore their very existence or because family conflicts prevent the heirs from jointly signing the certificate proving inheritance rights that is needed to start the process in Moroccan law. According to the women, in‐laws also commonly claim ownership of properties to which they are not entitled.Secondly, widows may be entitled to a widowhood allowance or survivor's pension from the administrations in the foreign country where their husbands worked.General convention of October 22, 2007, in force since June 1, 2011. Available at http://www.cleiss.fr/docs/textes/conv_maroc.html. In France, for instance, under the 2007 Franco‐Moroccan Convention on Social Security, the widow of a migrant can apply for a survivor's pension from the age of 55 and is entitled to an allowance for 2 years (if under 50) or until she reaches 55 (if aged 50 or over). In 2014, 47,546 persons received such pensions in Morocco, on a par with the number of people drawing a retirement pension (53,575).http://www.cleiss.fr/docs/stats/rapport_stat_2014.pdf. During the fieldwork in 2012, these allowances were an important subject of conversation and concern for the women, and something for which the researcher's help was often requested. Due to the women's lack of knowledge of their late husband's work and life in France, as well as their illiteracy and inability to speak French, claiming these pensions proved extremely difficult, and they sometimes fell prey to intermediaries offering to contact the foreign administration and to help these women to obtain their pensions, in return for a fixed sum or a percentage. Such practices show that even after their husband's death, women left behind often continue to be penalised in their access to social rights by the asymmetries in information, mobility resources, and linguistic competence (Carling, ) that characterised their transnational conjugal relationship.CONCLUSIONThough these dimensions are often mentioned in passing (Louhichi, ), the literature has insufficiently highlighted the fact that the extent to which women benefit from migration‐related changes ultimately depends on their relationship with their migrating husbands and the outcomes of intrahousehold bargaining processes, the latter being predicated on the structure of the household where they reside and their stage in the life cycle. Although it is often hypothesised that wives can be empowered as a result of their husbands' migration, this study argues that this possibility only corresponds to a particular stage in the women's lives, that is, when they form their own nuclear household and become de facto household heads. Yet the analysis has also highlighted the ways migration may slow down rather than facilitate this process. Although remittances can help women to establish separate households, nuclearisation may (a) only happen at a particular stage in the household cycle (when the wife has children and does not have to care for her husband's parents), (b) face resistance from the in‐laws who want to continue receiving the remittances, or (c) happen at the wife's expense if initiated by the in‐laws. Benefits may furthermore be limited and/or temporary, and the migrant's return may mark a reversal of the situation. These findings provide further insights into the gendered dynamics at work in the “migration‐left‐behind nexus” (Toyota, Yeoh, & Nguyen, ) and call for more quantitative studies to investigate the relationship between migration and household structures in origin countries. Because they illustrate the importance of changing power geometries in local and transnational households in determining women's status, the “three ages” described above can certainly be usefully applied to other contexts.In accordance with previous studies conducted in Muslim Arabic countries (Brink, ; de Haas & van Rooij, ) and in other contexts (King, Mata‐Codesal, & Vullnerati, ), this study suggests that migration systems predicated on a patriarchal social and family order are unlikely to be conducive to sustainable women's empowerment in the origin household and community. Migration and remitting practices are fundamentally shaped by prevailing gender and generational structures in Morocco, and their potential to challenge those structures is therefore very limited. Under certain circumstances, they may even reinforce them, making them more resilient in the face of contemporary social changes. In such systems, women are more likely to access the resources resulting from migration by behaving in accordance with traditions and drawing on the rights and entitlements granted to them by their religion and culture, such as the right to material support from their husband under Islamic law (nafaqah). Future research on the empowerment of women left behind should therefore consider how migrations departing from the patriarchal model, such as independent female emigration, may have more important and far‐reaching effects at origin, including by highlighting female migrants as role models for girls, but also how predominantly male emigration affects different female relatives, such as the migrants' sisters, mothers, or daughters.ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSI want to thank Alistair Hunter, David Owen, Cris Beauchemin, Ann Singleton, Dave Gordon, Sarah Payne, Sam Scott and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this article. I also gratefully acknowledge the support of the ESRC in funding this research (ES/I901884/1).REFERENCESAbadan‐Unat, N. (1977). Implications of migration on emancipation and pseudo‐emancipation of Turkish women. International Migration Review, 11(1), 31–57. https://doi.org/10.2307/2545006Abdelmajid, A., & Benohoud, S. (2010). Vers une nucléarisation des ménages marocains: caractéristiques et variations spatiales à travers le RGPH 2004. Les Cahiers du Plan, 32, 4–23.Aït Hamza, M. (1995). Les femmes d'émigrés dans les sociétés oasiennes (Sud du Maroc). In Le Maroc et la Hollande: Une approche comparative dans grands intérêts communs (pp. 159–169). Rabat: Université Mohammed V.Archambault, C. S. (2010). Women left behind? Migration, spousal separation, and the autonomy of rural women in Ugweno, Tanzania. Signs, 35(4), 919–942. https://doi.org/10.1086/651042Barou, J. (2001). Etre père à distance—Le devenir des enfants d'immigrés demeurés au pays d'origine: Regards croisés pères/enfants. Paris: SONACOTRA ‐ Comité français pour l'UNICEF.Bennett, R., Clifford, D., & Falkingham, J. (2013). Household members' migration and the education of children “left behind”: Empirical findings from Tajikistan and reflections for research practice. Population. Space and Place, 19(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.1698Berriane, M., de Haas, H., & Natter, K. (2015). Introduction: Revisiting Moroccan migrations. The Journal of North African Studies, 20(4), 503–521. https://doi.org/10.1080/13629387.2015.1065036Biao, X. (2007). How far are the left‐behind left behind? A preliminary study in rural China. Population, Space and Place, 13(3), 179–191. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.437Bouoiyour, J., & Miftah, A. (2015). The impact of migrant workers' remittances on the living standards of families in Morocco: A propensity score matching approach. Migration Letters, 12(1), 13–27.Bourqia, R., El Melakh, K., Abdourebbi, M., & Nafaa, R. (2007). Etude exploratoire sur l'émigration et ses impacts socioculturels sur la société locale. In M. Khachani (Ed.), L'impact de la migration sur la société marocaine (pp. 151–225). Rabat: AMERM.Brettell, C. B. (1988). Emigration and household structure in a Portuguese parish, 1850‐1920. Journal of Family History, 13(1), 33–57. https://doi.org/10.1177/036319908801300103Brink, J. H. (1991). The effect of emigration of husbands on the status of their wives: An Egyptian case. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 23(2), 201–211. https://doi.org/10.1017/S002074380005604XCarling, J. (2002). Migration in the age of involuntary immobility: Theoretical reflections and cape Verdean experiences. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 28(1), 5–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691830120103912Carling, J. (2008). The human dynamics of migrant transnationalism. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 31(8), 1452–1477. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870701719097Datta, A., & Mishra, S. K. (2011). Glimpses of women's lives in rural Bihar: Impact of male migration. The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 54(3), 457–477.de Haas, H. (2008). The complex role of migration in shifting rural livelihoods: A case of a Moroccan oasis. In T. van Naerssen, E. Spaan, & A. Zoomers (Eds.), Global migration and development (pp. 21–41). New York/London: Routledge.de Haas, H., & van Rooij, A. (2010). Migration as emancipation? The impact of internal and international migration on the position of women left behind in rural Morocco. Oxford Development Studies, 38(1), 43–62. https://doi.org/10.1080/13600810903551603Eddouada S., Anbi A. (2014). Les perceptions des migrants et de l'émigration à travers les femmes délaissées à Béni Amir, Presentation at the conference ‘migrations marocaines: Transformations, transitions et perspectives futures’, Fès, 22–24 May 2014.Gallou, R. (2005). Les immigrés isolés: La spécificité des résidents en foyer. Retraite et Société, 1(44), 106–147.Hadi, A. (2001). International migration and the change of women's position among the left‐behind in rural Bangladesh. International Journal of Population Geography, 7(1), 53–61. https://doi.org/10.1002/ijpg.211Hajjarabi, F. (1988). Femmes et émigration: cas de la région d'Al Hoceima. In Le Maroc et la Hollande: Études sur l'histoire, la migration, la linguistique et la sémiologie de la culture (pp. 177–185). Rabat: Université Mohammed V.Hajjarabi, F. (1995). Femmes, famille et changement social dans le Rif. In Le Maroc et la Hollande: Une approche comparative des grands intérêts communs (pp. 105–110). Rabat: Université Mohammed V.Hannaford, D. (2015). Technologies of the spouse: intimate surveillance in Senegalese transnational marriages. Global Networks, 15(1), 43–59. https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12045Hugo, G. (2000). Migration and women's empowerment. In S. Gita (Ed.), women's empowerment and demographic processes: Moving beyond Cairo, Presser HB (pp. 287–317). New York: Oxford University Press.Hunter, A. (2011). Theory and practice of return migration at retirement: The case of migrant worker hostel residents in France. Population, Space and Place, 17(2), 179–192. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.610Joseph, S. (1996). Patriarchy and development in the Arab world. Gender and Development, 4(2), 14–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/741922010Kabeer, N. (1999). Resources, agency, achievements: Reflections on the measurement of women's empowerment. Development and Change, 30(3), 435–464. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467‐7660.00125Kandiyoti, D. (1988). Bargaining with patriarchy. Gender and Society, 2(3), 274–290. https://doi.org/10.1177/089124388002003004King, R., Dalipaj, M., & Mai, N. (2006). Gendering migration and remittances: Evidence from London and northern Albania. Population, Space and Place, 12(6), 409–434. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.439King, R., Mata‐Codesal, D., & Vullnerati, J. (2013). Migration, development, gender and the ‘black box’ of remittances: Comparative findings from Albania and Ecuador. Comparative Migration Studies, 1(1), 69–96. https://doi.org/10.5117/CMS2013.1.KINGLacoste‐Dujardin, C. (1996). Des mères contre les femmes: Maternité et patriarcat au Maghreb. Paris: La Découverte.Levitt, P. (1998). Social remittances: Migration driven local‐level forms of cultural diffusion. International Migration Review, 32(4), 926–948. https://doi.org/10.2307/2547666Louhichi, K. (1997). The impact of the emigration of the husband on the status of the wife: the case of Egypt. In M. E. Cosio‐Zavala (Ed.), Women and families: Evolution of the status of women as factor and consequence of changes in family dynamics (pp. 323–339). Paris: CICRED.Malhotra, A., & Schuler, S. R. (2005). Women's empowerment as a variable in international development. In D. Narayan (Ed.), Measuring empowerment: Cross‐disciplinary perspectives. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.McEvoy, J., Petrzelka, P., Radel, C., & Schmook, B. (2012). Gendered mobility and morality in a south‐eastern Mexican community: Impacts of male labour migration on the women left behind. Mobilities, 7(3), 369–388. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2012.655977Mondain, N., & Diagne, A. (2013). Discerning the reality of ‘those left behind’ in contemporary migration processes in sub‐Saharan Africa: Some theoretical reflections in the light of data from Senegal. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 34(5), 503–516. https://doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2013.827831Mondain, N., Randall, S., Diagne, A., & Elliott, A. (2012). Les effets de l'émigration masculine sur la situation des femmes au Sénégal: Renforcement ou ébranlement des équilibres traditionnels? Autrepart, 2(61), 81–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2013.827831Pennetti, E. (2006). Les Victimes de l'émigration: L'analyse de la situation des femmes marocaines dont les époux ont émigré en Italie, notamment le cas de la population féminine de la localité de Fquih Ben Salah (Région de Tadla‐Azilal). Foggia: Université de Foggia (Italy). Master's dissertation, p. 86.Sadiqi, F., & Ennaji, M. (2004). The impact of male migration from Morocco to Europe on women: A gender approach. Finisterra : Revista Portuguesa de Geografia, 39(77), 59–76. https://doi.org/10.18055/Finis1561.Sayad, A. (1977). Les trois ‘âges’ de l'émigration algérienne en France. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 15(1), 59–79. https://doi.org/10.3406/arss.1977.2561Steinmann, S. H. (1993). Effects of international migration on women's work in agriculture. Revue de Géographie du Maroc, 15(1–2), 105–124.Toyota, M., Yeoh, B. S. A., & Nguyen, L. (2007). Bringing the ‘left behind’ back into view in Asia: A framework for understanding the ‘migration–left behind nexus’. Population, Space and Place, 13(3), 157–161. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.433Yabiku, S. T., Agadjanian, V., & Sevoyan, A. (2010). Husbands' labour migration and wives' autonomy, Mozambique 2000–2006. Population Studies, 64(3), 293–306. https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2010.510200 http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Population, Space and Place Wiley

The “three ages” of left‐behind Moroccan wives: Status, decision‐making power, and access to resources

Lenoël, Audrey
Population, Space and Place , Volume 23 (8) – Nov 1, 2017
Download PDF
11 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/wiley/the-three-ages-of-left-behind-moroccan-wives-status-decision-making-oj62xM0Cda

References (38)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
ISSN
1544-8444
eISSN
1544-8452
DOI
10.1002/psp.2077
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONWith an estimated diaspora of approximately 4 million, Morocco has become one of the world's leading emigration countries (Berriane, de Haas, & Natter, ). Male emigration to Western European countries—France in particular—started during colonial times and intensified after the country's independence in 1956, driven by the recruitment of low‐skilled workers to offset postwar labour shortages in Europe. Although the mid‐1970s oil crises put a halt to this economic migration of mostly rural men, it was followed by family reunification programmes and an increase in irregular labour migration to the traditional destinations and to Spain and Italy from the 1980s. Transnational families therefore remain an important feature of Moroccan society, particularly in the historical regions of international emigration—the Berber areas of the Northern Rif, the Southwestern Sous, and the Southern oases.Although there is strong evidence of a positive impact of international migration and remittances on the living standards of the households staying behind in Morocco (Bouoiyour & Miftah, ), the social and gendered effects of those flows in the origin communities have been relatively neglected. This is linked to the tendency to portray those staying behind as an homogenous category of people with little agency (Archambault, ; Mondain & Diagne, ), which may be compounded by the use of the expression “left behind” to refer to these populations, suggesting powerlessness and “involuntary immobility” (Carling, ). This is especially true for women, who tend to constitute a very large proportion of the population staying behind in countries like Morocco, where emigration flows have been predominantly male. In contrast to the female migrant regarded as potentially empowered by her migration to a country of destination associated with an idea of progress and emancipation, the women staying behind in societies conceived as stagnant and traditional are thought to be excluded from such dynamics (Archambault, ). It is in response to this belief that a recent strand of the migration and development literature has endeavoured to reveal the dynamics of change in origin households and communities. And it often tests one hypothesis: Can male emigration lead to the empowerment of women staying behind?This article explores this hypothesis in the context of Morocco, a country characterised by a salient Arab Muslim patriarchal order (Joseph, ). It analyses how migration and remittances impact the bargaining and decision‐making power of migrants' wives within the left‐behind household, in a region of historic emigration to France. This question is investigated using in‐depth interviews with 12 women staying behind, providing accounts of gendered power dynamics in the household and how migration affects them.The paper starts with a theoretical account of how migration can lead to women's empowerment in origin communities, focusing more specifically on how it affects the mediating factor of the household structure. It then provides contextual elements on transnational families and women left behind in Morocco and describes the data. By adopting a diachronic perspective generally absent from previous studies, the analysis then shows how shifting power configurations in the local and transnational households determine the wives' access to the empowerment benefits of migration. Based on the analysis of changes in status following the important stages of the domestic cycle and migratory trajectory of their husbands, this article distinguishes three “ages” for wives left behind, mirroring Sayad's () typology of Algerian emigration to France. The first age corresponds to the initial period living with the in‐laws and the second to the wife's formation of a nuclear household. The third age—usually overlooked in the literature—refers to the changes following the migrant's return and/or eventual death. The insights gained through this biographic approach and the implications for future research are discussed in Section 6.THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON MIGRATION AND EMPOWERMENT OF WIVES LEFT BEHINDAlthough long neglected (Hugo, ), gender and women's empowerment issues are now largely researched in migration studies. A survey of the growing literature on women left behind shows that this is often a core concern for researchers: Although referring to different terms of women's “empowerment” (McEvoy, Petrzelka, Radel, & Schmook, ) such as “emancipation” (Abadan‐Unat, ; de Haas & van Rooij, ), “autonomy” (Yabiku, Agadjanian, & Sevoyan, ), “status” (Brink, ; Louhichi, ), or “position” (Hadi, ), various studies focus on similar indicators pertaining to women's situation in intrahousehold dynamics and, to a lesser extent, to their status in the local community. Since Abadan‐Unat's () seminal article on the impact of migration on the emancipation of Turkish women at origin and abroad, scholars have investigated migrant wives' decision making (economic or not), access and control over financial resources, changes in the gendered division of labour, and the new responsibilities women have to assume following the migrant's departure.These indicators reflect women's agency and what the majority of writers see as the essence of empowerment, that is, “the ability to formulate strategic choices and to control resources and decisions that affect important life outcomes” (Malhotra & Schuler, ). This is in keeping with the definition of empowerment as developed by Kabeer () and adopted here, that is, “the expansion in people's ability to make strategic life choices in a context where this ability was previously denied to them” (ibid.: 437). This term suggests a process of change in which women are the agents, not just the beneficiaries. The concept of agency, understood as the ability to define one's goals and act upon them, is therefore central to this definition. Kabeer's definition refers explicitly to the strategic life choices, which are critical for people to live the lives they want (e.g., decisions relating to marriage, education, employment, and childbearing). Such life choices are however rather infrequent in people's lives (Malhotra & Schuler, ), and in contexts of strict sociocultural norms, decisions regarding “smaller” choices (e.g., moving freely in the community) or the ability to develop a critical perspective on the social order can also be indicative of empowerment. As highlighted by Malhotra and Schuler (), in this process, profound change in institutions supporting patriarchal structures is often required and women's sources of disadvantage, as well as the resources to fight it, tend to be found in household and intrafamilial relations.The link between emigration and women's empowerment is not straightforward and can be seen as a two‐way relationship (Hugo, ). If we focus on how the migration of household members can affect the agency of the women staying behind, different mechanisms can be distinguished, each of them reinforcing or contradicting each other. The various components of the process through which male emigration can impact female empowerment outcomes in origin communities are modelled in Figure  (the most important channels, factors, and outcomes being represented in bold). How the channels (represented in the top box) affect women's empowerment varies according to who migrates, the duration of migration, frequency of visits, and the type, frequency, and amounts of remittances, as shown by Bennett, Clifford, and Falkingham () with respect to children's education. These effects are also conditioned by social and cultural norms and by the degree to which the local socioeconomic situation provides a favourable structure for change to occur. This study focuses more specifically on the impacts of male emigration and remittance flows on women's decision making and access to resources, and how this is mediated by household structure.Mechanisms of influence of migration and remittances on women's empowermentChanging division of labour and greater access to resources and decision makingThe status of an international migrant's wife can be regarded as enviable, as “successful” migration tends to improve a household's welfare and to benefit the women through improved material living conditions and better access to a range of services and public goods. However, remittances do not always ensue from migration, or at least not in the short term and a more immediate effect of the emigration of one or more household members is that women may have to replace this lost labour and possibly take on tasks and responsibilities previously assumed by men, especially in agriculture (Biao, ; Brettell, ; Datta & Mishra, ). In the absence of their husbands, women also have to carry out activities outside of their home, such as going to the market and interacting with organisations and institutions they had not frequently visited before, such as banks and administrations (Abadan‐Unat, ; Louhichi, ). Such tasks can increase their mobility and self‐confidence and can be empowering, even if a possible source of discomfort in places characterised by strict gender norms.Male absence and de facto female headship can also empower women by giving them control over resources and opportunities to make household and budgeting decisions. In Egypt, Brink () observed that migrants' wives became responsible for daily expenditures and even major ones and allocated money for ongoing expensive projects such as house construction. In rural areas, new responsibilities include deciding about agricultural matters such as crop selection (Datta & Mishra, ) or hiring labourers and supervising their work (McEvoy et al., ). Such changes challenge the traditional division of labour and can be empowering if they lead to enhanced self‐confidence and the wider recognition of women's competencies by the community. Yet they can be limited if the men remain responsible for major decisions at a distance.The role of sociocultural norms and household structureAs suggested in Figure , whether emigration may be conducive to empowerment gains or not is dependent on the social and cultural norms and the degree to which the local socioeconomic situation provides a favourable opportunity structure for change to occur. These factors are of particular significance when considering the situation of women staying behind in Arab Muslim contexts—including the Mediterranean Arabo‐Berber communities—where the patriarchal order is characterised by “the prioritising of the rights of males and elders (including elder women) and the justification of those rights within kinship values which are usually supported by religion” (Joseph, : 14). In the social and economic spheres, this order is enacted in legal and customary rights favouring men over women and concentrating material resources in the hands of the former, for instance, through the unequal inheritance and property rules that preclude female access to land. This system also reinforces men's role as breadwinners and discourages female paid employment outside the house, thus increasing women's dependency on male members of the family for their subsistence (ibid.). Generally speaking, these traditional customs and the code of honour imposed on women tend to be stronger in rural than in urban areas (Sadiqi & Ennaji, ).The generational, kinship, and religious aspects of this system of male domination determine the gendered assignation of roles and power in the family. In extended patrilocal households (the ideal type of Arab family organisation), the domestic hierarchy is dominated by the patriarch who has power over all members, other men have power over women (at least formally), and older women take precedence over younger ones. This system also imposes the physical separation of men and women, the latter being confined to the domestic sphere. The power dynamics between women within the households are therefore central to their status and well‐being. Within these dynamics women's power is of an indirect nature because largely derived from their relationship to the men. Being a mother, especially of sons, bestows great power on a woman, often at the expense of the daughter‐in‐law (Lacoste‐Dujardin, ). The predominance of this system also explains that in extended patrilocal households with current international migrants, remittances are usually sent to the household head, that is, the migrant's father or another of his relatives, not his wife (Bourqia, El Melakh, Abdourebbi, & Nafaa, ; Sadiqi & Ennaji, ). As in other contexts (Mondain, Randall, Diagne, & Elliott, ), coresidence with the in‐laws therefore appears to be a crucial factor undermining the empowerment process of wives staying behind. It is therefore essential to understand how migration affects household structure.Male migrants' departure can be motivated by the desire to build or buy a house for himself and his family in the place of origin (Brettell, ). Migration can therefore accelerate the household nuclearisation process, thus allowing the migrant's wife and children to move out from the in‐laws and form a nuclear family of which she becomes the de facto household head. Doing so, she escapes her in‐laws' supervision and gains much greater power over the allocation of resources (Brink, ; Hajjarabi, ). The link between these phenomena is not straightforward, however: although most studies point to international migration accelerating this process (Brink, ; de Haas & van Rooij, ; Louhichi, ), other studies suggest otherwise. This study further investigates this link in the Moroccan context.MOROCCAN EMIGRATION AND WOMEN LEFT BEHINDMorocco has a sizeable population of women staying behind, although there are no available estimates of their numbers. Possibly due to a dearth of information on subsequent waves of migration, the phenomenon of “wives left behind” is mostly associated with the period spanning from the beginning of the 20th century to the mid‐1970s. This period was characterised by the absolute predominance of male migration from clearly defined regions, the effectiveness of the migratory networks and channels, the poor qualifications of the migrants, and a strong attachment to the family and the home society. These migrants' profiles mirrored those of the “first age” of Algerian emigration to France, as described by Sayad (). These men usually left either when newly married or, more often, single. In the former case, they left their spouse in care of their parents, and in the latter, an endogamous marriage was often arranged by the family during a holiday within a few years of their first migration. At that time, migration was generally regarded as a temporary livelihood strategy by these men and their families (Barou, ), facilitated by the ease of circulation between Europe and Morocco due to the high labour demand in Europe during the postwar boom years.When things changed in the 1970s, with the economic crisis and the ensuing halt to labour migration, those who had not yet returned were faced with the options of either continuing to live separately from their families or applying for family reunification. Although many chose the latter, others could not or did not want to, for reasons including an inability to meet the minimum income and housing conditions necessary for reunification,In France, applicants for family reunification must satisfy certain requirements relating to the migrant's length of legal residence in France, level of resources (excluding social benefits), type and size of accommodation (commensurate with the size of the reunited family), and the age of the spouse (18 or above) and children (under 18). Details of the current legal conditions can be found at https://www.service‐public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F11166. administrative difficulties, a desire to continue saving the money earned at destination in order to invest at home in preparation for an eventual return, and the men's reluctance to bring wives and children to a society viewed as hostile to the affirmation of their authority as fathers and husbands (Barou, ). Some men, initially opposed to this possibility or constrained by the need to care for elderly parents at origin, eventually applied for reunification but did not always succeed because of the increasingly stringent conditions or because it was too late (e.g., their children were over 18, they had invested too much at origin, or the family did not want to leave). As a result, many Moroccan migrants, including many retired ones, have been living a transnational family life for decades. This population is overrepresented among residents of migrant worker hostels (Hunter, ) and continue providing at a distance for families with whom they have only ever cohabitated during their holidays, usually a month or so during the summer (ibid.).In France, only limited quantitative data are available on these transnational family arrangements. However, in 2003, a large‐scale survey on the “Transition to Retirement of Immigrants” (PRI) found that out of the 77,198 men living in migrant worker hostels (Foyers de Travailleurs Migrants), only 32% had remained unmarried and just 28% were childless. According to the 1999 Census, 15% of these hostel residents originated from Morocco (Gallou, ). Although it was often commented during fieldwork that the practice of leaving wives and children behind is on the wane, there is evidence of a continuation of this practice among more recent male migrants to Spain and Italy (Eddouada & Anbi, ; Pennetti, ).This is also visible in the sex ratios of households left behind calculated from the 2006–2007 Morocco Living Standard Measurement Survey (MLSMS). This survey allowed analysing the structural characteristics of different kinds of households according to their migratory status and their urban or rural place of residence. As presented in Table , the sex ratios show the feminisation of households staying behind, because households with international migrant(s) present a slight imbalance in favour of female members, in both urban and rural areas, compared to nonmigrant households (78 compared to 97 men per 100 women in urban and 81 compared to 99 in rural areas). The table also indicates their more “traditional” structure, with larger proportions of three‐generation and complex families among international migrant households. It suggests that they are less concerned by the general trend towards household nuclearisation at work in Morocco (Abdelmajid & Benohoud, ), a finding consistent with Steinmann's () observation in the Todgha valley that the dissolution of the extended family structure was stronger among nonmigrant households. Logically, these households also have higher proportions of women aged 15 to 54 living with their parents‐in‐laws in both urban areas (25% against 11% in nonmigrant households) and rural areas (42% against 24%).Household characteristics by migration status—2006–2007 Morocco Living Standard Measurement Survey (MLSMS)No migrant (69.2%)Internal migrant (16.5%)Current international migrant (11.6%)Past or return international migrant (2.7%)URBANSex ratio (N man for 1 woman).97.81.78.89Household structure: Generations One generation10.97.711.914 Two generations77.769.566.669 Three generations11.422.821.417Household structure: Family types Single headed nuclear7.517.719.710.8 Complete nuclear62.839.935.748.1 Complex18.735.932.526.2 Other116.512.114.9 Women 15–54 living with parents‐in‐law11.42624.824RURALSex ratio (N man for 1 woman).99.87.81.82Household structure: Generations One generation9.37.711.313.3 Two generations69.361.556.848.9 Three generations21.530.831.937.9Household structure: Family types Single headed nuclear4.912.86.81.9 Complete nuclear58.539.339.940.6 Complex27.84044.444.9 Other8.77.9912.5 Women 15–54 living with parents‐in‐law23.740.542.349.1Source: 2006–2007 MLSMS—Author's analysis.As household nuclearisation is considered as an important enabling factor for women's empowerment, these descriptive statistics challenge the oft‐repeated assumption that migration accelerates this process. It is this link that our study aims to further explore qualitatively, in order to better capture the effects of migration on women staying behind over time. In doing so, it aims to deepen the understanding of this phenomenon in Morocco, where only limited research has been conducted on this topic. This study is in line with previous research that has focused on this phenomenon in relation to migrants' wives and in rural areas (Hajjarabi, , ; Steinmann, ; Aït Hamza, ; de Haas & van Rooij, ). Based on women's life narratives, it analyses the effects of migration on wives' bargaining and decision‐making power over time within the household in the context of an Arab patriarchal society.DATASemistructured in‐depth interviews were conducted in 2012 with 12 women (some interviewed twice) living in international migrant households, in a small town in the Berber Sous region in Southwestern Morocco. This town of about 6,000 inhabitants is situated in a rural and mountainous region characterised by relatively long‐established emigration to France of low‐skilled men who generally have regular status at destination. Although emigration originating from the town has feminised and diversified to destinations like Spain or the Gulf States, emigrants to France have had a lasting impact on the local economic development, as visible in the numerous properties and local businesses they own (shops, garages, and taxis).A review of the building permits issued between 2000 and 2012 by the town council revealed that approximately a third of them had been granted to family members of international migrants originating from the town or neighbouring villages.The women interviewed were selected by purposive sampling, the selection criteria being current or past experience of living in a household with an international male migrant (preferably as migrant's wives in order to compare with the existing literature on the topic), and residence in the town chosen for the case study. They were accessed through key informants (a migrant association and local contacts) and snowballing. Characteristics of the sample are provided in Table , and all the names indicated are pseudonyms. Ten of these women were or had been married to a migrant to France. These life narratives reflect the respondents' profiles (i.e., rural background, mainly illiterate, middle‐aged to older for most of them) and the particular location where they are set (a small town in a rural region). By definition, these families have not been reunited by the migrant at destination, which could be an indication of a traditional mentality likely to restrict female empowerment at origin. Moreover, some of these testimonies span almost 40 years and may appear to belong to a distant past where patriarchal social norms were not yet challenged. Yet, by adopting a biographical approach, their analysis reveals how migration interacts with determinants of women's intrahousehold bargaining power, following the important stages of the women's domestic life cycle and of the migrant's trajectory.Characteristics of the intervieweesNameAgeMarital statusInternational migrationCurrent migrantReturn migrantDeceased migrant1Leila59MarriedX (husband)2Khadija47WidowX (husband)3Fatima47MarriedX (daughter)4Souad36MarriedX (daughter)5Myriam65WidowX (1st husband)6Keltoum57MarriedX (husband)7Zakia42DivorcedX (siblings & ex‐husband)8Mahjouba64MarriedX (husband)9Zohra58MarriedX (husband)10Fatim‐Zahra65WidowX (husband)11Aicha57WidowX (husband)12Asna49MarriedX (husband)THE THREE “AGES” OF MIGRANTS' WIVESMarrying a migrant has long been an enviable prospect for women in Morocco, due to the actual or perceived advantages attached to this position. Yet the women's narratives show that such expectations were not always realized and that benefiting from the migration of a spouse was highly dependent on their position in the household. This tended to change over time, and it is possible to distinguish three ages of the wives staying behind, corresponding to stages of the domestic cycle and of their husbands' migration: the initial period living with the in‐laws, the wife's formation of a nuclear household, and the changes following the migrant's return and eventual death.The first age: living with the in‐lawsMost women reported marrying at an early age (between 15 and 19) with an older man generally unknown to them and who was already a migrant in France and returned during a holiday to get married. Half of these marriages were endogamous, and arranged through relatives, acquaintances or at the initiative of the migrant himself. Some women were asked for their consent, but as was common then, most had no or very little say in the arrangements. The wedding ceremonies usually followed swiftly, and in accordance with the patrilocal residence rule, the new wife went to live with her in‐laws in her husband's family house. This new residence could be in the same neighbourhood as the women's parents, or far away, in which case marrying meant a real uprooting for those young women who had generally never travelled anywhere before. Having married a migrant, they became migrant themselves, but not as trailing wives. It was common for the new wife to spend only a few days or weeks with the husband before he returned to France, and she was then left alone with his extended family.The women's testimonies reflected Kandiyoti's () description of the status of the young bride in her ideal–typical model of the “classic patriarchy”: Upon entering her husband's house, she must obey not only all the men but also the more senior women in the family, especially her mother‐in‐law. For most interviewees, their initial position in the household power matrix meant that they drew few or no benefits from being married to a migrant. Indeed, their youth, complete illiteracy, lack of assets, and the traditional expectation for a young bride to show submissiveness and obedience made their subservience complete.The situation could be even worse for those who entered from a lower social position, such as women who had been previously married, in a traditional context where widows and especially divorced women are devalued on the marriage market. This was the case of Aicha, who at 18 was freshly divorced when her parents married her to a migrant in France who was recently widowed and almost 40 years older than her. In her husband's house, she had to cohabit with the children from the first marriage who were the same age as her and showed her outright hostility. Although the prospect of marrying an international migrant had initially been a consolation for being married without her consent, she was soon disillusioned:When I heard that my husband was an emigrant, I imagined that I was going to have it all, that I would go to France, that I would travel, have a good life. I thought about all that. But unfortunately, what I found was a hole, I fell into an inescapable hole.[Aicha, 57, widowed]The women lived with their in‐laws for periods ranging from a couple of years to decades. The rarity of the migrants' visits, once or twice a year at best, and the lack of means of communication at the time meant that the wives could not really complain nor turn to their husbands in cases of conflict, especially in a cultural context where conjugal intimacy and emotional attachment are shunned (Lacoste‐Dujardin, ). The occasional letters, tape recordings (from the 1980s), and phone calls received first in local convenience shops and then on landlines at home did not allow any intimate exchanges between husband and wife as these were rarely private communications and more often intended for the whole family. It is only with the recent arrival of mobile phones that women have started having unsupervised conversations with their husbands, a change that has brought both the possibility of greater intimacy between husband and wife but has also enhanced the migrants' capacity to exert social control on their spouses (Hannaford, ). Yet, before that, the lack of advanced communication technologies meant that women could not really use their conjugal relationship to better their position within the household if they did not get on well with their in‐laws (the mother‐in‐law in particular) or if they were treated merely as maids, as often seemed to be the case. Likewise, it prevented migrants from effectively intervening in the intrahousehold dynamics back home, had they wanted to.Living with their in‐laws, women were also generally deprived of access to remittances, one of the main benefits of being a migrant's spouse. Remitting practices are governed by social and cultural norms (King, Dalipaj, & Mai, ), which are likely to prevail, independently of the migrant's own preferences. Carling () showed how migrants and nonmigrants' behaviour, sense of obligation, or entitlement are imbued by moralities of transnationalism, and, in order to “repay the gift of communality,” migrants can feel compelled not only to remit but also to do so in absolute compliance with the social and cultural norms of their community of origin. In Morocco, it is generally considered shameful (Hchouma) and an offence to his patrilineal family if a husband sends money directly to his wife if she is living with his parents or brothers. The remittances are usually addressed to the father, or if he is dead or sick, the mother or a brother, making the woman dependent on her in‐laws' good will to redistribute the money. The interviews suggested that this could be a source of tension and conflict. Leila was living with her husband's sick father and brother, and it was the latter who received the remittances. She recalls thatEvery time I asked him [the brother‐in‐law] for money—if I needed to buy something, like some clothes for example—he would always say no and would reply ‘Wait for the idiot [donkey] you married. When he'll come, he'll buy you everything you want!’. He received the money from my husband but he would not give me any. Just food, that's it. And not even good food.[Leila, 59, married]Such stories were common to almost all the interviewees, including those who had children, for as long as they lived with their in‐laws. And although women tend to progressively assert their position in the domestic unit with time and with the production of male offspring, in the Arab patriarchy model prevalent in North Africa (Lacoste‐Dujardin, ), migrants' wives were disadvantaged by their lack of control over resources. However, the births of their children enhanced their status and legitimised their claims to their husbands' remittances by the need to look after their progeny. As the children's main carer, many also started receiving child benefits from the French administration (made possible following the Franco‐Moroccan social security agreement of July 9, 1965 and limited to four children aged 0 to 18). But as long as they lived with their in‐laws, they often could not exert decision‐making power in relation to their own children's health or schooling. Their husbands sometimes took issue with how their families treated their wives and children, but they were themselves constrained by the strict cultural norms. Those wanting to help their spouse had no choice but to leave some money with them during their occasional visits or to send it through intermediaries, unknown to the rest of the family.Unfair treatment and lack of access to resources explain why women generally yearned for their own nuclear household. However, this process can only be initiated when a woman has become a mother and is secure in her marriage. Moreover, it is not necessarily facilitated by migration.The second age: residential independencyRole of international migration in the nuclearisation processAs highlighted above, the role of migration in the household nuclearisation process is debated. The interviewees' testimonies were consistent with the hypothesis that male migration and remittances may, in fact, favour the maintenance of the more traditional model of the patriarchal extended family rather than its demise, at least for a while. This may be especially true in rural areas where household nuclearisation is less common than in urban areas, as shown in Table . Although all the interviewees eventually obtained their own house, usually built or purchased thanks to their husbands' remittances, this process was fraught with pitfalls linked to the migrant's absence and to the power dynamics in the in‐laws' household.First, care arrangements can hinder nuclearisation as patrilocal residence rules mean that the daughters‐in‐law are traditionally in charge of looking after their husbands' elderly parents. In the absence of other women in the household who can act as caregivers, the wife is entrusted with that responsibility and is unlikely to get to live independently as long as she has to fulfil that function, usually until the death of the migrant's parents. Besides, a wife's attempts to live independently are often met with strong resistance from her in‐laws, because remittances are unlikely to be addressed to her as long as she lives with her husband's family. Her presence and that of the migrants' children in the household constitute the in‐laws' best guarantee of the continuity and magnitude of transfers as their role as carers for the migrant's family legitimises the financial support they receive. Incidentally, this also explains why migrants may pursue nuclearisation as a way to escape the heavy financial burden of supporting larger households (de Haas, ). In the face of this resistance, many women explained that they only managed to live independently after leaving the house due to a violent dispute with the in‐laws. However, such moves were only likely to succeed for those who had some intrahousehold bargaining power, derived from their own family's support, or from the fact that their marriage was secure after having had children with the migrant. In order to avoid such outcomes and continue benefiting from the migrant's remittances, in‐laws sometimes initiate the nuclearisation process, but to their own benefit. Two women reported being left behind in the village to work in the fields and take care of the family house and livestock for many years while the in‐laws moved to urban houses bought by the migrants. Being able to initiate the nuclearisation process therefore appeared to be determinant of the benefits to be expected from that change and was itself largely influenced by the woman's position in the household power matrix.Changes following nuclearisationAll women reported that their life changed dramatically when they started living on their own with their children. They felt a new‐found sense of freedom derived from not being constantly supervised and from being able to organise their time as they wished, without the constraints of a schedule imposed by the needs of extended households. Apart from those who were constrained to stay in remote villages or sidelined from such benefits by their in‐laws, the main positive change was the direct access to their husband's remittances. They obtained their nationality cards immediately after getting their own house, allowing them to go and collect the money orders themselves at the Post Office, usually every month. All women expressed their satisfaction at this change, which allowed them to spend the money as they wanted, apart from one who said she did not like the responsibility and found it hard to manage the money. The amounts received were relatively limited, however (between 1,000 and 2,000 MAD1 GBP = approx. 14 MAD. per month), thus necessitating good management.The women also mentioned the new tasks and responsibilities they had to assume, especially when there was no adult male in the house. Besides financial management, they sometimes assumed tasks that are not regarded as typically feminine, such as supervising the construction of a house, paying the workers, or buying the construction materials. They also reported travelling sometimes on their own, to get an administrative document for instance or to collect the rent on property. However, they did not have to deal with farm work as most families have withdrawn from this activity in the town. These new responsibilities positively change the way they perceive themselves. When asked how she felt about assuming many different tasks following her husband's departure, one woman, for instance, replied, “I feel like I have a personality”, suggesting the empowering role of this experience. Yet, in a context where gender roles remain strictly defined, assuming men's traditional tasks appeared as both a source of pride (“the other women just cannot do anything on their own”) and of discomfort. As previously observed by de Haas and Van Rooij (), many women complained about their burdensome workloads and responsibilities, raising children without their father often being mentioned as the most difficult one.Limitations, new demands, and asymmetries in the transnational householdHowever, new responsibilities came with many restrictions. Although some women reported that they had been directly in charge of initiating and supervising construction works, the management of housing and productive investments remained the man's prerogative, sometimes delegated to his father or brother. The strong patrilocal extended family often allows the absent male to manage the family resources and investments by proxy, only leaving decisions on small expenditures to the women. The husbands of Leila and Asna for instance remained in charge of their real estate investments by managing them during their annual holidays, only delegating to their wives or oldest sons what they could not do themselves.Moreover, although managing the household budget proved a source of profound satisfaction, not being consulted for bigger investments generated frustration, especially when the women felt that the detrimental consequences of migration on their family life had not really been offset by long‐term financial security. Leila, for instance, could not understand why her husband kept buying plots of land and houses and starting new construction projects that he never completed, matters that he refused to discuss with her.He does not listen to what I say. I ask him ‘why have you bought so many houses, why have you bought so many land plots? We have only two children.’ But he says that I don't understand, that he knows what he is doing. He told me it's in his blood: whenever he sees something [a house or a plot to build] on sale, he needs to buy it.[Leila, 59, married]Having acquired a certain control over remittances, the women may also have to satisfy new demands, especially from their own families. For instance, since moving into her house, Leila had to constantly invite members of her family and used a large share of the remittances towards meeting the expenses incurred by her obligation to show hospitality to her family. Indeed, as observed in Senegal (Mondain et al., ), the family and larger community's expectations regarding the level of remittances received by international migrants' wives and their degree of control over the way they are spent can be in sharp contrast with reality and represent a burden for these women.Finally, migrants' wives are penalised by the clear power imbalance characteristic of transnational conjugal relations. As highlighted by Carling (), asymmetries are important features of transnational relations between migrants and their nonmigrant counterparts; they are multifaceted and can be a source of frustration for both sides. The single‐sited research methodology used in this study did not allow us to uncover the migrants' sources of frustrations and vulnerabilities, although these should not be understated, as has been shown in other studies (Hunter, ). However, the women's testimonies demonstrated the multiple asymmetries contributing to their disadvantage in the transnational space. Indeed, besides the remittance flows, other flows and resources appeared to be largely controlled by the migrants. First, the interviews suggested an imbalance in terms of information and communication. As mentioned earlier, in the past, women could not easily contact their husbands and even when landlines were installed, the migrant was usually the one calling, with the family behind waiting for his calls. Likewise, the interviewees appeared to have very partial knowledge of their husbands' situation in the country of destination, with many seemingly not knowing exactly in which city he was living or what job he was doing, notwithstanding decades of marriage. Although such ignorance may be feigned, their access to such information is clearly constrained. Although the migrant husband could easily know the whereabouts of his wife if he wanted to, no such possibility was given to her, her only option being to try and piece together rare and sometimes contradictory pieces of information. None of the women had ever visited their husbands in France and were thus left imagining their husband's life there.This latter point relates to what Carling () refers to as “mobility resources,” that is, the entitlements the migrants possess, such as citizenship or residence permits in the country of destination. The migrants' wives usually lack control over them, and this proved a major source of tension and dissatisfaction as many had wished to migrate themselves or ensure that their children could do so. This desire was met with strict refusal from the husband, generally without any discussion. Khadija, for instance, remembers:My husband used to tell me he would like to take us to France to visit, but he would then also say ‘I am afraid you will run away’ (laugh), he'd say ‘I am afraid you are just like the others [his first wife and daughters in France who refused to return to Morocco with him], so no, you stay here, it's better. Here, you are a respectable woman, but if I take you to France, you will run away, and start wearing a skirt like that … So, no no no![Khadija, 47, widowed]Frustration at the husbands' attitude was often expressed, especially in relation to what the women saw as lost opportunities for their children (sons especially), that is, the promise of a good education and job prospects that they associate with emigration to Europe. Many seemed angered that their husband either precluded such opportunities or sent contradictory messages regarding migration prospects to the children. Asna's sons, for instance, long hoped that they would join their father in France, and as they saw their future there, they never invested in their education in Morocco. Her husband never clearly denied that possibility until they reached the age of majority and could no longer apply under family reunification. One son developed mental health issues, and none of her seven adult children were working or studying at the time of the interview.The third age: after the migrant's return or deathThe literature on women left behind usually focuses on the two ages described above. Yet, for women staying at origin, the consequences of a husband's migration can be felt long after his return and/or eventual death, especially in cases where elderly migrants have much younger wives and school‐age children at the time of retirement, which is quite common in Morocco. This last section sheds light on some of the issues facing these women in this “third age,” and the implications for their level of empowerment.Migrant's return: lasting changes?Do the empowering changes that wives may experience continue after the migrant's return? This question remains largely open in the literature, with some studies arguing that they are lasting (Yabiku et al., ), and others that they are not (Brink, ; de Haas & van Rooij, ). The women's testimonies are in line with the latter studies' conclusions, suggesting a loss of power upon their husbands' return. Although many women acquired management responsibilities and control of finances during their husband's migration, these were delegated to them out of necessity and were generally reclaimed by the husbands on their return. Still, as many returned migrants circulate between Morocco and France in order to maximise their pension income, some women continue exercising some responsibilities while their husbands are away.Although expressing satisfaction at the prospect of seeing their family reunited, the wives of returnees resented the loss of control over household resources and the need to constantly ask for money, as exemplified by Mahjouba who was in charge of the budget and investments during her husband's migration. On his return, he initially let her manage the expenditures relating to the children, but stopped giving her or the children any money after a while.I saw a big difference when he came back. Before I had the money and I decided how to spend it, and I could buy home decoration, rugs, etc. Now that he is here, he only buys food, that's it. And if we want to buy some clothes or something for the house, he says no. If you want something, you have to ask him once, twice, again and again, and he gives you maybe 100 Dirhams. 100 Dirhams and he leaves. It's not like before.[Mahjouba, 62, wife of returned migrant]Communication between husband and wife also seemed to be limited, which may be unsurprising given the geographical and emotional distance imposed for decades by migration and culture. Therefore, wives of returned migrants could often only speculate as to the reasons behind their husband's behaviour. A certain frustration could also be expressed about the limited long‐term benefits they felt migration had brought to the family:All that remains is what I have done [the houses built for their children], but as soon as he came back, his only interest was working in the fields. He works in the fields everyday. He spends all the money on the fields. But he hasn't done anything else, nothing that could provide us with an income.[ibid.]Besides these financial considerations, return also seemed to bring about a difficult readjustment to conjugal life for both husband and wife, as they were not used to living with each other.Although increasingly discussed in the migration literature, it is worth mentioning that no evidence of social remittances, that is, the ideas, practices, and social capital that migrants can transfer to their countries of origin through visits and communication (Levitt, ), was found in the interviews. There was, for instance, no indication that migrants had encouraged their children to pursue education or that they came back with more progressive ideas regarding gender relations and women's role in the family and society. In addition to the effect of the small sample, we did not expect to observe such influences because attachment to traditional values and gender order underlies the refusal of certain migrants to apply for family reunification at destination, leading to their eventual return. The strength of the gendered labour division in rural areas, traditional background, and possibly older age may also explain why these men, who had sometimes lived alone for decades, taking care of their own cooking, washing, and cleaning, came back to take on the role of the patriarch in a traditional family order.After the migrant's deathFinally, an issue rarely mentioned in studies of women left behind emerged from the field: the difficulties specific to international migrants' widows. Due to the age difference between husband and wife, especially in cases of the man's remarriage, women can become widows at a relatively young age in Morocco, with implications for themselves and their children (two interviewees became widows with children aged under five). Due to the weakness of the social safety nets and the low levels of pensions in Morocco, widowhood can mean an abrupt descent into poverty for women and they may be forced to move back with relatives. In this respect, widows of international migrants find themselves in a better position because of the assets they inherit and the surviving spouse's pension they can claim in the country of destination.Indeed, they tended to inherit substantial assets, which endowed them with some degree of material security, as was the case for Khadija who inherited the unfinished house her late husband had built, and to a lesser extent Aicha, who inherited half of the family house in the remote village. However, the extent to which they benefit in financial terms from their deceased husband may be very limited as many women prefer not to claim their rights for fear of conflicts with their in‐laws or because the process seems too difficult. A social worker working with elderly Moroccan migrants in France reported that it was common for the French bank accounts owned by deceased migrants to become escheat either because the heirs ignore their very existence or because family conflicts prevent the heirs from jointly signing the certificate proving inheritance rights that is needed to start the process in Moroccan law. According to the women, in‐laws also commonly claim ownership of properties to which they are not entitled.Secondly, widows may be entitled to a widowhood allowance or survivor's pension from the administrations in the foreign country where their husbands worked.General convention of October 22, 2007, in force since June 1, 2011. Available at http://www.cleiss.fr/docs/textes/conv_maroc.html. In France, for instance, under the 2007 Franco‐Moroccan Convention on Social Security, the widow of a migrant can apply for a survivor's pension from the age of 55 and is entitled to an allowance for 2 years (if under 50) or until she reaches 55 (if aged 50 or over). In 2014, 47,546 persons received such pensions in Morocco, on a par with the number of people drawing a retirement pension (53,575).http://www.cleiss.fr/docs/stats/rapport_stat_2014.pdf. During the fieldwork in 2012, these allowances were an important subject of conversation and concern for the women, and something for which the researcher's help was often requested. Due to the women's lack of knowledge of their late husband's work and life in France, as well as their illiteracy and inability to speak French, claiming these pensions proved extremely difficult, and they sometimes fell prey to intermediaries offering to contact the foreign administration and to help these women to obtain their pensions, in return for a fixed sum or a percentage. Such practices show that even after their husband's death, women left behind often continue to be penalised in their access to social rights by the asymmetries in information, mobility resources, and linguistic competence (Carling, ) that characterised their transnational conjugal relationship.CONCLUSIONThough these dimensions are often mentioned in passing (Louhichi, ), the literature has insufficiently highlighted the fact that the extent to which women benefit from migration‐related changes ultimately depends on their relationship with their migrating husbands and the outcomes of intrahousehold bargaining processes, the latter being predicated on the structure of the household where they reside and their stage in the life cycle. Although it is often hypothesised that wives can be empowered as a result of their husbands' migration, this study argues that this possibility only corresponds to a particular stage in the women's lives, that is, when they form their own nuclear household and become de facto household heads. Yet the analysis has also highlighted the ways migration may slow down rather than facilitate this process. Although remittances can help women to establish separate households, nuclearisation may (a) only happen at a particular stage in the household cycle (when the wife has children and does not have to care for her husband's parents), (b) face resistance from the in‐laws who want to continue receiving the remittances, or (c) happen at the wife's expense if initiated by the in‐laws. Benefits may furthermore be limited and/or temporary, and the migrant's return may mark a reversal of the situation. These findings provide further insights into the gendered dynamics at work in the “migration‐left‐behind nexus” (Toyota, Yeoh, & Nguyen, ) and call for more quantitative studies to investigate the relationship between migration and household structures in origin countries. Because they illustrate the importance of changing power geometries in local and transnational households in determining women's status, the “three ages” described above can certainly be usefully applied to other contexts.In accordance with previous studies conducted in Muslim Arabic countries (Brink, ; de Haas & van Rooij, ) and in other contexts (King, Mata‐Codesal, & Vullnerati, ), this study suggests that migration systems predicated on a patriarchal social and family order are unlikely to be conducive to sustainable women's empowerment in the origin household and community. Migration and remitting practices are fundamentally shaped by prevailing gender and generational structures in Morocco, and their potential to challenge those structures is therefore very limited. Under certain circumstances, they may even reinforce them, making them more resilient in the face of contemporary social changes. In such systems, women are more likely to access the resources resulting from migration by behaving in accordance with traditions and drawing on the rights and entitlements granted to them by their religion and culture, such as the right to material support from their husband under Islamic law (nafaqah). Future research on the empowerment of women left behind should therefore consider how migrations departing from the patriarchal model, such as independent female emigration, may have more important and far‐reaching effects at origin, including by highlighting female migrants as role models for girls, but also how predominantly male emigration affects different female relatives, such as the migrants' sisters, mothers, or daughters.ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSI want to thank Alistair Hunter, David Owen, Cris Beauchemin, Ann Singleton, Dave Gordon, Sarah Payne, Sam Scott and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this article. I also gratefully acknowledge the support of the ESRC in funding this research (ES/I901884/1).REFERENCESAbadan‐Unat, N. (1977). Implications of migration on emancipation and pseudo‐emancipation of Turkish women. International Migration Review, 11(1), 31–57. https://doi.org/10.2307/2545006Abdelmajid, A., & Benohoud, S. (2010). Vers une nucléarisation des ménages marocains: caractéristiques et variations spatiales à travers le RGPH 2004. Les Cahiers du Plan, 32, 4–23.Aït Hamza, M. (1995). Les femmes d'émigrés dans les sociétés oasiennes (Sud du Maroc). In Le Maroc et la Hollande: Une approche comparative dans grands intérêts communs (pp. 159–169). Rabat: Université Mohammed V.Archambault, C. S. (2010). Women left behind? Migration, spousal separation, and the autonomy of rural women in Ugweno, Tanzania. Signs, 35(4), 919–942. https://doi.org/10.1086/651042Barou, J. (2001). Etre père à distance—Le devenir des enfants d'immigrés demeurés au pays d'origine: Regards croisés pères/enfants. Paris: SONACOTRA ‐ Comité français pour l'UNICEF.Bennett, R., Clifford, D., & Falkingham, J. (2013). Household members' migration and the education of children “left behind”: Empirical findings from Tajikistan and reflections for research practice. Population. Space and Place, 19(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.1698Berriane, M., de Haas, H., & Natter, K. (2015). Introduction: Revisiting Moroccan migrations. The Journal of North African Studies, 20(4), 503–521. https://doi.org/10.1080/13629387.2015.1065036Biao, X. (2007). How far are the left‐behind left behind? A preliminary study in rural China. Population, Space and Place, 13(3), 179–191. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.437Bouoiyour, J., & Miftah, A. (2015). The impact of migrant workers' remittances on the living standards of families in Morocco: A propensity score matching approach. Migration Letters, 12(1), 13–27.Bourqia, R., El Melakh, K., Abdourebbi, M., & Nafaa, R. (2007). Etude exploratoire sur l'émigration et ses impacts socioculturels sur la société locale. In M. Khachani (Ed.), L'impact de la migration sur la société marocaine (pp. 151–225). Rabat: AMERM.Brettell, C. B. (1988). Emigration and household structure in a Portuguese parish, 1850‐1920. Journal of Family History, 13(1), 33–57. https://doi.org/10.1177/036319908801300103Brink, J. H. (1991). The effect of emigration of husbands on the status of their wives: An Egyptian case. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 23(2), 201–211. https://doi.org/10.1017/S002074380005604XCarling, J. (2002). Migration in the age of involuntary immobility: Theoretical reflections and cape Verdean experiences. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 28(1), 5–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691830120103912Carling, J. (2008). The human dynamics of migrant transnationalism. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 31(8), 1452–1477. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870701719097Datta, A., & Mishra, S. K. (2011). Glimpses of women's lives in rural Bihar: Impact of male migration. The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 54(3), 457–477.de Haas, H. (2008). The complex role of migration in shifting rural livelihoods: A case of a Moroccan oasis. In T. van Naerssen, E. Spaan, & A. Zoomers (Eds.), Global migration and development (pp. 21–41). New York/London: Routledge.de Haas, H., & van Rooij, A. (2010). Migration as emancipation? The impact of internal and international migration on the position of women left behind in rural Morocco. Oxford Development Studies, 38(1), 43–62. https://doi.org/10.1080/13600810903551603Eddouada S., Anbi A. (2014). Les perceptions des migrants et de l'émigration à travers les femmes délaissées à Béni Amir, Presentation at the conference ‘migrations marocaines: Transformations, transitions et perspectives futures’, Fès, 22–24 May 2014.Gallou, R. (2005). Les immigrés isolés: La spécificité des résidents en foyer. Retraite et Société, 1(44), 106–147.Hadi, A. (2001). International migration and the change of women's position among the left‐behind in rural Bangladesh. International Journal of Population Geography, 7(1), 53–61. https://doi.org/10.1002/ijpg.211Hajjarabi, F. (1988). Femmes et émigration: cas de la région d'Al Hoceima. In Le Maroc et la Hollande: Études sur l'histoire, la migration, la linguistique et la sémiologie de la culture (pp. 177–185). Rabat: Université Mohammed V.Hajjarabi, F. (1995). Femmes, famille et changement social dans le Rif. In Le Maroc et la Hollande: Une approche comparative des grands intérêts communs (pp. 105–110). Rabat: Université Mohammed V.Hannaford, D. (2015). Technologies of the spouse: intimate surveillance in Senegalese transnational marriages. Global Networks, 15(1), 43–59. https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12045Hugo, G. (2000). Migration and women's empowerment. In S. Gita (Ed.), women's empowerment and demographic processes: Moving beyond Cairo, Presser HB (pp. 287–317). New York: Oxford University Press.Hunter, A. (2011). Theory and practice of return migration at retirement: The case of migrant worker hostel residents in France. Population, Space and Place, 17(2), 179–192. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.610Joseph, S. (1996). Patriarchy and development in the Arab world. Gender and Development, 4(2), 14–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/741922010Kabeer, N. (1999). Resources, agency, achievements: Reflections on the measurement of women's empowerment. Development and Change, 30(3), 435–464. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467‐7660.00125Kandiyoti, D. (1988). Bargaining with patriarchy. Gender and Society, 2(3), 274–290. https://doi.org/10.1177/089124388002003004King, R., Dalipaj, M., & Mai, N. (2006). Gendering migration and remittances: Evidence from London and northern Albania. Population, Space and Place, 12(6), 409–434. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.439King, R., Mata‐Codesal, D., & Vullnerati, J. (2013). Migration, development, gender and the ‘black box’ of remittances: Comparative findings from Albania and Ecuador. Comparative Migration Studies, 1(1), 69–96. https://doi.org/10.5117/CMS2013.1.KINGLacoste‐Dujardin, C. (1996). Des mères contre les femmes: Maternité et patriarcat au Maghreb. Paris: La Découverte.Levitt, P. (1998). Social remittances: Migration driven local‐level forms of cultural diffusion. International Migration Review, 32(4), 926–948. https://doi.org/10.2307/2547666Louhichi, K. (1997). The impact of the emigration of the husband on the status of the wife: the case of Egypt. In M. E. Cosio‐Zavala (Ed.), Women and families: Evolution of the status of women as factor and consequence of changes in family dynamics (pp. 323–339). Paris: CICRED.Malhotra, A., & Schuler, S. R. (2005). Women's empowerment as a variable in international development. In D. Narayan (Ed.), Measuring empowerment: Cross‐disciplinary perspectives. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.McEvoy, J., Petrzelka, P., Radel, C., & Schmook, B. (2012). Gendered mobility and morality in a south‐eastern Mexican community: Impacts of male labour migration on the women left behind. Mobilities, 7(3), 369–388. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2012.655977Mondain, N., & Diagne, A. (2013). Discerning the reality of ‘those left behind’ in contemporary migration processes in sub‐Saharan Africa: Some theoretical reflections in the light of data from Senegal. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 34(5), 503–516. https://doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2013.827831Mondain, N., Randall, S., Diagne, A., & Elliott, A. (2012). Les effets de l'émigration masculine sur la situation des femmes au Sénégal: Renforcement ou ébranlement des équilibres traditionnels? Autrepart, 2(61), 81–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2013.827831Pennetti, E. (2006). Les Victimes de l'émigration: L'analyse de la situation des femmes marocaines dont les époux ont émigré en Italie, notamment le cas de la population féminine de la localité de Fquih Ben Salah (Région de Tadla‐Azilal). Foggia: Université de Foggia (Italy). Master's dissertation, p. 86.Sadiqi, F., & Ennaji, M. (2004). The impact of male migration from Morocco to Europe on women: A gender approach. Finisterra : Revista Portuguesa de Geografia, 39(77), 59–76. https://doi.org/10.18055/Finis1561.Sayad, A. (1977). Les trois ‘âges’ de l'émigration algérienne en France. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 15(1), 59–79. https://doi.org/10.3406/arss.1977.2561Steinmann, S. H. (1993). Effects of international migration on women's work in agriculture. Revue de Géographie du Maroc, 15(1–2), 105–124.Toyota, M., Yeoh, B. S. A., & Nguyen, L. (2007). Bringing the ‘left behind’ back into view in Asia: A framework for understanding the ‘migration–left behind nexus’. Population, Space and Place, 13(3), 157–161. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.433Yabiku, S. T., Agadjanian, V., & Sevoyan, A. (2010). Husbands' labour migration and wives' autonomy, Mozambique 2000–2006. Population Studies, 64(3), 293–306. https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2010.510200

Journal

Population, Space and Place – Wiley

Published: Nov 1, 2017

Keywords: ; ; ;

There are no references for this article.