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In Egypt, the economic costs incurred by spouses to pay for a marriage are huge, going far beyond the parties' regular income. Migration often appears to be the only possible way to amass the capital required to pay the expenses associated with their establishment as a couple and to support the household. This article is based on data collected in the course of several ethnographic surveys carried out between 2014 and 2017 in a village in the Nile Delta, and deals with the issue of establishing a family in the context of migration for men who have left for France, and for women who remain in the village. It presents the marriage of migrants in the village as an instrument which both guarantees the homecoming of the men who have emigrated and enables the upward social mobility of women without however challenging the patriarchal organisation of Egyptian society. Résumé: En Égypte, les coûts économiques engagés par les futurs époux pour le paiement du mariage sont colossaux, dépassant largement les revenus réguliers des contractants. La migration apparaît souvent comme une voie possible pour accumuler les capitaux économiques nécessaires au paiement des frais consécutifs à la mise en couple et à l' entretien du ménage. Cet article s' appuie sur des données récoltées lors de plusieurs enquêtes ethnographiques réalisées entre 2014 et 2017 dans un village du Delta du Nil. Cette contribution aborde la question du "faire famille" en situation migratoire pour des hommes partis en France, mais également pour des femmes restées au village. Elle présente le mariage des migrants au village comme un instrument qui assure à la fois le retour des hommes émigrés et permet l' ascension sociale des femmes sans pour autant remettre en cause l' organisation patriarcale de la société égyptienne. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In the dār al-islām , a juristic and contractual conception of the institution of marriage prevailed. Marriage was considered to be a contract that set the rights and duties of the spouses. On the basis of legal documents written between the third/ninth and the tenth/sixteenth centuries, coming from different parts of the Medieval Arabic world, we examine women's legal entitlements in marriage contracts, notably, with regard to dowry dispositions (ṣadāq) and stipulations pertaining to conjugal relationships (shurūt). During the married life, a succession of private law contracts can be concluded by the spouses: marriages, receipt of the dowry, repudiation or divorce. The corollary is that some women do not hesitate to request a qāḍī to enforce the clauses they, or their representative, have written in the legal documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women, as Olga Davidson has shown, play a central role in the Shāhnāma of Firdawsī, an epic particularly appreciated by the Persian and Turkish aristocracy during the medieval period. Iconography reinforces the role of these wives, mothers, sisters and fiancées who wait, as is often the case, for warriors to return or arrive and sing or cry their exploits. Three points reveal the importance of women: their central function in the formation of heroes, their social role in different types of unions as consolidators of aristocracy and peace among peoples as well as the prejudice that they suffer with respect to an ambivalent image created by male imagination as "outstanding" mothers and wives but also seductresses or witches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cet article souhaite montrer à quel point les rituels de mariage dits « coutumiers » et les normes de la relation conjugale à Lifou, île de la Kanaky-Nouvelle-Calédonie, ont été modifiés voire instaurés par les missionnaires protestants et catholiques, arrivés respectivement en 1842 et 1858. La réforme du mariage, centrale dans l’ œuvre missionnaire en pays kanak, a été impulsée à Lifou par l’ évangéliste polynésien Fao, et poursuivie par les missionnaires de la London Missionary Society et de la Société de Marie. Ils ont ainsi contribué à changer radicalement les rituels matrimoniaux et la « vie de foyer », les bases du mariage actuel ayant été littéralement inventées au XIXème siècle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The more contemporary wave of diaspora Africans constantly call upon a wide array of elements of their native cultures as they negotiate life in their host societies, signifying their continuing linkage to their homelands. This article examines marriage among Nigerian immigrants in the US for patterns expressing their continuing connectedness to their native cultures. I argue that marrying fellow Nigerians allows them to create a space where their native cultures become part of their daily lives. Legitimizing their marriages using Nigerian institutions, to an extent which is not required by US law, also signifies their connection to their homelands. When they give their children ethnic (Nigerian) names, they do so explicitly to express their cultural identity and roots and sow the seeds of this consciousness in their children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the analysis of ecclesiastical documents, this study explores how African women lived in the port town of Benguela from about 1760 to 1860. This period includes the height of the transatlantic slave trade, its decline and abolition, and the slow shift towards legitimate trade. Through specific cases revealed in baptism, marriage and burial records, the article presents short stories and explores African women's interaction with foreign men, their economic roles, and their participation in a Christian community. The study also discusses how African women made use of parish venues to establish rights and to record their wishes in order to protect loved ones, in a process that secured social and economic mobility for the next generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the performative and lived realities of the Zimbabwean diaspora in Britain. The author explores the way in which both public and private spaces of the diaspora are important arenas in the construction and reconstruction of gendered identities. It is based on multisited ethnography, comprising 33 in-depth interviews and participant observation in four research sites, and draws upon concepts of diaspora and transnationalism as theoretical and analytical frameworks. The findings suggest that the challenges to patriarchal traditions in the hostland in terms of women's primary migrant status and financial autonomy, the different labour market experiences of men and women, and egalitarian laws have caused tensions and conflict within diaspora households. The article examines how men use religious and social spaces, which provide for the affirmation of more traditional roles and relations, as a form of public resistance to changes happening within the domestic sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]