Transnational Love-Reconstruction of Womanhood and Manhood in the Context of Spousal Migration to Germany

Social scientists, who write about love and intimacy practices and their transformation in the modern world, set these practices in direct relation to modernity and its cultural institutions. Specific to modern era, the cultural model of romantic love becomes important both for women and men in the construction of their selves and in the construction of gendered subject practices, but especially for women’s lives it becomes a fundamental reference of meaning. In this article, drawing on the theoretical approaches pertaining to the relationship between modernity and its prevailing notion of romantic love, reconstruction and negotiation of womanhood and manhood in the context of spousal migration to Germany will be examined. The article is based on the analysis of four biographical interviews conducted with a married pair of Moroccan origin (Berber and Berber) and a married pair of Turkish origin (Persian and Sunnite Kurd) living in Germany. The Interviews have been realized during the field work of the third-party fund project “Reversal of the Gender Order? Marriage Migration by North African and Turkish/Kurdish Men to Germany”, conducted between 2012 and 2013 at Frankfurt Goethe University in Germany