Paper short abstract:

Drawing on a study of two types of mixed families in France, this paper investigates the characteristics and effects of white parenting across racialized boundaries. It will be the occasion to question whiteness and its (re)productions and transformations in mixed family settings.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on a study of two types of mixed families in France - international adoptive families and mixed couples and their descendants (study conducted between October 2015 - November 2017, observations and interviews, n=91), this paper aims at investigating the characteristics and effects of white parenting across racialized boundaries. In both cases, white parents engage in types of mixed parenting, by raising non-white adoptive children, or biological mixed children. As such, most interviewed white parents face experiences that are rarely encountered by whites as members of the majority. This paper will thus be the occasion to question whiteness and its (re)productions and transformations in family settings, when white parents are placed in a position of minority in their own families. I will first look at white parental socialization practices, and explore the diverse ways in which parents engage in forms of ethno-racial socialization in a colorblind context. These different practices reflect the ways white parents negotiate race relations and their embodiment in their very own family. I will then turn to identity formation processes, and look at how parental whiteness in contexts of family mixedness is displayed, enacted, and transformed in the daily family life. This will lead me to interrogate in which ways the parents' whiteness influences the identity construction of non-white children, and, in return, how it is shaped by the intimate experience of parenting across racialized boundaries.

Paper short abstract:

This paper reflects on the experience of mothering a mixed-race girl in Montreal, Canada. It examines the racialization processes of mixed-race children through analyzing the gaze, touch and discourse of strangers and family friends, and the child's perspective on her own ethno-racial bio-history.

Paper long abstract:

For the past 20 years, mixed(race) identities and bodies have started to appear increasingly in the media. Within the context of Canadian multicultural policies, which endorse ethno-racial diversity as a positive value, mixedness is often celebrated, especially through the bodies and images of mixed-race children and young women. In 2017, the city of Montreal featured the image of a mixed family—a white, presumably Canadian, mother, her black partner and their young mixed-child—as its icon. What are the repercussions of this fetishization of mixed-race children on their own lived experience and that of their parents?

This paper reflects on the every day lived experience of being the mother of a mixed-race little girl in the specific context of the city of Montreal, in Canada. It uses the researcher's own experience to reflect upon the racialization processes of mixed-race children through analyzing the gaze, touch and discourse of strangers, family members and friends toward her own child. The hair of mixed-race little girls is at the center of the reflection as it is 1) a central aspect of black women's identity, and 2) the focus of both white and black individuals' attention and touch. Hence, this paper will address how the celebration of mixed bodies in Canada justifies the crossing of mixed little girls' bodily boundaries and parental permission to do so on the pretext of "cuteness".

Paper short abstract:

This paper will draw from research done in Cairo from 2007 - 2009 with "half" Egyptians. I elaborate upon their lived experiences and attempts to create comfortable or third spaces (Meredith: 1998) for themselves as part of understanding their own identities in this specific context.

Paper long abstract:

In Egypt, like many other countries of the world, ideas of belonging are directly connected to how the nation is imagined (Baron: 2005). Historically speaking, people who identify as mixed or dual nationals are viewed as threats to the idea of the nation, whose loyalties are questioned as a result of their heritage (Bloemraad et al.: 2008, Howeidy: 2001). This is a notion that has not completely dissipated, resurging in times of crisis and rupture. People who are mixed Egyptian or dual nationals also find themselves held to socio-cultural standards that are not always articulated, this lack of articulation having no effect on the need for conformity.

This paper will draw from research done in Cairo from 2007 - 2009 with self - identified 'halfies'. I elaborate upon their lived experiences and attempts to create comfortable or third spaces (Meredith: 1998) for themselves as part of understanding their own identities in this specific context. What emerges is a rigid boundary between being Egyptian and being foreign which is contingent upon intersectional factors such as gender and skin colour, stemming from the nation building process of the early 1900's (Baron: 2005). People were also accepted or rejected socially based upon the ability to perform 'Egyptianness', a complex category in itself. This paper will then close by touching upon how some of these attitudes have yet to change despite the Egyptian revolution of 2011.

Paper short abstract:

What role does claiming a specific racial identification play in the implementation process of Indigenous, African and Afro-Brazilian history and culture in Brazilian educational institutions? This paper explores a group of teachers' concepts of whiteness, becoming black and claiming indigeneity.

Paper long abstract:

As part of a wider body of affirmative action targeting racial inequality, Brazil introduced Law 10.639 in 2003, which obliges every school to teach African, Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous history and culture. Representatives of the Indigenous and Black movements see the reform as an important step towards the deconstruction of the 'racial democracy'-myth and the reparation of injustices caused by the country's colonial history, slavery and its branqueamento politics. Although the teaching of African, Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous culture and history is a legal obligation, it has been widely met with neglect, if not active resistance. What this paper aims to explore are teachers' motivations to implement the law and the role racial identification plays in this process.

My research took me to the impoverished metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro, Baixada Fluminense, where the majority of the population declares itself as "mixed race" (pardo) and "black" (preto). Students and teachers do not only have to manoeuvre through the complexity of race and class relations, but constantly face discrimination because of their place of residence.

What the supporters of the law's implementation have in common is their recognition of the existence of racial discrimination in Brazil and the prevalence of post-(neo-)colonial inequality, as opposed to the widespread narrative of meritocracy and mestiçagem. More often than not, their work goes beyond the will to comply with legislation, and is strongly connected to political activism and a personal process of assuming/claiming - and thus moving to - a certain racial/ethnic identity.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how problematized interfaith couples in Ceuta reproduce the dominant norms despite being exceptions, whilst their children who self-identify as 'mestizos', displace rigid ideas of homogeneity and blur the ethnoreligious boundaries produced by the local discourse of 'convivencia.'

Paper long abstract:

Despite repeated requests by the Moroccan government for Spain to transfer its sovereignty, Ceuta continues to fall under Spanish jurisdiction. As an enclave across the straits of Gibraltar, Ceuta is a zone of intense confrontation yet also of peaceful quotidian (co)existence. The city has a dense heterogeneous population composed among others of Christians, Muslims, and smaller numbers of Hindus and Jews. The Ceutan government propagates a heritization discourse of 'convivencia' which promotes and celebrates the diverse local ethno-religious groups living peacefully together, and their mixing. Today the concept permeates Ceuta's political, economic and social life; even used as a shorthand code to describe the environment which magically bridges the obvious socio-economic and spatial divides.

Whereas the ideal of convivencia is generally aspired to by Ceutans, marriages crossing ethnic and religious boundaries are in practice frowned upon. Drawing on the everyday experiences of interfaith couples and their children, this paper investigates the everyday experiences, expressions, contestations and creation of convivencia. Based on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, the paper explores how interfaith couples who transgress, defy, and complicate such socio-cultural, legal and political boundaries, are problematized. It then explores how such couples nevertheless reproduce the dominant norms regarding the problematization of such mixing, and this, despite being 'exceptions', whilst their children self-identifying as 'mestizos' further displace the rigid ideas of homogeneity. In so doing, this paper interrogates the notions of 'interfaith' and 'mixedness' and contributes to the broader ethnographic literature on convivencia and mixed intimate relationships and marriages.

Paper short abstract:

In recent years a discourse of suspicion of binational marriages has developed in France, alongside increasing control of marriage migration. This paper examines the role played by both discourse and procedures in reviving racialised boundaries, as well as their impact on intimate and family lives.

Paper long abstract:

The control of marriage migration has become increasingly restrictive since the early 2000s, including ever more onerous procedures for non-European Union spouses applying for residency. Binational couples involving spouses from Africa and Asia, in particular, are likely to be suspected of fraud and to be subjected to lengthy enquiries into the nature of their relationship. In the process, they are often forced to stage their relationship as being in accordance with ideals of romantic love not usually expected of other marriages. The public discourse on sham marriage which has developed in France and other EU nations in recent years is racialised in particular ways in France, and serves to legitimize these procedures. In reality, both discourse and practices of control are rooted in older, colonial fears of racial and class-based mixedness. But how do people themselves experience state attempts to racialise France's internal boundaries, and to push them deeper into their intimate lives? How does the control of binational marriage shape definition of mixedness, as well as ideas of what constitutes 'good' marriage and appropriate family practices?

In addressing these questions, this paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork with binational couples in France and in Senegal and with a civic association in France, as well as on a small number of interviews with French state agents.