Paper short abstract:

Departing from young professionals’ personal accounts of living in cohabitation in Tunis, this paper explores how some Tunisian youth, through this transgressive daily practice, challenge and transform intimate relationships and related discourses on an intrapersonal, couple, family and state level.

Paper long abstract:

Most Tunisians do not get married until their early thirties, nevertheless premarital sexual relationships remain largely unaccepted, especially for women. Although the 2011 uprising opened up some space to challenge (sexual) taboos, youngsters generally feel pressured to conform to social and familial expectations. Despite cultural, religious, and legal censorship of premarital intimate relations, and its possible negative consequences, some youth in Tunis opt for cohabitation

Cohabitation is one way in which students and young professionals renegotiate legitimate norms of behaviour to create the literal and figurative space to balance their personal desires with social and familial expectations and live according to their own normality. This way of dealing with the possibilities and constraints regarding intimacy and marriage strongly challenges state authorities and generational hierarchies. Cohabiters therefore point to the transformative potential of cohabitation on themselves, their relationship, the marriage institute, and on society as a whole.

This paper shows how for some youth in Tunis, cohabitation is both a way to deal with voluntary/involuntary waithood and a means to shape and express themselves as autonomous independent men and women. It offers a deep ethnographic exploration of how cohabitation, as a daily practice, (potentially) transforms relationships on an intrapersonal, couple, family, and state level.

Anthropological research often focuses on highly committed Muslims and their concerns with piety, or on secular Muslims who use Islamic institutions instrumentally. By focusing on a non-religiously motivated relationship practice in a Muslim majority country, this paper offers a more nuanced perspective on morality, religion, and secularity.