The negotiation of religious difference in Euro-Senegalese families

Bibliographic Data

ID7987487
AuthorsHélène Neveu Kringelbach (0000-0001-7958-0754, University College London, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume45
Issue4
Pages501-516
Publication date2025-11-22
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCritique of Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0308-275X • E-ISSN: 1460-3721
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0308275x251388543
OpenAlexW4416535876
LanguageEN
References cited18

In the Senegambian region, the history of intimate relationships and marriage with Europeans goes back several centuries. As a result, people have developed tactics to mediate religious difference. Binational marriage between Senegalese and European spouses is increasingly common in both gender configurations, but such unions are also spaces where religious difference is the object of both conflict and accommodation. Many unions involve crossing religious boundaries and may include conversion to Islam for one of the spouses, as well as the education of Muslim children. Drawing on fieldwork in Senegal, France and the UK over more than 10 years, I show Euro-Senegalese families as spaces for the encounter and negotiation of religious difference. I analyse the role of concealment in avoiding conflict and the work of time in turning foreigners into kin against a background characterised by the legacy of colonial intimacies and the stigmatization of Muslims in contemporary Europe

Colonialism · Islam · Kinship · Negotiation · Object (grammar · Work (physics · African Studies and Ethnography · African Studies and Geopolitics · Anthropological Studies and Insights

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access