Heteromasculinities: Sexual Experiences and Transition to Adulthood among Young Moroccan Men in Europe

Abstract

The aim of this article is to describe how masculinities among a group of young Moroccan men in Europe are produced by the hegemonic power of heteronormativity. This article is based on the findings of research involving a group of thirty-five Muslim migrant men in Italy and France. The aim of the research was to analyze the impact of heterosexual scenarios in shaping the experiences of these young men during their transition to adulthood abroad. First, this article will show how, during youth, different profiles of premarital masculinity are constructed in relation to the various heterosexual scripts described by these men. Our analysis illustrates how intercultural and intracultural dimensions define masculinities in social interactions by reproducing the hegemony of the heteronormative scenario. Then, we will show that the interviewees also give particular importance to the moment of marriage when they want to display an “adult masculinity” and to recover their “moral integrity” after premarital, illicit, and sexual experiences. By focusing on family relations and intra- and interethnic dynamics in the migrant milieu, we will reveal how these different dimensions play a decisive role in producing sexual scripts and consequently in gender identification. This will lead us to discuss the role of heteronormative hegemonic models of masculinity references in the accounts of the interviewees, showing how sexuality is a field where the cultural belongings of these young men are defined and redefined during their transition to adulthood in a foreign country.

Keywords

heteronormativity masculinities sexual scripts transition to adulthood young Muslim young migrants

In both France and Italy, qualitative sociological research has recently started to study constructions of masculinity in migrant groups. In Italy, even if migration studies have often focused on discussing the integration of second generations (Ambrosini and Molina 2004; Ambrosini 2011), to date there are relatively few studies on migrants which concentrate more specifically on gender issues (Abbatecola and Bimbi 2013). In contrast, in France, a country with a long colonial history, questions about masculinities regarding immigrant men have been more widely explored (Shepard 2008). Up to now, however, studies have concentrated on descendants of North African immigrants (Hamel 2002), focusing almost exclusively on marginalized and discriminated masculinities, often perceived as a potential threat to the majority population (Guénif-Souilamas 2013; Guénif-Souilamas and Macé 2004; Kebabza and Welzer-Lang 2003).

Sociological studies aiming to explore masculinities in migrant groups have struggled to be considered part of an independent field of research (Broughton 2008; Donaldson et al. 2009; Juntunen 2002). Only recently, migration studies—through adopting sociological approaches—have begun to analyze constructions of masculinities and intimate lives of migrants (Bustamante and Aléman 2007; Carrillo and Fontdevila 2014; Charsley and Wray 2015; Gallo and Scrinzi 2016).

In this article, we intend to reflect on the processes involved in the constructions of masculinity among young Moroccan migrants in Europe, specifically in France and Italy. The aim of this article is neither to reconstruct the entire migratory biographies of the interviewees nor to offer a comprehensive reading of the issue of Moroccan migration to France and Italy. The main interest of this study is to explore how, among a population of Moroccan migrant men, heteronormative models of masculinity shape and produce sexual experiences and gender identifications. The hegemonic power of heteronormativity will be analyzed in the light of the migrant condition of these young men, their Muslim identity,¹ and their transition to adulthood. We attempt to analyze the impact of different heteronormative models of masculinity by focusing on relationships before marriage. The phase of transition to adulthood before marriage is particularly interesting because, as we will see, the interviewees often are forced to deal with sexual experiences in a context which is forbidden by Islam (Bouhdiba 1975). Indeed, Nikah (marriage) is the only relational framework in which sexuality between men and women—inescapably framed in a heteronormative context (Mernissi 1975)—is allowed according to Islam.

This article will focus on the experiences of a group of young Moroccan men between twenty and thirty years old, who arrived in Europe during their adolescence—between fourteen and nineteen to twenty years old—and who left their native land mainly (but not exclusively) to study. Those who at the time of the interviews were university students and arrived alone in Europe at the age of nineteen to twenty can be defined in a situation of “mobility” rather than actual migration.² Their stay abroad is sometimes limited to the years of education, and the young men are not contemplating a subsequent prolongation of their experience abroad. The young interviewees who arrived in Europe with their families—especially before the age of majority—can be considered “elite” migrants in the sense that most of them came from urban centers in Morocco and arrived in Europe between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, after having completed their high school education in their home country. Sometimes they continued their education to university level with the help of their parents and, in some cases, even without having to get a part-time job. Young people who left Morocco—sometimes illegally—in order to seek a job in Europe, and who have not completed at least a high school education, were not included in the interview sample as we wanted to build a homogeneous study group both in France (the Alsace region) and in Italy (Tuscany). Indeed, Moroccans who arrive in Alsace between the age of twenty and thirty are almost exclusively university students coming from privileged social classes or young people with family connections who come to study and mostly originate from big cities in Morocco (Frey 2008). In Tuscany, this type of migrant is rarer as here Moroccan immigration is mainly related to looking for a job, and the areas of origin in Morocco are much poorer, frequently rural (Dossier Migranti Firenze 2014). Thus, comparing two different migrant groups—workers and students, in some cases illegal immigrants and legal immigrants, young people from big cities and from upper classes, and young people from rural areas and lower classes, most of whom are not literate—was likely to distort the balance of our analysis. Therefore, at the same time, as respecting the peculiarities of the two ethnographic contexts (Alsace and Tuscany), we decided to focus the study on a particular migrant profile: the educated young adult who arrived in Europe during his adolescence and who experienced his transition to adulthood in the foreign country.

After having stated our position in the sociological debate on the transition to adulthood, and having indicated our theoretical and methodological tools, this article will show how different forms of heteronormative masculinity shape sexual scripts (Gagnon and Simon 1973) detected in the accounts of these young people. Attention is primarily focused on the variable character attributed to the “role of the man” in relation to sexual partners in premarital heterosexual contexts. Our analysis will show how heteromasculinity is differently produced and reproduced in various social interactions. Then, we will explain how this hegemonic model of masculinity uses marriage to express itself in multiple ways. Finally, we will illustrate its decisive role for the young interviewees in coping with external and contradictory injunctions to (hetero)sexuality before—and after—getting married. Through these injunctions, we will show how the transition to adulthood is shaped by relationships with family members, with young Italian and French people, with other young Moroccan immigrants who live abroad, and also with the second generations of Moroccans in France and Italy.

Even if heteronormativity is often considered as a monolithic norm, this article rather tries to describe the multiple forms through which its hegemonic power expresses itself (Wittig 1992; Rich 1980; Katz 1995). All the issues that we will deal with in the text will lead us to think about heteronormative masculinity as a hegemonic profile which is, however, adopted and negotiated in various ways. Thus, the pattern of the heteronormative masculinity will reveal itself as a changeable norm, which relentlessly redefines its hegemonic role according to different social contexts and different social actors (Fidolini 2015b).

Thinking about the Transition to Adulthood through Analyzing Sexual Experiences

When defining the category of “age,” there is a risk of essentializing the study object (Calasanti 2010; Diasio 2012; King 2013). The dominant representation of the phase defined as “youth” is one in which physical and mental changes naturalize the social role of the individual. Youth is interpreted as an evolving phase, a transition to a new biographical condition, which “is not here yet” but which begins to draw itself in the contingency. A young man or woman is, by definition, “not yet” because his or her development toward adulthood has yet to be completed. He or she is an entity in the making, and often, because of that, it seems that he or she needs to be defended, protected, oriented, and accompanied. Defined by a vulnerable and unstable essence, the young person often becomes the target of social policy interventions which aim at preventing him or her becoming prey to deviant and dangerous behavior—from violence to alcohol and drug addictions, to abuse of the Internet, to name just a few of the recent issues of debate—which alleviate the moral panic of adults (Bozon 2012).

In our research, the profiles of the young people interviewed are even more complex. Not only are the young interviewees people “in the making,” they are also immigrants and members of a minority population. Along with the risk of essentializing the meaning of their age as vulnerable and unstable, there is also the question of their ethnicity which exposes the interviewees to a double biologization process. As students, graduates and regular workers, from the urban centers of Morocco, the interviewees often find it difficult to differentiate themselves—in the eyes of the members of the majority population, in Italy and France—from their compatriots who have migrated clandestinely from rural areas or those who are unemployed and illiterate. In some cases, they even struggle to be seen as different from immigrants of other nationalities (e.g., Sub-Saharan Africa). The age and the origin of these young Moroccans seem to become “socially manipulated and manipulable data” (Bourdieu 1984, 145) which define the position of these young people in the public space (ibid.). In this sense, “the classification by age (but also by gender or class) always ends up imposing limits and producing an order where everyone has to keep a fixed role” (Bourdieu 1984, 144).

Moreover, when sociology tries to question the categories of “young” and youth, it often focuses on the phase of transition from adolescence to adulthood (Corijin and Klijzing 2001). In order to define the young man (or the young woman), sociologists frequently use the notion of adulthood as a point of contrast, considering maturity as the ultimate result of the process of evolution and independence during youth. The transition to adulthood is then characterized by distinguishing between a private biographical trajectory (Rosenfeld 2008)—which foresees the abandonment by the young person of the parental home and the construction of his or her home—and a public biographical path—in which the young person enters the world of work by obtaining stable employment and economic independence from their parents (Cavalli and Galland 1996).

Sociological studies of youth often conclude that, for young adults, the path toward constructing an independent life depends primarily on successful entry into the labor market (Van de Velde 2015). In this framework, the prolongation of the period of transition to adulthood is interpreted as a direct consequence of the difficulties experienced by young in finding stable employment (Van de Velde 2008). We believe, however, that sociological studies on this period of transition should not be limited to the analysis of economic factors (Leccardi and Ruspini 2005), as many other aspects—linked, for example, with intimate life—may be at play in shaping transition to adulthood (Rosenfeld 2008). In our view, the sexual lives of young people and gender identification processes are of considerable importance. For instance, while the construction of an independent family life seems to depend on the possibility of finding stable employment, sexual experiences outside marriage are increasingly common, in a context of “experimentation” for which the creation of a stable couple is not necessary (Bajos and Bozon 2012). How can this condition redefine the transition to adulthood and influence gender identification processes?

Relying on the theory of sexual scripts developed by Gagnon and Simon (1973), we propose a study of the sexual experiences of these young Moroccan men as a thematic space which contributes to give meaning to their transition to adulthood and their gender identifications. Following the theory of sexual scripts, we will interpret different scenarios that lead (or in some cases do not lead) to a sexual act not only as a result of natural impulses and sexual attraction but also in terms of the social constructions that the protagonists of these scenarios develop in defining their sexual choices during youth (Gagnon 2009). By analyzing the individual reflexivity—“intrapsychic scripts”—of the protagonists of these sexual scenarios, their relationships with their partners—“interpersonal scripts”—values, and cultural norms that allow (or prevent) the experience of sexuality—“cultural scripts” (Simon and Gagnon 1986), we will see how the meanings attributed to sexual experience during youth play a central role in the definition of heteromasculinities. These meanings are not conferred to their sexual experiences by these young adults themselves, but they have been identified by the researcher. The sexual scripts perspective will defend a sociological approach to sexual conducts and will lead us to avoid defining the young adult Moroccan migrant men as a dependent, passive, and inert subject—who is perceived according to essentialized representations of his age, origins, and social condition. We will show how his transition to adulthood is resignified in personal meanings by underling the active role of the subject in the construction of his own sexual biography in the light of his migratory experience.

The Methodological Tools of the Research and the Ethnographic Approach

The analysis proposed in this article is based on the results of individual in-depth interviews with a group of thirty-five young men, between the ages of twenty-five and thirty, all of whom had arrived in Europe (alone or with their families) when they were between the ages of fifteen and twenty. Most of the interviews were preceded and accompanied by long-term ethnographic observations—in France (Alsace), Italy (Tuscany), and Morocco (Casablanca and Rabat, in particular)—between 2011 and 2015. This ethnographic approach made it possible for the interviewer to ask questions about delicate and intimate topics such as sexual experiences in the context of recorded formal interviews. The ethnographic observation consisted in following these young people during different moments of their everyday lives. The researcher spent as much time as possible with them both as a group and individually. We accompanied them at university or at home, in spaces of ordinary and festive sociability, at discos and sports venues, and during evenings at their university residences. The research also involved trips to Morocco during the summer holidays when most students go back home. The researcher’s aim was to build a strong relationship with these young men, so that he was perceived not as an outsider with a fleeting and intrusive presence but as a familiar member of the group, sometimes a friend.

Having been accepted by the young men as a nonthreatening presence, the second step involved arranging a moment for a recorded interview. The researcher hoped that the young men would talk “openly” during the interview about their sexual experiences, given that such topics had already been the subject of informal discussions “among friends.” This technique brought advantages and difficulties. It meant that in the interviews³ the researcher had the opportunity to deal with very different topics that emerged as significant during ethnographic observations—for example, the question of premarital sexuality. This approach allowed us to understand better how much of what the young men said in individual recorded interviews and during informal homosocial interactions⁴ had a different meaning according to the interlocutors and the interaction frames. The risk was that interviewees may not have been willing to talk about their “real” experiences because they feared that the non-Muslim Italian researcher would share their revelations with other young Moroccans of mutual acquaintance.

Anyhow, it was not possible to carry out the same ethnographic work with all the interviewees. The most valuable aspect of interviews not preceded (or accompanied) by ethnographic observations (ten in all) was that young respondents readily spoke about their intimate experiences, as they were less afraid of being judged by an interlocutor who was not a member of their peer group. The lack of constraints among friends sometimes allowed the researcher to ask more direct questions about sex. In these cases, the researcher was perceived as merely an interviewer collecting testimonies who would then disappear from the interviewee’s circle of acquaintances.

In any case, in all these situations, the researcher never faced any particular difficulties connected with shyness, embarrassment, or discomfort while discussing the topic of sexuality. We fully appreciate, however, that the greatest difficulty for a study which focuses on sexuality is the long-standing question: have the interviewees told the truth? As many researchers highlight (Giami and Schiltz 2004; Mossuz-Lavau 2005) at the heart of any study into sexual behavior, in which people relate their own biographies, what comes to light are often the meanings and representations of the sexual practices that are discussed rather than sexual acts stricto sensu. To put it differently, sexuality is often studied as it is told and represented by the interlocutors (Giami and Schiltz 2004). These representations and meanings are certainly important, as they reveal how people interpret sexuality as a social signification that not only shapes private choices and private conduct but also social interactions and self-presentation. Throughout this article, we will discuss how alleged normative accounts (Fidolini 2017), be they true or false, are very significant, and an important part of the study is our analysis of how interviewees describe and characterize dominant representations of sexuality and gender.

Sexual Scripts and the Mise-en-scène of the Man’s Role in Premarital Heterosexual Relationships

The interviewees’ constructions of hegemonic models of masculinity often changed according to the actors involved in the interactions described by the interviewees themselves. We observed that they made a clear distinction between their lives in Europe on the one hand and their lives in Morocco on the other hand. This apparently simplistic distinction allows the young men to define and differentiate the scenarios of their sexual experiences (Gagnon and Simon 1973) by drawing a hegemonic “premarital model” of masculinity.

Moussa is thirty years old. He is from Agadir and is an economics student at the University of Strasbourg. He grew up in a wealthy family (his father is a doctor, and his mother is an elementary school teacher). Moussa often speaks of a “cultural factor” which justifies, in his view, different sexual behavior with different women. For Moussa, this cultural factor hinges on the origin of his potential partner. According to him, there is a clear distinction between a relationship with a young Moroccan woman and a relationship with a young French woman, or, more generally, with a European woman. This distinction is based on an alleged “Muslim culture” in which religion dominates. Moussa says,

[…] Basically, it’s as if the French girls approach you in a very explicit way [he laughs]! You cannot stop yourself! While with a Moroccan girl it is different; it is different. The fact is that when you go out with a European girl, you know that her ways are different. Here there are different habits. You know exactly how it ends: you get to sleep with her! But with a Muslim girl it does not happen. It might be the case, but usually it is her who tells you to stop, especially if she is a virgin. There’s religion that stops you […], it’s as if you did not respect your past, your country, your education…

The virginity of young Muslim women is regarded as a cultural sign that young people reinvest as an emblem of their own identity and as a representation of a cultural honor to be safeguarded abroad (Mernissi 1975). The value of virginity, in fact, becomes a means of affirming masculinity in relation to the role of women, interpreted as a custodian of the masculine reputation (Mitchell 2002). Respect for what is considered a feminine virtue—sexual purity—is also representative of a larger set of values which these young people consider themselves affiliated to. Both in France and Italy, other young men, like Said (twenty-six years old, living in Strasbourg) or Mustapha (twenty-three, living in Florence)—both university students—go as far as to say: “I do not even touch the girls of my country abroad” or “I do it for a sort of sexual patriotism!”

The acceptance of different models of sexual conduct, connected with different potential partners in premarital life, allows the young men to express different constructions of masculinity which, nevertheless, all conform to a model of hegemonic patriarchal masculinity (Connell 2005) that is used to negotiate a dominant position in the gender hierarchy (Connell 1987). Thus, if with young Moroccan women, the expression of a hypersexualized profile of masculinity seems to be limited and refused; in other circumstances, this same profile becomes a tool to act out a predatory heteronormative masculinity (Ferrero Camoletto and Bertone 2009). Under these other circumstances rejecting the advances of a young woman may mean casting doubt on one’s own masculinity and heterosexuality, as such behavior would contradict the ideal profile of masculinity that these young men refer to and that their peers expect (Flood 2008). The account of Moussa, once again, is particularly interesting in this regard:

I met a girl [he speaks about an Irish student he met in a disco in Strasbourg], and, in short, it is not that I questioned myself as if I were in Morocco. If you are in a Muslim country you always worry a little about the girl, you know how it works in Morocco, you know it’s different […]. And then, there were all my Moroccan friends, can you imagine if I hadn’t done anything with that girl?! All my friends would have said: what kind of man are you?

In Moussa’s story, the night at the disco is a privileged scenario (Gagnon 2009) where he can act out a predatory masculinity. Such a profile seems to be expected by his friends and requires that Moussa executes it: the fact that his partner was not Moroccan is central for the construction of his sexual scenario and for the mise-en-scène of his masculinity. In another situation, with a Moroccan partner, according to a different sexual script, the previously described scenario would be impossible. Indeed, in the case of a Moroccan partner, Moussa’s heterosexual masculinity would not be threatened if he did not act in predatory way because his peers—and especially his Moroccan peers—would have different expectations about how he ought to behave. In this second scenario, Moussa’s heterosexual premarital masculinity is acted out in a different frame and although it still conforms to the same hegemonic model, which requires him to express his gendered role through respecting and protecting feminine virtue (Mitchell 2002):

With a Moroccan girl it is haram [illicit]! You cannot damage her virginity like this. She is a Muslim girl! My Moroccan friends do the same, it is a cultural matter! We always say: do not do to another girl what you do not want to be done to your sister.

The ideal premarital masculinity presented by the interviewee strengthens a gender relationship built on the hegemonic role of the man (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005) by depicting a double standard dialectic that defines a different access to sex for a man and a woman (Rubin 1975) before marriage. While for Muslim men, premarital sex is not questioned, for Muslim women, sexual activity seems to be intrusively controlled. Once again, interestingly, this dynamic seems to be dictated primarily by the homosocial control of peers (Flood 2008) rather by a different sexual dignity attributed to Moroccan and Muslim women. The interviewees also seem to have two distinct ideas of about potential partners: on the one hand, we find the image of an ideal woman who can become a wife and who is required to be (sexually) pure; on the other, there is the temporary sexual partner—who is often characterized as European—who is the protagonist of a transitional phase of life, like youth (Fidolini 2015a). The first young woman is symbolic of the endogamic cultural rule according to which the ideal wife is Moroccan and Muslim: a woman who embodies the imperative of sexual purity before marriage, whereas the second exists outside such considerations. Marriage, as we are going to see, becomes a discerning element which is able to classify the intimate experiences of these young people.

Masculinity Put to the Test of the Transition to Adulthood: Toward a “Moral Integrity” through Marriage

The young interviewees make a clear division between a biographical phase of experiences dedicated to “young experiences” and governed by “reversible choices” (Galland 2011) and another more mature phase during which “adult” responsibilities must be taken. Future expectations are placed on religiously sanctified marriage, the only framework capable of converting illicit sexuality (haram) into licit conduct (halal; Bouhdiba 1975). The sphere of marriage is the future context where the perfectibility of the present conduct is projected.

Thus, the transition to adulthood seems to define a double bind condition. On the one hand, these young people want to experience their masculinity through an active sexuality that does not wait for marriage, while, on the other, there is an acknowledgment that a supposed “mature” masculinity can only be expressed through the acceptance of responsibilities which are not related to temporary youthful sexual adventures. However, the moment when these young people leave their parents often does not correspond with the moment of marriage or with the achievement of a real economic independence. This desynchronization of the processes of transition to adulthood (Corijin and Klijzing 2001) leads to the construction of new sexual scenarios.

The testimony of Yassine, a twenty-six-year-old university student from Rabat who arrived in Pisa ten years ago with his parents, summarizes this condition. Yassine’s family is not very wealthy (his father is a laborer, his mother a housewife), and Yassine pays for his own studies by accepting different part-time jobs. He says:

I cannot live without having sex until marriage! We are men and we are like animals you know, we are hunters, at this age we have exploding hormones, how do you restrain yourself?! […] Maybe women can succeed more, but a man cannot make it. With my ex [Italian] girlfriend, at the beginning I said that I would wait because I wanted to, I wanted to do something serious, but then it is impossible. We do not have the means to build a family, so…

Yassine highlights two contradictions that characterize the transition to adulthood for these young people. First, there is the biologization of masculine sexual desire that is distinguished from women’s desire which is not considered of the same “nature” (Ferrero Camoletto and Bertone 2009). Second, marriage is viewed as the only way to stabilize the hegemonic masculine role and its natural inclination to display a predatory sexuality. The construction of masculinity is linked to the creation of a family through marriage, interpreted as a space in which the man becomes an adult who operates in a framework of legitimate heteronormative sexuality.

The lack of financial stability needed to get married is used by these young people as an excuse to overcome moral obstacles that would prevent premarital sex. Interviewees such as Yassine adapt Muslim norms to allow them to justify their young sexual experiences. The discursive rhetoric used in the collected accounts reveals an expression of guilt—which may or may not be authentic—which shows the importance that religious rules have in the definition of a hegemonic model of masculinity and (hetero)sexual scenarios for these young people. Houcine, a twenty-two-year-old from Tangiers, is a university student in Strasbourg who grew up in a wealthy family. He says,

You know you do not want to marry that girl, you know it is not a serious relationship. I just had good time with her, that’s it. At the beginning, you like it, you don’t say “no,” you just want to have fun, but it’s never a completely joyful experience […]. You are Muslim and you are a little bit disgusted after sex, I mean, it’s a sin…sometimes you come back home and you think “I made the same mistake once again,” and sometimes you are disgusted. Okay, not exactly disgusted. Disgusted is too much. But you know that you have made the same sin again and every time it’s always the same story: “I shouldn’t have done that, I shouldn’t have.”

Marriage seems to offer the possibility of recovering a moral integrity that has been damaged and “stained” by premarital sexual experiences. Kamal, twenty-three, a university student in Florence, from Kenitra, who grew up in a family of immigrant workers in Italy, says:

It is an argument that everyone always faces at some point: “God will always forgive you.” Basically, it’s about appealing to the mercy of God. I know it is quite hypocritical, but it is so, in the sense that you made a mistake because you did something that is forbidden […]. I know that when I get married everything will change. I will recover from any mistakes I made, as if it was a new beginning. When I get married, I will become a correct Muslim for sure, as it should be. It will be nothing like now.

These young Moroccans often seem to outline a kind of masculinity which is strongly dependent on the expectations of other people (especially parents and friends). Tarek, aged twenty-eight, a university student studying physiotherapy, originally from Fez, arrived in Florence when he was sixteen years old with his parents who are both employed in a cleaning company. He has been living with his Italian partner for three years, without being married. Both he and his girlfriend have part-time jobs allowing them to be financially independent from their families. However, Tarek does not hide his embarrassment about living with a woman who is not his wife, stressing that the problem stems from the disapproval of his parents:

Now it is a little bit better, but at the beginning it was impossible with my parents. They did not accept our relationship. They are from a different generation, I understand them. Every time when I go to my parents’ house to eat, they always ask the same question: “when will you get married?” They have no problem with her, just to be clear, they are friendly, now they see her as a family member. But they want us to get married! […] It’s clear, isn’t it?! Cohabitating means being a couple in every way, and they are bothered by this thing. […] You feel tiny, like a child […], but if I think about the other young people of my age, I am a man compared to them!

Tarek feels that he needs to be married for his adult status to be considered legitimate in the eyes of his parents. This lack of recognition of his adulthood complicates the affirmation of his role as an adult man. It is clear that Tarek’s definition of what being a “man” entails is in conflict with the expectations of the members of his family. Tarek’s situation is representative of the conflicting meanings of marriage for different generations:

My uncle always says to me: “What are you going to do? Won’t you get married? Don’t you see that you are the only one in the family? What are you waiting for? You cannot be a young man all your life. You have to begin to be a man. Your parents are looking forward to that, you know?” He has told me this a 100 times…

The account of Belkachem—who is twenty-six years old and who grew up in a family of farmers and arrived in France (Strasbourg) from Casablanca—offers the description of an interesting situation which shows once again how the control of family members can seem oppressive to the young men. He explains that for his family the fact that he lives alone is not enough for them to consider him a “true” adult. The construction of his masculinity through sexual experiences must come to terms with the traps of a prolonged transition to adulthood. “At your home, with your wife, you are more empowered, you know what I mean? It’s not like that now, that you’re still young,” says Belkachem. Once again, his words describe a clear distinction between two different stages of life, youth and adulthood, which are characterized by the different meanings assigned to sexual experiences: “I do not have a house of my own, I do not have a steady job, how could I have a family now? So, I might as well take advantage of it, right?” In fact, Belkachem had started working just six months before his interview—after he obtained his degree in communication sciences—and, when we met him, he lived in a comfortable apartment, owned by his family. Belkachem obviously benefits from the setup, as his salary would certainly not cover the rent for such a good-quality apartment, but he remains dependent on his family (especially his sister, the owner of the house) just like when he was an adolescent. His situation seems to directly influence the nature of his sexual experiences:

For example: if I meet a girl for a one-night-stand, I never take her to my house. Sometimes my sister stops by to tidy up, and I can’t take the risk of being seen at home with a girl […]. My sister knows that I have girls, that I have my life, but it is one thing is if she knows it without seeing, and another if she witnesses it with her own eyes […]. It bothers me a little, I can’t say I feel totally free […].

During our ethnographic observations, we noted on two different evenings spent at Belkachem’s home with other Moroccan friends that his sister is very frequently present. Belkachem’s sister is about ten years older than he is and is married to a Moroccan man. Belkachem says that she often “checks up” on him, like she did when they were children in Morocco. According to Belkachem’s interpretation of the situation, she often comes to the house without notice in order to look for something or to do some cleaning, pretexts that Belkachem defines as “excuses” to disguise her real objective of keeping an eye on him. The fact that the apartment where this young man lives is owned by his family, makes Belkachem feel that his private space is open to invasion and his masculinity is subordinate to his sister’s control. He feels that his sister does not perceive him as autonomous and independent and that the degree of freedom he has in his private life is limited:

I mean…she’s my sister. I can’t tell her: “Listen, it would be better if you didn’t come here anymore, you know there are some girls, I want to be left alone without having to think that you might appear at some point.” I just can’t!

Relationships with the opposite sex must necessarily are framed by the inconsistencies of a prolonged transition to adulthood, a phase that is characterized by contradictions. While this phase offers these young people the opportunity to experiment with sex before marriage, it also delays the acquisition of the attributes considered necessary to legitimize their adult masculinity, a masculinity that conforms to a conventional patriarchal model that considers the adult man to be in control of his own private domestic space and sexual relations within that space.

Nevertheless, this categorization of different sexual scenarios is significant not only in terms of the young men’s status within their family. As we have already seen, it also plays a role in defining their relationship with peers, especially with fellow immigrants abroad, with young Moroccan descendants of immigrants in Europe as well as with Italian or French men and women. The next pages will allow us to understand how sexual experience and gender identification processes are significant social spheres where, in the host country, migrant identities and relations between majority and immigrant populations are negotiated.

Masculinities, Experiences of Sexuality, and Inter/Intraethnic Relations

During our study, we observed that the interviewees constructed a “biologized masculinity” (Ferrero Camoletto and Bertone 2009) in which the man’s profile was reduced to the action of a mandatory (hetero)sexual role. The interviewees describe a man’s instinctive and irrepressible heterosexual desire as a “natural” feature of their masculinity. This virile and predatory definition of masculinity is a strong normative model for the interviewees.

Nevertheless, during our observations, we often had the impression that we were witnessing episodes where the interviewees staged heterosexual behavior in a strategic manner to respond to the supposed expectations of others—especially peers, including the researcher, a young man. The homosocial space was a privileged scene to play out their heterosexual masculinity. However, in the accounts of our interviewees, the heteronormative profile was not only mobilized as a reference model to describe their own (hetero)sexual experiences. It was also used to define risks (Anderson and McCormack 2015) that this model could bring in relationships with various sexual partners and in the arena of gender identification processes (Charsley and Liversage 2015). The interviewees, at times, assumed a “defensive” position to avoid potentially problematic situations resulting from sex. This attitude reveals interesting differences in their relations with other young Moroccan immigrants abroad, with young second-generation Moroccan immigrants and with young men and women belonging to the majority Italian and French populations.

Twenty-four-year old Ahmed, from Casablanca, who was living in Strasbourg in 2012, talks about these intra- and interethnic relationships that are, in his narrative, closely connected to and defined by the processes involved in the transition to adulthood:

I avoid Moroccan girls born of immigrant parents. The problem is that Moroccan girls [descendants of immigrants] have their families behind who block them. So when they are out they behave in one way and when they return home, with their parents, they act differently […]. At home, they have parents that tell them what to do and what not to. Then as soon as they come out with their French friends they are told “Why don’t you have a boyfriend like we do?.” Then they end up behaving like the European girls, sometimes even worse than European girls […]. And why is that? Because that’s what often happens: since they want to get rid of parental control, they go to bed with a boy, lose their virginity, and then the guy is asked to stay with them because otherwise it would be a scandal sleeping with someone who won’t be your husband. So the guy finds himself in trouble, and if he tries to escape, then the father or the brothers of the girl will solve the question…You know what I mean. With French girls there aren’t such problems, neither with the girls who come from Morocco. This problem is with Moroccan girls who were born in Europe: that’s why I avoid them. (Ahmed, twenty-four years old, from Casablanca)

This account is representative of a dominant point of view held by many of the interviewees concerning the conduct of young women who are descendants of Moroccan immigrants. Ahmed’s narrative was fairly typical of the interviewees in France. In Italy, however, the presence and status of second-generation immigrants has up to now been less influential. Because of France’s colonial past and migratory history, migrants from Morocco began arriving in significant numbers during the 1960s (Frey 2008). Thus, second generations of immigrants from North African countries are dominant players in France’s migrant milieu which is not the case in Italy where significant numbers of immigrants from Morocco did not arrive until the 1980s and 1890s (Dossier Migranti Firenze 2014). Nevertheless, as we are going to see, we observed that, although framed in different terms, in Italy too, this representation of a particular group of Moroccan women as unsuitable partners for the virile and predatory young man recurred in the interviewees’ narratives.

Ahmed’s narrative conveys his belief that, in contrast to French women and first-generation immigrant Moroccan women, the daughters of Moroccan immigrants who were brought up in France have developed a sort of “double role” in that they adopt different modes of behavior according to whether they are with their families or outside the home with their friends. According to Ahmed, these young women behave as if they are available for sex outside marriage when they are with European friends away from parental control but do not display the same availability when they are under surveillance at home. Brahim is another young immigrant, but this time living in Italy. He is thirty years old, from Kenitra, and he arrived in Tuscany with his parents when he was fourteen years old—his father is a manual worker and his mother a housewife. His narrative illustrates that the representation of a particular group of women playing such a double role is common also in the accounts of Moroccan immigrants in Italy. Here, however, the Moroccan women deemed unsuitable partners for premarital sex are those who arrived in Europe during their childhood (between the ages of two and six, a sort of an Italian version of the French second generations). The fear of being trapped by these women that is expressed by Brahim was common to many of the young interviewees in Tuscany. According to Brahim, the women are to be feared because they are capable of juggling the Moroccan and the European cultures. For Brahim, these women are able to take advantage of the young man’s masculinity and his “insatiable sexual desire.” As we are going to see, the predatory profile of masculinity is thus represented as vulnerable and open to exploitation.

Brahim told us that for young Moroccan women who have grown up in Europe, especially when they are still virgin, sexual intercourse with a Moroccan immigrant is often seen as a part of a strategy for escaping parental control. He explained that in forming a relationship with a man who, as a Moroccan and in most cases as a Muslim, is likely to be accepted by the women’s relatives, the women manage to engineer a means of freeing themselves from their families. According to the interviewees—both in France and in Italy—the Moroccan immigrant is a “desirable” partner (Green 2014, 27) for young women not only because he represents a means of liberation from parental control but also because he allows them to maintain a link with their culture of origin.

Thus, as stated by Ahmed and Brahim, the sexual choices of these young women are dictated by their need to find a partner who, on the one hand, will have the approval of their relatives and, on the other, will allow them to break free from parental control. On the contrary—always according to the narratives of our interviewees—a marriage with a descendant of immigrants (or with a Moroccan man who arrived in Europe when he was a child in the case of Italy) would not be seen by these young women as a solution which allows social mobility. Only the Moroccan immigrant is interpreted as emancipated from his origin family, a bearer of economic opportunities, capable of finding a job abroad, and a well-educated partner who can offer a wife financial stability. Instead, descendants of immigrants are often seen as part of a young population still entangled in a net of unemployment, discrimination, and social marginalization (Guénif-Souilamas and Macé 2004). In a certain way, the young immigrant is represented as “more adult” than his peers, more autonomous and independent, able to offer a better quality of life to his partner.

Of course, we do not know whether the strategies described by the young men represent the real sexual conduct of these young Moroccan women in France and Italy. Indeed, we do not even know whether the situations mentioned by the interviewees describe situations they have really experienced (Fidolini 2017). In fact, proving whether they are telling the truth is impossible, and it would also be rather besides the point. What is interesting is how their rhetoric constructs particular representations of heteronormative masculinities in the migrant milieu. Brahim’s interview is particularly telling in this respect, as it clearly illustrates the dialectic of this defensive masculinity—a masculinity that must protect itself from its own undeniable virility and from its own (displayed) predatory nature. Brahim says:

Italian girls are more serious than Moroccan girls, especially Moroccan girls who arrived here when they were babies. I talked with this kind of girl about virginity […], I asked her [the daughter of immigrants] if she would have sex before marriage, and I realized what kind of girl I had in front of me […]. I mean, to her it doesn’t matter if it’s you or another guy. For her it is important to get rid of her parents and if you go to bed with a girl like this, then she will trap you because then she goes home and tells her parents that you obliged her to have sex. So then, her parents believe what she says and it is a mess […]. Do you know how many guys fall for it? An Italian man doesn’t know how these things work […]. She wants a Moroccan boy, so her parents are happy and accept the marriage. But these girls look for a man with a steady job, not a loser, because before leaving their parents they choose! They don’t want a beggar for sure! […] They take advantage of you, that’s why I told you: never with this kind of girl, never! An Italian girl does not create such problems, because she is less demanding, nothing is hidden.

Brahim’s (hetero)sexually active and predatory masculinity becomes a kind of burden, a kind of torment because it is associated with risks from which the interviewee needs to protect himself. Brahim’s defense strategy involves categorizing young women into three distinct groups. First, there are the young European women, who have nothing to hide and whose sexual desire is simple to interpret. Second, the young Moroccan women who were born in Morocco and arrived in Europe during adolescence or later and who therefore were not exposed to two different socializations during childhood. Third, the Moroccan women who arrived in Europe as children. It is the perceived duplicity of the women in this third group that provokes the activation of a defensive strategy. It is a widely held belief among the young men that these women choose Moroccan immigrants as sexual partners because they see them as a means of achieving upward social mobility because their status can be exploited (Green 2014). In this interpretation, the women’s choices are not governed merely by sexual attraction but, rather, are a form of a particular sexual-economic exchange (Tabet 2004). The choice of these women is governed by considerations beyond the sexual act, which center on the social status of potential partners. According to the interviewees, the immigrant man, as a potential husband, offers these women the chance to improve their condition, an assertion that confirms the power of men in the marriage market (Illouz 2012). In Muslim communities, this power is reinforced by the fact that Muslim women cannot marry non-Muslims and so must choose their partner among Muslim men (Mernissi 1975).

From the point of view of the interviewees, this sexual-economic exchange (Tabet 2004) is based on duplicity in that the women are described as using sex to take advantage of the man’s social capital while hiding their real objective. Moroccan women are believed to be less interested in erotic pleasure or a temporary partner because—according to the interviewees—they are looking for a man with whom they can build a marital relationship. The interviewees portray themselves as the potential victims of an unequal exchange. The women would like to “imprison” their predatory masculinity—as Brahim says—within the context of marriage, which for the women represents liberation from parental control. The young Moroccan man who is looking for sexual intercourse without long-term commitment risks being coerced into marriage as the victim of the young Moroccan woman’s strategy to become a wife and gain independence from her parents.

What is interesting in the interviewees accounts are their descriptions of different groups within minority populations, illustrated, for example, by the distinction made by the young men between Moroccans who arrived in Europe as adolescents or young adults and the descendants of immigrants. It would seem that when choosing a sexual partner, the daughters of Moroccan immigrants prefer young Moroccan immigrants to their own masculine counterparts because they see the immigrant as socially elevated. In a certain way, common notions about the low status of immigrants are overturned because, instead of being a target of discrimination, the Moroccan immigrant tries to assume a position of advantage and desirability. In the eyes of the men, in this scenario, their Moroccan origin is no longer a disadvantage as it is often seen in France or Italy (Hamel 2002), but rather it makes them desirable to the Moroccan women who have grown up in Europe. The expression of their masculinity becomes a sort of arm against racism and a means of overturning stigma (Goffman 1963). Indeed, Moroccan immigrants do not define themselves as “beggars,” as they designate the descendants of immigrants. The immigrant masculinity becomes the hegemonic one in their view. Ahmed and Brahim assign themselves a privileged position in the hierarchy of Moroccan men abroad and view other masculinities as occupying a subordinate and marginalized rank (Connell 2005; Hopkins 2006). What is more, in this context, this essentialized immigrant “Moroccan” heteromasculinity also subordinates Italian and French men. Indeed, according to the interviewees, the virile and predatory masculinity of the Moroccan immigrants is placed in a privileged position because it seems to be aware of the risks to which it is exposed when facing young Moroccan women who grew up in Europe. As stated by the interviewees, these risks often remain indecipherable for Italian and French young men because they would not know the hidden objectives behind the sexual choices of these women (“I know these traps. I grew up in Morocco,” says Brahim to the interviewer). Thus, for these young Moroccan men, the process of essentialization and culturalization of their Moroccan origins becomes an important part of the expression of their heteromasculinity, as it is used to position themselves in a privileged place in the masculine hierarchy.

Concluding Observations

This research attempted to analyze heteronormativity as a polymorphous norm and a flexible practice. From a constructionist perspective, the ways through which heteronormativity expresses its hegemonic power by producing heteromasculinities led us to think about these masculinities as nonstatic gender identifications. They can rather be defined as the result of “socially constructed relationships which are produced and reproduced through people’s actions” (Gerson and Peiss 1985, 327). Our analysis shows that, in the chessboard of constructions of masculinity among these Moroccan men, heteronormativity is a hegemonic reference whose power is however produced, reproduced, and resignified by different actors in multiple ways according social scenarios and relationships (Beasley, Brook, and Holmes 2012). So, a heteromasculinity, which is hegemonic in the homosocial peer context or in the couple relationship dimension, can then become subordinate to the control of a member of the family (as in the case of Moussa’s sister) or finds itself fighting to avoid marginalization when confronted with the masculinities of other immigrants or the masculinities of the majority population (as Ahmed and Brahim’s accounts reveal). Other people’s opinions and actions create expectations through which the interviewees make sense of their conduct and their gender identifications.

In particular, the article shows that heteromasculinities are firstly produced by the ways through which the interviewees and their interlocutors interpret the role of the man in different social situations, where masculine bodies—and their performances—reveal gender identification processes (Anderson and McCormack 2015) within sexual scripts. As Connell (2000, 12) writes,

Men’s bodies are addressed, defined and disciplined, and given outlet and pleasures, by the gendered order of society. Masculinities are neither programmed in our genes, nor fixed by social structure, prior to social interaction. They come into existence as people act. They are actively produced, using the resources and strategies available in a give social setting..

Sometimes these masculine bodies and their sexual scripts spoke about a sort of “hormonal young masculinity” where heterosexual activity is biologized by the interviewees as a natural feature of a predatory profile especially to produce homosocial complicities (Flood 2008). This profile was interpreted by the interviewees as typical of the youth: it then produced the identification of these young men with a reference age-group.

In other cases, these masculine bodies displayed themselves as “disciplined,” when these young men showed a “conjugal” and an “adult” sexuality, less impulsive and more thoughtful. This attitude is capable of taking on the responsibilities of a wiser age—which is identified through the abandonment by the young person of the parental home, the construction of a personal economic stability, and through heterosexual marriage. In this case, a responsible, independent, conjugal, and patriarchal masculinity allowed these young men to embody a hegemonic profile whether compared with that of those peers who—though having the same age—were considered as “still young” because they were not married, so not yet independent from their parents.

And, finally, these masculine bodies and their sexual experiences were sometimes “culturalized” by the young men themselves in order to make their belongings—the fact of being a Moroccan or a Muslim abroad, for example—a sort of rhetorical support to differentiate their condition of immigrants from the profile of other Moroccan men in Europe or from the members of the majority population. This process also led these young men to negotiate a sort of cultural authenticity by legitimizing their heteronormative gender identifications, their (hetero)sexual conduct, and their chosen partners in the migrant milieu.

In conclusion, it is important not to overlook this cultural rhetoric used by these young people in their testimonies (Fidolini 2017), a rhetoric which includes, for example, their representation of Muslim women as custodians of family honor. We must not fall into the trap of failing to challenge culturalist representations of a supposed Moroccan or Mediterranean masculinity (Ouzgane 2006)—such as that outlined in Anglo-Saxon anthropological studies of the 1960s and 1970s, by authors such as Peristiany (1965) or Pitt-Rivers (1977)—which envisage a monolithic culture with a strong dependence on tradition (Piña-Cabral 1989). However, having said this, the cultural normativity that characterizes the accounts of the young interviewees is an important finding. First, it reveals the multiple faces of heterosexual power and its changing features, which contrasts its representation as a rigid and monolithic order (Beasley, Brook, and Holmes 2012). Second, we do not find a rejection of Islam or of patriarchal hegemony. What is important to underline is that for these young men, Muslim culture and associated heteronormative and patriarchal models of masculinity are necessarily flexible to allow the expression of their masculinity in different social circumstances. We observe an appropriation of two cultural horizons (the culture of their native country and the culture of the migrant milieu). In this context, Islamic norms become rhetorical references rather than categorical imperatives (Gross 2005). For example, normative references to Islamic interdicts that forbid sex before marriage do not prevent the men having sex before they are married. The dominant models of masculinity staged by these young men often remain anchored to the patriarchal hegemonic profile, in which the heteronormative order seems the only possible arena for a man to express his masculinity (Connell 2000). The young interviewees emphasize the active and conquering nature of their sexuality (Benslama and Tazi 2004), considering it a distinctive element of a man’s youth and, thus, biologize what they see as their “naturally” disruptive and uncontrollable masculinity.

Again, we underline that the accounts collected during our research still remain oral accounts. Indeed, the gap between what is told and what is experienced by these young men could be very large. Incontrovertible proof is impossible. However, as Allen (2005, 53) maintains, the possibility that subjects are not telling “the truth” about their sexual experiences is not necessarily an obstacle to good data collection, since all sexual stories can reveal individual hegemonic representations of sexuality. The social meanings of masculinity are built as much by talking about sex as by actually having sex (Devereux 1967). It is through discourse that gender configurations are reproduced, and social and cultural identities are reaffirmed. The appropriated use of normative references about gender identification processes, sexual behavior, and religious norms frames the scenarios the young men use to describe the heterosexual scenarios present in their narratives. The complexity and the variability of their heteromasculinities are revealed, and their transition to adulthood is seen in the light of their migratory status through which the social and private profiles of these young adults are shaped.

Footnotes

Acknowledgment

The author thanks Tammy Corkish for her insightful comments and critics. Thanks are due to the referees for positive and constructive feedback.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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