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The Contexts of Transnational Divorce

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Divorce in Transnational Families

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Abstract

To understand and explain the stories of spouses on handling law in marriage and divorce, it is necessary to look at the societal and historical contexts in which their marriages and divorces took place. I divide these contexts into the dimensions of place, time and distance, arguing that these dimensions can, at least partly, explain the differences between the stories of spouses on handling law in marriage and divorce. This chapter will provide the information necessary for understanding these contexts.

Earlier versions of a few sections of this chapter have been published in Sportel (2013).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    World Tourism Organization UNWTO. This number declined after January 2011, when former president Mubarak was put out of office and the country went through a period of turmoil and violence. However, most of the fieldwork for this book was done just before the regime change.

  2. 2.

    Stevens, Noor, and Tardio, Natasza (2011). Kus Kus Bezness. Een Nederlandse vrouw gevangen in het web van een Egyptische liefdesfraudeur. Amsterdam: De Boekerij.

  3. 3.

    They did all not use the term Bezness, however. Noor Stevens’ book had not yet been published when I did my Egyptian fieldwork.

  4. 4.

    World Travel and Tourism Council 2015, p. 5.

  5. 5.

    In early 2015, there were 380,755 persons of Moroccan descent living in the Netherlands. Of this group, 212,304 are so-called second-generation migrants, the majority of whom have two parents who were born abroad (CBS Statline, accessed in March 2016). In 2015, the Netherlands had a total population of 16,900,726 with 22,700 people of Egyptian origin living in the Netherlands in 2012. 12,776 were born in Egypt (first-generation migrants), 4783 have two parents who were born abroad and 5141 are children of one Egyptian parent and one Dutch parent (CBS Statline). Around two-thirds of Egyptians living in the Netherlands are Muslims, and one-third Coptic Christians. It is estimated that around 10 % of people living in Egypt are Christians (Zuijdgeest 2005: p. 15), meaning Coptic Christians are overrepresented in the Netherlands.

  6. 6.

    Based on commission documents, obtained from one of the former members.

  7. 7.

    CBS statline, accessed through www.cbs.nl in March 2016, percentages calculated by author.

  8. 8.

    Altena describes how already in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, marriages between Dutch men and native women in Dutch colonies were acceptable while such inter-ethnic marriages of Dutch women were out of the question, as they were supposed to marry within their own group (Altena 2008: p. 123).

  9. 9.

    I will return to the role of the social environment in Chapter 8.

  10. 10.

    Website Dutch embassy: http://egypt.nlembassy.org/shared/products-and-services/products-and-services/getting-married/getting-married.html?q=married&selectedLocalDoc=getting-married-in-egypt, accessed March 2016.

  11. 11.

    Kamerstukken 2012–2013, 32 840, nr. 8 (amendment Arib-Hilkens).

  12. 12.

    However, it must be noted that the Moroccan spouses from migration marriages are overrepresented in the research group, so my information on Dutch-Moroccan perspectives is limited to a few cases.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lichtenberg-Kolleg Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Göttingen, Geismar Landstraße, Göttingen, Germany

    Iris Sportel

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Sportel, I. (2016). The Contexts of Transnational Divorce. In: Divorce in Transnational Families. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-34009-8_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-34009-8_2

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