Understanding Gender and Diversity in Europe: Experiences of Migrant Single Mothers in Denmark

This book is a socio-legal interdisciplinary study on gender and diversity in multicultural societies of Europe. It uses secondary data to discuss the broad experiences of migrant single mothers/women in Europe. Second, it includes narratives of experiences across the life course of single Danish-Pakistani women, starting from their pre-migration background to their elderly lives. The author uses an analytical framework used of relational collectivism and individualism, the former referring to the understanding of oneself as connected and interdependent to the family, and the latter referring to values of independence, personal interest and achievements. She uses the term ＂mélange familism＂ to explain a new family type that combines both relational-collectivist and individualist elements. A major part of this work is its deliberation of mélange familism and processes of social and legal practices in the everyday lives of single mothers. Crucially, the book demonstrates that social and legal traditions are not static, but are a product of improvisation. It makes a significant contribution by providing an alternate picture of single women/mothers as against the stereotypical image of ’passive, subordinate Muslim women’. It also contributes to gender and family studies by showing the increasing establishment of single-mother-headed households as a source of new possibilities; a new type or form of family construction, and not just the tragic residue of a broken two-parent family.

Rubya Mehdi is an emerita of the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen. She is interested in intersections between law and sociology, like pluralism and informal justice; values and norms in relational collectivist societies; gender issues; critique of radical Islam; women movements, and individualization of Muslim legal traditions in the everyday lives of migrants. She has research experience and has worked in Pakistan, Denmark and the UK. In 2010, she started a journal renamed Navein Reet: Nordic Journal of Law and Social Research, in which she published a special issue on ’Law and Run-away Women’. Among the books she has published are: Law and Religion in Multicultural Societies (co-ed., 2008, Djøf Forlag); The Islamization of Law in Pakistan (Routledge, 2015). Besides, she has contributed chapters to several books and to peer-reviewed international journals.