This book seeks to provide a deeper understanding of Muslim migrant fathers’ experiences of home-school cooperation in Danish schools by identifying and contradicting a phenomenon of “mistrusted masculinity.” This term refers to a negative stereotype of Muslim migrant men that figures in political and media rhetoric where they are portrayed as controlling and patriarchal. Throughout the ethnography, migrant fathers confront this stereotype and express how they must navigate around this negative image in their struggle to be acknowledged as good fathers by their children’s schools. Jørgensen uses Geertzian “thick description” of micro-interaction between fathers and Danish teachers to explore the complex interplay of often-untested assumptions, misunderstandings, and untoward effects.
Author(s): Anne Hovgaard Jørgensen
Series: Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 265
City: Cham
Acknowledgement
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction
A Dangerous Man
Where They Came From?
The New Role of the Father
A “Race-Blind Ideology”
Parenting in the Welfare State
Contesting Home-School Cooperation
Theoretical Underpinnings
Methodology
Gendered Potentialities
Anonymity
Structure of this Book
References
Chapter 2: Social Alertness
Concerned About Inclusion
An Intersubjective Tension
Tabooing “Foreignness” and Ideals on Diversity
“The Black” and “the White” Class
Constructing the “Bilingual”
Tabooed Divisions
The Language Test
The “Language Logic”
Becoming Redundant
Pushing the Lines of Becoming
Conclusion
References
Chapter 3: Fathers and School
A Gendered Space
The Mother Myth
The Awkward Spaces of Fathering
A Gendered Contact Lists
Fathers Becoming Redundant
“Come, We Also Need You”
“Gender Givens” and Different Horizons of Experience
Conclusion
References
Chapter 4: Struggling Along
Expanding “the Flexible”
Parents Becoming Dependent
Logics of the “Technological-Turn” Within Home-School Cooperation
Struggling Along
Ontological Uncertainty
The Well-Being Group—And the Good Supporting Parents
Becoming Absent
Conclusion
References
Chapter 5: The Constraining Jobs
Constraining Jobs and Everyday Rhythms
Absence on the Parent Intranet
Providing Mobility
A Precarious, Invisible Job Market
Divorce as Reinforcing Absence
Becoming Mystified
Invisible Fatherhoods
Conclusion
References
Chapter 6: Construction of the “Dangerous Man”
The Political Subjectivity
Representations of the “Foreign, Muslim Masculinity”
A Negative Controlling Image of the Oppressing Patriarch
Absence in the Integration-Strategies
“A Patriarchal Belt”?
Moving Between Scales
Conclusion
References
Chapter 7: Mistrusted Masculinity
Mistrust as a Way of “Being-in-the-World”
Community of Experience
Uncanny Suspicions
I am a Good Man—I am a Gardener!
Corporal Punishment
Coercive Concerns and Ideals on “Seizing Freedom”
Normativity and the Appropriate Youth
“It’s Best for Our Children to Know Where We Come From”
Being a War Refugee
The Rule of the Game
Conclusion
References
Chapter 8: Concerned Fatherhood
Concerned Fathers
The Solution Is Within
An Assemble Role as “the Strict Father”
Emergent Fatherhoods
“He Was so Different in Many Ways”
Conclusion
References
Chapter 9: Conclusion
Overcoming Mistrusted Masculinity
Mistrusted Masculinity
Social Alertness
Concerned Fatherhood
Shaking Loose of Being Defined by Lacks
“Show Us That We are Important!”
References
References
Index
