Situated Mixedness

Drawing from empirically grounded studies, the volume Situated Mixedness sheds light on the state of migration-related “intimate diversity”, that is, the simultaneous formation and existence of various configurations of conjugal mixedness. It examines this phenomenon in Belgium, a country in the European Union with a long history of immigration and where an important percentage of registered marriages are international.

Through the optic of “situated mixedness”, the volume pays attention to the (dis-)connections between intimate diversity and its surrounding environment. Bringing together mutually reinforcing or often contradicting emic and etic perspectives, it illuminates how specific context/s (socio-legal, cultural, temporal, etc.) not only can influence, stem from, or trigger a social phenomenon but also remain standstill without a particular impact on individual’s lived experiences. It brings out in subtle ways the agency and subjectivities of individuals, nuancing thereby common-held views on socially Othered couples.

Focusing on the intimate sphere of individuals’ life at the crossroads of anthropology and sociology, the volume contributes fresh insights not only to the study of migration and intermarriage but also to the literature on super- and hyper-diversity. It will be of interest to scholars, students, and social actors working on family-related migration, state policies, and social cohesion.

The Introduction and Chapters 5, 6, 7 and 8 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 International license.

Asuncion Fresnoza-Flot is a tenured Research Associate (chercheuse qualifiee) of the Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS) and Senior Lecturer (maitresse d’enseignement) at the Laboratory of Anthropology of Contemporary Worlds (LAMC) of the Universite libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. She has published widely in English and French including five co-edited Special Issues in peer-reviewed journals and three co-edited volumes. Her works include the volume Tangled Mobilities: Places, Affects, and Personhood across Social Spheres in Asian Migration (co-edited with Liu-Farrer, 2022). She is principal investigator of the research projects BelMix (https://belmix .hypotheses .org/) focusing on the contextual mobility of Belgian-Asian couples and AspirE (https://aspire.ulb.be/) examining the decision-making of aspiring Asian (re-)migrants.