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Mehmet BozokLoss of Masculinity as a Face of Masculinity Crises Experienced as a Result of Migration
Mehmet BozokThis paper discusses the relations between international migration and masculinity crises, grounding on the data from the findings of a number of cross-cultural studies that focus on men’s loss of power under migration. Although the debates on migration and gender are a growing field in social sciencessince the late 1970’s, issues related to men and masculinities were not discussed until recently in this field. Critical studies on men and masculinities had developed concurrently with the debates on gender and migration on a different side of social sciences, as an ally of feminist scholarship.
With the studies of founding scholars, such as Raewyn Connell, Michael Kimmel, Michael Messner and Jeff Hearn amongst others, this interdisciplinary field critically investigated issues such as men’s identities, experiences of being a man in different cultural contexts, men’s roles, men’s differential access to patriarchal privileges, discourses of masculinity, masculinity crises and men and masculinities’ experiences of migration lately. Connell and her colleagues emphasized that men and masculinities are neither essentialistic, nor universal. From the very beginning, this field emphasized that men and masculinities are social constructs that present social and cultural diversities and that are subject to change. Therefore, from the beginning, pluralistic notion “masculinities” became one of the trademarks of this field. Based on the notion of social construction, this field presented that masculinities are subject to “crises”, as well as possessing and being in dominant positions of patriarchal power.
Discourses around “masculinity crises” have a quite a long history, even dating back to works of the late 19th century and early 20th century authors such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Henry David Thoreau and Sigmund Freud. From the beginning, the idea of “masculinity crises” suggests the loss of men’s power, shaking and quaking of the grounds under men and masculinities, and the transformation of existing masculinity into something unknown and something undesirable. Indeed, from the beginning, the discourses of masculinity crises imply anxiety, regression and fear of the loss of men’s power. Later, with the rise of second wave feminist activism and feminist scholarship in the 1970’s, those discussions were transferred to the debate of men’s (widespread) loss of privileges and power under the development of women’s empowerment and expansion of gender-based rights. Those scholarly and political debates found acceptance amongst mainstream discussions and were reflected in journalism and the media as well.
The emergence and development of critical studies on men and masculinities brought concrete grounds for debates on masculinity crises. Authors such as Joseph Pleck, Lynne Segal, Raewyn Connell, Stephen Whitehead and Robert Levant were amongst those who discussed whether there was a prevalent contemporary masculinity crisis that shook the grounds under masculinity. Those authors pointed out that, “masculinity crises”, the anxieties that arise from the dislocation of contemporary masculinities is predominantly a discourse rather than a historical situation of widespread crisis of present-day masculinities. However, those discussions were carried to fields and reasons in which men feel anxieties because of loss of power, dislocation of men’s prestige-attributed social statuses, loss of contexts where men’s identities were constructed and re-constructed, such as unemployment, subcultures and representations of masculinities in cinema.
This paper brings emergent literature on masculinity crises to the contemporary debates on masculinities and migration. As a developing area of discussion since the early 2000’s, masculinities and migration literature began to investigate migrant men in different cultures. Focusing on concurrent debates with critical studies on men and masculinities, this literature covered issues such as unemployment, power, transnationalism, identity, health and regional patterns of change of gender identities of men under the conditions of migration. One of the issues of this recent field of research is men’s loss of power and status as a result of migration. Investigated by scholars such as Bartolomei (2010), Haile and Siegmann (2014), Sarti (2010), Scrinzi (2010), Sinatti (2014), Charsley and Wray (2015), Nare (2010), Hibbins and Pease (2010), Pease (2009), Bozok ve Bozok (2019) and Güney and Konak (2016) amongst others, was discussed with approaches such as men’s “feminization”, “loss of power”, “change of roles”, “loss of patriarchal privileges”, “demasculinization” or “invisibility”. Here, focusing on studies on migrant masculinities, this paper considers this pattern as masculinity crises experienced as the loss of masculinity as a result of migration.
In conclusion, this paper argues that migration may lead to masculinity crises through the loss of masculinity, especially amongst lower class men who are more unprepared for cultural differences and integration. This form of masculinity crises amongst migrant men manifests itself as a backlash from men’s privileged positions of power and authority, and loss of income and status. Therefore, they feel themselves demasculinized under circumstances of migration, and experience a masculinity crisis. Finally, this paper underlines that since crisis is a temporary position, these perceptions of loss of masculinity may lead to reconstructions of other patriarchal masculinities with different constructive dynamics.
