Religious citizenship and gendered sanctions in the lived experience of second generation Ghanaians

Abstract

French

This study seeks to understand how some African Initiated Christian churches in Amsterdam sanction discrimination against women in the exercise of the right to religious citizenship. This research also investigates how through the exercise of agency some female second generation Ghanaians contest, reinterpret or conform to gendered sanctions in the religious field. Data were drawn mainly from in-depth interviews, participant observation and informal interviews in Amsterdam. The exercise of religious citizenship is not a level playing ground for both females and males. The study concludes that religious sanctions on sex and sexuality pronounced in the religious field contradict human rights expressed in the nation state. The study also noted that the emergence of immigrant women’s engagement in institutionalised religiosity binds feminist scholars to rethink of religion as a field that does not generate only oppressed female citizens rather it also provides the space for females to exercise agency.

Keywords

African Initiated Christian churches female agency gender religious citizenship religious field second generation Ghanaian

Introduction

Feminist theorists (Hobson and Lister, 2002; Lister, 1992; Tastsoglou and Dobrowolsky, 2006) have broadened the concept of lived citizenship to embrace membership in meso and micro groups rather than membership only in the nation-state. Citizenship is not a concept limited to the acquisition of status and rights, for it also encapsulates participation, identities and lived experiences in the day to day activities of individuals in groups or communities. Yip (2007: 210) argued that homosexual, lesbian and bisexual believers have the right to participation, representation, identity and lifestyle in the exercise of ‘religious’ citizenship in the religious field. Nyhagen (2015) and Predelli (2008) adopted religious citizenship in the description of the life of female believers in Oslo and Leicester in their religious communities. Following these studies, we draw on the literature of religious citizenship to understand how African Initiated Christian churches (AICCs) in Amsterdam sanction certain forms of discrimination (for example, pregnancy out of wedlock) against women in the exercise of the right to religious citizenship.

Theoretical thinking in twentieth century migration studies sidelined women until the early 1970s (Donato, 1992; Morokvasic, 1984; Simon and Brettell, 1986). The recognition of gender (Brettell and De Berjeois, 1992; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994; Mahler and Pessar, 2001) in the migration literature allows for a more sophisticated analysis of the dynamic and fluid concept of gender as relational and situational rather than static (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1999; Pessar and Mahler, 2003). The literature on gendered migration has focused mainly on migrant women’s labour force and their financial remittances back home (Espiritu, 1997; Pessar and Mahler, 2003); female migrants as domestic workers and sex workers (Pratt, 1997; Agustin, 2006). The literature that intersects migration, gender and religion in Europe has focused mainly on immigrant Muslim women (Diehl et al., 2009; Predelli, 2008; Rosenberger and Sauer, 2013) with the exception of few studies that deal with immigrant Christian women (Nyhagen, 2015).

There is evidence in gender and religion studies that ‘tighter social control’ is placed on younger women (Davidman, 1991: 134). Behavioural expectations in churches are more demanding on females than males especially in issues concerning sex and sexuality formation (Armitage and Dogan, 2006). Importantly for this study, some female pastors in the Presbyterian Church of Ghana were confronted with socio-cultural setbacks in the execution of their duties (Adasi and Frempong, 2014: 63). Inglehart and Norris (2003) discussed in their analysis of the World Values Surveys/European Values Surveys between 1981 and 2001 that gender inequality in religiosity persists and varies across countries. There is lacuna in the literature on studies that explore the intersectionality of migration, gender and immigrant Christian churches. This study therefore investigates the gendered sanction of pregnancy out of wedlock in the lived experience of religious citizenship by female second generation Ghanaians in Amsterdam. It also examines the extent to which female agency of second generation Ghanaians intervene in the gendered sanction of pregnancy out of wedlock in the religious field. In the literature on religion and sexuality, particularly, little attention has been paid to the children of immigrants in AICCs in Europe.

The study of AICCs in Amsterdam results from their rapid growth in many European countries (Ter Haar, 1998; Tonah, 2007; Van Dijk, 2002) and the attempt of some of them to preserve the culture of their country of origin. Moreover, mass immigration of Ghanaians in the Netherlands is a relatively new phenomenon compared to the Turkish, Moroccans, Antilleans and Surinamese who entered massively from the late 1960s onwards. The number of Ghanaians has grown steadily in the last three decades (Kyei and Smoczynski, 2016; Statistics Netherlands, 2015a). According to the Amsterdam Bureau for research and statistics, Ghanaians were about 12,480 in 1996 but by 2014, the total Ghanaian population in the Netherlands had increased to 22,556 (Statistics Netherlands, 2015b). The total number of second generation Ghanaians in the Netherlands has more than doubled. In 1996, there were 3056 second generation Ghanaians in the Netherlands but by 2014, it had gone up to 8871 (Statistics Netherlands, 2015b). More than half of Ghanaians live in Amsterdam and they are the fifth largest immigrant group in Amsterdam after the Moroccans, Turkish, Antilleans and Surinamese (Gemeente Amsterdam, 2013: 62; Setrana and Kyei, 2015). The number of AICCs in Amsterdam has risen from 17 in 1997 (Ter Haar, 1998) to about 150 as at 2013 (Van Den Bos, 2013).

Conceptualisation of themes

The study uses Bourdieu’s (1985) concept of field to facilitate the discussion on the multidimensional relations that occur within AICCs in Amsterdam. Bourdieu argues that the field is a human construction of the interaction between people and among groups of people with their own set of beliefs and distinctive ‘logic of practice’ which is however not fixed but flexible (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 97).

The main capital resources within a given field according to Bourdieu (2005) are economic, social, and cultural. There are different forms of fields for instance artistic or religious (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 97) within a social setting and they are distinct by the rules and values that govern them. Different strategies are adopted within a field by the social actors in a process of accumulation of the forms of capital resources. We examine the religious field of AICCs in Amsterdam which allows the discovery of how the various forms of capital resources like leadership, information, marriage market and friendship (Kyei and Smoczynski, 2016) are distributed although unequally. Religious field is suitable for the discussion because it creates the physical and/or figurative space with fluid boundaries that enable members of the studied AICCs to live as religious citizens. Religious field allows interaction at the horizontal level among the members and at the vertical level with AICCs as institutions.

Traditionally the notion of citizenship has been limited to the legal political rights within the public sphere of the nation-state (Barbalet, 1988; Turner, 1990). Feminist theorists (Hobson and Lister, 2002; Lister, 1992, 1997; Tastsoglou and Dobrowolsky, 2006) have however, argued that the plurality of communities and the varied forms of belongingness result in multiple meanings and practice of membership which are not embraced in the traditional nation-state association with citizenship. Citizenship should therefore not be perceived as a static attribute of a group of people within a given polity rather citizenship is contested, fluid and dynamic which involves processes of negotiation and struggle (Lister, 1992; Tastsoglou and Dobrowolsky, 2006). Citizenship is extended thus to membership at the meso and micro-levels.

In the context of gendered citizenship, we argue that the process of exercising equal right to participation and representation by females and males within a given immigrant religious community is a form of religious citizenship (Predelli, 2008; Yip, 2003, 2007). Female and male members compete for participation within the religious field as they seek to achieve full religious citizenship. Male dominance in the religious field has gendered the competition and in consequence access to the field is embedded with gender relations.

Secondly, we have to note that the term second generation (SG) is used in migration studies as an umbrella term to classify different categories of immigrant children and there is no consensus in the literature as to who qualifies to be called second generation (Aparicio, 2007; Favaro and Napoli, 2004; Timmerman et al., 2003). This research conceptualises second generation as any child born in the Netherlands or who entered the Netherlands at/before the age of six with at least one parent as immigrant and is eighteen years and above as at the time of the data collection (Martens and Veenman, 1996). Studies have shown that immigrants and especially their children tend to be secular as they spend considerable number of years in the host country (Van Tubergen, 2007). Some secularisation and assimilation theorists also suggest that second generations may not translate religious life in their social relations (Connor, 2008; Massey and Higgins, 2007). It is expected that after their primordial socialisation in the Dutch society, the analysed second generations respondents are likely to distance themselves from AICCs due to the secular nature of the Dutch public sphere. In light of this discussion, the study adopts Sayad’s (1979) understanding of the conflict between children of immigrants and their parents. As parents do not recognise themselves in the ‘children of France’ (Sayad, 1979) at the micro level, this research seeks to examine at the meso level how the ‘children of Netherlands’ confront, contest and/or conform to the norms in the religious field.

Pre-marital sex is one of the dominant deviant acts prohibited in the religious field of the studied AICCs. The visible yardstick for assessing conformity or not to pre-marital sex in the religious field is pregnancy out of wedlock. The practice is echoed in most of the early studies on pre-marital sex as they showed negative relationship between religiosity and the frequency of premarital sex (Clayton, 1972; Davidson and Leslie, 1977; Sack et al., 1984). Recent research from the United States of America showed that religiosity correlated strongly with teen birth rates whereas abortion correlated negatively with religiosity (Strayhorn and Strayhorn, 2009). Addai (2000) demonstrated that religious affiliation had differential effect on pre-marital sexual behaviour of Ghanaian women. Sanctions in this research are termed as gendered when the frequency of punishment are female centred. The article argues that the implementation of sanctions in the religious field of AICCs are not fairly meted out to both males and females, however, some women react divergently to the gendered sanction of pregnancy out of wedlock.

In order to develop our line of argument we pay attention also to the concept of agency which has featured prominently in the discussion of religiosity in the feminist theory (McNay, 2000). Bracke (2008) identified three main lines that have emerged in the theoretical approach to agency. The first school of thought echoes a division of labour approach in the discussion of women agency as they concentrate on women only to the neglect of structural power constraints that have the tendency of oppressing women. This approach somehow impoverishes the research of female agency as it is exclusionary and leaves out significant variables in the discussion. The second line of argument is the application of agency as a mode of integration into modernity (Bracke, 2008: 62). The debate questions whether adherence to a deity can contain any elements of agency or is the concept of agency applied in the context of religion so that religious believers move along with modern conceptions of humanity (Asad, 1996). Asad holds that agency is used as a vehicle to integrate religious behaviour of others into modernity. This study also holds that religion cannot be privy to individual freewill rather integral to the entire process. Thirdly the concept of agency is associated with resistance and Mahmood (2005) elicits in her work the attribution of resistance to agency. Mahmood (2005) argues that female agency is the realization of a woman’s aspiration against the status quo of custom and tradition. Mahmood (2005: 9) attributes agency to ‘a whole range of human action, including those which may be socially, ethically or politically indifferent to the goal of opposing hegemonic norms.’ Agency is thus the ability to take actions in situations in which one is entangled with social structures and that action transform social relations in one way or the other (Sewell, 1992: 20). Our research acknowledges that although it is established in the literature that agency reflects opposition to hegemonic powers in a field, nonetheless, we will demonstrate that there are social agents who exercise agency without contesting existing status quo in the religious field.

Data and method

The study adopted ethnographic research methodology of in depth interviews, participant observation (Flick, 2009; Suryani, 2013) and informal interviews. The fieldwork took place in Amsterdam from January 2014 till January 2015. The study adopted purposive sampling technique which is a type of nonprobability sampling that permits the selection of the units to be observed on the basis of the judgement about which units will be the most useful or representative (Babbie, 2007: 184). Two types of purposive samples, namely second generation Ghanaians who attend AICCs in Amsterdam and AICCs in Amsterdam were selected in this study. Snowball sampling technique was used to recruit sixty second generation Ghanaians within AICCs in Amsterdam to participate in life history interviews but after fifty interviews, new themes were not coming out as the process had reached saturation. As a result, fifty second generation Ghanaians participated in the research out of which thirty-five were females and fifteen were males. Semi-structured in depth interviews were also conducted with nine AICCs in Amsterdam and they were also recruited through purposive sampling technique based on the dominant churches attended by the second generation Ghanaians interviewed. The study sought to measure the frequency of formal sanctions in the AICCs and the types of sanctions that dominate in the AICCs. The research also measured the reaction of female second generations to the sanctions.

The interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Line by line the data were manually categorised into analytic units under descriptive words or category names. The information were organised into themes and sub-themes (Rossman and Rallis, 1998: 171). The themes and sub-themes were analysed for each participant and they were also connected to other interviewees with quotations. Descriptive and inferential analyses of data were employed in this work (Guba and Lincoln, 1982; Hammersley, 1992). These interpretations were based on the state of the art and personal interpretations.

Findings and discussions

Gendered sanctions: Pregnancy out of wedlock

Religious citizenship is acquired in all the studied AICCs in Amsterdam through the rite of initiation. Religious citizens, namely females and males, are to obtain equal access to participation and representation without any gender obstacles. It was observed in this study that religious citizens are guided by specific logic of practice (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992), laws and belief systems that regulate the mode of conduct of members. Sanctions in the form of rewards and punishments for compliance or not respectively of the norms in the process of religious socialisation are implemented on religious citizens. The head pastor of one of the participating churches narrated that:

The church is governed by rules and regulations that are applied on all members of the church. The actions and inactions of the members attract punishment or reward. (Head pastor 1, 2014)

Another head pastor also described the presence of sanctions in the church:

Well I will say that our church is notable for the application of sanctions. If anybody faults, they are aware of the punishment. But the degree of the sanction depends on the gravity of the offence. There are instances when we have suspended people indefinitely or definitely in the area of adultery or conflicts like quarrel respectively. (Head pastor 2, 2015)

Citizenship in the nation state is enshrined with enforceable rules and regulations on its citizens to strengthen nation building. In the same vein, members of the religious field according to the data are obliged to abide by the norms and values as religious citizens, failure to do so attract punishment or reward.

During the life history interview, the respondents were asked about their opinion on sanctions in their respective churches. A male second generation responded that:

When I go to my head pastor and tell him that I stole something, I am pretty sure that he will tell me I will pray for you and God will forgive you and probably tell me to return the stolen item if possible. However, when a girl goes to the head pastor and tells him that she is pregnant, she is banned from active church participation and there are no exceptions, she is banned. The irony of the situation is that in most instances the men responsible for the pregnancy go unpunished. (Kofi, 2014)

Another participant also recounted that:

I think it is a bit judgemental because all the sanctions that I witnessed were about pregnancy especially this year and the victims were females only. Anytime someone was punished publicly in church, it was about pregnancy and I have not witnessed anything else apart from this. The females were embarrassed in front of the church and they were suspended for a while. The punishment by suspension lasted from four months and beyond. If a female held a position in the church like usher or deacon then that person was stripped of those duties in that period and she could not partake in the sharing of bread and wine in church. (Aba, 2014)

Although theoretically the norms and sanctions apply to all religious citizens in the religious field, in our research we noticed that the implementation of sanction on pregnancy out of wedlock seems to favour males to the detriment of females. Gender connotation may be hidden in the use of the generic word ‘member’ in referring to religious citizens. The gender inequality in the application of the sanctions on pregnancy out of wedlock infringe on the right of some of the female respondents to equal treatment as religious citizens. In the practice of the law, females were more likely to go through public humiliation. The right to equal treatment as religious citizens was somehow distorted by the gendered approach to sanctions and the manifestation of the religious field as a non-level playing ground as males are in privileged positions.

A female second generation also questioned the predominance of pregnancy out of wedlock among the sanctions in her church:

It is interesting that some women are punished for getting pregnant before marrying in church. Those on suspension have to sit in the back seats of the church as they cannot join the main congregation. They are constantly disgraced and degraded with the aim of discouraging others from the act. I am convinced that the punishment is not as a result of the pregnancy but because of the disgrace that the church seems to absorb. Why does the church not punish those members in the church who gossip? (Lovinia, 2014)

The study also found that some AICCs in Amsterdam practice what this article calls ‘selective sanctions’ which is the system whereby some immoral acts are overlooked by the church structures while others attract punishment. Male dominance in the hierarchical structure of the religious field has the tendency of influencing the mode of executing sanctions. The female-only sanction of pregnancy out of wedlock is an affirmation and re-affirmation of male hegemony and female subordination in the religious field. Some respondents commented that their churches perceive pregnancy out of wedlock as act that attracts public shame and ridicule upon the churches. Moreover, pregnancy out of wedlock may reveal the weakness of patriarchal dominance in ensuring that the social order is reproduced in the religious field. In consequence, the female figure is humiliated publicly in most of the studied AICCs in Amsterdam and subsequently suspended from active engagement to serve as deterrent for the other church members.

The gendered sanction of pregnancy out of wedlock also revealed how traditional cultural practices manifest themselves within the religious field. Early missionaries in Ghana were faced with the problem of disentangling converts from their traditional practices and culture but they were not successful (Meyer, 1998: 318). Post-independence Pentecostalism sought to propagate a rupture from tradition but they have not been successful (Meyer, 1998: 318). The dynamics in traditional cultural practices adapt to modernity and some have found their way into the religious field. A male respondent remarked:

I do not believe in the mentality and philosophy that because a young girl of nineteen years old had sex and got pregnant before religious marriage she is sanctioned. It has to do with the Ghanaian culture. In the Ghanaian culture it is a taboo for an unmarried woman to have sex and also to get pregnant. (Kojo, 2014)

The female biased mode of executing sanctions in some traditional cultural settings might have infiltrated into AICCs in Amsterdam and settled in the day to day way of life in the religious field. Such actions are subtle and may pervade unconsciously in the religious field. There is therefore the problem of the boundary or dichotomy between some traditional cultural practices and religious practices.

Most of the sermons of the pastors emphasised the need for girls to preserve their virginity until marriage. Also, girls should not wear dresses that are sexually provocative whereas the boys are advised to be circumspect with female friendship (Field Notes, 2014). The conversational style and public discourse in the making of religious citizenship depicts sexual behavioural expectations that create gendered space in the religious field. Words expressed in the religious field cannot be classified as neutral because of the taste that language produces in the social interactions which generates standard dialect as the reality. The standard dialect yields symbolic dominion (Ahearn, 2001: 111) over some of the female respondents that prevents them from questioning the status quo of the quasi female-only sanction of pregnancy out of wedlock.

Sexuality approaches: Religious field vis-à-vis nation state

The religious field occupies a physical and figurative space (Bourdieu, 2005) which sometimes extends beyond the boundaries of a nation state. The laws and norms of the religious field more often than not coincide or conflict with that of the nation state and it results in tension between civil citizenship and religious citizenship. In spite of the fact that the religious field partners with the nation state in the socioeconomic and cultural development of their citizens, the divergent viewpoints sometimes create challenges especially for children of immigrants who have the peculiar problem of integration. In the Netherlands sex and sexuality education aims at harm minimisation by providing information about sex related diseases like ‘HIV/AIDS, safe sex practices, reproduction and birth control methods, managing peer influence, relationships, decision making and dealing with emotions when sexually active’ (Smith et al., 2011: 21). The Netherlands adopts liberal approach towards sexuality whereas the AICCs in this study have strict sexuality teachings of abstinence. All of the studied AICCs in Amsterdam are not adjusting their strict sexuality teachings to meet the more liberal Dutch attitude towards sex and sexuality. Seven out of the nine AICCs interviewed stressed that their churches cannot be adapting to the culture of each society in which they are planted. The head pastor of one of the participating churches remarked:

The church is not to serve the society’s interest but to please God. So irrespective of the societal differences the church remains firm in its principles. The church makes the youth aware of their Christian values and how they differ from the Dutch secular laws. The church admonishes the members to hold fast to the laws of God. (Head pastor 3, 2014)

Another head pastor also reiterated that:

We teach the children purity of life because here in the Netherlands the law permits sex before marriage but in God’s kingdom we do not believe in boyfriend or girlfriend as it is understood in the Dutch culture. We also teach them the existence of heaven and hell as retribution for their life on earth. (Head pastor 4, 2014)

Efficient and consistent sex education is fundamental in evading the problem of early pregnancy that thwarts the upward mobility of children of immigrants in Dutch society. The divergent sexuality approaches in the religious field of AICCs in Amsterdam – abstinence from pre-marital sex and the Dutch minimisation of harm from pre-marital sex has the likelihood of causing some form of conflicting ideas and challenges in the sexuality lifestyle of the respondents. Some studies (Rocca et al., 2010; Strayhorn and Strayhorn, 2009) have shown that the abstinence from pre-marital sex approach is more likely to result in early pregnancy compared to the minimisation of harm in pre-marital sex that may lead to school dropout.

A male respondent recounted that:

I am a university graduate with a well-paid job but an active citizen in the church. The church is fundamental to my moral belief systems and I seek to live in conformity with its teachings despite the conflicting views the church has with the Netherlands as a state. (Kwesi, 2014)

Another participant also noted that:

There have been instances in the church when some ladies got pregnant and their boyfriends failed to wed them. Their names were taken out of the church’s register as a result they could not vote in the church although they were not banned from attending church services. The fact is that they were not considered as members of the church. (Adwoa, 2014)

A female respondent noted:

I am an active member of the church but I am mostly confronted with how to comport myself sexually. I have a boyfriend and we do have sex which is against the basic principles of the church but my fiancé is not a member of the church so he does not share the idea of not having sex in a relationship. (Effe, 2014)

The belief systems in the religious field do not mirror the ‘children of the Netherlands’ as such the AICCs sometimes have the sensation that they have lost control over ‘these children who do not carry on the’ (Sayad, 1979) norms of the religious field. Acculturation in the nation state generates liberalised way of life among some second generation respondents that make them ‘enemies who are coming out from the womb of their mothers’ (Sayad, 1999). The situation creates tension and conflict at the meso level in the religious field as well as at the micro level between first and second generation migrants. Moreover, the process of simultaneously creating religious and civic identity is imbued with conflict between civic citizenship and religious citizenship. Religious citizenship does not fade away with the growth of liberal democratic societies rather they interact and compete with each other.

Female agency mitigating gendered sanctions

This research identified respondents who were not victimised by the gendered sanctions, rather exercised agency by conforming, contesting or negotiating access to equal treatment as religious citizens in the religious field. Three typologies of female agency were constructed. In the first instance 29 out of the 35 of the studied female second generations did not follow the strict sexuality teachings of their churches which enjoined them to abstain from premarital sex. Moreover, two of the female participants felt humiliated after getting pregnant out of wedlock and were latent in the religious field. Lastly, four of the female respondents conformed to the strict sexuality teachings of their churches and were keen to preserving their virginity till they get married. These ways of exercising agency were echoed in the interview with one of the head pastors:

In my church none of the youth has been suspended because of pre-marital pregnancy. Maybe they have gotten the message sent across to abstain from sex before marriage. Or maybe they are taking advantage of the modern technologies available to them in order to avoid pregnancy. (Head pastor 5, 2014)

A female participant argued that:

After all everybody has sex so it is not fair that because a woman’s sexual intercourse results in pregnancy she gets punished. The most important things are to prevent sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy. The ways to avoid the humiliation and sanctions are the use of contraceptives and in case the contraception fails and pregnancy occurs, then the only option left is to terminate the pregnancy unless it has really advanced. (Ama, 2014)

Another female second generation Ghanaian also narrated that:

I am aware that quite a number of girls in church have terminated their pregnancies but the use of different forms of contraception is common among the youth. These actions are done to avoid being sanctioned in the church because of premarital pregnancy. The churches have to live up to reality rather than keep blind eye on sexuality issues. (Rose, 2014)

Religion is criticised widely among European feminist scholars (Braidotti, 2008) due to its biased gender and sexuality sanctions against women. The study revealed however that a significant number of the studied female second generations re-interpret and contest the strict sex and sexuality principles of their churches. Broadly, religion seeks to embrace the technical and economic characteristics of modernity while being antagonistic to its ethical values. With the mind-set of religious revival (Bracke, 2008: 57), the new religion practiced by a sizeable number of the respondents are also shaped by the ethical values of modernity. Religion and modernity cannot therefore be considered as mutually exclusive as they shape each other.

Most of the female respondents sought the realisation of their aspiration by resisting the status quo of customs and tradition (Mahmood, 2005) in the religious field. It was found that most of the respondents who were not married had fiancés and engaged in sexual relationships with their partners contrary to the teachings of their churches. The use of contraception and other birth control methods by most of the studied female second generations in the religious field is a form of resistance at the meso level of the religious field by second generations. These ‘sociological bastards’ (Sayad, 1999) act in ways that prevent exclusion or limitation of their rights to participation as religious citizens in the religious field.

A small proportion of the respondents did not use contraceptives neither did they commit abortion rather they allowed their pregnancies to stay and were therefore sanctioned accordingly by their churches. A female respondent who was sanctioned by her church because of pregnancy before religious marriage bemoaned that:

The pregnancy escaped me till after four months otherwise I would have aborted the pregnancy and that would have avoided all the intimidation and suspension from some church activities. I am confident it will not happen again till I get married as I now use contraceptive implant which is a birth control technique. I seldom go to church because of the humiliation and shame. I do not complain verbally but I do express my anger and despair in silence. (Joy, 2014)

The data also showed that a few of the female victims felt humiliated and ashamed as a result they resisted and contested the gendered sanctions through nonverbal gestures of facial expressions. Two of the respondents did not return to the church at all and their absence from church services was public expression of the self. The findings reiterate the work of Bracke (2008) on second generation female Muslim and Christian participants in the Netherlands who moved away from their original places of worship as a form of resistance to contest the gendered practices in the religious field. Absence from the religious field however entails loss of capital resources of friendship and information which have consequential effect on immigrant integration.

Distancing themselves from the preceding modes of expressing women agency, four of the studied female respondents conformed to the strict sexuality regulations of abstinence from pre-marital sex in their churches. A female interviewee expressed her conformity to the church’s teaching of abstinence from pre-marital sex:

I used to have a boyfriend but I quitted because he insisted on having sex with me. I have decided to remain virgin till I get married but I am not doing that only because my church tells me to act that way. I feel secured and empowered with this decision as it draws me closer to my God. (Tiz, 2014)

The conformity of a few of the respondents to their churches’ abstinence approach may signal passivity and victimisation, however, the respondents acknowledged the practice as form of empowerment. The quest to avoid the gendered sanctions is not considered a burden rather a sign of fulfilment. The respondents exercise agency by conforming to their churches’ teachings on abstinence from pre-marital sex which manifests that adherence to the deity (Asad, 1996) is not privy to individual freewill.

Conclusions

The concept of religious field (Bourdieu, 1985; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992) facilitated the understanding of the social interactions between females and males that occur within AICCs in Amsterdam. The study realised that the religious field is not a level playing ground for both females and males in the exercise of religious citizenship. The religious field is embedded with laws and norms enshrined in gendered discourse that govern the behaviour of the religious citizens. There is gendered discrepancy in the implementation of the sanction of pregnancy out of wedlock and the norm, which are regulated by structural powers in the religious field.

Reiterating some feminist theorists’ (Hobson and Lister, 2002; Tastsoglou and Dobrowolsky, 2006), the study demonstrated that the concept of citizenship is fluid and non-static as such it is applicable not only at the nation state level but also at the meso level of the religious field. The fluidity of the boundaries in the religious field is not limited to the nation state boundaries. The study revealed that religious sanctions on sexuality pronounced in the religious field contradict human rights expressed in the liberal Dutch society. In other words, religious citizenship at the meso-level contests civic citizenship at the nation-state or macro level. In spite of the conflicting perspectives on sexuality, most of the respondents simultaneously sought both religious citizenship and civic citizenship.

The study also noted that female respondents resist, contest, conform or re-define the sexuality approach in the religious field as they seek to live as religious citizens. A handful of the female respondents conform to the abstinence from pre-marital sex in the religious field as act of faithful religious citizens and mark of self-fulfilment. Also more than three quarters of the female religious citizens in this study resist the abstinence from sexuality approach within the religious field in a ‘tactical trajectory’ (Woodhead, 2007) in order to avoid being sanctioned. Such interviewees re-interpret or re-define in their lived experiences the sex and sexuality approach in the religious field to reflect what this article refers to as hybrid or diluted lifestyle as they identify with modernity. The process of identifying and living religious citizenship interacts and compromises with civic citizenship. The study concludes that the emergence of immigrant women’s engagement in institutionalised religiosity (Göle, 2010; Midden, 2012) binds feminist scholars to rethink of religion as a field that does not generate only oppressed female citizens rather it also provides the space for females to exercise agency. The research has contributed to the discussion on female agency as it argued that there are social agents who exercise agency without necessarily contesting existing status quo in the religious field.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments that helped to improve the quality of this article.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Author biographies

Justice Richard Kwabena Owusu KYEI holds a PhD in Sociology from Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Social Work in Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi-Ghana. He is an adjunct fellow in the Centre for Cultural and African Studies, KNUST. Justice won 2019 Individual Research Grant from the African Peacebuilding Network, Social Science Research Council. He was also awarded 2019 Individual Research Grant from the Swiss Sub-Saharan African Migration Network, Neuchatel University, Switzerland. His research interests are: gender, religion, migration, political sociology, conflict and peace studies.

Address: Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Sociology and Social Work; Private Mail Bag, Kumasi-Ghana.

Email address: rokyei@hotmail.com

Rafal SMOCZYNSKI is a sociologist, an associate professor at Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. His research interest focuses on social control, migration, sociology of religion, social theory, sociology of markets. His publications were included in e.g. Oxford University Press, de Gruyter, Ethnic and Racial Studies, East European Politics and Societies and Cultures, Czech Sociological Review. He was involved in research projects funded by e.g. EU 6FP, Research Council of Norway, DAAD, National Sciences Centre (Poland), Visegrad Fund, the Korea Foundation. He acted also as a visiting professor at e.g. Ferdowsi University, National Dong Hwa University.

Address: Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Department of Religious Studies; ul. Nowy Świat 72, 00-330, Warsaw, Poland.

Email: rsmoczyn@ifispan.waw.pl

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