Men from cultures of honor “suffer a massive loss of power and prestige” in Norway

Going from being “ruler of his universe” to a Nav client in a “feminized society”.

Terje Bjøranger and Gunnar Svensson’s book “Honor-related crime” is full of insight into the immigrant cultures’ encounter with Norway.

One aspect they highlight as less well known than it should be is the situation of men migrating to Europe from honor cultures.

“From the stories of the women we have had conversations with over the years, a picture emerges that some men feel marginalized after migrating to Norway,” they write.

As an example of how wrong it can go, they highlight the murder of 22-year-old Anooshe Ghulam Sediq in Kristiansund in 2002.

Anooshe’s elderly husband and killer went “from being a respected man with a military background in Afghanistan to becoming a disillusioned welfare recipient in Norway.”

– And what happens to men who migrate from a situation where they enjoy great respect by virtue of their gender, are the family’s undisputed ruler and breadwinner, and to a feminist-oriented society in Europe?

“Is it possible to understand that they become violent, that they even kill their wives and possibly their own children, when they experience their last vestige of honor as threatened? Yes, it is possible to understand,” the two Kripos-employed policemen write in the book.

It is worth including full extracts for the highly readable and insightful book.

Although they may have been unschooled, perhaps even illiterate in their homeland, they were rulers of their universe before the migration. By virtue of their gender, and with the support of the culture of honour. Then suddenly they are expected to take part in raising children, take care of their school work, learn Norwegian, participate in unpaid volunteer work in the housing association, and a number of other activities they were spared for before the migration. Completely out of place behavior for a man in Afghanistan or Iraq – yet they were rulers. But not here.

Here they are not allowed to be men as the tradition at home taught them. And as if all this wasn’t enough, here they meet female police officers, female case managers who demand things from them, women in school and child protection who think things about their children, and who put grills in the heads of their wives and daughters. Grills about rights and freedoms, which successively demolish his own position as family owner. It is our assessment that the situation of men who migrate to Europe from cultures of honor has received too little attention. It is a beautiful thought that all people are equal, and that everyone has a Scandinavian view of equality between the sexes, but it has little merit.

Bjøranger and Svensson think we lack an understanding of how radically different Western societies have become from the cultural starting point these men come from.

These men, if they want to keep the tradition of honor, “have a lot to lose by migrating to Europe.”

They suffer a massive loss of power and prestige. They lose the expected control over the family, do not understand the new codes, in short do not find themselves at home.

But it is often different for women. For them, the migration is potentially much more tempting. Absolutely and in a relative sense towards the men.

The women, on the other hand, have everything to gain. And it looks like the women and girls are adapting to the new world in a simpler way, whether it’s learning Norwegian, getting an education, getting a network, getting in touch with the neighbor or understanding and getting involved in what the children are learning at school. This may be related to the fact that in their home country they were used to working hard and finding strategies to survive, and that here they see a possible personal gain. Of course there are exceptions here too. But the more the women emerge as winners in the relationship after the migration, the less men these men become.

And a man who has lost face can become a “dangerous man”.

A man who experiences that eighty percent of his well-won leadership position as a man has been tried to be “integrated away from him” can become a dangerous man in a conflict.

Bjøranger and Svensson have several examples in the book where immigrant men have committed murder and serious violence against their partners.

Read also: Lecturer links school violence to immigrant children’s anchoring in “pre-modern clan societies”

Over 60 percent of all partner murders in the last 10 years have been committed by immigrant men from non-Western countries.