From Intermarriage to Conjugal Mixedness

Abstract

Studies on intermarriage generally take for granted the better integration of migrants, who married outside their own group when settling into a host society. Intermarriage, however, is a more complicated process than that, however; calling it “conjugal mixedness” stresses its intersectional quality and takes marital norms, inequality between partners, and social disapproval into account. In this article, I give current trends in French statistics, showing how important it is to analyze separately men from women and migrants from immigrant descendants. Conjugal mixedness is also constructed in daily life within the family. Couples find ways to deal with their differences: some adjust to the majority or minority culture; others elaborate a “reciprocal intercultural exchange.” Integration is thus the result of participation in social life, but in modern multicultural societies, integration also produces different lifestyles.