Your own life

The title of your thesis is 'Living your own life'. What do you mean by that?
- I interviewed young Turkish-Swedish Muslim girls, and wanted to point out that there are more ways than one to be a young immigrant. Western media have a high focus on oppression, honour and shame, while the girls in my study insisted that everybody has to find their own way, live their own life. And they do just that. They are not as bound by their culture as is often claimed. There are big personal differences, and differences between families as to how they respond to cultural demands.

Rundgren says that there certainly are examples of restraint and suppression among the girls in her study, but that the picture has many nuances. Life is about more than guarding the family's honour. There is an important difference between public on one side and private on the other. When 'no one' is looking, cultural norms can often be stretched or surpassed. 'No one' in this case refers to the older generation. Rundgren was at a student's party where both the boys and the girls drank alcohol. The young people trusted each other not to tell on them, even though the Turkish community is often depicted as being gossipy. Several of the young girls also had boyfriends. This was a secret that was more guarded, only their best friends should know about things like that.

Negotiations about freedom

Many of the parents accept things happening that are not culturally accepted. One example of this is the two young girls that took the ferry to Finland. These trips do not have a good reputation, about the same as taking the ferry to Denmark from Norway. The girls had received permission from their parents but they were not to let anymore in the Turkish community get a whiff of it. So the two girls lied to their acquaintances about where they were going.

- To establish trust with your parents is an important means of getting more freedom, Rundgren says. A girl whose parents trusted her, was given free reins. This could also help other girls. By showing that they were going to be with a 'nice' girl, they were allowed to go places that otherwise would be forbidden territory. For the same reason it was an advantage to keep to a Turkish community, where there apparently is less possibility of 'getting up to' anything. But the girls 'got up to' things anyway, so this was a false security.

The traditional and the modern

How do the girls deal with living so close up to two cultures? Do they want to be Swedish?
- They want to adopt some of the 'Swedish' values, as for example gender equality. They are concerned with getting an education, and want to combine family life with a career. This means that a future husband will have to do his part of housework and childcare. But with one exception all the girls I spoke to were proud of being Turkish and wanted to convey an undefined 'Turkishness' to their future children. The wanted to be 'modern' Turks, Rundgren says.

What the young people liked in the Swedish culture was not seen as incompatible with being Turkish. Most of the youngsters in Rundgren's study had parents who had originally come from the Turkish countryside. They perceived their parents as being traditional and old-fashioned, and locked into the Turkish rural culture of the '60s. Visiting Turkish cities the young has seen that there are modern Turks, and that it was not necessary to live as their parents did to be able to call themselves Turkish. Yet Rundgren maintains that this does not mean that the children strongly criticise their parents. The parents have worked hard and forsaken a lot to give their children a better life than they have had themselves, and the children are thankful of that. When the girls were asked to mention a person they admired many answered "my mom". Some of the girls also said that their own parents had become more modern, and that they had acquired many of the values of Swedish society.

Honour and shame - again

Initially Rundgren was concerned with not seeing the Turkish girls as victims of an old-fashioned culture. Yet concepts such as honour and shame became important in her study because they were important for the girls. The girls talked a lot about their responsibility for their families' honour setting a limit on their personal freedom. This responsibility was depicted as a heavy burden, and something their brothers did not have to bother about.

- This does not mean that the girls wanted to live like Swedish girls, for example as far as sexual morals were concerned. Everyone I talked to said that they wanted to live chastely before they were married. But they pointed out that this should be a personal choice, not a family matter. They wished that their parents had faith in their children making the right choices, without being watched, Rundgren said.

- Can you say something about the different demands made on boys and girls?
- An important difference is that young boys are expected to be 'wild'. It is for example not a point that they stay away from Swedish girls. It is often even accepted that they marry Swedes. In the family of one of the girls I talked to the brother was married to a Swedish Christian woman, and this couple was a full member of the family. While an older sister was frozen out of the family because she has married a Pakistani Muslim, Rundgren recounts.

Different rules for women and men are explained with the man being stronger than the woman, and that he will have the ability to raise his children as Turks even though his spouse has another culture. A married women will be subordinate her husband's culture, at least as far as the children's upbringing is concerned. This attitude provokes the young girls. They are proud of being Turkish. And they feel sure that they are able to convey what they feel is valuable in this culture even though they marry a 'stranger'.