Evidently Married: Changing Ambiguities in Creating Family Ties in Morocco

What does it take for a couple to stand out as married to others? In Morocco, an ideal scenario to marry today involves families celebrating three stages: an engagement, a legal contract, and a wedding. Yet, as I will show, couples may also turn out to be married without such ceremonies. Other eleme...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Hawwa
Main Author: Fioole, Annerienke (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2022
In: Hawwa
Further subjects:B Relationships
B Law
B Morocco
B Penal Code
B family code
B Family
B civil registry
B Marriage
B customary marriage
B Ambiguity
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Summary:What does it take for a couple to stand out as married to others? In Morocco, an ideal scenario to marry today involves families celebrating three stages: an engagement, a legal contract, and a wedding. Yet, as I will show, couples may also turn out to be married without such ceremonies. Other elements can make for evident marriages. Still, legal recognition has, over the past decades, become increasingly essential within people’s own creations of conjugal bonds. Moreover, family and penal code revisions, together with the civil registry’s expansion, have profoundly changed proceedings and possibilities to legally marry. These processes defy simple binaries of legal versus licit domains. Legal and licit understandings of marriage interlace both in people’s own evaluations and in state officials’ approaches. However, as I will argue, increased emphasis on legal registration also heightens state control over family ties and reduces people’s opportunities to leave marital definitions open-ended as this suits them over time.
ISSN:1569-2086
Contains:Enthalten in: Hawwa
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/15692086-12341385