The negotiation of religious difference in Euro-Senegalese families

In the Senegambian region, the history of intimate relationships and marriage with Europeans goes back several centuries. As a result, people have developed tactics to mediate religious difference. Binational marriage between Senegalese and European spouses is increasingly common in both gender configurations, but such unions are also spaces where religious difference is the object of both conflict and accommodation. Many unions involve crossing religious boundaries and may include conversion to Islam for one of the spouses, as well as the education of Muslim children. Drawing on fieldwork in Senegal, France and the UK over more than 10 years, I show Euro-Senegalese families as spaces for the encounter and negotiation of religious difference. I analyse the role of concealment in avoiding conflict and the work of time in turning foreigners into kin against a background characterised by the legacy of colonial intimacies and the stigmatization of Muslims in contemporary Europe.