Older age, newer loves: changing meanings of intimacy for Sierra Leonean migrant women in France

Transnational migration often results in the reconfiguration of established gender relations. This article addresses the ways in which ideas of love and intimacy are reproduced and challenged in the life courses of Sierra Leonean women who live in France. It explores the transformation of women’s perception of love over the life-course, from situations of intimate partner violence to relationships established later in life and based, as these women see it, on individual autonomy and gender equality. Their narratives do not rely on ideals of ‘romantic love’ but reveal, rather, the importance of life trajectories in reframing individual subjectivities informed by gender relations in an adverse social context. The context of migration tends to assign rigidly gendered roles to migrant women: on entering their host societies, they often find themselves socially isolated and economically dependent on immigrant men. In articulating the process by which they fled unhealthy marriages and tried to establish new relationships, Sierra Leonean women express freedom from collective norms concerning marriage and present love as an individual choice. However, those choices were possible only later in the life course, when women no longer need to consider their reproductive role as central to their lives. The material and social conditions for finding love are associated with the opportunities given by age.