Maghrebian mothers of french daughters. Motherhood, gender relationships and immigrant maghrebian women in France on Yamina Benguigui’s cinema

Abstract

This text focuses on cultural representations and the practice of maternity on a migration-immigration situation; this situation which, even though it is as antique as History itself, is the center of one of the most passionate debates on politics, media and the academic world nowadays. Therefore, what these pages intend to propose is the apparently easy subject of how maternity in the migration-immigration situation is conceived and performed, partucularly in the heart of the Maghibrian comunity in France. In order to do this, we have chosen to study the oral testimonies in two documentary films made by the French director, Argelian by birth, Yamina Benguigui: Femmes d’Islam (1994) y Mémoires d’immigrés, l’héritage maghrébin (1997). We will also analize the production of her first fiction movie Inch’Allah Dimanche (2001); finally we will examine the intencionality of the filmmaker considering the triple perspective of the history of migrations, the history of women, and the relations between contemporary history and cinema.