Making money, marking identities the Moroccan wedding.pdfVIP

Making money, marking identities: the Moroccan wedding business in Brussels T. Kochuyt (CESO, KULeuven) thierry.kochuyt@soc.kuleuven.be Abstract Present article deals with the weddings of the second generation Moroccan migrants in Belgium and the way they elaborate these marriages as unique ceremonial events. Triangulating qualitative and quantitative data with theoretical insights we will see how a whole economy developed in which Moroccan entrepreneurs supply for specific goods and services like the caftan, a traditional ceremonial dress for women. n the demand side the need for unifying rituals and symbols is important since the Moroccan community is inwardly torn by acculturation and individualization, leading to a growing discord between the generations and the sexes. Although traditional at first sight, the wedding rituals and the caftans are rather reinvented by a community looking for ethnic identity-markers that can help to realign all descendants. This ‘translocation’ of culture is therefore not just replicating the homeland but also creating new grounds to stand on. Butchers, bakers, grocery stores, retailing in clothes, household appliances, furniture and jewellery, restaurants and banquet halls, beauty parlours and hairdressers, dj’s and musicians, …: the diversity of Moroccan business in Brussels proves wide but occasionally all these enterprises link up and constitute – in a direct or indirect way – a vast wedding industry. Indeed, in Belgium Moroccan weddings became a booming business during last decade. The most emblematic feature of this commerce is the caftan, i.e. a traditional Moroccan dress worn by women on festive occasions. Making an inventory of the caftan business in Brussels we counted around 70 shops while western ceremonial dresses only have 30 outlet-stores. With 125,962 inhabitants the Moroccan community is by far the largest community from foreign origin in this city of 1 millio