Dr H. Chafai (Habiba)

Are cultural values, attitudes, practices and customs changing over time in a postmigration context? May opening a dialogue between generations track intergenerational transformations? Habiba Chafai current research project targets the cultural and socioeconomic circumstances of Dutch-Moroccan citizens. She intends to investigate the notion of belonging and its potential connection to economic independence by considering gender, religion and generational change from the perspective of the upbringing values of mothers. Her main objective is to investigate how mothers inform their children’s sense of belonging across three generations in Dutch society. She recently published an introductory article on the subject “Contextualising the socialisation of Muslim minorities within parental upbringing values in the Netherlands: The case of Moroccan-Dutch” in the Journal of Muslims in Europe.

Habiba Chafai specialises in Moroccan society and culture and the position of women therein with a particular focus on gender-based violence. Her sociolinguistic background brings in the significant role of language in shaping and reflecting identities and social interactions. Her research interests mainly combine between the issues of gender, Islam and migration within media and critical discourse studies.
She is a former lecturer of Arabic language and cultures (Modern Arabic and Moroccan dialect) at the University of Minho in Portugal and the University of New England in Morocco. She earned a PhD on Language Sciences with a dissertation on the representation of ‘honour killing’ in the British press. Her recent project on street sexual harassment has resulted in the publication of the first two articles written in English about the topic on the Moroccan context.
Besides possessing native fluency in Arabic and French, she is also fluent in English, Portuguese and Spanish. And she also speaks a bit of Dutch!

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