A dance of virtue and protection: femininity and masculinity negotiations in Arab cross-national marriage between Syrian refugee women and Egyptian men

Abstract This article examines how gender identities are relationally constructed and strategically negotiated in marriages between Syrian refugee women and Egyptian men in Egypt. Based on in-depth interviews with 33 women and 9 men, the study explores how uprooting, legal precarity, and social asymmetries shape performances of idealized masculinity and femininity. It introduces the concept of negotiated femininities to describe how displaced women navigate structural vulnerability through context-sensitive gender performances, while men enact protective masculinities centered on provision and moral authority. Although Syrian women are idealized for their perceived virtues of docility and domesticity, their narratives expose tensions that both challenge and affirm ideals of hegemonic masculinity. Framed as a “dance of virtue and protection,” the paper contributes to debates on Arab masculinities, inter-Arab and cross-national marriage, refugee-host relations, and the gendered politics of displacement, highlighting marriage as a site of complex negotiation, reciprocal gender role formation, and a pathway for self-resettlement.