ABSTRACT

In tracing the background of the second-generation young men who were involved in the London bombings and the influences shaping their particular masculinities, I invoke a notion of generational (dis)placement to explore how they find themselves in a world very different from anything their parents knew. Often unable to communicate with their parents, young Muslim men may feel obliged to show signs of respect to their fathers, but at the same time can feel internally estranged. They might show these outward signs of respect, and so learn to behave appropriately, while shaping very different kinds of lives for themselves with their friends and on the Internet in the privacy of their rooms. This is not so different from other second-generation young men who have grown up in migrant communities, but we require forms of qualitative research that can appreciate the need to listen to the particular cultural narratives and ways particular traumatic, including the unspoken traumatic, histories of exile and displacement find an echo in future generations.1