ABSTRACT
Identity construction among young European Muslims of migrant origin has drawn significant attention for many reasons. They represent a fascinating case study of the intermingling of distinct ethnocultural, religious and national senses of belonging – each complicated and strengthened by ever-intimate and immediate tools of globalized communication. European Muslims also represent the fastest-growing population in many of their respective countries – numbering more than 58 million people in Europe by 2030 (Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life 2011) – which has galvanized debates about welfare consumption, employment and citizenship. Moreover, the private construction of European Muslim identity has been publicized significantly by corresponding political identities and their scrutiny by policymakers and the press. Threaded through each of these considerations is interest (or concern) about the purported conflict between Muslims’ allegiance to their faith and their consensual obligation to their state (Gest 2010; Laurence 2012). The question is: how can we explain European Muslim identities? Examining the whirlwind of analysis, there appears to be an emerging consensus
among scholars of social and political identity that European Muslims live out an
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2015 Vol. 38, No. 11, 1868-1885, https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2014.920092
anti-essentialist critique of identity construction every day (see e.g. Strasser 2008; Salih 2004; Liebkind 1989; Grillo 2003, 2004). Indeed, in their quotidian choices, European Muslims selectively negotiate a variety of obligations and lifestyles to formulate a constellation of unique identities that – from the outside – appear to select from different spheres of belonging simultaneously. Subsequently, various scholars have heralded a generation of young Muslims ‘striving to resist hegemonic attempts to reduce their identities to essentialised ideological entities, and seeking to destabilise these hegemonic representations’ (Salih 2004, 996). Scholars think that European Muslims do this by – for example – adhering to certain aspects of Islam, specific ideals of national belonging and unique traditions of homeland culture to assemble an amalgamated identity that defies the discourses of complete religious, national or ethnic ‘authenticity’.
