ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the perceptions of gender among young immigrants of Muslim background, although many of the issues touched upon are also relevant for young people from non-Muslim homes. The cultures generally represented by first-generation migrants are not homogeneous entities but differ in many respects according to ethnicity, class, gender, age and religion. Forty-two percent - or about 67,000 - are formerly guestworkers, renamed immigrants, mainly from Turkey, Yugoslavia, Pakistan and Morocco. Among immigrants and refugees at least 60,000 are Muslims. One great difference between the gender ideology that dominates the homes of the young immigrants compared with those of the rest of Danish society is that among the former, an ideology of difference dominates whereas in the latter an ideology of sameness rules. In many respects they have managed to combine several cultural norms. The Danish anthropologist Anne Knudsen has suggested the concept 'constructive schizophrenia' for this kind of talent.
