ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we seek to understand the psychological processes that underpin a ‘third position’, juxtaposed to this of individuals who engage in racist and violent acts driven by either religious-based extremism, or extreme far right nationalist ideologies. We offer a political psychological analysis of the socio-political realities of post-diaspora French-Muslim women against the backdrop of the interdependent counter-movements and counter-narratives of the far right and radical Islam. Accounting for the intersectionality of gender, religion, and nationalism as drivers and inhibitors of nativism and extremism, we seek to understand how post-diaspora French-Muslim women experience their identity, republicanism, and its values, as an alternative to radicalisation and violent extremism in the context of integration processes and migration challenges. We conduct a thematic analysis of secondary material (interview excerpts) sourced from five published studies containing interviews of second (and subsequent) generations of French Muslim women. We find that French-Muslim women experience identity conflict on a daily basis, struggle to feel integrated into French society, and confine their faith to the private sphere to participate in public life. The consequence of this is a ‘superficial' integration amongst French-Muslim women, as the demand for assimilationism fails to foster a genuine or natural allegiance to the nation. This research provides an important contribution to existing work on identity integration and highlights the need for future investigation into Europe's largest minority population.
