Convivial narratives as agency: Middle-class Muslims evading racialisation in Copenhagen

Abstract

This article presents an ethnographic analysis of how young middle-class Muslims in Copenhagen create convivial narratives of their city. The article builds on Paul Gilroy’s idea of conviviality by bridging it with Saba Mahmood’s concept of agency. I argue that widening the conversation on urban conviviality to include a perspective on agency allows us to expand the sociological imagination to one that combines both phenomenological and critical theory in urban analysis. In the context of Denmark, middle-class Muslims’ convivial narratives can be understood as an agency to navigate Islamophobic or racist experiences, enabled by their spatial mobility and class positioning. The article concludes that Muslims’ conviviality is contingent on an intersectional understanding related to racialisation, gender and socio-economic position. This approach allows an appreciation of how socially mobile Danish Muslims can construct convivial narratives to evade racism and Islamophobia in everyday life.