Abstract
Since 2001, a number of controversial and sometimes violent events in the UK and elsewhere have raised anxieties around British Muslim male identities. The problematisation of those identities is now framed around the supposed conflict between Britishness and Muslim-ness. Yet these discourses of the belonging of young Muslim identities often underplay or fail to consider the increasing importance of local, British spaces in ethnically diverse towns and cities, shaping and creating new dynamics of identification. This study draws upon extensive ethnographic research and mobile interviews to provide a comprehensive study of these evolving spatial identities of British young Muslim men. It uses Birmingham as a case study area, a city in which more than a fifth of the population describe themselves as holding to a Muslim faith. The study contrasts how the everyday experiences that underpin Muslim identity stand in stark contrast to less tangible notions of Britishness. The article concludes by positing that young Muslim male identities are characterised by a dissonance between the emotional place-belongingness that evokes for them a sense of inclusion, and the politics of belonging that marks out their exclusion.
Highlights
Since 2001 a number of events in the UK and abroad have helped draw Muslims as a problematic group in North America and Western Europe (Allen 2010, Parekh 2006)
The paper concludes by positing that young Muslim male identities are characterised by a dissonance, between the emotional place-belongingness that evokes for them a sense of inclusion, and the politics of belonging that marks out their exclusion
Between the post-war period and the 1990s, the politics of belonging for Muslim migrants had pitted their allegiances to the UK against their attachments to diasporal homelands in South Asia
Summary
Since 2001 a number of events in the UK and abroad have helped draw Muslims as a problematic group in North America and Western Europe (Allen 2010, Parekh 2006). The findings suggest that the identities of young Muslim men in Birmingham were not explained by a conflict between ‘Britishness’ and the Muslim faith Instead their sense of belonging was characterised by a contrast between their everyday lives which are underpinned by attachments to local spaces and emphasising their inclusion, and the divisive political discourses that they encountered, which marked out the potential for their exclusion. This paper utilises sociological and geographical theories of belonging with an emphasis on scale and spatiality to investigate the struggle over what Yuval-Davis (2006) and Antonsich (2010) would term, the belonging and the ‘politics of belonging’ of young Muslim men in Birmingham It begins by reviewing literatures of belonging and providing a methodological overview before going through the empirical data exploring the way in which the politics of belonging plays out in relation to young Muslims’ feelings of Britishness. The paper concludes by reflecting on the dissonance between participants’ contested politics of belonging as British Muslims, and their deepening ties to local spaces as focal points for their identity
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
