Identity loss or identity re-shape? Religious identification among the offspring of ‘Christian–Muslim’ couples

Abstract

ABSTRACT Previous research on interreligious marriages has indicated that they tend to cause both ethnic and religious ‘dilution’ and ‘loss’, but these concepts are misleading and cannot explain different and often contradictory identification processes. Based on qualitative in-depth interviews with 66 sons and daughters raised in families where one partner is an immigrant from a majority-Muslim country and the other Italian, this article explores the offspring’s religious identities. The article counters the notion that there is a univocal process of religious ‘loss’ among ‘mixed’ offspring. Three different identification processes were found: ‘Islamic’, ‘non-religious’, and ‘spiritual’. In the first case, the identification with the Islamic faith of the Muslim father leads the offspring to discuss identity in terms of opposition to youth with a ‘Western secularised’ way of living. In ‘non-religious’ identifications, offspring downplay the role of religion, preferring to emphasise their dual ethnicity. The third type of narrative (‘spiritual identities’) shows the elaboration of an anti-dogmatic position on religion, sometimes more syncretic, sometimes more holistic. Results suggest that offspring’s identities are much more complex and characterised by a re-shaping, rather than a loosening, of religiosity.