Abstract
This chapter addresses the relevance of religion in the identity negotiation process, focusing on the Muslim community in Luxembourg. The Muslim community in Luxembourg constitutes a numerical minority that has not been subject to much scientific research. The specific research question is how Muslim migrants from the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia living in Luxembourg relate to their religious heritage in a new socio-cultural context, in which they are not necessarily perceived as Muslims. The author looks at how individuals negotiate identity references, and discusses the changing significance of religion and the way it is integrated in the identity patchwork of migrants and refugees. The chapter presents finding of an intensive fieldwork, and shows how migrants and refugees construct their identities in relation to situationally redefined in- and out-groups; how they distance themselves from different ways of being Muslim and from different groups of Muslims, and how they contribute to deconstruct alleged religious group. Personal moral goodness is particularly emphasized for self-definition. Interestingly, personal moral goodness is strongly related to Islamic concepts of leading a good life, even among those who claim that religion does not matter in their lives. Religion is finally represented as subjectively re-appropriated in a way that leads to construct a feeling of moral superiority and a related encompassing social identity.
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Notes
- 1.
With more than 43 % foreign residents (Thill-Ditsch 2010), the percentage of foreign residents is among the highest in Europe.
- 2.
Modified law of March 31, 1979, Loi du 31 mars 1979 réglementant l’utilisation des données nominatives dans les traitements informatiques (Mém. A—69 du 29 août 1979, p. 1386).
- 3.
Migrants came mainly for economic reasons and refugees for political and security reasons during the break-up of the Yugoslav federation.
- 4.
Most of the migrants were received under the law of 1972 (Loi du 28 mars 1972 concernant, l’entrée et le séjour des étrangers, le contrôle médical des étrangers, l´emploi de la main-d’oeuvre étrangère), whereas refugees coming after 1996 were received under the law of 1996 (Règlement grand-ducal du 22 avril 1996 portant application de l’article 3 de la loi du 3 avril 1996 portant création d’ une procédure relative à l’examen d´une demande d’asile) and had no access to the employment market as long as they were asylum seekers.
- 5.
The sample consists of Muslims from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia and Croatia.
- 6.
The Arabic word millah, literally meaning “nation”, is the term used for confessional community and refers to protected religious minority groups.
- 7.
- 8.
After the 2nd World War, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia became a Socialist Federal Republic (SFRY), in which six republics were federated under communist rule and the motto of “fraternity and unity”. The different ethnic groups were allocated different rights and privileges within the different republics, depending on whether they were recognized as a nation or a nationality. The SFRY can be viewed as a political nation, composed of different apolitical cultural nations (each one having their own republic) and different nationalities ( narodnost, that had a mother state outside of Yugoslavia).
- 9.
Communist authorities preferred to use the term “Muslim”, because the alternative “Bosniak” would have implied that Bosnia is their national territory and not the homeland of local Serbs and Croats as well. The term “Bosniak” is now used to denote Slav Muslims in the former Yugoslav republic, now independent Bosnia-Herzegovina.
- 10.
The interviews excerpts have been translated by the author. All the original names have been changed.
- 11.
The different but similar dialects composing Serbo-Croatian were standardized into a unique language during the nineteenth century to demonstrate the ‘oneness’ of the Yugoslav nation. Yet, they have undergone important transitions since then, especially after the break-up of the Yugoslav federation. Nowadays, Serbian and Croatian are officially recognized as different languages. The complex transitions and perceptions related to the union of the Serbo-Croatian language are too complex to be dealt with in this place (Adanir 2002; Babuna 2000, 2004; Friedman 2000; Greenberg 2004).
- 12.
- 13.
The tape-recorded interviews were conducted in French, German, Luxemburgish or English, depending on the language preference of the interviewees. Interviews ranged from one and a half to four hours and usually took place in the homes of the interviewees. The questions were open-ended and covered four general areas: immigration history, trajectory and motives, experiences in host and home country, salience of religion and reconstruction of social networks.
- 14.
According to Wimmer, boundary contraction consists of excluding different categories of persons from the in-group and to reduce the number and type of persons included in the group. Contraction happens through “shifting emphasis to lower levels of differentiation or through fission”, implying “splitting the existing category into two”. To illustrate this notion he gives the example of the encompassing category “Asian“, that can be rejected by migrants in favor of finer distinctions such as “Taiwanese” or “Chinese”. Boundary contraction is thus about different levels of in- or exclusion that are at the base of categorization of “self” and “other”.
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Waltzer, L. (2015). Negotiating Identity: How Religion Matters After All for Migrants and Refugees in Luxemburg. In: La Barbera, M. (eds) Identity and Migration in Europe: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. International Perspectives on Migration, vol 13. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10127-9_13
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