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Geographies of Identity

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Troubling Muslim Youth Identities

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Abstract

This chapter introduces the key concepts of the research and the theoretical frameworks we draw on to analyse our four country case studies. After addressing the concept of youth, we use poststructural and postcolonial theories to elaborate our understandings of identities as being multiple and fluid, always in process. These perspectives are again drawn upon to understand gender, as constantly brought into being in performative ways. We conclude this section by emphasising the significance of belonging and affiliation in the production of identities. As part of our concern with youth’s national belongings, we explore the complexities of citizen identities, probing the imagined community of the nation, and how national affiliations may, or may not, coincide with modern nation-state boundaries. We problematise the Western origins of the nation-state and the implications for states emerging from coloniality. We then consider the relevance of the nation-state within a globalised world and related questions about post-national or more cosmopolitan forms of citizenship. Pursuing our interest in different axes of youth identities, we turn to religion, interrogating the supposed separation of religion and politics in secular modernity, as well as the putative incompatibility of Islam with modernity and modern state formation. We return to cosmopolitanism to critique its modern, Eurocentric origins and the implications for ‘Muslim cosmopolitanism’. We conclude this chapter by engaging with feminist and postcolonial literature which demonstrates how national and religious affiliations are consistently and pervasively inflected by gender.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for International Education, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

    Máiréad Dunne

  2. Centre for International Education, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

    Naureen Durrani

  3. St Mary’s University, London, UK

    Kathleen Fincham

  4. Centre for International Education, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

    Barbara Crossouard

Authors
  1. Máiréad Dunne
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  2. Naureen Durrani
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  3. Kathleen Fincham
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  4. Barbara Crossouard
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Correspondence to Máiréad Dunne .

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Dunne, M., Durrani, N., Fincham, K., Crossouard, B. (2017). Geographies of Identity. In: Troubling Muslim Youth Identities. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-31279-2_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-31279-2_2

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-230-34837-0

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