Jeffrey Alexander Elisabeth Becker Princeton University
This dissertation project studies identity formation, boundary making, and stigma by focusing on Muslim identity within the context of the mosque in contemporary society. Through qualitative methods (ethnographic observation at mosques, interviews and textual analysis of national newspapers), the investigators will study Muslim identity construction and the confrontation of resulting stigmatization. The intellectual stimulus arises from the policy findings that individuals in Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom increasingly privilege their Muslim identities over ethnic or national identities. The researchers hypothesize that individuals with Muslim backgrounds both confirm and challenge religion-based boundaries through various strategies (e.g. confrontation, dialogue, and avoidance). In testing and building upon this hypothesis, this study will address the following questions: What is the importance of Islam for individual identities in contemporary European societies? How and why do individuals who identify as Muslims cope with and/or confront stigma? How and why is the site of the mosque important for strategies of coping with and/or confronting stigma across national contexts?
The investigators will complete an ethnographic study with three Muslim minority groups at the site of the mosque in three European cities (individuals of Pakistani descent in London, UK; Turkish descent in Berlin, Germany; and Moroccan descent in Madrid, Spain). Through ethnographic observation, interviews and textual analysis, the researchers employ a unique methodological approach to analyze identity formation and resultant everyday experience across the continent--providing both micro and macro lenses for better understanding migration, integration and multiculturalism in Europe through the dually social/physical space of the mosque. Ethnographic studies of Muslim groups to date focus almost exclusively on insider accounts, failing to address mainstream societal forces that contribute to identity formation among minority groups. Moreover, the ethnographic site of the mosque is highly underutilized, with no in-depth ethnographies as of yet undertaken at a European mosque and only one at a mosque in the United States. The comparative method that draws on parallels of increased identification of Muslim in three historically divergent European countries, as well as the inclusion of a southern European country, will concurrently contribute to sociological understanding of boundaries on belonging in different contexts.
Broader Impact
The significance of this study reaches far beyond the discipline of Sociology into broader society. In grappling with debates on immigration and integration, research findings will contribute to understandings of multiculturalism globally. By engaging with not only academic institutions, but also community organizations, the research will also help to create linkages between the academic and broader civil society in the three countries of study.
My ethnographic research in the mosque demonstrated the mosque as a dually physical and sociocultural space, in which place interacts with various enactments of belonging. Divisions (along gender, generational) lines are reflected at once in the physical delineation of mosque spaces and acts of the constituents who practice their religion within these spaces. The youth constituents in particular focus on outreach and interaction with broader society. This often reflects their own grappling with multiple/hyphenated identities, as European citizens with "migration backgrounds"—attempting to integrate legal, ethnic and religious underpinnings of self. In Berlin, this is evidenced in weekly German language sermons that encourage participation of the general public insomuch as more formalized Open Mosque Days, mosque tours and panels, all led by a core group of youth. Language plays a key role, with the second and third generations fluent in the mainstream language. However, both generational and gender lines are not fixed, but somewhat fluid. While women and men separate for prayer, they eat together in the basement canteen; and outreach activities often include a crossing of these boundaries by outsiders (e.g. women sitting in the area where men pray, or men participating in discussions in a room usually designated for women and children). What this study finds is a dynamic community, with some subsets more marked—and marketing—this dynamism than others. This dynamism often attempts, in rhetoric if not always in action, to demonstrate how mosques and Muslims, more broadly, belong to European societies—drawing on overarching values, shared historical underpinnings and future possibilities. While situated within the cities of study (Madrid, London and Berlin) and their respective country locales (Spain, the UK and Germany), this study found that the transnational aspect of mosque life cannot be overlooked. Linkages exist in funding schemes in as much as leadership (with imams often hailing from Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco etc.). They also exist in an understanding of a Muslim whole that ascends physical boundaries. Despite claims of unity, however (most marked in the case of the London mosque), ethnic divisions remain in mosque communities—whether they primarily cater to a single ethnic group or multiple ethnicities. Helping to challenge these divisions are the rise in converts, who almost always cast their belonging as evidence of non-ethnic means of belonging and seek to emphasize the importance of such means of belonging to broader society. What this study shows is how mosques act as microcosms of macro-issues occurring across today’s Europe. These spaces/places, in their varied forms, demonstrate in both function and physical form, religious, ethnic, generational and gender boundaries (among others). They demonstrate the activity of a youth grappling with the meanings and meeting places of multiple identities. Mosques are local, regional and transnational spaces, signifying—in their very presence—dynamic processes of social change.
