The past several years have seen many examples of friction between secular European societies and religious migrant communities within them. This study combines ethnographic work in three countries (The Netherlands, the United Kingdom and France) with a new theoretical frame (regimes of secularity). Its mission is to contribute to an understanding of collective minority identity construction in secular societies. In addition to engaging the academic literature and ethnographic research, the book takes a critical look at three cities, three nation-contexts, and three grassroots forms of Muslim religious collective organizations, comparing and contrasting them from a historical perspective.
Carolina Ivanescu offers a thorough theoretical grounding and tests existing theories empirically. Beginning with the principle that religion and citizenship are both crucial aspects of religious migrants' individual identities, she demonstrates the relevance of collective identity, which is shaped through articulations of belonging to geographical and ideological entities. This form of belonging, Ivanescu asserts, is filtered through the mechanisms of citizenship and religion in the modern social world.
