The WAU 2025 Congress (Antigua, Guatemala) webpage and call for panels are now open - Please visit waucongress2025.org for more info.

WORLD ANTHROPOLOGICAL UNION

CONGRESS 2024​

Paper

Borders, boundaries, inter-sectionalism and the problems of memory of young British Muslims in-between identities in modern UK

presenters

    Dina N. Karavaeva

    Nationality: Russia

    Residence: Russia

    Institute of History and Archaeology in Ural Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences; also Ural Federal University

    Presence:Face to Face/ On Site

This research is devoted to the study of the identities of modern British Muslims (symbolically “migrant communities”), British citizens, residents of London, Manchester, Oldham, Bradford, and based on statistical data, social reports, media, visual anthropology and author's field materials 2012-2023. The work describes British Muslims, how their identity develops and what is the role of city structures and districts. The authors will tell who British Muslims are, what the dynamics of their identity/s are and what the role of memory and cross-border identity (in-between ethnic Bangladeshi/Pakistani, pan-religious Islamic and national British). In relation to this group, in line with the concept of “active borders,” we can talk about co-interpretation of borders – joint interpretation of the meanings of history/space/memory both on the “hard” and “soft” borderlands. Young Muslims of the so called “2-3 generations” deal with two cultural worlds of their own families and cultural communities, as well as their peers, schools and society at large. In addition, peers are often drawn from a wide variety of immigrant cultures. Thus, “intercultural worlds”, including “worlds of memory”, can turn out to be not only “bicultural”, but much more multi-layered, giving rise to misunderstandings. The special research approach is the visual and urban anthropology. The work describes British Muslims are, how their identity develops and what is the role of city structures and districts, with the help of urban and visual anthropology. We are talking about: 1. some ghettos presenting (not preserving) a micro version of the world that its inhabitants once left; 2. quarters of a cosmopolitan, commercial, literally multicultural order; 3. “quarters” that do not exist as such, a territory that sometimes remains an idea, a virtual space enclosed within the central and bohemian districts (Muslim entertainment, Muslim hipsters, politicized youth, who today form the British Islam image as unique phenomenon.

Keywords:

British Muslims, in-between identities, UK, visual and urban anthropology