State containment and closure of gendered possibilities among a millennial generation

On not knowing Muslim young men

Bibliographic Data

ID3394564
AuthorsMairtin Mac An Ghaill (0000-0002-5713-3109, Newman University, corresponding author), C Haywood (0000-0002-2309-7808, Newcastle University)
Year2022
Volume70
Issue3
Pages419-437
Publication date2022-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Sociological Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/00380261221076192
OpenAlexW4211124011
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited48

Within a British context, the South Asian Muslim community is currently a significant media spectacle with a millennial generation of British-born young men inhabiting public personae that officially are perceived as being a 'suspect community'. An epistemological assumption of this perception appears to be that religion is the dominant and exclusive social category shaping their behaviour. Using qualitative research that synthesizes postcolonial and critical men's studies, this article explores how Muslim millennial men are 'categorically' contained with accompanying forms of (de)gendering. The article is based upon research with Birmingham-born millennial young men of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage, aged 18-25. The research found that a major effect over the last few years of establishing a securitized regime involving ascribed values, reviled violent bodies and designated locations has been to circumscribe the spaces within which Muslim young men are able to perform masculinities in public spheres. The 'no-go' spaces of hard physical borders and the increasing complexity of imagined (post-Brexit) borders have imposed racially intensified patterns of stratification in austerity Britain. We conclude by arguing that young men are subjectively negotiating the discursive construction of Muslim identities. This negotiation engages with dynamic dissonances that are (re)constituting their remembering of the past and the living and doing of the present and their imagined futures

Austerity · Context (archaeology) · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Public sphere · Social science · Sociology · Gender Politics and Representation · Gender Roles and Identity Studies · Gender Studies · Gender, Security, and Conflict · History · Law

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