Programme full

Wednesday 15 April 2015 11:00 - 12:30
PAPER SESSION 2
Muslims and finally Nigeria with it geo-political division between Northern Sunni Muslims and Southern Christians. The
final short panel discussion provides the space for engagements with the comparative dimensions of the symposium.
Troubling Youth Identities: Nation, Religion and Gender in Pakistan, Senegal, Lebanon and Nigeria
Dunne, M., Crossouard, B., Durrani, N., Fincham, K.
(University of Sussex)
This paper introduces the symposium that brings together recently conducted studies that explored how youth
construct their identities in four contrasting non-Western, predominantly Muslim contexts. Each of these studies
focussed on youth identity formations within contrasting configurations of state, nation, religion and gender. In a global
context of heightened concern about youth, the youth bulge and religion, these studies provide analyses of the
heterogeneous ways that national and local cultures, societies and their education systems represent and produce
forms of local and global youth citizenship. Our interest here is in the ways that youth appropriate different discourses
in the construction of their own identities and those of ‘others’.
This introductory paper sets out a common research design, methods and fieldwork itinerary developed to provide
space for discussion with young people about their sense of identity and belonging within each national context.
Following this it presents the overarching framework for the analysis of the empirical work with young people in the
four distinct socio-political contexts of Lebanon, Nigeria, Pakistan and Senegal. These country studies are at the core
of the symposium and trace selected configurations of the intersections of national, religious and gender ideologies in
young peoples’ accounts of themselves and their local social environments. Each paper thus will refer to how different
forms of social and educational ex/inclusion are produced in each context and the implications for a sense of
belonging, identity formation, social relations and social cohesion in sub-national, national and supra-national levels.
Youth Narratives of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ in Pakistan: The Intersection of Gender, Religion and Ethnicity
Durrani, N.
(University of Sussex)
This paper draws on an empirical study carried out in the north-western province of Pakistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It
focuses on the ways Pakistani youth construct their identities through drawing on the multiple discourses of nation,
religion, gender and ethnicity. The narratives of young people aged 18-29 are accessed via single-sex focus group
discussions. The research participants vary in terms of education background, but are predominantly in higher
education. In terms of faith and ethnicity, the research sample predominantly identify with Sunni Islam and the
Pakhtun ethnic group.
The study offers understandings of how young Pakistanis appropriate, perform and/or resist dominant discourses of
nation, religion and gender and the intersections in their constructions of ‘us’ and ‘others’ in contemporary Pakistan
which has been a site of ongoing religious and gendered conflict since the “War on Terror”.
Gender, Nation and Religion in Senegal: The Silences of Republican Secularism?
Crossouard, B.
(University of Sussex)
The emergence of Senegal as a nation state in 1960 saw its adoption of a republican, secular constitution, in which all
political parties were debarred from associations based in ethnicity, region or religion. At the same time, the different
peoples of Senegal are predominantly Muslim, and indeed particular Islamic brotherhoods were integral to the
country’s governance during French colonial rule. Even if seen as a beacon of democracy in Africa, recent
Senegalese elections saw considerable unrest, including violent street demonstrations in which youth were highly
active. The acrimonious pre-election climate also saw the politicisation of some Islamic brotherhoods by the previous
president, in contravention of the secular principles of the constitution.
This country case will explore youth’s identity constructions in a context in which the formal constitution has
constructed religious, ethnic and regional identifications as irrelevant to politics. This may have been intended to
construct a national consensus around what it is to be Senegalese, but could foreclose the possibilities of more
particularistic identity constructions, while also producing silences around ethnic/gender/religious differences and
inequalities, potentially leaving the norms of dominant and historically privileged groups implicit and unchallenged.
Drawing upon post-structural theories of identity and discourse, this country case will therefore explore male and
female youth’s identity constructions in different metropolitan and peri-urban communities in Senegal, in particular the
axes of differentiation that matter to them with respect to gender, nation and religion.
BSA Annual Conference 2015 100
Glasgow Caledonian University