Are Suburban Youth Becoming More Traditional? A Comparative Study on Young People from Muslim Backgrounds Living on the Outskirts of Madrid and Paris

Abstract

This paper compares how Muslim youth identify with traditional values in two disadvantaged areas: a banlieue of Paris and a barrio of Madrid. Research has revealed divergent forms of identification with Islam and tradition. In Les Bosquets (Paris), where the predominating context is one of ethnic segregations, a lack of civic participation, isolation from the city center, and increasing inequalities and Islamophobia, youth are exhibiting an ambivalent return to traditional values and building a new proud, combative and collective Islam. In the case of Madrid, young people distinguish between human/religious and traditional values while ignoring the latter values when they interfere with individual interests. Islam here is individual and compatible with a collective feeling of neighborhood, one built within a context of ethnic diversity, a less intense feeling of Islamophobia, greater accessibility to the cosmopolitan urban center, and dense networks of civil society that encourage local participation.