Browsing by Author "Lönnroth-Olin, Marja"

The discourses of Young Muslim men in the West have tended to focus on marginalisation, deviancy and threat. Often the voices of the targets of these stigmatizing discourses are not heard and thus, they do not have the possibility to re-define or resist the dominant discourses. This Thesis investigates how young Muslim men living in Finland, surrounded by discourses of threat and marginalisation, construct Muslimness and how they position themselves and others in that construction. The data was collected by semi-structured thematic group interviews, conducted in small groups or dyads, with 12 young men aged from 18-29 years. The data was analysed using a Critical Discursive Psychological approach, focusing on how the young men are constructed and positioned by the larger societal discourses and how they respond to these constructions, as well as on how they construct their identities in the immediate interaction situation. The analysis focused on three concepts; interpretative repertoires, ideological dilemmas and subject positions, which all shed a light on how identities are constructed and negotiated in interaction in relation to the sociocultural context. In the data 3 interpretative repertoires, 3 ideological dilemmas and 5 subject positions were distinguished. The results show that the participants negotiate their identities in relation to various actors, as well as in relation to relevant identity categories such as gender and generation. In their talk, it can be distinguished that they sometimes accept and repeat, yet sometimes question and re-define how Muslimness is constructed in the societal discourses.