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This comparative study focuses on how civil society structures influence youth from a Muslim background in their upward mobility and local belonging (to the neighbourhood and to the city). Under comparison are one banlieue in Paris and one barrio in Madrid, similar in terms of social precarity and yet different in their degree of ethnic and religious diversity, their connection to the city centre, the state funding they receive and their civic participation. In the case of the neighbourhood of San Cristóbal (Madrid), a lack of state investment has resulted in a diminished capacity for civil society to connect young people to new opportunities. However, their daily contact with the city centre, the ethnic diversity in the neighbourhood and collaborative efforts between secular and religious structures work together to foster a sense of mixed belonging among young Spanish Muslims. In contrast, significant investment by the State in the suburb of Les Bosquets (Paris) since the riots in 2005 have indeed linked young people to new opportunities, but at the cost of an institutionalisation of civil society structures. In Les Bosquets, increased ethnic segregation, geographical isolation, and the estrangement of religious and ‘laic’ (i.e. secular) organisations are all responsible for the new sense of malaise felt by youths, thus severely affecting their sense of belonging.

This comparative and qualitative research examines the types of ethnic, racial, religious, and social identification that North-African second generations adopted in a banlieue of Paris and a peripheral barrio of Madrid. Four types of self-identification were detected in the neighborhood of Les Bosquets (Paris) and three in the neighborhood of San Cristobal (Madrid). In Les Bosquets, isolation, Islamophobia and the relationships with the police give rise to a "reactive ethnicity"; a new conservative Islam gains many followers ("Muslim self-identification"); race appears for the first time as an element of self-identification ("indigenous self-identification”) and secularism has waned (“laïc self-identification”). In San Cristóbal, a significant share still feels like immigrants (“immigrant identification”); a new Spanish-Muslim generation (“hybrid self-identification”) is born, and the most vulnerable youth adopt a conservative Islam while simultaneously developing a sense of “neighborhood pride” and identification with the working class (“neighborhood identification”).

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.

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