Against the background of migration, globalization and nationalization, questions arise about the identity formation of young Muslims living in Germany. Gender-related characteristics of identity are of utmost relevance for the individual in order to be able to successfully locate oneself in modern society. In this article, we examine gender-specific differences between young Muslim women and Muslims with a Turkish migration background who grew up in Germany. We aim to answer the question of how the social, cultural, and ethnic identities of young Muslims growing up in Turkish immigrant families were formed, and to what extent gender differences between young men and women exist here. This question is particularly interesting as young Muslims with a migration background stand at the intersection of different ethnic, cultural, religious and political worlds and have to cope with the task of forming their own processual identity. In this qualitative study, 50 interviews were conducted with young Muslims aged 18-25 whose parents or grandparents migrated from Turkey to Germany. The interviews were audio-documented, transcribed, and imported into the qualitative software program atlas.ti. The analysis was structured by a codebook consisting of structural and open codes. Furthermore, co-occurrence analysis was used to examine the co-occurrence of open and structural codes verified through an interrater reliability calculated using the statistical measure Krippendorff's alpha. The results show that society and culture have a great influence on young Muslims. The development of identity shows significant gender-related characteristics: Young women describe a predominantly good, especially professional, integration into German society. In their Turkish family, however, they tend to encounter criticism, alienation and devaluation. The men are more likely to report discrimination and experiences of disintegration. On the other hand, they experience fewer conflicts in their Turkish family; as sons, they are held in higher esteem than the daughters. These findings reveal divergent expectations placed on men and women by Turkish and German society, which influence their identity formation, but also their inner-emotional conflicts. A hybrid migratory identity represents a valuable resource for shaping transnational and postmodern life-worlds.

No abstract

Against the backdrop of globalisation on the one hand and nationalisation on the other, the question of tolerance of ambiguity, i.e. of tolerating cultural ambiguity and vagueness, is of particular importance. This qualitative study investigates what tolerance of ambiguity means in a group of 50 young Turkish Muslims living in Germany. A high tolerance of ambiguity is mentioned much more frequently in the interviews than a low tolerance of ambiguity with tendencies towards (religious) radicalisation. Appreciation of different cultures and lifestyles and a certain resilience to discrimination go hand in hand with a high tolerance of ambiguity. However, it is also possible that despite high tolerance of ambiguity, the corresponding attitudes remain ambivalent. A lack of support, difficult interpersonal conflicts (especially in one’s own family), and a turn to religion occur together with expressions of low ambiguity tolerance. The casuistic representations deepen the impression that high ambiguity tolerance is favoured in triadically structured families functioning as a collective, whereas early traumatic experiences and emotional distance in crises promote low ambiguity tolerance, especially in adolescence. The results underline the importance of high tolerance of ambiguity on the part of both the host country and the migrants.