Gender-Related Particularities in the Identity of Young Muslims Living in Germany

Abstract

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.