‘I Want Good Children, Also for this Country’: How Dutch Minority Muslim Parents’ Experience and Negotiate Parenting, Parenthood and Citizenship

Abstract

This article investigates how minority Muslim parents experience and negotiate parenting, parenthood and citizenship in a context of increasing socio-political tensions. Drawing upon both parenting and parenthood as well as minority citizenship studies, it conceptualises parenthood as a domain for experiences of inand exclusion of belonging to society. Based on an ethnographic study with self-organising Moroccan-Dutch parent groups, analyses show that political discourses contesting migrants' belonging to society as well as disqualifications of minority parenting in parenting discourses and social services enter these families' domestic lives in pervasive ways. As parents engage in socio-political dynamics in public spheres, they ground themselves in migratory, classed, historical, religious and globalised perspectives to express, counter and co-build parenthood and citizenship notions. As such, this study sheds light on how parents affirm their civic contribution to society as a parent, as well as on the civic nature of parenthood. Translating the findings to practice, this article draws attention to minority Muslim families' diverse stances as child-rearing citizens.

Religious transmission and cultural negotiation in first‐generation Muslim migrant parents in Italy: A qualitative study

“…Within this frame, the study addressed the intertwine between the two acculturation drivers of cultural maintenance and cultural change and the four religious dimensions identified in the BFRD model (Saroglou, 2011). The aim of this research was indeed to highlight how the need to ‘raise good Muslims’ (van Beurden & de Haan, 2020) in a Western context challenges the way Muslim first generation approaches religion and religiosity. We have taken a multidimensional approach to religiosity to gain a more detailed understanding of the different facets of religiosity and how they contribute to the overall process of cultural adaptation and of intergenerational transmission of religious values.…”

“…Studies on the acculturation experiences of Muslim migrants in the diaspora have examined the relationship between religious identification and affiliation with the culture of the host society (Triandafyllidou, 2002;Vertovec & Rogers, 2018) and the dynamics of religious visibility and the similarities and differences in religious behaviour across generations (Guveli & Platt, 2023;Kurien, 2021;Molteni & van Tubergen, 2022). Broadly speaking, research suggests that a context where Islam is not welcomed may reinforce religious identification (Güngör et al, 2011), which also serves as a strategy for coping with the life as an immigrant in a new context (Molteni & Dimitriadis, 2021).…”

“…However, culture and religion are kept distinct in secularized Western society (Pew Research Center, 2018), and Muslims' sense of ethnic identity is constantly challenged by the assimilation efforts of the host society. These efforts are mainly aimed at the second generation (Güngör, Fleischmann, & Phalet, 2011) and, in the case of long‐term migration, overlap with the efforts of Muslim parents to pass on their values to the new generations (van Beurden & de Haan, 2020). Indeed, religious transmission is a central task for Muslim parents in raising their children, but part of the socialization of the new generations takes place in a cultural context that offers values and models of behaviour that openly contradicts, if not devalues, Islamic traditions.…”