The Drama of Social Identities : How second-generation Muslims in the Czech Republic cope with otherness and negotiate their acceptance
Abstract
This paper focuses on the identity construction of second-generation Muslims in the Czech Republic. This generation consists mainly of young Muslims who are the descendants of migrants who came to Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1990s as part of student and labour migration.
Their socialization took place in the context of their Muslim family, but they were primarily socialized in the Czech environment. Thus, second-generation Muslims move between several cultural frameworks, transnational fields located in the space in-between.
They negotiate their identity situationally and must cope with their parents' country of origin, ethnicity and national identity. Through these interviews of second-generation Muslims, I would like to show how these young people with a migratory experience treat ethnicity when reporting on their otherness and what strategies they apply when negotiating key social identities.
I created this data based on semi-structured interviews.