Summary:
Due to immigration, in Switzerland the Muslim population has grown considerably within the past 30 years. In 2010, 5.2% or around 400.000 people are of Muslim faith. The adolescence and emerging adulthood constitute a third (!) or about 120.000 people. Despite this number, conspicuously no in-depth study exists with regard to young Muslims, their religious and national-cultural identification, values, and attitudes towards Swiss society. This absence is even more notable, as these young Muslims will become next leaders of Muslim organisations and ideals and values of the upcoming generation will be crucial for the social incorporation of Islam and Muslims in Switzerland. The research projects aims to close the desideratum as it investigates the various perspectives and attitudes of Muslim youth on religion and society and asks to what extent Muslim religiousness impedes or enhances an integration and participation in Swiss society. In particular, the study will take-stock of the varied religious, cultural, and social activities of youth groups within and outside Muslim organisations. Using the approach and vocabulary of civic social capital as coined by Alex Stepick, the project will analyse to what extent Muslim youth group activities provide and promote the building of bridges and links towards the wider society. The study will be of much interest for social and political decision-makers, the administration, and the wider Swiss public; it will provide knowledge about the various integrative and supportive activities offered by Muslim associations and will suggest perspectives of civic engagement of Muslim youth groups, forums and leaders. Also, the project will suggest criteria of best practice civic engagement. In general perspective, the project will be instrumental to provide insights for studying Muslim youth in Europe.
Objectives:
The project seeks to investigate the various perspectives and attitudes of Muslim youth on religion and society and asks to what extent embeddedness in religious associations impedes or enhances an integration and participation in Swiss society. In particular, the project will take-stock of the various religious, cultural, and social activities of youth groups within and outside Muslim organisations.
Research questions:
The project's basic research questions take leave from collective forms of in-group bonding and exchange and consider their activities as an important indicator for the social integration (embeddedness) or disintegration (exclusion) of Muslim youth in Swiss society. Research questions are on a descriptive and analytical level. On the descriptive level, the project strives to study and gain knowledge:
- What kind of formal and informal Muslim youth groups exist within mosque associations and what activities, aims, ideals, and values do they promote?
- What kind of networks and forums of young Muslims exist beyond and independent of mosque associations and what are their activities, aims, ideals and values?
On the analytical level, the project asks:
- To what extent do social relationships, based in formal and informal Muslim youth groups related to mosque associations, affect individuals' relationships to the broader civic society and enable or hamper forms of civic engagement?
- To what extent do social relationships, based in forums and networks outside and independent of mosque associations, affect individuals' relationships to the broader civic society and enable or hamper forms of civic engagement?
- In comparative perspective we ask, how religious organizations, in our case Muslim youth organizations, enable or discourage civic social relationships with the broader civic society.
As conceptional frame, the project will apply the approach of civic social capital as coined by Prof. Alex Stepick and his research on immigrant religious groups in the US.
