Kids from blended backgrounds with one Muslim mum or dad have plural identities

How do Quebec-born youngsters in blended households with one Muslim mum or dad self-identify? How do they mix the totally different values transmitted by their mother and father and people of the society through which they develop up?

These are a number of the questions that led Josiane Le Gall, an assistant professor of anthropology at Université de Montréal, to conduct a qualitative examine with colleagues in faith, social work, anthropology and psychology at UdeM, Université Laval and Morocco’s Al Akhawayn College.

The findings have been printed final August in a particular subject of the journal Social Compass on how Muslim / non-Muslim households around the globe navigate id and spiritual points of their each day lives and the social constraints they face.

Le Gall’s analysis grew out of a bigger examine on plural id in about 100 individuals of blended ethnicity in Quebec. She interviewed 23 individuals aged 18 to 40 with one Muslim immigrant mum or dad. The Muslim mother and father got here from Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Guinea, Egypt, Gambia and Bangladesh. Two-thirds have been non-practicing.

Quebecers at the beginning

Le Gall discovered three totally different patterns of cultural transmission within the topics’ households: complete absence of any cultural transmission, specific transmission of id markers (language and/or tradition), and publicity to cultural references (the faith was not actively transmitted however cultural and spiritual practices have been current within the house).

Members have been unanimous in saying they recognized at the beginning as Quebecers and, to a lesser diploma, as Canadian, no matter whether or not the non-Muslim mum or dad was born in Quebec or elsewhere.

“They have been influenced above all by the place they have been born; that is the place they really feel at house,” stated Le Gall. “Faculty and the friendships they shaped formed their identities greater than anything.”

On the identical time, most of them have been additionally connected to the cultural heritage transmitted to them by their immigrant mum or dad.

“They declare a plural id that mixes cultural influences from the immigrant and non-immigrant mum or dad,” defined Le Gall. “Because the expression goes, they’re 100-per-cent blended.”

Restricted transmission of language and faith

Rising up in a multi-ethnic house has formed these people in some ways. They’ve a connection to the cultural and culinary traditions of their Muslim mum or dad’s native nation, however in lots of circumstances little or nothing of the Muslim mum or dad’s faith and language was handed all the way down to them.

Nearly all of the topics reported talking French at house, and a few spoke English.

“As adults, some regretted that their mum or dad hadn’t taught them Arabic or different native language and made an effort to be taught it,” Le Gall famous. “They might have favored to have the ability to converse it, particularly when visiting kin of their immigrant mum or dad’s nation of origin.”

Faith was an vital dimension of id for the handful of topics whose mother and father have been each training Muslims. The others stated they’d been uncovered to some Islamic rituals however usually didn’t follow Islam or every other faith.

“Having been born in Quebec, they exhibited a sure reticence, if not indifference, about faith usually,” commented Le Gall.

Plural id is enriching

It was in early maturity that most of the topics felt a stronger want to say their Muslim mum or dad’s cultural markers. “As teenagers, they have been extra prone to reject or reduce the significance of their minority tradition, ” stated Le Gall.

Most often, their identification with the minority tradition was rooted primarily of their each day experiences and practices with their immigrant mum or dad, slightly than understanding the language and faith or having the nationality.

“Whereas the identities constructed by the topics assorted extensively, all of them felt that their blended cultural id was enriching, not limiting,” stated Le Gall. “They reject any inflexible, predefined notion of id and might simply reconcile the totally different sides of their id, which they don’t see as incompatible in any approach.”