Are Suburban Youth Becoming More Traditional? A Comparative Study on Young People from Muslim Backgrounds Living on the Outskirts of Madrid and Paris

This paper compares how Muslim youth identify with traditional values in two disadvantaged areas: a banlieue of Paris and a barrio of Madrid. Research has revealed divergent forms of identification with Islam and tradition. In Les Bosquets (Paris), where the predominating context is one of ethnic segregations, a lack of civic participation, isolation from the city center, and increasing inequalities and Islamophobia, youth are exhibiting an ambivalent return to traditional values and building a new proud, combative and collective Islam. In the case of Madrid, young people distinguish between human/religious and traditional values while ignoring the latter values when they interfere with individual interests. Islam here is individual and compatible with a collective feeling of neighborhood, one built within a context of ethnic diversity, a less intense feeling of Islamophobia, greater accessibility to the cosmopolitan urban center, and dense networks of civil society that encourage local participation.