“Were you treated differently because you wore the hijab?”: Everyday Islamophobia, racialization and young Turks in Britain

Abstract

Numerous studies suggest that British society is becoming more Islamophobic, and Muslims, especially youth, in Britain have been its victims. But while there is growing evidence of how they have been targets of explicit and severe instances of Islamophobia, less attention has been focused on how they are also targets of its subtle and implicit forms. The purpose of this paper is to examine how Islamophobia manifests in everyday interactions and how Muslims are racialized from the perspective of one of its supposed victims that has been so far under-researched, i.e., young Turks in Britain. The young Turks’ accounts about themselves and their immediate circle of relatives revealed that Turks in the UK experience Islamophobia, but that it is often enacted during mundane interactions without ever becoming explicit. Visible Turkish-Muslim women, however, are the target of everyday Islamophobia far more than Turkish men and secular women, both of whom do not display any religious signifiers in public places. They face Islamophobia at the intersection of gender and religion. Many Turkish women are racialized through the hijab which is interpreted and described in ways that draw upon a set of symbolic meanings and associations. In addition, contrary to what has been discussed about the Islamophobic experiences of Muslim women in previously conducted studies, the evidence of this research shows that Islamophobia appeared to visible Turkish women more frequently in a more mundane, subtle way.