‘I don’t think you will understand me because really,I believe’ – Unaccompanied female minors re-negotiating religion

Abstract

The role of religion in migration has been a contested subject in previous research and social work practice, with religion being considered both a bridge and a barrier to integration. When considering unaccompanied female minors, struggling to be recognised beyond the prevailing image of the victimised refugee girl, religion is sometimes seen as a force of oppression rather than a tool for integration. In this article, we focus on the embodied practices of young women’s lived religion in a context where such practices are constructed as otherness. Based on an interview study with 11 unaccompanied female minors, this article explores the identity negotiations that emerged when migrating from societies where religion plays an integral part in everyday life to a society with highly secular values. By using the concept of (oppositional) gaze, we explore how these young women negotiate their identities at a point where the normative, invisible gaze meets the embodied practices of lived religion. We demonstrate how these young women are themselves agents of their own faith, and we confirm previous research that points to religion as a support structure for unaccompanied minors; however, not without causing friction in their new society. The study shows how lived practices of religion and the development of an oppositional gaze can function as mutually reinforcing processes in identity negotiation. In social work, understanding the role of religion through lived practices might contribute to a more holistic approach when creating solutions for young people experiencing turbulent circumstances of arriving in a new country.

Keywords

Gender refugees migration faith

Introduction

This article illuminates the stories narrated by unaccompanied, refugee girls, who recurrently turn to religion in their attempts to describe and make sense of their situation. The participants in this study come from countries such as Ethiopia, Iraq, Somalia and Syria, where religion plays an integral part in everyday life, and they have travelled to the highly secular context of Sweden where religious institutions have marginal influence on the general society (Burén, 2015; Thurfjell, 2016; Zuckerman, 2008). For young people arriving as unaccompanied minors who might lack a social network in their new country and who often have to deal with traumatising experiences from their flight, religion has been shown to serve as a distraction, a source of identity and a link to their past as well as a way of finding meaning and dealing with the turbulence of migration and adapting into a new society (Ní Raghallaigh, 2007, 2011). However, when they arrive in Sweden, religion becomes something that needs to be defended, legitimised and explained. How these girls deal with that, what strategies they apply and which resources they draw on is the main focus of this study. The understanding of the ways in which unaccompanied girls relate to religion, in a new context after migration, is a prerequisite for adapting a holistic perspective on the individual. This study therefore provides an important contribution to social work discourse regarding integration and diversity work.

Previous research has recognised the importance of religion in the migration process (Berghammer and Fliegenschnee, 2014; Connor, 2010; Diehl and Koenig, 2013; Foner and Alba, 2008; Frederiks, 2016; Jeldtoft, 2011; Ní Raghallaigh, 2007, 2011; Silvestri, 2011). On the other hand, Foner and Alba (2008) argue that due to the history of religious conflict, the separation of church and state and the specific background of religious immigrants, religion is largely perceived as a barrier to integration in Europe, and European studies tend to focus on religion as a source of conflict.

That contested view of religion in migration is only one aspect of the peculiar situation unaccompanied girls face in Sweden. As unaccompanied minors, they have been cut off from their families and the immediate influence of their parents, being without their closest family during a time when they face both the challenges of developing through adolescence and the circumstances of migration, facing life in a new society that is very different from their own. Furthermore, the Swedish National Board for Health and Welfare (2017) reports that the reception system for unaccompanied minors in Sweden is adapted for boys and young men, who constitute the majority of unaccompanied minors (Socialstyrelsen, 2017). A recent study from Finland draws similar conclusions by illuminating the ways in which female minors must relate to being a minority in a context and a system where young masculinity is the norm (Kaukko and Wernesjö, 2017). Taking the perspective of human rights, Taefi (2009) describes the unique situation of girls as ‘marginalised within the group of children as female and within the category of women as children’ (Taefi, 2009: 347).

In this article, we pay attention to the voices of unaccomapanied girls who in their stories of migration and integration draw on the meaning and importance of religion. However, their stories are not about religious institutions and leaders. Instead, they are about the ways in which religion is lived, negotiated, revised and adjusted in various contexts. Thus, following the lead of Avishai (2008), with her study on Jewish Israeli women’s religiosity, in which she insists on approaching religiosity as constructed, we also illuminate the everyday doings of religion and their meanings as experienced by unaccompanied girls in Sweden.

Perspectives of lived religion

The analytical frame applied in this article builds on the concept of lived religion. Rather than seeing religion as a thing, something controlled by powerful others, the perspective of lived religion brings forward its social and everyday aspect. In this sense, religion is always found in action and in relationships (Orsi, 2003). People construct their religious worlds together, sharing experiences of an intersubjective reality. Religion in this sense encompasses everything from rituals and values to mundane tasks that fill our everyday life but are made sacred through the individual’s understanding of them (McGuire, 2008; Orsi, 2003; Zubair and Zubair, 2017). Thus, the concept of lived religion blurs the boundaries between the religious and the profane, ignoring the sacred-profane dichotomy and instead putting emphasis on the actual practices of ordinary people, regardless of official definitions from religious institutions or official spokespersons (McGuire, 2008). It also questions the private–public dichotomy by emphasising the inseparability of religious practices from other practices of everyday life (McGuire, 2008; Orsi, 2003).

The perspective of lived religion emphasises the role of an individual subject rather than religion itself. It is how people create their religious worlds, how they share their religious experiences and how they appropriate different objects of everyday life as religious that becomes of the focus of an inquiry. As shown by Rahmath et al. (2016) in a study of Muslim women’s experiences with hijab in Canada, the practice of veiling is a result of each individual’s deliberate choice and understanding of her religion rather than an act of automatic submission. Showing the diversity of practices makes it possible to recognise the individual’s own understanding of what is sacred (Rahmath et al., 2016).

At the same time, lived religion is created and influenced by the people close around. The family or the close community, the way they live and practice, are often the main source of religious education; thus, the context in which a subject engages in doing religion matters (Franceschelli and O’Brien, 2014, 2015). Migration is one such context that keeps changing and diversifying the religious landscape, both in terms of multi-religious societies and intra-religious diversity (Frederiks, 2016). New impressions and changing relationships ingrained in the migration experience also affect the way of interacting with religion. Institutional, cultural and structural contexts play an important role in the process of self-positioning and defining one’s religiosity (Avishai, 2008).

What is important about the perspective of lived religion is that this concept transcends hegemonic definitions of what religion is and makes visible the practices of marginalised groups, giving individuals the same right to define their religion as (religious) authorities. For example, Jeldtoft (2011) makes a case for applying the perspective of lived religion to Islam because it focusses on people and their everyday lives instead of institutions and organised forms of religion. Patriarchal or ethnically biased perspectives are made to give way for other interpretations (Jeldtoft, 2011). In a study by Zubair and Zubair (2017), Pakistani Muslim women discuss their own understanding of Islam, questioning established interpretations of religious decrees in negotiating their identities as Muslim working women and feminists. The study captures the agency and resistance of Muslim women in Pakistan by focusing on their own interpretations of Islam, showing that women are not only victims of religious dogmas but agents in their own faith (Zubair and Zubair, 2017). In a similar vein, Read and Bartkowski (2000) in problematising the question of veiling in Islam demonstrate that women who both decide to veil and those who do not are actively involved in negotiating their religion via-a-vis other societal structures, such as gender (Read and Bartkowski, 2000). Lived religion is thus a concept that does not erase the considerations of power but brings forward the perspective of those who negotiate and live their religion in the context of multiple structures and changing relationships. The stories narrated by 11 unaccompanied girls living in Sweden allow us to get closer to the experiences of changing context, creating and reinventing understandings of religion and performance of religious practices.

Study design

In Sweden, unaccompanied minors fall under the responsibility of the municipalities who provides them with a place to live, education, a legal guardian and the support of the social services. Thus, the contact with the research participants was made through the social services. Information about the interviews and the right to participate as much as they wanted or not to participate at all were given first by the social worker and later by the first author. The participants were also given a letter of consent in their own language. In addition, at the beginning of each interview, they were again asked to confirm their consent (cf. Marshall and Rossman, 2011).

The interviews with the girls were carried out in two phases. The first phase, conducted between April and June 2017, involved 11 participants and was designed to explore how the girls perceived their situation after arriving in their designated municipality. The interview guide was semi-structured around themes such as school, living conditions (family care homes or residential care unit), leisure time and interaction with authorities, for example, with the social services. The second interview took place between nine months to one year after the first, and the interview guide was designed to open up deeper discussion around themes that emerged in the first phase. Out of 11 research participants during the first phase, one declined to be interviewed again and three did not respond to the invitation; thus, seven were interviewed in the second phase.

At the time of the first interviews, the participants were between 13 and 18 years old. They came from Somalia (5), Ethiopia (1), Afghanistan (1), Syria (3) and Iraq (1). Their time in Sweden varied between one and three years. According to Swedish legislation, they were all unaccompanied minors, e.g. they arrived in Sweden without their parents or any other recognised legal guardian.

Most of the interviews took place in a secluded space at the public library or the public library garden. Two of the participants who lived at a residential care unit were interviewed at home and one participant did her second interview through a video call. Since not all the participants were fluent in Swedish at the time of the first round of interviews, we offered them a choice of having an interpreter present either in person or interpreting by phone with loud speakers. We outweighed the potential risk of using an interpreter and considering their position as gate keepers that could influence the interview (see Edwards, 2013), with considerations of creating an enabling environment that prevents exclusion of groups and individuals who are already disadvantaged or at risk of not being heard (Edwards, 2013; Ingvarsdotter et al., 2012). During the first phase, eight interviews were conducted with an interpreter, while three were conducted in Swedish with some use of English.

Interpreters were contacted through the municipality interpretation service; however, the quality of the interpretations varied. We tried to accommodate the participants’ requests for interpreters with specific or regional dialects (e.g. Arabic from Syria, Dari from Afghanistan or Kurmanji/Northern Kurdish), but it was clear that, in some cases, the participant and the interpreter did not fully understand each other. Some interpreters were not as fluent in Swedish as would have been desired, which led to the researcher and participants using English, online dictionaries¹ (for particularly difficult words) or gestures to bridge the gap when the interpretation was inadequate. The style of interpretation varied as well; although all interpreters were requested to interpret as closely to the participants’ speech as possible, some reported rather than translated what the participants said. Furthermore, using an interpreter often caused the conversation to halt. All interviews from phase two were conducted in Swedish. The improved level of Swedish as well as the absence of a third voice made the conversation more fluent. We could also reaffirm what had been discussed in previous interviews by returning to some of the subjects and hear the participants’ thoughts expressed in their own words. Since the research participants were more comfortable with the language, they could elaborate on their answers and explain their thoughts more freely.

All interviews were recorded, with the permission of the participants, and transcribed. Languages (spoken between the participant and the interpreter) other than Swedish and English were noted in the transcription but not transcribed. Otherwise, the transcriptions were kept as close to the speech as possible. In addition, the first author made field notes including information about the conversation.

All authors are all fluent in English and Swedish; thus, the analysis was conducted in the language of the transcripts. However, in adopting the denaturalised approach to transcription (Oliver et al., 2005), the quotations presented in this article have been translated by the authors and adjusted (e.g. grammatical errors were corrected) to prevent the meaning of the quote from being lost in translation. After the first round of interviews, we analysed the data using thematic analysis with an inductive approach (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Religion as a theme and an analytical focus emerged as a result of an interactive process of engaging with the empirical material. Prompted by that finding, religion became one of the themes specifically explored during the second phase of interviews.

For the purpose of this article, we then broke down the theme of religion by focusing on the context, agents, interactions and emotions around which the participants talked about religion. Finding religion as a theme often described in a contextual relationship to other people, we decided to use the concepts of gaze and oppositional gaze as main analytical framework allowing us to understand the empirical material. The concept of gaze was developed by Foucault (1979) and can be understood as a tool of power in the form of surveillance and instigation of self-regulation. Foucault described how, through feeling the gaze of others, people adapt themselves to the disposition of the ones who are looking. In addition, Haraway (1988: 581) describes how the normative gaze, from an unmarked position of power, represents and reproduces an imaginary objectivity that gives subjective perspectives the appearance of truth, reinforcing normative power relations. Thus, in the analysis, we were not looking for explicit descriptions of being looked at. We rather focused on latent narratives (Braun and Clarke, 2006) of getting (unwanted) attention or recognition, in regards to their embodied religious practices, sometimes made visible through other peoples’ comments or behaviour. We also followed Hooks (2010) by using the concept of oppositional gaze as a form of resistance in face of that silent, invisible power, to understand how these girls found ways of deconstructing the stereotypical images of themselves and then described counter narratives and defined their own reality.

Findings

One of the distinctive features of the interviews was the recurring topic of the participants’ religious identity. While their reflections during the interviews suggested that they continuously questioned both their own and others’ (authoritative) definitions of their religion, being religious or believing in God was described as an unquestionable and integral part of who they were. Moreover, for several of them, their faith also seemed to have gained a more prominent role in their lives as they dealt with the hardships of migration or the absence of their families (Frederiks, 2016; Ní Raghallaigh, 2011). The reason for migrating varied, from war to prosecution or forced conscription of family members, forced marriage and terrorism in combination with poverty and general instability in their home regions. However, all emphasised that the decision to migrate was taken by their families, not by themselves.

As previous research found (Ní Raghallaigh, 2007, 2011), religion also creates a link between different spaces to find meaning in a new situation and to secure the sense of self. In particular, the participants’ relationship with God and the performance of religious practices helped them to cope with the insecurity of their situation as asylum seekers and the absence of their families. During the first phase of interviews, only two of the participants had received a Swedish residence permit and the rest were in the situation of not knowing whether they would be allowed to stay in Sweden. During the second phase, all had received their residence permits. Although this changed the context and ambience for the whole interview and the way the participants spoke about their own futures, the insecurity of not knowing when they will be reunited with their families was shared by most of them. This quote from Maram illustrates the way of emotionally counterbalancing the insecurity of their situation through religious practices as a way of coping with the absence of family.

You feel, you do Salah and what the religion says and, really, you feel secure […] When you read, when you are close to God, everything is fine when you think like that, you know […] But now, if you have no family it is really good to be close to God you know. If you need aid, it’s God who will aid you, you know. But it’s… the best thing is to be close, you know. To feel secure. I don’t know, it feels like that. (Maram, 17 (2nd interview))

It is in this context that religion was given a prominent place in the stories narrated at two different points in time. In contrast to the unfamiliar context in which the research participants had begun living, religion was something comfortable. However, this comforting aspect of religion came from an ongoing identity work, during which the research participants had to face various gazes, revise their own practices and create new forms of expressing and living their religion.

Being viewed as the other

Religion and religious practices used to be unquestioned parts of everyday life for all the research participants when living in their home countries. They engaged in them, just as they engaged in all other activities of everyday life. However, the migration made those practices less ordinary by emphasising their strangeness if not unfitness to the new setting. For example, most of the Muslim participants had received comments or questions about their religion. Najah reflects:

There are not many Muslims. And they always ask ‘Why do you wear the hijab? Why? Why are you not dressed like other girls?’ Yeah, I think they… this question is really weird. Yeah, because I don’t know how to explain everything in Swedish! […] They ask, ask about Islam and such. For example, they ask me ‘Why do you wear the hijab?’ Then when you want to answer, they won’t listen. (Najah, 13 (1st interview))

Religious practices and wearing a hijab are seen as suspicious in the secular context of Sweden. What Najah narrates is a growing sense of friction between her religious practices and the surrounding society. In this case, the (simple) questions become the manifestation of the majority society’s more complex perception of Islam and Muslim women. The invisible gaze is made visible by the comments Najah receives on her religious practices. She recognises that the questions are not the result of curiosity but rather a type of harassment since those who ask them do not care about the answers and might instead be aiming to set her apart from other girls by pointing out what they see as different. Najah, however uses her own observation to deconstruct the vague image imposed on her by the gaze of others. She observes that there are not many Muslims where she lives, and inexperience might explain why others cannot see the complexity behind her religious practices; a complexity she cannot, she says, explain well enough in Swedish.

People around react to the ways in which girls dress, to their religious rites and practices, thereby manifesting a prevailing image of a greater mistrust towards Islam. Aisha boldly reveals that by suggesting: ‘So, I really thought she would think that I was one of them! I mean, those who kill people’. (Aisha, 16 (2nd interview)).

Here, Aisha makes clear that even though the gaze of people around her might place her in the same group as terrorists, she resents that categorisation and separates herself from those she herself perceives as the other, ‘them’.

In addition to being perceived with suspicion, young Muslim girls also experienced being viewed as victims of oppression.

They [the family] tell me, ‘Qamar, you live in Sweden, you don’t want to wear the veil all the time’. I tell them it’s my religion and they tell me that ‘No, you are here in Sweden, you can decide for yourself’. I tell them that I know that but for now I feel like wearing it. It’s the same, take it off or… yeah. (Qamar, 17 (1st interview))

Qamar reveals here the prevalent stereotype of Muslim women being forced into various religious practices. Here, the secular context of Sweden is seen as a place of freedom and individual empowerment. By saying ‘I feel like wearing it’, Qamar strongly opposes such a view by emphasising that she is indeed in charge of her own body and religious practices. Rather than positioning herself as a victim of religion, Qamar presents herself as a reflexive subject who can decide about how to live her religion. Qamar’s quote also shows not only how the girl is subjected to the gaze but how the veil in this case is seen as a symbol of oppression. Qamar, though, clarifies that ‘it is the same’ – whether she wears it or not will not affect her empowerment; it is up to her to feel what she wants.

Sometimes the gaze of others was made real to the girls by comments or questioning remarks, as shown above. Sometimes though, it was manifested through outspoken rules or dissuasion against engaging in certain behaviour. Sharefeh stayed with a Swedish foster care family who were not Muslims themselves but were very keen on upholding a perceived Islamic upbringing for Sharefeh. This led to her being subjected to rules she herself did not associate with her own faith. She described:

One example could be that the [foster care father] told me that I could not shake hands for example or associate with boys. And that person [foster care father] said ‘You’re Muslim, you must not do such things’ (Sharefeh, 16 (1st interview))

What Sharefeh is describing is a good example of the layered workings of an invisible gaze as well as the discrepancy between an outsider’s simplified interpretation of what they see as an authoritative religion. Later, in the interview, Sharefeh explained that she believed the foster family were themselves wary of how they would be judged by the social services, concerned about whether they would be seen as good foster parents or not. Their views of a (proper) Islamic upbringing were thus imposed on Sharefeh as a consequence of the imagined gaze of the social services. Through her own observations of the relationship between her foster care parents and the social services, Sharefeh was able to explain what she perceived as strange, unnecessarily strict behaviour from her foster family. She also addressed the problem by talking to her social worker about how the rules in the family did not cohere with her own religious practices.

Being the other among the others

So far, we have shown how gaze from the majority culture in secular Sweden manifests when it falls on the religious practices of girls who are perceived as the other. For some of these girls, however, their otherness is also formed by the gaze of their old community. Aisha explains it like this:

If I have [physical education] I wear the hijab, you know, like this [gestures how she fastens her hijab behind her neck]. Then I can have it at school as well, it’s OK. Yeah. But when swimming. I can go swimming without hijab [laughs]. Yeah. But if there are no people from my country. But if there are people from my country, I cannot […] Because, you know, I don’t know but I feel myself that… them, all my countrymen in for example this city, who live in this city. They know each other. Yeah, then, they will tell that, eh, ‘Do you know her? She had no hijab at the swimming pool, she went swimming without.’ Yeah, like that. (Aisha, 17 (2nd interview))

In this example, Aisha’s fear of the visible gaze can be seen as the manifestation of the invisible gaze. She is afraid of actually being seen without her hijab as she believes that it will not be looked upon well by the community of her fellow countrymen. She is certain that showing herself unveiled in the swimming pool will be perceived as strange, and in the eyes of the people from her homeland, she will become the other. As a community of migrants from a culturally and ethnically different context with a religious adherence deviating from the secular norm of Sweden, people from her homeland are already perceived as the other. Thus, while the practice of wearing the hijab already marks her as different in the eyes of the Swedish society, not wearing the hijab marks her as the other amongst the others. It is also clear in her quote that she is not sure whether there actually is a community of people from her homeland watching her. However, the gaze is still present. She describes a feeling that ‘they’ know each other and that ‘they’ will talk. She does not include herself in this community, emphasising both herself and them as the other.

The complexity of the situation that these girls live in as foreign both to their new and old cultures is also illustrated by the following quote by Maram. The quote is taken from a discussion during the second interview about what had changed since she came to Sweden, and her style of clothing was one thing she brought up. She described how she had switched her long skirts for trousers and had started to loosely drape her hijab over her hair and around her shoulders instead of wearing it pinned closely around her head and neck. She was not willing to make just any changes however, explaining that she still wanted to cover the shape of her body. When talking about the knee-length dresses some Swedish girls wore in the summer she said;

It is pretty, I like it. Perhaps I will try at home. Maybe when I have a husband and a family I will wear dresses like that at home […] Not in public, there are other people from my homeland and maybe if they would see me they would think ‘Maram is not proper’. I don’t know, I would think so myself if a girl from my country dressed like that. (Maram, 18 (2nd interview))

Maram’s case, like Aisha’s, helps shed light on how, from an intersectional perspective, there is always more than one gaze. Migration from one context to another makes the examples particularly visible as the dominant gaze in their past communities is suddenly contradicted by an opposing viewer (the majority society of Sweden). Furthermore, Maram also admits to seeing her own gaze falling upon other girls. In a sense, the gaze has become internalised. How Maram is looked upon by others directs her own gaze, showing gaze as an invisible presence influencing her disposition towards others. Maram turns her oppositional gaze towards herself, reflecting on her own role in upholding ordinances she is not fully supportive of, balancing her own shifting viewpoint while making small changes over time and shifting her own perspectives accordingly.

Shifting boundaries of otherness

By being questioned, the girls learn to see religion as something significant that they must relate to in new ways. A story narrated by Aisha is exemplary here:

Before I came to Sweden I thought there were only Muslims and Christians and I didn’t know there were Shia, I thought they were Christians. Once at the library, a guy from Afghanistan asked me ‘Are you Muslim?’ I said ‘Yes’. Then he asked, ‘Are you Shia or Sunni?’ And I didn’t know how to answer. [I said] ‘I’m Muslim’. Then he said, ‘No, don’t you know there are Shia and Sunni?’ And I asked, ‘Which one is real Muslim?’ […] He said ‘I’m Shia, so that’s Muslim’. Then I said, ‘Ah, I don’t know, but anyway, I’m a Muslim. (Aisha, 17 (2nd interview))

Prior to her arrival to Sweden, Aisha was ‘just’ a Muslim, but while living in Sweden, she is questioned about the type of Islam she adheres to. How others see Islam both expands her own view of her religion and narrows her religious identity. In one way, the question points to the intra-religious diversity of Islam, but at the same time, the categories are still fixed. This shows how the gaze of others both determines how we are to be described and is determined by how we describe ourselves. It is important that Aisha defines herself so she can be viewed (and treated) accordingly. By doing so, she conforms to a definition of herself and her religion that she was not previously aware of. In the quote above, she seems to deflect categorisation as she points out that, ‘anyway’, she is Muslim. In the interview though, she claimed to be Sunni and that she always had been. In conforming to the gaze, she accepts how the onlookers define reality. However, the way she expressed it in the interview suggested that she might be proud of her newfound identity.

The ongoing processes of differentiation also have consequences for how the girls feel about their place in a new society. For example, Nour, who during the first interview described her plans for graduating from university, securing a good job and reuniting with her family, suddenly saw her dreams being washed away. She failed her physical education because she could not swim. She got into an argument with her teacher because she would not take off her long T-shirt and trousers in swimming practice, but the teacher considered this a safety risk. As a result, Nour skipped the swimming lessons at school and tried to find a private tutor. In the end, she explains that:

I don’t think you will understand me because really, I believe […] It’s my religion […] It is what is in my religion, really, I can’t. If I’m going to be in the swimming pool I cannot take off my t-shirt. (Nour, 16 (1st interview))

Everyday matters are suddenly brought to the fore as potentially separating and disabling in the new context. In this case, Nour removes herself from the critical gaze of her teacher and finds her own solution through a private tutor. Nour’s contention ‘You will not understand because I believe’ can be read as a growing sense of misunderstanding and mistrust. She feels forced to defend herself and her religion even during the interview as her view of the (Swedish) researcher is as the other, the non-believer. She accomplishes that by looking back at the observers, the teacher and the researcher, and drawing a line separating herself as a believer from the secular context in which she lives. Her reasoning reflects the majority society’s view of religion as something external, set apart from the everyday that can be put aside as needed. As the teacher shows reluctance to find a compromise to his standpoint on safety first, Nour instead alienates herself, both physically by seeking a private tutor and also by deepening the emerging sense of otherness she already feels, enforcing the separation between herself and the other rather than trying to overbridge it.

Najah, as seen above in this text, was very firm in her inclination not to bend to harassment, and later in the interview she instead explains how she will overcome the prejudgment of others:

No! Because I like myself! That’s why! Because in the future when I’ve become a heart surgeon and I know many languages. Then they will ask me ‘Are you a Muslim or what? Yes. Then they will think that – aha, Muslims can. Then! That’s why I won’t explain anything now. (Najah, 13 (1st interview))

As she recognises that being a Muslim is viewed as something depreciated in her current context, Najah’s plans on earning the respect she deserves through other kinds of recognised capital. A successful and prestigious career as well as being erudite, knowing many languages, as opposed to not being completely fluent in Swedish, will comply with the normative image of success and negate any prejudgment against her as a Muslim. Najah further aims to reconstruct the image of Muslims by being a role model. She wants to prove that Muslims are capable of great things. Najah’s example illustrates the complexity of being at the intersection of age, gender and, moreover, a religious and linguistic minority. She opposes the stereotypical image of Muslim women as oppressed and passive, as well as the stereotype of the vulnerable refugee girl, by proudly stating that she likes herself and that she knows her own strengths and capabilities. She will not be constrained by the gaze of ignorant others. At the same time, the ways in which she is marginalised blocks her effort to demonstrate her capabilities as the capital associated with the progress she is determined to prove Muslims are capable of is restricted to adulthood and tied to language proficiency in Swedish.

While Najah clearly distinguishes herself from native Swedes as ‘the others’, Fatima instead points to similarities between herself and her new society:

There are other countries, Sweden for example. The men cook and take care of the children, I saw it but I was not there yet. During that time I felt the tradition, one hundred percent. My father, my brother, everybody, they all followed traditions. But I came here, I listened to the laws and everybody is equal, the same for boys and girls, and the guys must do everything in the kitchen, or the man even. Then I read the book [the Quran] again and the prophet Mohammed says the same […] when I look at my grandfather, he does everything according to tradition. Where he is, tradition is important. (Fatima, 18 (2nd interview))

What is interesting about Fatima’s story is her clear separation between religion and tradition. Tradition for her is rejectable while religion is not. Fatima completely denounces any authoritative interpretation of her own religion by doing the research and the subsequent interpretation herself. She also redefines the boundaries of her perceived otherness in explaining that what might set her apart from her Swedish peers is tradition, which is something non-essential and changeable, not something that defines her. Using religion to understand and overbridge perceived differences, she also explained, during the interview, how she transfers her own perceptions of gender to her mother who recently arrived in Sweden. Instead of submitting to a critical gaze and accepting a position at the margins of both her previous and present communities, she situates herself at the forefront of the imaginary border of otherness, but as an active agent, an interpreter and negotiator, redefining religion itself as a tool for integration.

Discussion

Consistent with Boutwell’s (2015) argument regarding the politicised, colonialised and othered construct of a refugee girl, in this study, we continue disturbing this patronising view by showing the research participants as agents of their own. Using a framework of lived religion, we are able to show how gaze, used as a tool for reinforcing existing power structures, can be deconstructed when touching upon embodied practices.

As shown by previous studies (Frederiks, 2016; Ní Raghallaigh, 2011), religion continues to play an integral and important part in the everyday life of the girls in this study after their migration to Sweden. Ní Raghallaigh’s (2007, 2011) analysis of religion as a support structure for unaccompanied minors is reflected in the narratives in this article. The image described by Foner and Alba (2008) and Rahmath et al. (2016) showing how European societies tend to regard religion as a barrier towards inclusion, and religious practices such as wearing a hijab, with suspicion (Foner and Alba, 2008; Rahmath et al., 2016) are also confirmed by the girls’ narratives. However, as is also shown by Rahmath et al. (2016) and Zubair and Zubair (2017), the religious practices of these girls are the result of ongoing reflection rather than submission to authoritative decrees.

By looking specifically at girls who have recently migrated to a country with significantly different perspectives on religion than their home countries, we can capture and highlight their struggle to negotiate their own perspectives and embodied religious practices through the development of an oppositional gaze. Furthermore, we can also see examples of how the girls’ perspectives on their own lived religion and their development of an oppositional gaze can function as mutually reinforcing processes.

Gaze is in itself always invisible, felt rather than actually seen. However, it is not untraceable. By looking back, these girls describe and analyse the disposition of the onlooker and their own reflection in the eyes of the other. Seeing the other and understanding how they see you is a stepping stone for deconstructing normative and discriminating definitions of reality. Furthermore, the descriptive and categorising aspects of the gaze can be both limiting and widening. The gaze can produce conformity but can also broaden perspectives, describing what is being observed. Under an oppositional gaze, practices that have become invisible through their normality might emerge in a clearer light. Seeing how other people perceive a shared reality, the girls also broaden their own views of what has not previously been concretised or questioned, analysing their surroundings.

While the gaze is always superficial and invisible, lived religion is both embodied and visible. By looking at narratives of lived religion, we see how the invisible gaze reveals itself when touching upon religious practices that respond to its force. Finding themselves subjected to more than one gaze, being seen as the other amongst the others, the girls keep their religious identities even in the face of criticism, unmasking harassment posed as simple questioning, denying oversimplified or authoritative interpretations of their religion.

However, negotiating one’s own practices while under the gaze of others requires some strategies for protection. As shown, some of these girls are shifting their behaviour depending on who is watching, while still being themselves as often as possible, making gradual, small changes.

While the uniqueness of their situation as newly arrived and unaccompanied in a drastically different religious context captures their struggles in an emergent phase of (re)negotiation, the same uniqueness makes it difficult to foresee how these issues will affect their future. We can only speculate about how they will feel and think after a few years or what the consequences of their struggles will be. Gaze can be persistent. While developing an oppositional gaze might help them identify the structures behind discrimination, resistance can be tiresome, especially when situated at the intersection of several discriminating structures. As has been described in this study, the new context still poses challenges to their sense of identity and integration.

Conclusion

We want to emphasise that it is important to talk about religion. As shown in previous studies, as well as in this article, religion can be an intrinsic part of unaccompanied girls’ identities and an important source of strength and resilience during turbulent circumstances (Ní Raghallaigh, 2011). However, it can also be a cause of friction with the majority society and a cause of othering. Being (at least temporarily and physically) cut off from the their families, they are also cut off from their primary source of religious guidance (Franceschelli and O’Brien, 2014, 2015) during a time in their lives when they experience multiple transitions and little consistency. As social workers at the social services take on some of the responsibilities previously held by parents (Wimelius et al., 2017), understanding the role of religion in the lives of unaccompanied girls might contribute to a more holistic approach in social work with unaccompanied minors in particular and migrant youth in general. Letting girls define and describe religion in their own words instead of reinforcing stereotypes created by the gaze of the majority might facilitate their identity re-negotiation. Approaching the subject of religion might also serve to create the trust and understanding unaccompanied minors ask for in relation to their social workers (Herz and Lalander, 2019). To alienate religion or disregard it might cause more harm in already trying situations and lessen support for girls who miss their families.

Not talking about religion would be to accept the subjectivity of others (the gaze from no one and nowhere (Haraway, 1988)) rather than recognising the girls as capable agents in their own faith. Seeing these girls as agents in their own and seeing their interpretations and religious practices as valid by their own definition might assist them in deconstructing the oppressive, restrictive gaze and recognising their own agency.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Note

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