The biographical approach and the subject’s «active» role in the processes of gender and religious identity building

The case study illustrates how the biographical approach can be used to analyse processes of identity-building of second-generation Muslim women living in Italy. This approach makes it possible to shed light on the capacity of these young women to take an ‘active’ role in the identity construction process in light of the twofold paradigm of heredity and reinterpretation. The topics explored in the biographical narratives are ‘gender’ and ‘religion’, in order to explore the influence of these two social categories of belonging on each other during identity formation. The aim is to identify the strategies of identity-building adopted by young Muslim women in response to the various ‘challenges’ that might arise from their multiple socio-cultural belongings, while growing up in a non-Muslim country. Hence the research focus is on the ‘tensions’ and mediations, as well as the solutions – in terms of estrangement, innovation, adaptation, resistance or even liabilities – with respect to how identity is ‘enacted’ or ‘inscribed’. In short, the biographical approach will be used inductively to construct identity profiles which make it possible to move from individual stories to sociological ideal-types in which each story is inserted.