Currently Head of Division, Criminology, Sociology and Social Policy (2021-). Previous author name: Line Nyhagen Predelli Address: Criminology, Sociology and Social Policy School of Social Sciences and Humanities Loughborough University LE11 3TU United Kingdom
This study focuses on Christian and Muslim women’s religious faith, identities and practice. A ba... more This study focuses on Christian and Muslim women’s religious faith, identities and practice. A basic assumption is that the religious arena, in the form of churches, mosques, and other religious organisations, provides spaces where women and men act as citizens. The main objective of the research has been to identify and assess how women’s individual religious identities and practices may provide both resources and/or barriers to citizenship. Citizenship is here viewed in a broad sense: it refers not only to the status, rights and duties of individuals, but also to their participation, identity and belonging. Women often draw on their own sense of identity and belonging as a source of empowerment and participation. Religious identity and belonging can thus be a resource for citizenship practice. In our project, we have examined how Christian and Muslim women link their religious faith, identity and practice with active citizenship.
This article discusses relationships between temporariness and belonging among Pakistani middle-c... more This article discusses relationships between temporariness and belonging among Pakistani middle-class migrants in Dubai. We explore reasons that push them to move to Dubai and how their professional position and temporary status affect their sense of belonging. Based upon unstructured interviews with 20 Pakistanis, our findings show that temporariness is problematized, but not explicitly contested, by the participants, who all expressed a strong sense of belonging to Dubai despite their lack of citizenship rights. We suggest that these findings relate to the participants’ ability to draw upon socio-economic resources and networks to enable further transnational mobility.
The sociological ‘lived religion’ approach focuses on the experiences of religious individuals in... more The sociological ‘lived religion’ approach focuses on the experiences of religious individuals in everyday life, whilst also considering the institutional aspects of religion that they may engage with. It emphasizes that individuals do not simply ‘copy’ institutional religious prescriptions; instead, it posits that people have an active and reflexive role in shaping, negotiating and changing their own beliefs and practices. This article examines the implications of the ‘lived religion’ approach for secular feminist analyses of religion in Western contexts. It starts out by proposing three different secular feminist positions on religion: a hard, a mixed hard and soft, and a soft position. The article then examines the views on women and religion forwarded by some high-profile feminist organisations in Europe, and how these relate to the three proposed secular feminist positions on religion. Finally, the article assesses which secular feminist position is most compatible with a ‘live...
Issues of problem-representations, framing, claims-making and resonance in women's movements ... more Issues of problem-representations, framing, claims-making and resonance in women's movements in Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom
This is an article in The Conversation. The images and video have been redacted for copyright pur... more This is an article in The Conversation. The images and video have been redacted for copyright purposes and may be viewed in the online version.
This is an article in The Conversation. The images have been redacted for copyright purposes and ... more This is an article in The Conversation. The images have been redacted for copyright purposes and may be viewed in the online version.
This article analyses the increasing participation of Muslim women in mosques in Norway in light ... more This article analyses the increasing participation of Muslim women in mosques in Norway in light of current discourses on citizenship, gender and migration. It discusses how various processes in the mosques can be interpreted as contradictory and complex by sometimes increasing the participation of women and promoting liberation, while at other times constraining women’s activities through various forms of discipline and control. Women are vital for the building of religious institutions among Muslim immigrant communities, and they are slowly achieving more space in such institutions. They are also being included in new forms of participation in some mosques. Recently, some Muslim women in Norway have made public calls for the reinterpretation of the Qur’an in ways that are more inclusive towards women. Despite pressures from both within and outside the mosques, however, Muslim congregations in Norway can still be described as patriarchal gender regimes where the participation and c...
Chapter abstracts Chapter 1 Religious women on faith, identity, citizenship and feminism Nyhagen ... more Chapter abstracts Chapter 1 Religious women on faith, identity, citizenship and feminism Nyhagen and Halsaa introduce the main issues addressed in this unique, comparative study of Christian and Muslim women in Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom: religious faith, identity, citizenship, gender equality and feminism. Based on qualitative interviews, in-depth empirical evidence is brought forward, focusing on the importance of religion for identity, citizenship, gender equality and feminism from the point of view of religious women themselves. Nyhagen and Halsaa briefly report some findings before situating the study within the historical, socio-political and religious contexts of Norway, Spain and the UK. The four-dimensional research strategy to include women belonging to majority and minority Christian and Muslim faith communities (the dominant state-supported churches, Pentecostal congregations, Sunni and Shia mosques) in the three countries is described. (Continues...)
This study focuses on Christian and Muslim women’s religious faith, identities and practice. A ba... more This study focuses on Christian and Muslim women’s religious faith, identities and practice. A basic assumption is that the religious arena, in the form of churches, mosques, and other religious organisations, provides spaces where women and men act as citizens. The main objective of the research has been to identify and assess how women’s individual religious identities and practices may provide both resources and/or barriers to citizenship. Citizenship is here viewed in a broad sense: it refers not only to the status, rights and duties of individuals, but also to their participation, identity and belonging. Women often draw on their own sense of identity and belonging as a source of empowerment and participation. Religious identity and belonging can thus be a resource for citizenship practice. In our project, we have examined how Christian and Muslim women link their religious faith, identity and practice with active citizenship.
This article discusses relationships between temporariness and belonging among Pakistani middle-c... more This article discusses relationships between temporariness and belonging among Pakistani middle-class migrants in Dubai. We explore reasons that push them to move to Dubai and how their professional position and temporary status affect their sense of belonging. Based upon unstructured interviews with 20 Pakistanis, our findings show that temporariness is problematized, but not explicitly contested, by the participants, who all expressed a strong sense of belonging to Dubai despite their lack of citizenship rights. We suggest that these findings relate to the participants’ ability to draw upon socio-economic resources and networks to enable further transnational mobility.
The sociological ‘lived religion’ approach focuses on the experiences of religious individuals in... more The sociological ‘lived religion’ approach focuses on the experiences of religious individuals in everyday life, whilst also considering the institutional aspects of religion that they may engage with. It emphasizes that individuals do not simply ‘copy’ institutional religious prescriptions; instead, it posits that people have an active and reflexive role in shaping, negotiating and changing their own beliefs and practices. This article examines the implications of the ‘lived religion’ approach for secular feminist analyses of religion in Western contexts. It starts out by proposing three different secular feminist positions on religion: a hard, a mixed hard and soft, and a soft position. The article then examines the views on women and religion forwarded by some high-profile feminist organisations in Europe, and how these relate to the three proposed secular feminist positions on religion. Finally, the article assesses which secular feminist position is most compatible with a ‘live...
Issues of problem-representations, framing, claims-making and resonance in women's movements ... more Issues of problem-representations, framing, claims-making and resonance in women's movements in Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom
This is an article in The Conversation. The images and video have been redacted for copyright pur... more This is an article in The Conversation. The images and video have been redacted for copyright purposes and may be viewed in the online version.
This is an article in The Conversation. The images have been redacted for copyright purposes and ... more This is an article in The Conversation. The images have been redacted for copyright purposes and may be viewed in the online version.
This article analyses the increasing participation of Muslim women in mosques in Norway in light ... more This article analyses the increasing participation of Muslim women in mosques in Norway in light of current discourses on citizenship, gender and migration. It discusses how various processes in the mosques can be interpreted as contradictory and complex by sometimes increasing the participation of women and promoting liberation, while at other times constraining women’s activities through various forms of discipline and control. Women are vital for the building of religious institutions among Muslim immigrant communities, and they are slowly achieving more space in such institutions. They are also being included in new forms of participation in some mosques. Recently, some Muslim women in Norway have made public calls for the reinterpretation of the Qur’an in ways that are more inclusive towards women. Despite pressures from both within and outside the mosques, however, Muslim congregations in Norway can still be described as patriarchal gender regimes where the participation and c...
Chapter abstracts Chapter 1 Religious women on faith, identity, citizenship and feminism Nyhagen ... more Chapter abstracts Chapter 1 Religious women on faith, identity, citizenship and feminism Nyhagen and Halsaa introduce the main issues addressed in this unique, comparative study of Christian and Muslim women in Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom: religious faith, identity, citizenship, gender equality and feminism. Based on qualitative interviews, in-depth empirical evidence is brought forward, focusing on the importance of religion for identity, citizenship, gender equality and feminism from the point of view of religious women themselves. Nyhagen and Halsaa briefly report some findings before situating the study within the historical, socio-political and religious contexts of Norway, Spain and the UK. The four-dimensional research strategy to include women belonging to majority and minority Christian and Muslim faith communities (the dominant state-supported churches, Pentecostal congregations, Sunni and Shia mosques) in the three countries is described. (Continues...)
Through interviews with Christian and Muslim women in Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom, this ... more Through interviews with Christian and Muslim women in Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom, this book explores intersections between religion, citizenship, gender and feminism. How do religious women think about citizenship, and how do they practice citizenship in everyday life? How important is faith in their lives, and how is religion bound up with other identities such as gender and nationality? What are their views on 'gender equality', women's movements and feminism? The answers offered by this book are complex. Religion can be viewed as both a resource and a barrier to women's participation. The interviewed women talk about citizenship in terms of participation, belonging, love, care, tolerance and respect. Some seek gender equality within their religious communities, while others accept different roles and spaces for women. 'Natural' differences between women and men and their equal value are emphasized more than equal rights. Women's movements are viewed as having made positive contributions to women's status, but interviewees are also critical of claims related to abortion and divorce, and of feminism's allegedly selfish, unwomanly, anti-men and power-seeking stance. In the interviews, Christian privilege is largely invisible and silenced, while Muslim disadvantage is both visible and articulated. Line Nyhagen and Beatrice Halsaa unpack and make sense of these findings, discussing potential implications for the relationship between religion, gender and feminism.
In: Jeffrey Haynes, ed. Routledge Handbook of Religion and Politics. New York: Routledge., 2016
Gender is at the heart of religion and politics, yet marginalized within religion and politics as... more Gender is at the heart of religion and politics, yet marginalized within religion and politics as separate academic fields as well as within studies that bring these two fields together. Indeed, gender is rarely mentioned in major books on religion and politics (see, for instance, the Routledge series ‘Studies in Religion and Politics’ and the Palgrave Macmillan series ‘Culture and Religion in International Relations’). The field of religion and politics thus mirrors other fields of study when it comes to the relative marginalization of gender. When gender is examined, it is via studies that focus explicitly and often exclusively on the role of gender in religion and politics, such as the edited volume by Bayes and Tohidi, which analyzes ‘the politics of women’s rights in Catholic and Muslim contexts’, along with more recent edited volumes by Cady and Fessenden and Reilly and Scriver which both address the religion-secularism-gender equality nexus in different contexts. Other works, including those by Scott, and Rosenberger and Sauer, discuss a single topic such as the politicization of the Muslim headscarf.
New and shifting configurations of gender, religion and politics require us to examine how nation states as well as international and global governance structures (e.g., the European Union; the Organization of Islamic Cooperation; the United Nations) deal with gender equality issues that are highly contested (e.g., abortion, contraception, divorce, prostitution, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, honor killings); how national, international and global government institutions relate to religious stakeholders and actors (e.g., the Catholic Church); how faith-based and secular voluntary organizations mobilize in relation to gender equality issues; how religious communities deal with gender equality and women’s rights issues, and how religious women and men perform and negotiate gender relations in their everyday lives. Highlighting the stable and shifting relationships between religion, politics and gender, this chapter focuses on the relationship between religion, politics and gender at global, national and local levels.
From a feminist point of view, politics is not simply about states, governance and the electorate, but also about communities, civil society groups, families and intimate aspects of individuals’ ‘lived citizenship’. A feminist notion of politics points to the artificial and often imposed distinction between ‘the public’ and ‘the private’ spheres as untenable, as politics are intertwined with our everyday lives as economic, social, gendered, racial and ethnic, sexual and intimate, religious or secular citizens. Moreover, while status, rights and duties are central aspects of lived citizenship, so are our identities, our sense of belonging, our caring for each other, and our participation in a multitude of social contexts. Politics intersect with gender and religion at all of these levels and also with other forms of difference and inequality such as class, ‘race’ and ethnicity, and sexuality. Women’s political activism that addresses inequalities, discrimination and marginalization is at times primarily based on the mobilization of gender, while at other times it is based on a mixed mobilization of gender together with ‘race’ and ethnicity, sexuality, or religion. Furthermore, gender-based political activism may be anti-religious, indifferent to religion, or pro-religion, while religiously based political activism may support conservative or progressive forms of gender relations. The following three sections of this chapter address the issues of religion, secularization and gender politics; multiculturalism, feminism and religion; and women and religious activism.
In: The Social Politics of Research Collaboration, eds. Gabrielle Griffin, Katarina Hamberg and Britta Lundgren. New York: Routledge., 2013
The aim of this chapter is to examine some of the issues involved in leading an international sub... more The aim of this chapter is to examine some of the issues involved in leading an international sub-project which engaged in comparative qualitative research across several countries in Europe, and to draw some lessons from that experience for future project management. Whilst building on insights from previous scholarship about collaborative research (e.g., Priest et al. 2007; Kuhn and Remøe 2005a; O’Connor et al. 2003; Bournois 1998), it seeks to centre relations between the structured dimensions of a large research project, the research as a process, and the researchers working on the project. The chapter, which considers both expected and unexpected management issues, is organised along the themes of managing demands, opportunities, and constraints and risks. The discussion focuses on different types of project demands, the various types of actors that sub-project leaders have to engage with, expectations about independence and dependency/control in academic work, and various constraints and risks related to planning, time-management, personnel and resources, language skills, ethical issues, and research quality – all crucial topics in leading international sub-projects. The availability and realisation of opportunities, including academic freedom, career progression and prestige, are also considered.
The chapter seeks to highlight tensions and challenges related to managing known demands and expectations versus contingencies and unexpected events. It also refers to particular challenges related to comparative research. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of backstage (Goffman 1959) managerial and emotional labour (Hochschild 1983), which is still a relatively neglected issue in scholarly literature on management in the academy (see, however, Isenbarger and Zemblyas 2006; Ogbonna and Harris 2004; Bellas 1999). Research managers engage in emotional labour not only to display socially expected and acceptable feelings (Hochschild 1983), but also to process and negotiate their own feelings and reactions in relation to colleagues, organisational processes, and institutional power structures. The chapter begins with a section on how project management success and failure is talked about. It is rooted in the author’s own experience as project leader of a work package within a large project funded by the European Commission (EC). It is especially relevant to Social Science and Humanities researchers who plan to embark upon comparative research collaborations, whilst also speaking to those who are more experienced in managing collaborative projects.
In: Beatrice Halsaa, Sasha Roseneil and Sevil Sumer, eds., Remaking Citizenship in Multicultural Europe: Women's Movements, Gender and Diversity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
This chapter addresses the overall topic of this volume, of whether women’s movement claims can b... more This chapter addresses the overall topic of this volume, of whether women’s movement claims can be understood as claims to remake citizenship in multicultural Europe, by asking the following questions: How is the term citizenship understood by contemporary women’s movement activists? What reflections and experiences do such activists impart in relation to lived citizenship? Is citizenship a concept used by movement activists – does the term have political relevance for women’s movement claims? According to Lister et al. (2007: 168), there is ‘remarkably little empirical analysis of lived citizenship in comparison with the volume of theorising about citizenship in individual member states of the European Union, never mind cross-nationally. This is particularly the case with regard to citizens’ own understanding of citizenship’s meaning’ (Lister et al., 2007: 168; see also Kaber, 2005: 1). Our study of women’s movement activists and citizenship in Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom (UK) seeks to fill some of this empirical gap in current scholarship, whilst also contributing to theoretical debates about citizenship as a concept. Moreover, we address the issue of whether the broad understanding of citizenship promoted by feminist scholars has a potential to become increasingly relevant and useful for women’s movements across different national and political contexts.
Uploads
Papers by Line Nyhagen
New and shifting configurations of gender, religion and politics require us to examine how nation states as well as international and global governance structures (e.g., the European Union; the Organization of Islamic Cooperation; the United Nations) deal with gender equality issues that are highly contested (e.g., abortion, contraception, divorce, prostitution, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, honor killings); how national, international and global government institutions relate to religious stakeholders and actors (e.g., the Catholic Church); how faith-based and secular voluntary organizations mobilize in relation to gender equality issues; how religious communities deal with gender equality and women’s rights issues, and how religious women and men perform and negotiate gender relations in their everyday lives. Highlighting the stable and shifting relationships between religion, politics and gender, this chapter focuses on the relationship between religion, politics and gender at global, national and local levels.
From a feminist point of view, politics is not simply about states, governance and the electorate, but also about communities, civil society groups, families and intimate aspects of individuals’ ‘lived citizenship’. A feminist notion of politics points to the artificial and often imposed distinction between ‘the public’ and ‘the private’ spheres as untenable, as politics are intertwined with our everyday lives as economic, social, gendered, racial and ethnic, sexual and intimate, religious or secular citizens. Moreover, while status, rights and duties are central aspects of lived citizenship, so are our identities, our sense of belonging, our caring for each other, and our participation in a multitude of social contexts. Politics intersect with gender and religion at all of these levels and also with other forms of difference and inequality such as class, ‘race’ and ethnicity, and sexuality. Women’s political activism that addresses inequalities, discrimination and marginalization is at times primarily based on the mobilization of gender, while at other times it is based on a mixed mobilization of gender together with ‘race’ and ethnicity, sexuality, or religion. Furthermore, gender-based political activism may be anti-religious, indifferent to religion, or pro-religion, while religiously based political activism may support conservative or progressive forms of gender relations. The following three sections of this chapter address the issues of religion, secularization and gender politics; multiculturalism, feminism and religion; and women and religious activism.
The chapter seeks to highlight tensions and challenges related to managing known demands and expectations versus contingencies and unexpected events. It also refers to particular challenges related to comparative research. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of backstage (Goffman 1959) managerial and emotional labour (Hochschild 1983), which is still a relatively neglected issue in scholarly literature on management in the academy (see, however, Isenbarger and Zemblyas 2006; Ogbonna and Harris 2004; Bellas 1999). Research managers engage in emotional labour not only to display socially expected and acceptable feelings (Hochschild 1983), but also to process and negotiate their own feelings and reactions in relation to colleagues, organisational processes, and institutional power structures. The chapter begins with a section on how project management success and failure is talked about. It is rooted in the author’s own experience as project leader of a work package within a large project funded by the European Commission (EC). It is especially relevant to Social Science and Humanities researchers who plan to embark upon comparative research collaborations, whilst also speaking to those who are more experienced in managing collaborative projects.