CHAPTER 10: Stepping in and Out of Worlds: Bosnian Muslim Girls’ Narratives About Cultural and Religious Identity Construction

This chapter features narratives of adolescent Bosnian Muslim women who came to the United States as refugees following the Bosnian War in the 1990s. Each of the women featured in this chapter considers herself to be socially and culturally proficient both within immigrant Bosnian and mainstream U.S. cultures; each is also academically successful and professionally ambitious. In their own words, the young women relate their lived experiences in U.S. culture and their processes of acculturation and identity construction. The analysis highlights the conceptions and reconstruction of cultural and religious identity among these women, who all identify themselves as ethnically Bosnian and religiously Muslim. Narratives and analysis also discuss the role of race, language, and cultural distance in the women’s identity construction process.

Each adolescent woman idealizes a bicultural identity in which she is able to step between both Bosnian and U.S. cultural worlds. The women describe various degrees of success with this cultural code-switching and explain their processes of highlighting or downplaying their religious and cultural identity in various social situations. While their experiences in U.S. schools and social contexts vary, all the women are conscious of various influences on their religious and cultural identities and ascribe personal agency to their bicultural identity construction.