Intersections between Gender, Religion, Ethnicity and Nationality: Implications for Citizenship as Theory and Lived Practice

Scholars who examine political and social aspects of religion are increasingly invoking the term ‘citizenship’ in debates about religious rights, religious freedom, and political claims-making rooted in religious convictions. In particular, the notion of ‘religious citizenship’ is being used, mainly from a top-down, rights-based perspective that centers on the formal rights of individuals, groups and organizations in multicultural societies to religious freedom of belief and worship as well as to stakeholder representation. What is lacking in recent scholarly discourse is an intersectional approach to religious citizenship that focuses on how religious individuals and groups understand, practice and negotiate citizenship in everyday life. Such a bottom-up approach is rooted in feminist conceptualizations of citizenship as lived practice, which foreground experiences of participation and belonging, but also experiences of exclusion and marginalization. Moreover, a bottom-up approach foregrounds religion as it is lived in people’s everyday lives, while not losing sight of institutionalized inequalities. Majority and minority religions often have different statuses and rights granted by governments, and individuals and groups who adhere to majority and minority religions may experience unequal citizenship conditions due to religious, gender, racial, ethnic and other intersecting forms of discrimination. Questions about citizenship conditions also pertain to relations between religious and secular individuals, groups and institutions. This paper argues that intersections between gender, religion, ethnicity and nationality produce challenges to rights-based approaches to religious citizenship. Based on empirical research with Christian and Muslim women in two different national (Norway and England) and multicultural (Oslo and Leicester) contexts, and on two different axes of majority-minority relations (religious and ethnic), the paper critically questions the usefulness of the term ‘religious citizenship’ both as theory and as lived practice.