| dc.description.abstract | An increase in major terrorist events in Europe over the past decade has shifted the reality for Muslims in Western Europe–and not for the better. The 2015 Paris attacks and the 2016 Nice truck attack have refocused attention on people’s origins as a place of blame rather than examining the internal factors that may have contributed to their individual radical actions. Moroccans, one of the largest immigrant populations in Western Europe, are consequently one of the largest Arab populations to have been affected by the policy and attitude changes in response to these events. The French secularist policy, laïcité, has long faced criticism for its prejudices against Muslim populations. Through new research, I show the presence of a potential connection between ethnic discrimination and radicalization through the application of the reactive ethnicity theory as a theoretical framework. The understanding of collective ethnic identity formations through the lens of various psychologists such as Jean Phinney, Ruben Rumbaut, and Henri Tajfel allow for a deeper comprehension of the importance of identity to examine the reasoning behind certain behaviors, such as the inherent favoritism of people within same groupings. Understanding how people come to view themselves opens a possible explanation for why they behave the way they do. Identity is very entwined with behavioral actions (Simons 2021) The pertinence of identity in relation to radicalism is explained by examining the process of radicalization through research experts such as psychologist Bertjan Doosje et al., and political scientist Anja Dalgaard-Nielsen. However, these studies were independent of each other and did not attempt to connect the relationship of ethnic identity and radicalism through the lens of reactive ethnic identity. The research conducted for this thesis strongly suggests that a discriminatory environment, such as that facilitated by the laïcité, results in an ethnic identity deemed ‘reactive ethnicity’. Along with examining reactive ethnicity as a concept, this piece delves into the process of radicalization in Europe by examining the Moroccan immigrant population in discriminatory contexts in order to facilitate a deeper understanding of the complexities that motivate radicalism | |
