Navigating Colour-blind Societies: A Comparative Ethnography of Muslim Urban Life in Copenhagen and Montreal

Navigating Colour-Blind Societies is a comparative ethnography of racialisation, class, and gender in the lives of young Muslims coming of age in societies where race is deemed insignificant.

The book offers insights into the urban lives of young middle-class Muslims in Copenhagen and Montreal. Based on their narratives, the book examines racialisation as (1) a social process that is classed and gendered and (2) a spatial process that is social and temporal. Denmark and Quebec have seen an increasing thrust of nationalist politics in recent years, which position their Muslim citizens as the quintessential “Other.” The book contributes to our understanding of how Muslims are racialised and how they navigate this process of racialisation in social and urban life. The interaction between movement and life stories provides a unique vantage point in bringing the city to life from the perspective of these young adults.

The book appeals widely to academics and students in sociology, anthropology, and human geography. It also appeals to a wider audience interested in anti-racist scholarship and Muslim experiences in the Global North.

Chapters: Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Amani Hassani is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Brunel University. She is an urban ethnographer working at the intersection of sociology, anthropology, and human geography. Her research explores the connection between racialisation and spatialisation, focusing on Muslim populations in the Global North. She has written widely on racialisation, Islamophobia, and Muslim experiences in academic and public domains.