Muslim Belonging and Politics of Belonging in the Philippines

Type

Single Panel

Time & Location

Session 4
Wed 15:30–17:00 Room 1.102

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Abstract

This panel looks into the lives and experiences of Muslim Filipinos through the lens of belonging and politics of belonging. It will tackle the various ways in which Muslims perform and construct their belongingness, which Nira Yuval-Davis (2006) defines as “emotional attachment, about feeling ‘at home,’” that exists at three analytical levels: “[the first is] social locations; the second relates to individuals’ identifications and emotional attachments to various collectivities and groupings; the third relates to ethical and political value systems with which people judge their own and others’ belonging/s.” Belonging becomes political, Yuval-Davis asserts, when contestations over the latter ensue and when social locations—including political and historical positionalities, and narratives of identities, are used, particularly by hegemonic powers, to draw, enact, maintain, and reproduce boundaries between “us” and “them.” Thus, the panel will also look at how these boundaries are drawn and what their consequences are for particular Muslims, while, at the same time, interrogating how these boundaries are contested and challenged.

Cited work: Yuval-Davis, Nira, “Belonging and the Politics of Belonging,” Patterns of Prejudice, 40:3 (2006), 197-214, at 197.

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