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Muslim Youth, Religion, and Educational Aspirations: The Case of West African Immigrants in New York City

Serah Shani (Mercy College, New York, USA)

Children and Youths' Migration in a Global Landscape

ISBN: 978-1-80117-539-5, eISBN: 978-1-80117-538-8

Publication date: 24 May 2022

Abstract

Purpose: This ethnography examines West African immigrant youth attending an Islamic madrassa in a New York City mosque and their future educational aspirations.

Methods: This ethnographic research was conducted mainly through interviews of ten Muslim youth attending weekly madrasa at a West African mosque in the Bronx in New York City. I also did observations in the mosques, observing youth behavior, seating and listening in their classes, observing their interaction with one another and with their parents. While I had done this research within a month, I have been researching this community since 2006 at different times on the topic of parenting and schooling.

Findings: Muslim parents and teachers, concerned that children might fall into inner-city neighborhood life, engaged in teaching, guiding, and counseling the youth to keep them religiously and educationally engaged. As a result, the youth in this study demonstrated strong comittment to Islam and parental expectations but also expressed their own views of what their lives could become as transnational citizens.

Research implications: This research demonstrates that while schools, parents, and extracurricular programs are concerned with how youth will turn out, the youth are also making sense of their education experience in these spaces among others, and engage in carving a niche to inform their identity, education and career path. To this end, youth agency and voices should be acknowledged in educational research.

Value: The youth in this research demonstrate how contemporary young immigrants, living in a transnational world with diverse belief systems and ideals for success and socio-economic mobility, engage in imagination, resiliency and agency as they adapt to their new environment.

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Westmont College Provosts’ Office for providing funds to conduct this research. The author would also like to thank all the parents, youth, and Imams who gave their time and made this research possible.

Citation

Shani, S. (2022), "Muslim Youth, Religion, and Educational Aspirations: The Case of West African Immigrants in New York City", Atterberry, A.L., McCallum, D.G., Tu, S., Lutz, A. and Bass, L.E. (Ed.) Children and Youths' Migration in a Global Landscape (Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Vol. 29), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 95-114. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1537-466120220000029007

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited