Gendered Citizenship in Multicultural Europe: The Impact of Contemporary Women's Movements (FEMCIT)

This project, sponsored by the European Commission under the Sixth Framework Programme, Priority 7, commenced on 1st February 2007 and will complete in January 2011.

The project includes 10 Work Packages, Dr Line Nyhagen Predelli will lead Work Package 4. Each Work Package will gather new empirical data from three or four EU member states and aims to develop new theoretical knowledge about contemporary gendered citizenship in a multicultural context.

Work Package 4: Ethnic and religious citizenship. Intersections between feminism, ethnic identity and religion in a multicultural Europe

This qualitative study aims to:

• explore and assess understandings of the impact of minority women’s organisations on the anti-violence and anti-racist policies of the majority feminist movements, thereby identifying best practices and less good practices in terms of policy development at both the nation-state and European level.

• explore how religious European women define, construct and practice citizenship in their everyday life, thereby identifying and assessing how religious identities and practices may provide resources and barriers to citizenship.

• understand how different groups of women (minority and majority feminists and women adhering to different religious traditions) understand and practice citizenship as both national and European citizens, and how they perceive the importance of social identities (ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality) for their citizenship practice.

The data for the project will be collected through the use of qualitative research methods, with in-depth interviews of relevant individuals. Fieldwork will take place in Norway, the United Kingdom and Spain.

The study is divided into 3 strands:

• Cross-national comparisons of feminist organisations working to eliminate racism and violence against women and their impact on policy making.

• Cross-national comparisons of progressive and traditional women within different religious traditions.

• A contested notion of citizenship: what does citizenship mean for women in different communities?

The project will run from 1st February 2007 to 31st January 2011.

Sponsor
European Commission (Sixth Framework Programme, Priority 7)

Project Team
The project team are: Dr Line Nyhagen Predelli (Work Package Leader, Department of Social Sciences), Esmeranda Manful (CRSP), Nigel Bilsbrough (CRSP), Sharon Walker (CRSP), Professor Beatrice Halsaa (University of Oslo), PhD student Cecilie Thun (University of Oslo)

Publications
Predelli, L. N. (2008) Religion, Citizenship and Participation: A Case Study of Immigrant Muslim Women in Norwegian Mosques in European Journal of Women's Studies, Volume 15, No. 3, pp. 241-260.
http://ejw.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/15/3/241

See www.femcit.org for further information.

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