Family life is a primary source of identity and belonging with significance as an integral part of everyday life overall. There are, however, other important cultural and social signifiers of identity which are connected to our understanding of family and are dependent on it for meaning. Addressing questions of identity and belonging is therefore integral to shedding light on how Muslim family life is experienced, organized and changing. It reveals how individuals exercise agency in response to the structural circumstances of their lives, including family arrangements. Building on the conceptual and theoretical framework introduced previously, this chapter begins by outlining the core concepts of identity and identification and framework of intersectionality. Together, these provide a solid basis for exploring various forms of interconnectedness and interdependence relevant to understanding Muslim family life. They are important in helping to avoid uncritical assumptions regarding the dominance of collectivist principles and extended family arrangements. The chapter considers religion and ethnicity as intersecting dimensions of difference that are commonly foregrounded in accounts of Muslim families. It moves on to consider the relevance of diasporic and transnational identifications to Muslim family life, taking account of how family and wider kinship relationships can often occur across borders, reflecting the modern, global interconnectedness of families (Brah, 1996; Vertovec, 2009). The analytical focus then shifts to belonging at the national level and the associated identity politics of citizenship and nationhood through which Muslims are frequently positioned as outsiders and experience contested belonging (Abbas, 2005; Fekete, 2009). Local attachments to place are also considered, reflecting the contribution of the local as another source of identity and belonging relevant to understanding Muslim family life. The chapter draws attention to how exploring Muslim family life involves taking account of multiple forms of identity and belonging and various, complex, shifting linkages between them.

Identity and identification

Like family, identity is a limited, conceptually problematic term, and if and how it should be used is a persisting matter of debate (for example, Brubaker, 2013; Jenkins, 2014). There is, however, a consensus that identity matters, as it is fundamentally about knowing who we are and where and with whom we belong, and, conversely, where and with whom we don’t.