Routledge Advances in Ethnography Navigating Colour Blind Societies

This book 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. 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 under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.