'Alhamdulelah' and a 'fair go': Muslim women engage with 'belongingness'

The focus of this paper is on the articulation of feelings as a way to better understand how Muslim women position themselves as self-representing agents - a role understood. here, as a first step towards engaged citizenship. We are not interested in citizenship per se. nor, it must be said, in Islam for itself, though how these elements are conceptualised by these Muslim women certainly shapes this project and cannot remain invisible. We are examining how the identities of Muslim women transition towards settlement when they relocate We therefore ask how are inclusion and exclusion, as a double-sided expression of Samina Yasmeen's belongingness" 12007) actually experienced and then articulated by Muslim women? Both this concept and this question are placed at the heart of our paper: telongingness' is our central structuring and analytical principle. As settlers developing their social and cultural capital, these women effectively conduct their own analyses of their belongingness' without ever using that unusual word Nevertheless, they constantly articulate their feelings about the process of developing new ways of being. This, we argue, is what sets belongingness' apart from the more objective observation of belonging Belongingness requires the analysis of feelings about belonging and the development of strategies that move subjects towards the identity shifts that constitute manageable ways of living in a new country.