Unsettled grounds: religion, gender and sexual nationalism in a Dutch city.

Abstract

This contribution explores how the polarisation between religion, gender and sexuality in relation to nationalism manifests in the Dutch city of The Hague. Conceptual debates on secularism and sexual nationalism, as well as the materialist study of religion, are brought into conversation with ethnographic data on African Christian placemaking in the city. The contribution demonstrates how materialisations of Dutch secular nationalism become visible in religious spatial practices of religious migrant communities in their interaction with the city. It argues that African Dutch communities - youth in particular - experience and navigate the city as a space of multiplicity. They live, produce, and navigate contestations over gender and sexuality in secular and religious spaces in the city on a day-to-day basis. It offers alternative perspectives in relation to the political mobilisation of religion, secularity, gender and sexuality as culture wars or discursive battlefields in research and policy debates.