Likes, Comments, and Follow Requests: The Instagram User Experiences of Young Muslim Women in the Netherlands

Abstract

Young Dutch Muslim women often lead complex existences: on the one hand, they may be considered “other” to European culture and expected to conform to so-called Western values; on the other hand, they can be subject to scrutiny within their cultural and religious communities. This article explores young Dutch Muslim women’s online practices by focusing on Instagram. By discussing the theories of third spaces (Bhabha, 1994; Pennington, 2018b) and composite habitus (Bourdieu, 1990; Waltorp, 2015), we investigate the following questions: How do young Dutch Muslim women use Instagram? What are the opportunities and constraints that they face when using Instagram? Through qualitative interviews, we discovered that Instagram helps young Dutch Muslim women express their identity in their own terms, but it presents negative aspects connected with privacy and surveillance. We then discuss the need not to generalize Muslim women’s experiences and instead to consider their selective use of Instagram and heterogeneity within Islam.