Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I explore how practices of beautifications by Christians and Muslims in the Somali-Dutch and Ghanaian-Dutch communities in the Netherlands are important to their sense of self and sense of belonging.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I explore how practices of beautifications by Christians and Muslims in the Somali-Dutch and Ghanaian-Dutch communities in the Netherlands are important to their sense of self and sense of belonging. I show how contemporary political discourses in the Netherlands constructs religious ‘Others’ and discuss how this discursive positioning impacts on how practices of beautifications become a response to current debates on religion and migration but also how people challenge certain assumptions about religion and migration through bodily practices. Based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork, I discuss how Othering impacts on people’s sense of belonging thus creatively and selectively priveledge certain identities. Similarly, I explore the ways in which participants redefine what beauty means at certain times in their life such as being married, unmarried or as parents. Although beauty practices may be primarily religiously symbolic practices, they are also influenced by practical concerns such as gendered and social understandings related to perceptions of respectability, propriety and belonging. Beauty practices are thus entangled with people’s sense of belonging or being included to either social or religious communities.