Talking about radicalization

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to build a bridge between the criminological tradition of research on hard-to-reach groups and sensitive topics and the tradition of critical research on radicalization. As a result of the hard-to-reach character of so-called radicals themselves, the article analyzes interview experiences with ‘professionals’ working within the prevention of radicalization and other actors. This article discusses the experiences connected to the preparation and unfolding of the interviews on the sensitive topic of radicalization and illustrates how interviews and questions designed to gather knowledge about radicalization processes among Muslims in Denmark often became a discussion about the concept of radicalization itself. This article shows that making use of the concept of radicalization is problematic in interviews as it is embedded in the Danish political discourse on immigration, Muslims and Islam. This article reflects on researcher positionality and how being a white ethnic Danish researcher might have caused an underestimation of how problematic the concept is to people directly involved with it, and that speaking from such a researcher positionality also can make the concept of radicalization seem even more problematic.

KEYWORDS:

• Radicalization
• hard-to-reach groups
• sensitive topics
• interviews
• qualitative methods
• Bourdieu

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This article is part of a project on young people and radicalization processes at the Department of Sociology and Social Work, Aalborg University, funded by Aalborg University’s Talent Management Programme. I would like to thank project leader Sune Qvotrup Jensen for comments on earlier drafts of the article.

2. The project studies Islamist radicalization in a gender and subcultural perspective, as well as through sociology of religious emotions; see http://www.maskulinitet.aau.dk/cemas-centre-for-masculinity-studies/research-projects/radicalization/.

3. The research project also included other alternative strategies such as journalistic sources, online ethnography, and interviews with former so-called radicals.

4. This could, however, also be a natural reaction of a social worker wanting to protect what he perceives as vulnerable youths from a researcher’s questions.

Additional information

Funding

Funded by Aalborg University’s Talent Management Programme.