The Intangible Nation: Spatializing experiences of Britishness and belonging for young British Muslim women

Critical developments within studies of nationalism trace the spatially dynamic tonalities of the nation through everyday routines, practices and encounters, considering how bodies and objects perform, reproduce and resist ideas of national identity. These studies have turned towards the more-than-representational and conceptualizations of affective atmospheres to unpack the ties between people and the nation, exploring how the nation is felt and embodied. Drawing on interviews and small group discussions with 10 young British Muslim women in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, this paper contributes to this emerging body of literature in two ways. Firstly, it considers how religious and national identities intersect and are embodied in the everyday on an emotional and experiential level through the headscarf. Secondly it explores the affective spatialities of these women's embodied identities, considering how emotional spaces, such as the home, affect how the nation is felt, (re) shaped and (per)formed in the intimate and mundane. Focusing upon the home and the headscarf, it demonstrates the complex relationship between the non-human, human, tangible and intangible, reconceptualizing how the nation is felt, experienced and lived across diffuse spaces and atmospheres. Through questioning how 'Britishness' is felt and spatialised, the paper highlights the complex nature of national identities and how they are navigated and embodied by young people, impacting feelings of belonging. It argues that national identities are not spatially and geographically uniform, but messy, emotional and situated, constantly becoming through everyday encounters across space.