Everyday embodied othering experiences of young Muslims in the Netherlands

The Muslim Other stands outside the somatic norms of white Dutch society. Thinking through the body as a phenomenal lived body, we explore the ways through which the Muslim Other is (re)constructed through embodied encounters and intersections of sensoriality, corporeality, and affectivity in the urban Dutch. We identify how (1) the Muslim Other is (re)produced through a set of multisensorial encounters based on the look, hearing, and touch; (2) Othering is intercorporeally practised; (3) Othering affectively charges the atmospheres of everyday life to the point that even the objects that Muslims carry cause anxiety. We further outline how this Othering trilogy provides avenues of possibility whereby the imposed anger and ‘dis-orientation’ can potentially be transformed into hope and ‘re-orientation’.