For minorities such as Muslim women, citizenship regimes are of central importance in political opportunity structures. In many parts of Europe citizenship is contoured around unequal boundaries which serve to create, reinforce and reproduce negative narratives about minorities such as Muslims. In turn, integration frameworks have been underpinned by such negative assumptions, so that the political agency of Muslim women in Europe has been often challenged by an inhospitable and exclusive public sphere. It has also been problematised by the inability of governments to deal with the full complexity of multiculturalism, where Muslim women are a minority within a minority whose voice has been marginalised. This paper then will consider how Muslim women’s agency in Europe is challenged and problematised, and Muslim women’s agency is being developed in spite of this.
