ECPR

Install the app

Install this application on your home screen for quick and easy access when you’re on the go.

Just tap Share then “Add to Home Screen”

Betraying the Nation: Identity, Citizenship, and the Danish Women of ISIS

Citizenship
Democracy
Extremism
Gender
National Identity
Identity
Immigration
Narratives
Camilla Gissel
Universitetet i Oslo
Camilla Gissel
Universitetet i Oslo

Abstract

Women who left Denmark to join the Islamic State were constructed naïve, innocent and ‘groomed’ girls when they first left for Syria and Iraq. However, in the years that followed, they were stripped of their claims to innocence and their Danish identity. In media and political narratives, they were not just framed as security threats but as ultimate traitors—women who had “vendt Danmark ryggen” (turned their backs on Denmark). This betrayal was not only about ‘extremism’ but about identity: by rejecting the Danish welfare state and embracing Islam, they positioned themselves outside the moral and national boundaries of ‘Danishness’. Drawing on narrative criminology and social problems theory, this paper examines how identity is constructed, contested, and revoked in political and media narratives about Danish women in ISIS. Through narrative criminological analysis, I show how these women’s exclusion was framed through a dual betrayal: as women and mothers, they had abandoned their expected roles; as (‘former’) Danes, they had rejected the nation’s core values. Their Muslimness—particularly for white converts—became central to their loss of Danishness, revealing how national belonging is not only racialised but also contingent on moral and political loyalty. Denmark’s longstanding refusal to repatriate these women underscores a more profound question: If extremism renders citizenship null and void, who gets to belong? By analysing the stories about these women, this paper sheds light on how extremism, gender, and national identity are intertwined in the politics of exclusion.