Who am I?: The Emotional Situations and Identity Constructions of Canadian-Born Ismaili Muslim Youth

This dissertation examines the inner work of identity formation as it takes shape for minoritized, and often marginalized, Shia Ismaili Muslim adolescents. Through the use of psychoanalytic theory and qualitative research methods, including focus groups and individual interviews, the emotional world of adolescents is analyzed to foreground conflict, difficult feelings and intergenerational memories. Identity markers of faith, culture, race, and citizenship are explored through the psychoanalytic concepts of anxiety, loss, melancholia, guilt, and ideality. My analysis focuses on how social contexts of prejudice and stereotypes relate to inner experiences of isolation, loneliness, and feeling misunderstood. Focusing on the emotional dynamics of faith identity, the dissertation offers an account of the creative and at times defensive processes through which adolescents navigate relationships with teachers, parents, peers, media, and school in a Canadian context that meets, but also fails to meet, their efforts. While highly attuned to the ways Islamophobia operates in public discourse in Canada, the participants have difficulty acknowledging their distress, struggle to find hope and spaces of inclusion, and take on the weighty responsibility to educate others in an effort to reduce the hate projected onto them. The result is a painful split between their faith and their secular selves.