Project R-16451

Claiming a place for religion at work: A practice-theoretical exploration of the relational and processual dynamics of Muslim employees' religious practice (Research)

As Muslims continue to be faced with religious discrimination in the labor market, the specific experiences of Muslim employees in the Global North have recently started to draw increasing academic attention. Building on these developing insights from different disciplines, this project aims to develop an innovative processual and relational interdisciplinary theorization of Muslim employees' attempts to practice religion at work and claim more space and visibility in workplaces in the Global North. By theorizing how employees' negotiations of religious practice at work are tightly interconnected with the accepted/dominant range of workplace practices and with the way religion is practiced within broader religious and socio-political communities, as well as shaped by the potential tensions between these two types of practice, this project offers original contributions to both organizational theory and anthropological approaches to lived Islam. To achieve these aims, the project adopts practice theory as its core theoretical framework and integrates knowledge from organizational theory; citizenship studies, and anthropological approaches to lived religion. To develop this processual and relational theorization, it combines a longitudinal qualitative approach and an ethnographic case study design.

01 January 2026 - 31 December 2029