From Cognitive Environment to French Youth Engagement in Jihad
| Author | Marie Kortam |
| Date | 01 June 2017 |
| Published date | 01 June 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12433 |
From Cognitive Environment to French Youth
Engagement in Jihad
Marie Kortam
French Institute of the Near East (IFPO –Beirut)
Abstract
This essay explores the cognitive environment of radicalised youth and describes how the path of engagement in the Syrian
revolution is radicalised. Using a case study, I analyse the experiences, personality and motivation of Elodie, a young woman
from Saint-Denis in France. Elodie’s story provides a context to examine how socially constructed processes become individu-
alised. The approach taken in the study adopts anthropologist David Mandelbaum’s concept of engagement to understand its
meaning. Based on this approach, the study considers engagement as a phase of shaping convictions, not as its result. As
such, engagement does not appear to be fixed, final, and unchangeable; rather it is dynamic. Constructing Elodie’s trajectory
will help in understanding the present pattern of meaning of what I call the ‘space of jihadist (fighters)’and revolutionaries,
as related to the Syrian conflict.
Policy recommendations
•Support young people at this critical stage in their lives, especially when it comes to integrating them into the labour
market.
•Encourage young people’s participation in political life and redesign social support programs to meet individual needs
and improve their quality of life.
•Invest state funds to revamp places where young people generally spend their time, rather than only investing in mos-
ques and religious institutions, and provide support to places where extremism is not related to a religious socialisation;
•Promote security within a citizenship perspective.
Since September 2001, the fight against terrorism has
become the main political objective of most European coun-
tries. They unite in their ultimate goal to defeat the threat
from radical Islam. Radical Islamists, on the other hand, cite
the Quran to declare Jihad against all non-believers and
miscreants who offend Islamic society. They continuously
remind us that France is in their line of sight. European
political agendas that stigmatise Islam, such as those of
Nicolas Sarkozy, not only fuelled xenophobic views and
Islamophobia, but also made France one of the key targets
of Islamists. In return, France has depicted Islam as a threat
to the Republic, despite the conflicting attitudes of the gov-
ernment towards the world’s two largest sources of funds
for Islamist militant groups, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
1
This essay explores the cognitive environment of radi-
calised youth in France and describes how the path of
engagement in the Syrian revolution is radicalised. Using a
case study, I analyse the experiences, personality and moti-
vation of Elodie, a young woman from Saint-Denis, whom I
interviewed ten years ago. Elodie’s story provides a context
to examine how socially constructed processes become indi-
vidualised (Cuadraz and Uttal, 1999). As this method allows
the discovery of new processes and concepts (Lincoln and
Guba, 1985), I will go through this analysis to highlight the
experiences as defined and constructed by the actor. The
absence of statistics do not allow for a precise analysis that
would focus on the relationship of social categories rather
than on the particular categories. In this context, ‘the partic-
ular case is not particular in the aspects that are of concern
to the inquirer. Indeed, it is not a “case”for it presents itself
to us rather as a point on entry, the locus of an experienc-
ing subject, into a larger social and economic process’
(Smith, 1987).
The approach taken in this study adopts anthropologist
David Mandelbaum’s (1973) concept of engagement to
understand its meaning. According to Mandelbaum, life con-
sists of constant adjustments and periodic ‘adaptations’.
Adaptation is a process; each of us tries throughout his or
her life to establish new patterns of behaviour to adapt to
new circumstances. Every individual has the means to adapt
and can, in the important life moments (biographical junc-
tions), adjust to new social roles and formulate a different
worldview. Howard Becker’s (1985) interactive concept of
the ‘career’also helps us to understand the process of
engagement. On a large scale, the jihadist career is the pro-
duct of a coincidence, exchange, negotiation and conflict
between a personal decision and objective factors in an
individual’s path, such as stages in the educational system,
cultivating religious values or being a part of institutions,
social groups, or other categories (Passeron, 1989). Thus,
©2017 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2017) 8:Suppl.4 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12433
Global Policy Volume 8 . Supplement 4 . June 2017
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