‘Muslim minorities’ in Kraków? Inter-relations between the Urban living spaces and the experience of spatial life of minority groups

Abstract

Minority group experiences in urban settings are always subjected to the problem of top-down or external categorisations which are related to interpersonal and material interactions within the city. To catch those interdependencies our research is concerned with whether people externally categorized by us as ‘Muslims’ in the city of Krakow determine or motivate their actions and relationships mainly on the basis of religion and whether they engage in constant, regular interactions with others as ‘Muslims’. The aim of our article is twofold. First it highlights the need for researchers to examine their own assumptions about the categories they are using. Social categories determine the outcome of the research and position externally the research subjects in social networks that not necessarily mirror their actual experiences. The study therefore is exploring whether the category of ‘Krakow Muslim’ reflects their experience of the city. The second aim is to propose a variation of the ‘living space maps’ analysis, introduced by Martha Muchow (1935), to explore whether our research subjects experience the city in a religious manner and if they experience religion in a specific way in Krakow.