Markers of difference make a difference: Perception,control,and clarity in white Muslim women’s stigma management

Abstract

White Muslim women in Norway navigate a world shaped by racialized and religified expectations. This article explores how markers of difference such as skin tone, clothing, and accent enable and constrain their self-presentation. Drawing on 14 qualitative interviews with both converts and lifelong white Muslim women, the study develops a theoretical account of “markers of difference” by identifying three variable characteristics: perception, control, and clarity. Earlier research has shown how markers like skin tone or the hijab become racialized. This study demonstrates how the materiality of different markers (e.g., names, accents, practices) provides varied opportunities and constraints for identity management. The article shows how being racialized as white affords degrees of faith information control. Yet whiteness does not fully protect against othering, including racism and Islamophobia. Ambiguous or unexpected markers prompt probing and misrecognition. The findings underscore that markers of difference are materially specific, dynamic, and context-dependent, while entangled with racial, religious, and other discourses of difference. The article contributes to Goffman-inspired stigma studies, to scholarship on white Muslims in Europe and North America, and to debates on the race-religion constellation. Empirically, it challenges assumptions that white Muslims without visible religious markers avoid stigma, showing how less visible cues like names or accents can also elicit negative, including racialized, reactions. Its central contribution is to refine the concept of markers of difference, systematising their variable characteristics and their role in stigma management.