Muslim youth: a Scottish narrative

In a political climate where racism has become normalised through the rise in right wing rhetoric across Europe and the USA, with a focus on ‘the other’, the school space in which BME Muslim children and young people are situated is becoming increasingly unstable, through the levels of state control via monitoring and measuring by policy strategies, and where discrimination by the dominant community
becomes more evident. In nations which put ‘social justice, equality and equity’ at the heart of their policies, with a priority to engage with ‘young people to facilitate their personal, social and educational development and enable them to gain a voice, influence and a place in society’ (what is the name of the report?? Scottish Government, 2004, p1) what does this mean for a BME Muslim young person who is labelled by policy and literature through a deficit discourse of failure, on their identity and their sense of belonging? Dr Riaz’s research, albeit a small scale study exploring policy and practice, reflects similar findings to the recent Social Mobility Commission report (Stevenson, Demack, Stiell, Abdi, Clarkson, Ghaffar and Hassan, 2017) across education, community and employment.