Abstract

What methodological tools the researcher needs to carry out a study on religion and intimate lives? How does religion shape intimate lives? By analysing some results of a sociological qualitative research led between 2011 and 2015 in Italy and France with a group of young Moroccan and Muslim men who have migrated to Europe, this article try to give an answer to these questions. Moving away from a theoretical perspective which thinks about religious and sexual individualizations strategies as a singularized approach on the individual status, we will analyse how religious and sexual bricolages are privileged points of view to think social relationships and interactions. We will focus our attention on couple relationships and intergenerational relationships. The article will discuss the cases of two young men, Hamid and Idriss, to show how religious and sexual individualization paths produce normative arrangements with Muslim precepts through which different kind of social relationships are built, organised and negotiated. Our ethnographic approach will show that religion and sexuality reveal their normative impact on individual conducts through becoming dispositifs of power which produce a plurality of social interactions.