Navigating sacred and secular: the dynamic evolution of Muslim students’ sense of belonging in UK higher education

This paper examines how British Muslim undergraduates in the UK negotiate belonging in higher education (HE) as a temporal and relational process rather than a stable outcome. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 30 British Muslim students across two universities in the West Midlands, a region of comparatively high Muslim visibility, the study traces how belonging is produced, unsettled, and reworked through everyday institutional arrangements. While the West Midlands is not treated as representative of the UK HE sectors, its demographic density renders the mechanisms shaping belonging particularly visible.

The analysis identifies three overlapping configurations of belonging: disruption and extended liminality, strategic adaptation and everyday placemaking, and confident integration and legacy-building. To interpret these trajectories, the paper introduces the Muslim Identity Intersectional Matrix (MIIM), developed through reflexive thematic analysis. MIIM uses temporality as its organising logic to trace how recognition and risk are distributed across intersectional identity positioning, agency and practices, institutional structures and resources, and social representations and policy atmospheres.

Findings show that students respond to exclusionary or ambiguous conditions through calibrated self-presentation, tactical placemaking, and peer-based care infrastructures. Across both sites, the pace and durability of belonging were shaped by the reliability of faith provision, staff religious literacy, peer density, and predictable governance routines. Belonging remained contingent and reversible where securitised policy climates heightened perceived risk and constrained voice.