This paper will explore the lives of the young Muslims in Jamia Nagar, a segregated neighborhood in New Delhi, and see how they make sense of their lived space through their experiences and everyday life practices. With the help of ethnographic observation and ethnographic interviews and drawing inferences from the theories of space and experience by Setha Low, Gopal Guru, and Sundar Sarukkai, this paper will trace out how the Muslim youth experiences their sense of belongingness in their lived space and how they utilize their limited space to achieve their desires and aspirations while living in a rapidly globalizing life world. The paper discusses the idea of belongingness of the young people in their neighborhood through their everyday life practices informed by their senses. The paper frames the social and subjective construction of belonging in observable everyday adaptations in job security, lodging, culinary, dressing, and eating habits of the younger residents. The glocalised manifestation of their choices discloses the influence of the neo-liberal market economy and attests to the making of a very particular niche, even within the periphery. Most of the previous studies about Muslims in Indian cities have been explored from a perspective of the creation of marginal neighborhoods due to various historical, political, and socio-economic factors. Studies on marginal spaces like Jamia Nagar have not focused on the perspectives of the people and their experiences of their lived space. They have instead centralized inequality and the various forms of violence Indian-Muslims are subjected to. By trying to understand the nuances happening inside a Muslim neighborhood, this paper will propose or highlight the importance of knowing what the people living in the margins have to speak about them.
