In February 2015, London schoolgirl Shamima Begum headed to Syria to live in the Islamic State’s Caliphate. Now nineteen years old, she recently turned up in a Syrian refugee camp, demanding to be returned to the UK. Begum claims she “never did anything dangerous” during her stint with the Caliphate, but subsequent news accounts suggest her activities in Syria were not those of a mere housewife.
Of all the discussions about the dangers that Islamist terrorism poses to Europe, one of the areas that has received the most academic and policy focus is that on so-called foreign fighters.