Psychological Process and Pathways to Radicalization

The recent emphasis on ‘home-grown’ terrorism has resulted in a vigorous discourse on radicalization as a process that might explain how seemingly ordinary people become terrorists. This paper explores the psychological influences, group and individual identity in young people during maturation, when transitions of identity may make them vulnerable to recruitment to violent radicalization. This paper specifically focuses on the recent phenomena of home grown terrorism in Western democracies. This requires investigation without assumptions of similarity with other global and historical acts of terrorism. Studies of terrorism have focused on those identified as engaged with terrorist organizations or convicted of terrorist crimes, with little attention given to populations that are vulnerable to recruitment to terrorist action. Therefore, this paper focuses on home grown terrorism and the psychological processes and pathways to radicalization as a pre-cursor of terrorist acts.