Exactly one year ago, the first edition of this Egmont Paper was released. Its aim was to explore the wider circumstances that could help explain the decision of thousands of, mostly young, European volunteers to journey to a faraway war theatre in the Levant. This Egmont Paper is a thoroughly revised, updated and expanded version. Several new features have been introduced. It proposes, firstly, a more systematic attempt at understanding why people with different social backgrounds feel attracted by IS, also known by its Arabic acronym Daesh. Two categories of Syria travellers (a more general term than ‘foreign fighters’) can be identified. For a first group comprises pre-existing kinship and friendship gangs. For them, joining IS is merely a shift to another form of deviant behaviour, next to membership of street gangs, rioting, drug trafficking, and juvenile delinquency. But it adds and opens a thrilling, bigger-than-life dimension to their way of life – indeed transforming them from delinquents without a future into mujahedeen with a cause. Whereas most individuals of the first group are known to the police, this is not necessarily the case for the second group. Before suddenly deciding to leave for Syria, the youngsters in this group didn’t show any sign of deviant behaviour and nothing seemed to distinguish them from their peers. But frequently they refer to the absence of a future, to personal difficulties they faced in their everyday life, to feelings of exclusion and absence of belonging, as if they didn’t have a stake in society. They are often solitary, isolated adolescents, frequently at odds with family and friends, in search of belonging and a cause to embrace. At a certain point, the succession of such estrangements resulted in anger. The relative share of both groups may differ according to national backgrounds. But, however different in background and motivations, they share common characteristics. Together these constitute the subculture on which IS’ force of attraction thrives. ‘No future’ is ...