In both policy and academic debates in Britain, as elsewhere in Europe, concern is increasingly expressed over the implications of spousal immigration for ‘integration’. Continued practices of ‘homeland’ transnational marriage within some ethnic minority communities, in particular, are presented as problematic, and new immigration restrictions likely to particularly affect such groups are justified on the grounds of promoting integration. The evidence base to underpin this concern is, however, surprisingly limited and analysis is based on differing and often partial conceptualisations of integration. Through an examination of the evidence in recent studies, we interrogate the impact which spousal immigration can have within differing domains of integration. Exposing the complex processes at play we demonstrate the need for future research to deploy a nuanced, more comprehensive concept of integration if it is to avoid simplistic assertions that these forms of marriage migration have a single, direct impact on integration processes.
The literature increasingly recognises the importance of gender in defining the boundaries between national societies and migrants. But little is still known about the history and changes of mechanisms that shape the role of gender as category of difference. Based on a critical case study of Switzerland, this article examines how gender is implicated in the politics of migrant admission and incorporation and underlying notions of ‘the other’. Drawing on theories of boundary work, we show that gendered representations of migrants are mobilised by different actors to advance their claims and calls for certain forms of immigration control and migrant integration. Since the late 19th century, gendered representations of Swiss nationals and migrant others shift from classical gender ideas to culturalised post-colonial interpretations of gender roles and, most recently, to normative ideas of gender equality. As part of these changes, migrant women moved from the periphery to the core of public and political attention. Concomitantly, categories of difference shift from the intersection of gender and social class to an intersection of gender, culture and ethnicity. Local particularities of Switzerland – the idea of ‘overforeignisation’ and the system of direct democracy – play a significant role in shaping categories. But Switzerland’s embeddedness in transnational fields emerges as equally important. The article expands on recent research and illuminates how changing dynamics of categorisation and othering facilitate the construction of nations and national identities in a transnationalised world.
The article discusses one of the most compelling policy issues facing liberal democracies in Europe: What policy tools can be used to promote social cohesion in a pluralist multi-ethnic society with different moral and religious and ethical values, and cultural and linguistic traditions? We focus on the role that citizenship education has taken since the early 2000s in light of the integration of immigrant children in schools in the Netherlands and England. Citizenship education is designed to integrate immigrant groups socially, foster their loyalty to the state and encourage them to become engaged in democratic politics. Our empirical analysis advances our understanding of the policy ramifications of a new turn in integration policies directed towards stronger civic integration through sharing common values and moral standards.
In the last two decades, the concept of multiculturalism has come under attack in political and academic discourses. Simultaneously, European governments have accommodated key aspects of multicultural policies, both nationally and internationally. In academic debates, it has been suggested that ‘multiculturalism’ can be replaced by ‘interculturalism’. This paper responds to those suggestions. We argue that, while liberal state multiculturalism risks essentializing minority groups, critical multiculturalism as a social movement refers to minority struggles to be recognized as equals in relation to the majority. Interculturalism as policy opens up a space for dialogue where minoritized people, individually and collectively, can find their own voices and negotiate their own identities and interests as well as the shared values of larger society. While multiculturalism is partly about legal rights and policies, it is also about possibilities for participation, opening up public spaces for dialogue and negotiations where the voices of minoritized groups and individuals are heard, providing an opportunity for living together in a diverse society marked by mutual understanding and adjustment. We conclude with the suggestion that intercultural dialogue should be combined with critical multiculturalism. In other words, the theory and practice of intercultural dialogue need to go beyond liberalism and take into account critical multiculturalism’s emphasis on the positionality of all perspectives. A theory and practice of genuine intercultural dialogue cannot ignore power relations, the empirical fact that some people speak ‘from above’ and others ‘from below’.
Gender and indigeneity themselves are contested terms and fields of conflict. In this article, I bring the fields of gender studies and indigenous studies into conversation with each other. Starting from indigenous studies, I aim to let insights and perspectives from gender studies challenge and shed light on the methodology of indigenous studies. An outspoken gender perspective would contribute to, as well as challenge, the research on indigenous issues and thus, also, indigenous methodologies. I argue that gender and, following gender, also intersectional perspectives, are important in order to bring difference and disharmony to the table.
Cross-cultural living experiences may lead to the development of cosmopolitanism among people who are on the move. This article critically explores this proposition in relation to first generation Chinese migrants in New Zealand, focusing on, not only their opportunities but, more importantly, the barriers they encounter in terms of performing cosmopolitanism through an analysis of their everyday intercultural interactions. The key premise is that being able to engage in cosmopolitanism is not a given result of increasing levels of cross-border mobilities or intercultural interactions but occurs through, and relates to, social structures and power relations that individuals negotiate in different social settings. By drawing insights from ‘everyday cosmopolitanism’ and ‘contact zones’, this paper explores three factors that articulate the possibilities of becoming cosmopolitan: (a) everyday cosmopolitanism in contact zones; (b) the emotional dimension of encountering others; and (c) migration and family life challenges. In doing so the paper examines how the process of becoming cosmopolitan is entangled with migrants’ social-demographic characteristics, along with their individual self-perceptions, biographies, and personal relations with others. It highlights that cosmopolitanism is socially situated, subject to multiple pressures, and enacted within the uneven power relations of society. Moreover, it demonstrates that diversity encounters are inherently emotional and cannot be understood outside of the emotional dynamics from which they emerge.
Racism has been widely discredited in past decades, and opinions that are perceived to be in conflict with the anti-racist norm are considered improper. Therefore, the anti-racist norm arguably represents an obstacle for anti-immigration parties. They must ensure that their criticism is not perceived as racism since that threatens to delegitimize the party and thereby undermine its possibilities for electoral success. The idea of the study is that the existence of the anti-racist norm make descriptions of these parties by the media decisive: the stronger connection to racism, the more severe the parties’ violation of the anti-racist norm is perceived by the public, which make voters less inclined to vote for them. This hypothesis is experimentally tested by labelling a fictive party differently and the result supports the basic idea of the study albeit the ‘racist’ label itself surprisingly does not decrease support more than the label of xenophobia.
It is usually thought that a shared public sphere is a prerequisite of any democratic regime, where citizens can deliberate and act according to their duty to carry out justice. This prerequisite, however, can be complicated due to linguistic diversity. Until recently, the literature on linguistic justice has primarily focused on how to achieve just linguistic regimes in compound (i.e. federal) multilingual states, granting some kind of linguistic and political autonomy through the territorial division of the state. But what actually happens inside the territories? This paper deals with linguistic diversity and the establishment and maintenance of a shared public sphere in political communities in which territorial divisions are not possible because the linguistic communities are intermingled. I argue that linguistic justice, with the aim of creating the conditions that maximize the incentives to share the public sphere, would be achieved if, and only if, two principles were reached: (1) the equal recognition of all the host language groups of the political community and (2) the non-segregation of people for reasons of language. Although the relation between the principles can be problematic, I argue that they can be fitted into a linguistic theory of justice named ‘Multilingual Convergence’.
Drawing on an ethnographic study in Copenhagen, this article explores the gendered ethnicities of young women navigating multi-ethnic street terrains. The study includes an ethnically heterogeneous sample of 25 women aged 13–23 who are involved in street-oriented peer groups and activities. The analysis demonstrates how young women modify their lifestyle, language, body and posture to establish proximity to ethnic minority youth. By applying intersectional theory, the article explores gender and ethnicity as situational accomplishments, and it is argued that ethnic identifications in this context need to be explored as flexible and fluid, changing, not only over a lifetime, but within a single day. This exploration of young women’s gendered ethnicities adds to the limited research on the gendered and racialized dynamics of street culture.
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Although there is extensive literature on the relationship between student motivation and achievement, less is known about how secondary schools create conditions that enable diverse groups of students to do their personal best. This article reports research into the development of school leadership in New Zealand secondary schools to enable Indigenous Māori students to achieve educational success as Māori. Data collection included school goal-setting plans for students, in-class observations, student surveys and interviews. Analyses revealed school goals reflected low expectations for Māori achievement and little evidence of culturally responsive practices in classrooms. Interviews with Māori students highlighted perceptions that their schools had low expectations for them and their learning, while analysis of Māori student surveys indicated lower academic aspirations in comparison with European peers. These results are discussed critically alongside specific recommendations for further research on the multiple influences of mainstream secondary school contexts on educational achievement outcomes for Indigenous students.
The growth of the black1 middle class in ‘post-apartheid’2 South Africa has become the subject of scholarly and public interest. Applying elements of discourse analysis to interview and group discussion based data, this article provides a qualitative thematic exploration of two pressures that confront a group of black middle-class professionals residing in Johannesburg, South Africa. The first pressure is the experience of being black under the hegemonic white gaze and the second is the experience of the marshalling black gaze. The complexities of occupying the positions of being black and middle class and of living with the scrutiny of two gazes concurrently, is explored. The findings suggest that the white gaze persists in seeking to negatively mark and destabilise black professionals and profiting off covert and paradoxical mobilisations of race discourses as a means of bolstering whiteness. On the other hand, the black gaze serves to police the boundaries of what acceptable blackness is. Under this gaze, the professional, black middle class is perceived as having sold out to whiteness and abandoned given conceptions of blackness. The tensions arising out of navigating these dialectical disciplining gazes suggests that this group holds the tenuous position of being corralled from the ‘outside’ and ‘inside.’ The research, however, reveals the complex ways in which racialisation continues to shape black lives alongside the less rigid identity possibilities for blackness that move beyond essentialised identity performances.
Immigrants who believe they suffer from stigmatization and discrimination may still demonstrate positive attitudes toward government authorities. We explore this trust–discrimination paradox by examining perceptions about police and policing among Ethiopian Jews in Israel, an immigrant racial minority. Drawing on data collected from focus groups and survey results, we find that levels of trust in the police among Israelis of Ethiopian descent are equal to or higher than among veteran Jewish Israelis. Nevertheless, Ethiopian Israelis also report negative perceptions of the police that are rooted in strong feelings of stigmatization by these government agents. While trust in the police may reflect Ethiopian Jews’ desire for integration, participation, and inclusion as legitimate and equal members of nation and state, we demonstrate that they use various de-stigmatization strategies whose aim is to downplay the importance and depth of their discrimination by the police. These strategies, we argue, allow Ethiopian Israelis to maintain positive attitudes toward the police.
This paper analyses the dynamics between ethnic boundaries and electoral alignment in the context of western minority nationalisms by focusing on the Catalan case. In particular, the research explores the changes in boundary shifts at the electoral level, whether they affect differently pro-sovereignty and pro-union parties, and to what extent changes have reinforced the ethnic alignment of vote. Methodologically, the analysis is based on observational data from the elections of 2010 and 2012, which allows control over some of the traditional limits of opinion studies. The results suggest that ethnicity is a dynamic factor that has gained relevance for both sub-state and state-wide parties, and that processes of boundary contraction are not necessarily associated with electoral failure.
This paper uses the 2010 Ethnic Minority British Election Study to look at the political attitudes of Muslims in Britain. It tests the relationship between political alienation and political participation on the one hand, and Islamophobia and disapproval of British military involvement in Afghanistan on the other. The principal findings are that perceptions of Islamophobia are linked to greater political alienation, to a greater likelihood of non-electoral participation and to a lower likelihood of voting among Muslims. Likewise, disapproval of the war in Afghanistan is associated with greater political alienation and a greater likelihood of some types of non-electoral participation. There is strong evidence that British Muslims are more likely to interpret discrimination they experience as motivated by their religion and that they perceive more prejudice at the group level. These findings have two theoretical implications. First, they support the theory that non-electoral participation is motivated by dissatisfaction with the party political system. Second, they suggest that perceptions of sociotropic discrimination (for minorities) and a rare salient political issue in which all parties are in opposition to most voters can lead to negative affect towards the political system and stimulate non-electoral participation at the expense of voting.
What impact does access to the rights associated with formal permanent residency status have on immigrants’ sense of integration their country of residence? I explore this question with a focus on ‘affective integration’, an original measure developed to refer to immigrants’ sense of belonging, recognition, equality, optimism and loyalty in, or to, their country of residence. Original data are drawn from an online survey and a series of in-depth interviews with New Zealanders resident in Australia. As some survey respondents were affected by 2001 changes that withdrew New Zealanders’ entitlements to welfare and citizenship in Australia and others were not, levels of ‘affective integration’ among the two groups were able to be compared. The data reveal that many New Zealanders without access to the welfare and citizenship entitlements associated with permanent resident status had a highly ambivalent sense of affective integration in Australia. Many reported being economically, socially and culturally well integrated in Australia but also reported strong feelings of exclusion, rejection, exploitation and discrimination. They identified these feelings as being the result of their ineligibility for welfare assistance and citizenship acquisition. For some such migrants, these feelings have led to a decision to migrate back to New Zealand in the near future. For others, however, a high degree of structural integration into Australian society has deterred return migration, creating a significant population of long-term residents whose generally favourable structural integration into Australia is undermined by their growing sense of disadvantage, marginalisation and exclusion. These findings contribute to our understanding of the relationship between access to the rights of permanent residency and affective integration. They also contribute empirical data to policy debates about the consequences of treating those who move under human mobility regimes as temporary migrants.
Debates on language rights as integral elements of human rights have gathered momentum since the early 1990s. International organisations such as the Council of Europe (CoE) and the United Nations (UN) have advocated linguistic rights through various charters and conventions, albeit with wavering levels of success. This article focuses specifically on the European context and the manner in which the CoE has dealt with language rights in the continent. The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the European Charter for Regional and Minority languages (ECRML) and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCPNM) are discussed in light of the region’s contemporary linguistic makeup. Current inequalities in the application of language recognition provide an area of special concern. For example, while speakers of ‘indigenous’ (or autochthonous) minority languages have apparently enjoyed an improving status in recent decades, the position of immigrant (or allochthonous) languages is less clear and current approaches largely ignore linguistic diversity which has been brought by recent mass migration patterns, leading to a somewhat exclusionary system. Through the discussion possible pathways for better inclusion of immigrant languages within current international frameworks, especially those of the CoE, are explored.
The article addresses the problems of defining an indigenous people by deconstructing the Sámi debate in Finland, which has escalated with the government’s commitment to ratify ILO Convention No. 169. We argue that the ethnopolitical conflict engendered by this commitment is a consequence of groupism, by which, following Rogers Brubaker, we mean the tendency to take discrete groups as chief protagonists of social conflicts, the tendency to treat ethnic groups, nations and races as substantial entities and the tendency to reify such groups as if they were unitary collective actors. The aim of the article is to deconstruct groupist thinking related to indigenous rights by analytically separating the concepts of group and category. This allows us to deconstruct the ethnicised conflict and analyse what kinds of political, social and cultural aspects are involved in it. We conclude that indigeneity is not an ethnocultural, objectively existing fact, but rather a frame of political requirements.
The rapid proliferation and ongoing transformation of digital technologies and social media platforms have had a substantial influence on the participatory cultures of young people and their associated social connections. This social/digital nexus raises important questions of social cohesion, with digital technologies at once augmenting social interaction whilst simultaneously creating an uneven landscape of access for participation. To address this interface of the digital and the social, this paper presents a qualitative study of 24 tertiary students from ethnic minority backgrounds living in Auckland, New Zealand, who use social media. Incorporating a pre-screening questionnaire, a one-week social media diary and semi-structured interviews, this study presents the ways in which digital belongings influence participants' practices of friendship and family. The ways that connective media influence, and even constrain interaction alongside the politics of belongings, are theorised to further examine the meanings and experiences behind participants' social media usage and social contact. By integrating these ideas, this paper presents the ways in which young university students use social media and the extent to which digital interaction and networking influence social participation and social cohesion.
This paper explores the social reproduction of precarity among white South African migrants in Australia. Building on Griffiths and Prozesky’s elucidation of the white South African imaginary and its role in triggering emigration, we draw on ethnographic data on white South Africans living in Melbourne to argue that our informants reproduce what Hage terms a ‘white nation fantasy’. In documenting the ways our informants’ migration experiences can be read as a function of a threatened social imaginary, we suggest that their ‘successful’ resettlement in Australia points to the congruence of their ontological grounding with the white nation fantasy predominating in Australia. Ultimately, however, we argue that the sense of precarity our informants experience in Australia is intrinsically embedded in their reproduction of the white nation fantasy. Our case study therefore serves as a cautionary tale to inflexible constructions of whiteness globally.
This article explores the relationship between media discourses and experiences of belonging. Studies on Muslims and the media have suggested that there is a largely negative discourse about Muslims in Western countries. As a result, the ‘othering’ processes that occur in the media may impact how Muslim citizens experience their individual attachments to society. We use excerpts from focus group interviews with Somalis in the Netherlands1 to investigate how they look upon, counter or internalize media discourses that seem to depict them in a negative way, particularly because they are Muslims. The findings indicate that discriminative discourses create a plurality of outcomes for our participants. Whereas all perceive a negative debate, some discursively ‘join’ a global Muslim community as a result, while others try their best to avoid association with a worldwide Muslim alliance and emphasize within-group variances. Though the opposing reactions might seem contradictory, we argue that both responses counter the same problems: ‘othering’ and victimization. Thereby we give voice to Somalis who are not often heard, while at the same time adding to the theoretical understanding of ‘othering’ processes.
Increasing migration worldwide and the cultural diversity generated as a consequence of international migration has facilitated the unions of people from different countries, religions, races, and ethnicities. Such unions are often celebrated as a sign of integration; however, at the same time as they challenge people's idea of us and them, intermarriages in fact still remain controversial, and even to some extent, taboo in many societies. Research and theorizing on intermarriage is conducted predominantly in the English-speaking North American and British contexts. This special issue includes empirical studies from not only the English-speaking countries such as the U.S., Canada, and the UK, but also from Japan, Sweden, Belgium, France, and Spain and demonstrate the increasingly diverse directions taken in the study of intermarriage in regards to the patterns, experiences, and social implications of intermarriages. Moreover, the articles address the assumed link between intermarriage and "integration."
This paper studies the social networks and feelings of social loneliness of a group of migrants that, because of their European origins and their mixed relations with a native partner, might be easily integrating socially. The data are a sample of 237 (first-generation) European migrants with a native partner living in Belgium, drawn from the EUMARR study on binational couples. First, their social networks and feelings of loneliness are compared to those of natives in a uninational partnership. Second, structural equation modelling is performed to study the effect of various characteristics of local and transnational networks of family and friends (such as size, composition and intensity of contact) on feelings of social loneliness, as well as the link with migration history. Results reveal that European migrants with a native partner experience more feelings of social loneliness than do the native population. A larger local network, with more own relatives and more (own, not met through the partner) friends, as well as more frequent contact with local friends contribute to lower levels of social loneliness. Transnational contact and the share of natives in the local network have no impact. The findings contribute to a better understanding of the social life of European migrants and show how, even with a native partner, they are still affected by the migration move in relation to feelings of social loneliness.
This paper analyses the marital dissolution of binational couples (i.e. couples comprised of immigrants and natives) in countries with traditionally distinct integration models: Canada, the United States and France. Previous studies appeal to cultural differences to explain the higher divorce rates of binational couples but they omit the potential effect of migration or that of environmental factors such as immigration policies and attitudes towards migration and intermarriage. In order to test a model that includes all these factors, an identical online survey was conducted in the cited countries. The concepts ‘binational couples’ and ‘culture’ were disentangled into specific types of couples and variables. While being involved in a binational marriage was not found to be a significant predictor of divorce, being involved in one where both partners are foreign born decreases the risk of divorce. Religion, family values and families’ perception of a relationship are also significantly related to marital stability.
This article provides an analysis of how Nigerian women migrants are represented and constructed as racial others by officials in the Scandinavian football clubs that recruit and employ them. Situated against scholarship on race, gender, and sport, within and outside the Scandinavian region, we highlight consistencies in stereotypical representations of black athletes. We use theories of racialisation to draw attention to how ideas about race and gender are mutually imbricated in shaping Scandinavian representations of Nigerian women football migrants. Based on interviews with Scandinavian football club officials, and Nigerian women football migrants, we expose and critique the ways in which Nigerian women’s migration as professionals, and their competencies as athletes, are constantly undermined by racially inscribed representations.
Mixed race scholarship considers the deployment of the term "mixed race" as an identification and theorizes that the operation of the external racial gaze is signaled through the "what are you?" question that mixed race people face in their everyday lives. In interviews conducted with mixed race, young adults in a Western Canadian urban context, it was evident that the "what are you?" question is the verbal form of the external racial gaze’s production of ambivalence on mixed race bodies. However, this study also found that mixed race people have "ready" identity narratives in response to the "what are you?" question. This paper shows the importance of these narratives (the very existence of the "ready" narratives, as well as the content of the "ready" narrative) for fleshing out the operation of the external racial gaze in the Canadian context. Respondents draw on two closely related modes of narrating origin when responding to the "what are you?" question: they respond through a kinship narrative that is heteronormative and they narrate that they inherit "national origin" "through blood." I argue that these responses point to how the gaze produces the multiracialized body through the desire to imagine and "know" its originary point of racial mixing. Yet, the "ready" narratives are also agential: while at times they narrate to the expectations of the gaze, they also "play on" the gaze.
The study of nations and ethnicities has been subject to recent trends, particularly, those denying substance to ethnicity and nation, but focusing on the way ethnicity and nation are socially constructed and ‘reified’ (constructivism–reificationism). In this article, this idea is tested on the Yugoslav case, where cases of reification are said to have been ‘arbitrary’. Such a position suggests that members of the Yugoslav federation went on their own ways because of ‘reification’ in the form of the republics and provinces. Although it is found that the republics and one province did enhance the process of national constitution, and although ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’ were active in the 1980s—a fact that is in line with a constructivist–reificationist theoretical position—there is one distinctive case that directly challenges such a position: Vojvodina did not opt for independence but, because of its Serb majority, it swiftly became integrated into Serbia. Moreover, the current article presents additional information to suggest that, although constructionist–reificationist approaches are relevant, they do not suffice to explain ‘nation’.
This article examines the individual and contextual factors affecting peripheral identifications in Spain. It does so by conducting multilevel statistical analyses on two surveys on regional and national identifications that were carried out by the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas in 1996 and 2006, at two very different political conjunctures. At the individual level, these analyses show that peripheral identifications are strongly conditioned by language attributes (in particular by vernacular mother languages), by the place of birth of respondents and by left–right self-placements. At the aggregate level, only geographical distance from the national centre exerts a significant and consistent influence on peripheral identifications. Our analysis reveals also that the effects of language attributes and ideological orientations increased from 1996 to 2006, and suggests that contexts of polarisation regarding political–territorial issues strengthen the influence of linguistic characteristics and ideological orientations on peripheral identities.
This paper examines the process of "acting ethnic", and demonstrates that, in certain circumstances, people act in keeping with an ethnic identity. Based on a study of two infantry brigades in the Israeli army (the IDF), the paper shows how organizational ethnic culture forms the basis of the process of "acting ethnic". This paper highlights the tendency in certain situations to suspend nonethnic privileges by adopting an ethnic identity and in addition, to exaggerate ethnic performance. Moreover, it is argued that "acting ethnic" is a collective performance, aimed not only at belonging to the group, but also as a means of maintaining and reproducing ethnic identity and asserting a legitimate alternative to the hegemonic identity.
Working Holiday programs have been identified as an increasingly significant source of temporary migrant labor for several wealthy states. This case study adds to limited work on this phenomenon in the Canadian context by offering a partial chronology of Irish Working Holiday migration to Canada and a critical analysis of Canadian government discourse that positioned Irish migrants as not only "culturally compatible" but also part of white settler Canadianness thus making them desirable workers and potential future immigrants. The Canadian case study raises questions about how Working Holiday and related youth mobility programs may be linked to classed and racialized migration and dominant ideologies of nationalized belonging
Intergroup conflicts represent a risk of social instability and even violence. Understanding the reasons that push group members to adopt a certain level of conflict intensity is of the utmost importance. In the hope of shedding new light into this phenomenon, this paper explores how ethnic conflict intensity may be influenced by linguistic vitality, the social health of a language. The paper presents a theoretical model in which low and high levels of linguistic vitality are presented as being linked to lower conflict intensity than moderate vitality levels. The results of multilevel modeling lend support to this hypothesis for language-based ethnic tensions in a general context and, more precisely, within countries.
The life expectancy differential between Indigenous and other Australians is in the order of 11 years and requires far-reaching, complex and multifaceted policy responses. Theories and instruments of international human rights are among those that have helped to shape responsive policy discourses. Developing these often abstract rights into people’s substantive capacities to make meaningful choices about how they will live is difficult, but the article shows how this is possible with reference to a general theory of capabilities as self-determination. Such a theory, proceeds from Sen and Nussbaum’s extension of Aristotle’s concern for ‘human flourishing’ where the political right to self-determination, affirmed at international law, presumes certain essentialist capabilities to secure, people’s political agency. These essentialist capabilities suggest a distribution of authority on the basis of equal opportunities to make choices of personal value, rather than just an egalitarian concern for equality of outcomes.
In this article we present a cross-national comparison of framing of the issue of the ‘Syria fighters’ in Flanders and the Netherlands. We examine this topic using inductive and deductive framing analysis and interpret the results in terms of the advocates expressing the frames and the newspapers they were published in. We argue that variation in frame use can be explained by considering the background and social identification of the frame advocates. Furthermore, the subject of the ‘Syria fighters’ is depicted as mostly relating to (Islamic) religious motives and the overall societal construction is relatively one-sided and problematized in a negative sense. This article serves as a preliminary step to a multi-level analysis of societal discourse on integration-related issues in online and offline networks, with an emphasis on Moroccan minorities in Flanders and the Netherlands.
Numerous scholars have examined how governments in particular times and places have classified their populations by ethnicity, but studies that are both cross-national and longitudinal are rare. Using a unique database of census questionnaires, we examine state practices of ethnic enumeration over a 50-year period (1965–2014) in the 24 countries and areas that comprise Oceania. The region’s extraordinary linguistic and cultural diversity, combined with its complex colonial history and indigenous politics, make it an ideal site for comparative analyses. We find a shift from biological conceptions of difference to a more cultural understanding of group identity, exemplified by a sharp rise in language questions and the decline of race-based inquiries. While local identity labels have largely displaced colonial categories, the imprimatur of previous regimes still lingers, particularly in Melanesia. These shifts in official constructions of ethnoracial differences reflect a gradual lessening of colonial influences on demographic practices.
This article discusses ethnicity and refugee status among Rwandan refugees self-settled in Nairobi, Kenya. It addresses conflation of Hutu fugitives who participated in the 1994 Rwandan genocide and refugees, and critiques perception of Hutu and Tutsi as mutually exclusive ethnicities with no points of intersection. Framed within the social constructivist approach to identity, the article problematizes ethnic essentialism and wholesale criminalization and stigmatization of Rwandan refugees and, in particular, Hutu ethnicity in ways that silence individual viewpoints emanating from personal experience. Conversely, the article highlights how Rwandan refugees deflect collective guilt and legitimize their refugee status under the shadow of the genocide which was committed by extremist Hutu on Tutsi and moderate Hutu. The refugees’ reaction to association with the genocide confounds theoretically irreconcilable extremes through self-representations centred on experiences that muddle the simplistic perpetrator – victim and guilty – innocent binary. The refugees’ narratives portray victimhood in Rwanda as complex, cyclical and heterogeneous.
This paper uses survey data from Oslo to examine whether strong ethnic identification helps or hinders the integration of adolescents from immigrant families into the larger Norwegian society. Dependent variables are openness to other ethnic groups than one’s own, educational achievement, and positive self-concept. The findings are generally positive for the integration of adolescents with immigrant parents in Oslo. In particular, ethnic identification is positively associated with socio-cultural openness to ethnic others, and with having a positive self-concept. However, ethnic identification does not appear to facilitate educational achievement. Nor does it generally appear to do so when it is combined with strong openness to ethnic others.
Following the publication of the 2001 and 2011 Census data, considerable attention has been given to patterns of ethnic residential segregation within the UK. The evidence contributes to debates about integration; however, as
This article argues that court-ritual unawareness, linguistic shortcomings and stereotypical images about non-Swedish otherness impair the position and acting space for immigrants in a Swedish district court context. Drawing on two ethnographically informed research projects focused on courtroom interaction during more than 20 trials dealing with ‘domestic violence’ and ‘street-related crime’, we claim that immigrant voices are often silenced due to taken-for-granted practices in court. Through analyses of interviews, performances, interpreted hearings and references to a desirable Swedishness, it is argued that situations are created where immigrant participants may experience their possibility of being understood as limited and their voices as being unheard. Such conditions are emotionally draining and may result in participants choosing silence over stating their case. This is a problem, not only within the individual court case, but also for the overall legitimacy of the court system and for issues of institutional trust among citizens.
In this paper, I will analyse a case of ethnic transformation in post-1991 Ethiopia based on an ethnographic study of the Eastern Gurage. The case represents an ethnic setting where the conventional conceptualization of ethnicity in terms of a notion of origin undermines the diversities expressed in various forms of category and boundary formations. The ethnic setting does not also fall into, but combines, the commonplace dichotomization of primordialist versus constructivist notion of ethnicity. Not only by taking Barth’s (1969) formalist anthropological conception of ethnicity as boundary formation, but also suggesting my own analytical distinction, I will attempt to account for the various forms of ethnicities particularly those based on clanship, locality, Islam and state’s categorization. In this regard, I have introduced a distinction between the concepts of identity and belonging in order to explain the different forms of social and political classifications, ideologies and power relationships that are often treated as implying a single phenomenon, i.e. identity formation.
Though now under some challenge, the policy orthodoxy in Australian Aboriginal affairs since the 1970s has been progressive in its social justice orientation, postcolonial in its amelioration of the colonial legacy, and culturalist in its privileging of ethnicity. In this paper I argue that its attempt to recover the past in the face of increasing postethnicity is becoming counter-productive, by stultifying cultural adaptation and compromising individuals’ capacity to engage with modernity. The notions of interculturality and postethnicity point to coexisting ancestral cultures, an imagined, symbolic national Aboriginality, and deep intersection with settler-Australia and the world, and so cultural ‘changing-sameness’ and simultaneous ‘bothness’. The paper argues that a dialectic of public policy and Aboriginal identity politics resists this lived reality, with negative effects. It proposes that a way forward is to engage more fully with the lived reality.
This paper uses interview data collected from young people in Queensland, Australia, to report the narratives of young Australians on the issue of ‘boat people’ and to explore the ‘accepting’ viewpoint. Consistent with existing literature, the ‘anti-asylum’ interviewees construct symbolic boundaries via language to justify why they believe exclusionary measures should be taken against asylum seekers who attempt to reach Australia by boat. In order to challenge this language of exclusion, our findings suggest the ‘pro-asylum’ participants adopt narratives aligned with the cosmopolitan principles of responsibility, openness and compassion. By doing so, they defend their belief that Australia’s obligations towards the broader global community should take precedence over any challenges ‘boat people’ present to the Australian nation.
Contrary to the widespread opinion that hatred and mutual dislike among various ethnic groups was a chief characteristic of Yugoslavia and was at the bottom of the country’s destruction, the ethnic distance survey conducted in 1990 indicates that Yugoslav society was a community with a generally low level of ethnic animosities. The results demonstrate the huge discrepancy between what most Yugoslav citizens felt and needed, and what political elites and nationalist intellectuals claimed "their people" wanted and needed in the 1990s. Many scholars have not incorporated or noticed the difference.
Brazil is undergoing a paradigm shift in its approach to racial inequality. Once eschewing race, legislators and other policy makers are now vigorously implementing racial quotas in public institutions of higher education. In this paper, we explore public opinion on racial quotas using the 2010 and 2012 AmericasBarometer. In 2010, a surprising majority of Brazilians strongly supported these policies. Afro-Brazilians and individuals with lower levels of education were more likely to express strong support compared to whites and those with higher levels of education. In 2012, a question format change that set up a zero-sum game scenario between afro-Brazilians and others resulted in a dramatic fall in that support. Interestingly, those 2012 results show that education, and not race, contours support. We discuss possible explanations for these particular patterns of public opinion on racial quotas in Brazil.
This essay analyses skin bleaching among middle-class Tanzanian women as performative practice. It draws on empirical material from interviews with middle-class Tanzanian women as well as from advertisements in Dar es Salaam. Skin bleaching is situated at a ‘site of ambivalence’ (Butler), revolving around ‘light beauty’ as postcolonial regulatory ideal. Thus on the one hand, skin bleaching is analyzed as a practice of ‘passing for light(-skinned), embodying urban ‘modern’ forms of subjectivation. On the other hand, the decolonizing potential of skin bleaching becomes apparent as the interviewed women’s forms of embodiment renegotiate postcolonial Blackness putting forward notions of ‘browning’ (Tate). However, ‘light beauty’ then also appears as norm, according to which forms of embodiment can only ‘fail’. In this regard, skin bleaching challenges essentialized notions of Blackness, embodied in the color of one’s skin, while it also illustrates the performativity of racialized embodiment and its intersections with other structural categories.
This paper analyses the manner in which some Black and minority ethnic (BAME) people are adding new voices to conceptions of what national identity can be by re-constructing their own position within the nation’s political narratives. It will do so by exploring how the 2011 referendum to establish legislative powers for the Welsh Assembly Government mobilised some BAME individuals and organisations, to contribute to the on-going development of a Welsh political identity, by announcing their support for the ‘Yes’ campaign. This will analyse how the scale of the national is made meaningful in particular spaces by those at the forefront of BAME relations, and considers the possibility this presents for creating a future plural nationality. It will do so by looking specifically at how sub-national identity challenges primary national narratives, to deepen our understanding of the complex relationships between ethnic diversity and the performance of national identity, in the re-imagining of contemporary ideas of nationhood.
This article analyses how European governments and civil society actors engage diasporas in Europe as agents for the development of their countries of origin. Through a critical examination of diaspora engagement discourse and practice in various European countries, we identify three implicit understandings. First, development is conceived of as the planned activities of Western professional development actors; second, diasporas are seen as actual communities rooted in a national ‘home’ and sharing a group identity; and third, migration is regarded as binary mobility. We argue that these interpretations are informed by notions of ethnic or national rootedness in given places and that they lead to further assumptions about why, and in pursuit of what goals, diasporas engage. We conclude that such essentialized understandings limit the potential of diaspora engagement as a means of innovating the development industry by broadening understandings of what development entails and how it can be done.
Religion in general, and Islam in particular, has become one of the main focal points of policy-making and constitutional politics in many Western liberal states. This article proposes to examine the legal and political dynamics behind new regulations targeting individual religious practices of Muslims. Although one could presuppose that church–state relations or the understanding of secularism is the main factor accounting for either accommodation or prohibition of Muslim religious practices, I make the case that the policy frame used to conceptualize the integration of immigrants in each national context is a more significant influence on how a liberal state approaches the legal regulation of individual practices such as veiling. However, this influence must be assessed carefully since it may have different effects on the different institutional actors in charge of regulating religion, such as the Courts and the legislature. To assess these hypotheses I compare two countries, France and Canada, which are solid examples of two contrasting national policy frames for the integration of immigrants.
In this article, we explore ethnic group boundaries within a context of contemporary Istria. It is maintained that the local population of Istria has a strong regional identity and that boundaries between the members of local Croat majority and the researched minority and immigrant groups are characterised by blurred group boundaries. It is argued that these people are engaged in multiple forms of boundary making which challenge the ethno-national understanding of entitlement to the in-group membership in a local imagined community. Among other things, it is indicated in the article that ethnic minority groups, such as Italians in Istria, who make a large effort in boundary making to maintain their cultural heritage, are preferred by the ethnic majority as full-fledged members of the local community than certain groups of co-ethnics. The study is based on extensive qualitative data material gathered in Croatia in the period 2009–2013. The ethnographic material comprises 45 interviews with domicile ethnic Croats, domicile members of the Italian minority and Bosnian–Herzegovinian migrants residing in Croatia and Istria.
In this paper, I introduce the term ‘cultural wounding’ as central to an analysis of ethnicity and ethnic identities that have experienced trauma through inter-ethnic conflict. Cultural wounding speaks to rupture and assault in a physical, emotional, spiritual and ideological sense. By establishing the definitional character of cultural wounding, I present a discussion of the ‘wounds’ that result from the deliberate targeting of ethnic groups in campaigns of violence and conflict. I focus the attention here on instances of wounding and healing within historical and contemporary contexts of Indigenous Australia. The primary aim here is to propose a framework for understanding wounding, healing and transformation as experienced by ethnic groups that undergo change brought about by conflict. Wounding, healing and transformation are steps in the journey to not only surviving but also thriving along ethnic lines in the aftermath or amidst moments of conflict and challenge. Drawing on instances of cultural wounding and the healing project amongst Indigenous groups in Australia, I propose a discourse that articulates what happens when the wounded survive, examining the link between wounding and healing, action and projection.
In the decade following 9/11, numerous studies have confirmed that anti-Muslim prejudice, commonly referred to as Islamophobia, has become a prominent feature of many societies. As a result, Muslims have been demonised and subjected to discrimination in various ways. While the role of sensationalist media and Far Right groups in perpetuating Islamophobia has been widely commented on, not enough attention has been given to the role played by mainstream politicians in fostering Islamophobia. In this article, I examine how British Cabinet ministers of the Labour Government represented Muslims and Islam in speeches given between 2001 and 2007. Using discourse analysis, I deconstruct the representations of Islam and Muslims in 111 speeches made by these influential ministers. I also consider the discourse surrounding related issues such as multiculturalism, Britishness, integration and terrorism. I argue that Islamophobia based on generalisations, assumptions and stereotypes of Islam and Muslims were present in the speeches. Thus, this article calls for an awareness of the way in which mainstream politicians in Britain have been involved in stigmatising Islam and Muslims, and perpetuating Islamophobia.
For Spanish-speaking Latinos in the United States, the Spanish language is a component of identity that is often viewed as fundamental to their human experience. This deep connection between language and identity becomes problematic as a result of what we suggest in this paper is a deeply racialized attack on the use of the Spanish language. Drawing upon ethnographic and qualitative in-depth interview research with first-generation Mexican migrants in the US, we bring together the literatures on race and ethnicity to facilitate a more nuanced understanding of the ethnic and racialized processes involved in reaction to and treatment of the use of Spanish in the US. Centering the voices and experiences of first-generation migrants, we are able to explicate their experiences with respect to intersecting mechanisms of ethnocentrism, language oppression, and racism.
Contact theory and threat group theory offer contradictory hypothesis regarding the effect of contact with immigrants. Does contact reduce or increases negative attitudes towards immigration? This article integrates both approaches and tests the effect of contact towards immigrants when different contexts are considered. We investigate the effect of the economic environment and the immigrant group size on modifying attitudes towards immigration in the context of Catalonia, which offers a complex environment where traditional hypotheses can be tested. Results show that close contact and family contact with immigrants reduce prejudices. However, mixed results are reported regarding the effect of the economic environment or the immigrant group size. Findings also show that Catalan identity is related to lower levels of negative attitudes towards immigrants, regardless of having experienced contact with foreigners. Results have implications on the impact of context when dealing with the impact of contact on attitudes towards immigration.
Asian Americans and Latinos living in the United States often emphasize solidarity at the panethnic level, insisting on their common goals. However, expressing panethnic solidarity is one thing, whereas conducting political actions out of psychological states is another. This study examines how panethnicity affects Asian American and Latino political participation. My analyses find that panethnicity, as one component of multidimensional group consciousness, significantly influences Asian American and Latino voting and nonvoting activities. However, how panethnicity affects political participation varies, depending on panethnic groups and their modes of political participation. Specifically, my evidence indicates that panethnicity significantly bolsters both Asian American and Latino nonvoting participation. In contrast, panethnicity significantly dampens Asian American voting participation but has no impact on Latino voting participation.
This article argues that the mainstream (constructivist) theorizing about ethnicity should be expanded in order to take essentialist aspects that are present in the notions of "potential ethnics" into account. By focusing on the notions of "potential ethnics", that is, in this case Rwandans and Burundians, one avoids the oversimplification that still persists in the debate about essentialist and constructivist approaches to ethnicity. Qualitative interviews conducted between September 2007 and May 2008 show that Rwandans and Burundians do not conceive of ethnic categories as either constructivist or essentialist, but that constructivist and essentialist notions exist next to each other and are strongly intertwined in the different lines of reasoning. These findings support arguments criticizing the dominant constructivist theories (about being Hutu and Tutsi) as being unable to capture the complexity of ethnic realities.
This paper analyses the adaptation strategies of Vietnamese and Ukrainian immigrants having permit for settlement in Poland and settled in Warsaw and its vicinity (namely in the Mazowieckie province), with an emphasis on the relationship between the cultural, social and economic dimensions of adaptation. The research showed that due to the large cultural distance between the Vietnamese and Polish societies as well as the specific socio-cultural characteristics of Vietnamese immigrants (e.g. strong ethnic identity and a high level of in-group ties) the concept of adaptation should be reconsidered and a more holistic approach should be taken. From an individualistic perspective, a strategy of separation was most visible among the Vietnamese, whereas from a group and culturally sensitive perspective a strategy of collective and intermediate integration was predominant in this group along with collective social mobility. Vietnamese immigrants who were integrated with Polish society, such as pioneer immigrants, Vietnamese leaders, the spouses of Poles and representatives of the 1.5 and 2nd generations played the role of cultural brokers. They mediated between their compatriots and Polish society. Thus the integration of the majority of immigrants took place through the agency of the representatives, who also had a key role in the formation of the Vietnamese enclave. In the case of Ukrainian migrants the close cultural distance between the Polish and Ukrainian societies as well as the volume and density of relations between Ukrainian immigrants and Poles (including very frequent mixed marriages) primarily led to assimilation and individual social mobility. Cases of migrants operating in transnational social spaces which encompass Ukrainians, Poles and migrants from other post-Soviet countries remained rare. Ukrainian immigrants mainly based their adaptation on bridging capital accumulated in strong ties (which was related to their Polish spouses and cultural assimilation), whereas the Vietnamese migrants predominantly used bridging capital generated in weak ties as a resource for adaptation.
Perception of refugees in Nairobi goes beyond the generic and homogenizing term ‘refugees’ and the legal instruments guiding the hosting of refugees. Legal instruments such as the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1969 African Union Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa take the position that refugee hosting is humanitarian and apolitical. Based on the experiences and circumstances of Somali refugees in Nairobi, this paper takes a contrary view and argues that refugee hosting is political and shaped by interpretation of the conflict that the refugees fled and their perceived political implications for the host country. The paper locates accentuation and criminalization of Somali religious affiliation in the localization of global conflicts and globalization of local conflicts in which the predominantly Muslim Somali refugees become the local and regional epitome of contemporary global terrorism as the conflict in Somalia has global ramifications due to its association with global terrorism. Having demonstrated the role of regional and global politics in the hosting of Somalis in Kenya, the paper also argues that Somalis are not helpless victims of circumstances as they create counter-narratives that seek to de-legitimize politicization and criminalization of their religious and ethnic affiliations.
This article aims to explore the forced dislocation of immigrant Gyspy townspeople from a Turkish town, Bayramiç, Çanakkale in 1970. It focuses on the workings of social categories of Turkishness and Gypsyness through this exclusionary violent case, how they were re-employed and reproduced exclusively in conjunction with Turkish nationalism. It was the time of socio-economic transformation and rise in populist–nationalist discourses in Turkey. In the town, the reflections of this historical context demonstrated the transformation in power allocation and competing personal interests in highway transportation and forestry. Eventually, the attacks started as "Drivers’ Fight" but turned into "Gypsy hunt" with the effects of socio-economic competition and interests, the employment of historical stigma of Gypsyness and terrorization of the perpetrators in the town.
This study aims to address a historical paradox: how can we understand the Kurdish movement’s EU policy in the two decades subsequent to the end of the Cold War? I argue that the Kurdish movement has pursued two different approaches towards the EU (or Turkey’s EU membership bid) in the last two decades. While the Kurdish movement adopted a pro-EU stance from the beginning of the 1990s until 2005, it situated itself in an in-between position towards the EU after that year. In the analysis of these two different periods, I will interrogate the role of the international system, the domestic setting, identity/difference and the relations of power in the Kurdish movement’s EU policy.
This article analyses the Catholic religious ritual of the festa among the Maltese community in Melbourne and compares it with the scope and function of the ritual in Malta. The author argues that such a comparative analysis can serve as a useful lens through which to analyse some of the challenges posed by the secularist public sphere envisioned in the liberal multicultural state in Australia.
Recent interpretations of policy developments across Europe have suggested a potential tension between multiculturalism and national identity. This article examines how this tension has been understood in British political debate by analysing, as a proxy, debates from the House of Lords. These debates show that four competing frames exist on the relationship between multiculturalism and national identity. These frames offer rival perspectives on the issues surrounding multiculturalism and national identity; they present different problems and solutions. Moreover, the article shows how these frames start from different interpretations of the social reality they are responding to. It concludes by questioning the pursuit of consensus on these matters.
Theorizing the centrality of race remains a key issue within the social sciences. However, an examination of four programs that dominate critical inquiry, particularly in the US context – Racial Formation Theory; Systemic Racism; Color-Blind Racism; and Critical Race Theory – reveal two key problems: a reductivist account of the role of culture in the production of race and racism and the essentializing of the political identity of racial Others. This article, then, considers a different paradigm for the study of race – an affective program. Two components of an affective program identified in this article are: (a) a more dynamic account of culture, opening up the realm of the discursive to more than just signification and representation, but also expression; and (b) locating the possibilities of racial politics as matters of racialized and anti-racist practices rather than matters of racial identity.
This article focuses on both the narratives of Project Champion, a surveillance scheme in Birmingham in the UK that saw the installation of 216 closed circuit television and Automated Number Plate Recognition cameras in two areas which contained the greatest concentration of Muslims in the city. Considering the period of time throughout which Project Champion was conceived in 2008, instigated and eventually dismantled by July 2011, this article provides an unprecedented insight into the damaging impact that can occur if local agencies and institutions fail in their attempts to put central government policies into practice at the local and community levels. Whilst Project Champion is an extraordinarily intense and somewhat extreme instance of government counter-terrorism policy, this article allows for a range of issues that have previously been explored in a broader and largely national context to be considered in some depth at the highly localised level.
Within popular culture in the West, stereotypical representations of ‘race’ still persist. This is particularly troubling when we find that it is racialized minorities themselves behind such representations. The aim of this article is to explore how the conditions of the cultural industries steer the work of minority cultural producers in directions that can undermine the radical potential of the counter-narratives of difference. The article begins with a discussion on the politics of representation where I argue for integrating a sociological approach into cultural studies of diasporic popular culture that pays closer attention to the process of symbol creation. The remainder of the article uses a study of a British South Asian theatre company to show how the increasingly commercialized cultures of production that characterize the sector had a troubling impact on the way a play exploring postcolonial feminisms was marketed and presented to the public.
Cultural diversity is very often conceived in relationship with the nation-state, but rarely problematized in tandem with transnational forces like political and economic globalization. The article begins by recognizing the need, and the difficulty, of studying both these forces simultaneously in relation to cultural diversity. As a supranational set of institutions, the European Union provides an ideal framework in which to assess the simultaneous impact of the nation-state and globalization on cultural diversity. The EU unification project, based on a pluralist, multicultural and multilateral vision of Europe, is diametrically opposed to previous state-making practices centred on rigid notions of internal uniformity and gravitating around the practices of ‘nation-statism’. This article first proposes the notion of ‘cultural homogenization’ as an explanatory tool to identify the role of normative visions of culture associated with the nationalizing practices of most modern nation-states. It then connects this to the scholarly literature on ‘nation-building’ and focuses particularly on its critique within theories of nationalism. This in turn is associated with various resurrected pluralist arrangements which have emerged in Europe, like cultural autonomy, multiculturalism and particularly, ‘consociationalism’. However, the article identifies a more immediate challenge to cultural diversity in the de-regulative policies associated with neo-liberal globalization. It concludes that, although European consociationalism remains a well-established and time-honoured tool for stabilizing inter-cultural relations and maintaining pluralist coexistence, it does not, and cannot, provide an incentive and framework for accommodating the normative and cultural conflicts unleashed by neo-liberal globalization.
This article examines how racialized meanings were attributed to alcoholic products (tequila, pulque, and beer) in the United States and in Mexico in the early part of the 20th century. Researchers in both countries provide a wealth of information about the politics, establishment, and enforcement of alcohol prohibition. Yet, few projects consider the effects of these measures from a transnational perspective. Drawing on newspaper articles and primary and secondary sources from the United States and Mexico, this work illustrates how, amid changing ideas regarding alcohol regulation, various actors projected racial and class meanings onto commodities and their consumption.
Scholarly definitions of nationalism often characterize the nation as the supreme object of loyalty (a ‘jealous god’). Such restrictive definitions are unwise because they needlessly exclude a wide range of pro-national beliefs and practices. Demonstrating this, however, is harder than often thought, because the close linkage between nation and jurisdiction seems to entail a prioritization of national attachment over other identities. More pluralist accounts of nationhood, such as those of Margaret Moore or Charles Taylor, only partially resolve this dilemma, which requires consideration of the ultimate sacrifices entailed by war and conscription. Yet these cases of ultimate sacrifice should be understood not as endemic to nationhood alone but to all forms of strong communal attachment, when faced with existential threat. As it is this threat, rather than nationhood per se, that drives nationalism to take absolute forms, restrictive definitions may justifiably be rejected.
Studies of secularization suggest it is a complex and multidimensional process and that secularization unfolds in different sets of identities, practices and values. But, in spite of its non-linear and non-coherent character, secularization it is not necessarily arbitrary and individualistic. Rather, as this work demonstrates, ethnic groups may be influenced by similar secularizing forces, but the impact of these forces will be different and different paths of secularization will take place. In this work, based on a survey conducted in March 2009 of a representative sample of the adult Jewish population in Israel, we study three major ethnic groups in Israel to demonstrate how ethnicity influences the process of secularization measured in beliefs, practices and attitudes. Our findings demonstrate that ethnicity creates distinct paths of secularization with different changes of practices, beliefs and values. While for some ethnic groups secularization happens alongside a significant change in beliefs, practices and behaviors, for others religion remains significant and secularization is more partial, especially when measured in liberal values.
Faced with claims for recognising religious diversity, liberal European democracies have shifted in the last 10 years towards a more restrictive view of integration. This paper seeks to make a contribution to this line of research on how European countries deal with migration-related ethnic and religious diversity today by investigating the case of a southern country, notably Greece. Greece is an interesting case to study: it has by now 20 years of experience as a host country, but still its migrant integration policies are under-developed. In addition Greece it is currently experiencing an acute economic crisis while irregular migration towards the country is on the rise. These developments have contributed to bringing migration on to centre stage in political discourse with a concomitant rise of racist and xenophobic discourses against migrants. This paper takes, as a case study, the public Muslim prayer that took place in several squares of Athens on 18 November 2010 as a peaceful protest against the fact that Athens still does not have a formal mosque. We use this event as an opportunity for interviewing social and political actors directly or indirectly involved in it on their views regarding migration, religious diversity and their accommodation in the Greek public space. We analyse their discourse on whether and under what conditions religious diversity, Islam in particular, should be tolerated or accepted in Greek society. We propose here the notion of ‘nationalist intolerance’ to make sense of Greek discourses and propose a dynamic understanding of tolerance and intolerance as concepts that do not emanate from abstract norms but are rather negotiated in specific contexts.
The keris is a Malay or Indonesia dagger. In 2005, the then United Malays National Organization (UMNO) Youth Chief and Malaysia Education Minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, wielded the keris at the UMNO Youth general assembly, which he claimed to be a means to motivate the Malays. Following that, the UMNO Youth general assembly in 2006 and 2007 was noted for some racist statements made by several delegates in addition to the keris-wielding action repeated by Hishammuddin. The non-Malays perceived the action of wielding the keris as a gesture meant to defend ketuanan Melayu (Malay supremacy) and to threaten those who opposed Malay special rights. After the political tsunami in 2008, the Malaysian Chinese Association and Malaysian People’s Movement Party (Gerakan) leaders blamed UMNO for their electoral debacle. Hishammuddin also admitted that his raising of the keris was among the causes of the Barisan Nasional’s poor performance in the general election. He apologized to the non-Malays because of the fear to a symbol which was not his intention and to the Malays for not being able to uphold their symbol of heritage. This study aimed to compare the coverage of the keris polemics by mainstream Malay, English and Chinese as well as alternative newspapers. By using framing as the theoretical framework and content analysis as the research methods, it was found that the newspapers framed the issue differently, reflecting the political economic and ideological boundaries within which the journalists work.
How do attempts to politically mobilize support on the basis of ethnicity resonate with the people targeted? This paper develops theory about the affinities between institutionalized political orientations—how individuals understand their place in political processes and how they make decisions about political issues—and the ways that ethnic appeals may make sense to people. By focusing on institutionalized orientations as a form of consciousness, this theory enables analysis of how orientations of different segments of a polity facilitate the resonance of ethnic appeals and relate to one another, which holds implications for attempts to counter ethnic mobilization. The paper applies this theory to Fiji, a country that has experienced divisive ethnic politics and attempts to forge alternate models of national unity. Based on in-depth interviews with a sample of citizens from across Fiji, I conclude that distinct political orientations characterize different parts of the population and find within-orientation differences between those who understand political developments in more ethnic terms and those who do not. Using this evidence, I draw implications about the types of changes that might transform the resonance of ethnic mobilization in Fiji.
The integration of young immigrants is a key issue in European societies. The article examines how Moroccan and Romanian youths employ their family social networks to move beyond them to get access to other available resources in their context of migration. We find that youths evaluate families as their main source of social capital. But how do they combine family and kinship resources to build new networks? The study draws on 57 in-depth interviews with teenagers from secondary schools in the Veneto Region, a paradigmatic area for the increasing ethnic pluralization of Italian society. Moving beyond the usual understandings of social capital and social networks we focus first on the relationship between bonding and bridging, in particular the distinction between horizontal and vertical bridging among migrants. Then attention is paid to the agency of youths, stressing their social competence to overcome initial difficulties such as gender inequalities or the limits of bonding solidarity.
In the last 30 years, many European states have assumed a form of responsibility for recognition concerning the cultural identity of the members of their kin-minority groups. Despite the increasing number of states assuming such special trans-sovereign duties relating to individuals who are neither citizens nor residents, and the endorsements given by the Council of Europe and the EU, a conceptual analysis and normative evaluation of identity recognition as a kin-state’s duty remains absent from the literature on liberal multiculturalism. Focusing on the case of the Hungarian Status Law, this article problematizes identity recognition as a kin-state’s responsibility, examining its legitimacy, place and limits in liberal multiculturalism. Against the current consensus in liberal multiculturalism, I argue that, although the primary responsibility for identity recognition lies with the home-state, a kin-state can complement the home-state’s duties.
What are the conditions under which resources embedded in the social networks of entrepreneurs can be accessed and mobilized in purposive action? We interviewed a sample of 10 native Dutch and 22 immigrant entrepreneurs in the Netherlands. Trust was an important facilitator of social support from so-called ‘strong ties’ and proved effective in maintaining already established relations with ‘weak ties’. Accessing social support through weak ties, however, appeared more difficult due to distrust and discrimination. This applied particularly to immigrant entrepreneurs working in a neighborhood with a low concentration of immigrants: a context making ethnicity more salient. In this context distrust and discrimination coincided with problematic access to Dutch clientele and less collaboration with Dutch businessmen.
Ethnic disparities in educational aspirations and choices are important to comprehend ethnic education inequality. Based on a mixed-method approach (3121 questionnaires and 40 interviews of pupils), this article investigates ethnic differences among nine ethnic minority groups of pupils in Brussels with regard to their educational aspirations. The multivariate analysis of the questionnaires shows that pupils from only four out of the nine ethnic minorities hold significantly higher aspirations than the majority group. In addition, our mixed-method results did not support the hypothesis on perceived ethnic discrimination in the labour market in explaining the higher educational aspirations of ethnic minority youth. Nevertheless, personal experience of discrimination at school is significantly associated with higher educational aspirations. We conclude by highlighting the relevance of the parental transmission of the intergenerational mobility project in explaining ethnic differences in youth’s educational aspirations.
Based on Koreatown in Los Angeles and the Vietnamese Field’s Corner in Boston, our aim is to understand how transnational relationships with countries of origin and settlement among the second generation affect local contestations over political legitimacy and community projects. Despite historical parallels between these two communities, the evolution of ethnic politics among the second generation has taken divergent paths – one based on accommodating the political status quo and the other operating against it. The successful efforts of Korean American leaders in broadening traditional notions of an ‘authentic’ ethnic politics hinged on their ability to create an alternative imagined community that was spiritually linked to events in their parents’ homeland and was unfettered by dependency on US government funding. In contrast, the second generation Vietnamese leadership lacked the real or imagined transnational linkages and non-governmental funding sources it needed to re-imagine and re-articulate political projects considered progressive and authentically ‘Vietnamese’.
This article analyses the way in which the question of performing salat (Islamic prayer) at the workplace is addressed by second-generation Maghrebi-Muslims in Belgium. Over recent years, western Europe has witnessed a number of societal debates on the increasing visibility of Islam in the public sphere. A key argument often used in these discussions concerns the necessity to defend the ‘neutral’ or ‘secular’ character of the public sphere towards Muslim claims. In so doing, the idea of religious pluralism becomes opposed to the idea of a secular public sphere. This paper seeks to complicate this perspective by questioning the idea that praying in public (i.e. at the workplace) figures as a religious claim that is defended unequivocally by Muslims. The narratives explored here show that Muslims – irrespective of the degree of their religious commitment – do not hold similar positions towards this question. Contrasting perspectives about the idea of the public, that of a ‘correct’ religious practice and the position of Islam in the Belgian public sphere rather informed these positions. Consequently, the analysis of the different accounts shows that what often passes as a single principle (that of privatization of religion) in fact consists of an assemblage of heterogeneous discursive repertoires, which address the question of religion in the public in a diverse set of ways. Such a perspective invites us to consider how secularism is reproduced and maintained throughout heterogeneous normative orders, including religious ones.
Muslims in Europe are increasingly constructed as problematic and insular. This article examines whether this construction may be justified and the impact this has had on the attitudes of Muslims living in different countries in Europe. Over 70 percent of Bangladeshi, Turkish and Moroccan Muslims living in Britain, Germany and Spain, respectively, felt ‘at home’ in their country of residence. This sense of being at home, and whether the events of 11 September 2001 or 11 March 2004 affected this was associated with citizenship of or birth in Europe, experiences of victimization and perceived local social support. Citizenship, experiences of discrimination and strength of religious identities were associated with reporting British, German or Spanish identities. Rather than providing evidence of self-segregation, these findings emphasize the impact of the political and social marginalization faced by Muslim groups in Europe, which significantly affects their ability to feel themselves at home there.
Today’s students wrestle with the continued salience of racial identity on campuses that encourage the celebration of ‘diversity’ while at once digesting messages that the USA is now largely ‘post-racial’. Based on data collected through fieldwork observation, focus groups and in-depth interviews with a local Multicultural Greek Council for fraternities and sororities, we argue that ‘multicultural’ student organizations engage in a variety of racial identity tactics that simultaneously constrain and enable the perception of their racial identities. By relying on the two cultural narratives of multiculturalism – abstract and organizational – members of Greek organizations that do not conform to the White/Black binary can construct identities and a movement understood as rational, progressive and generally innocuous. Yet, in practice, the dominant expectations to perform ‘multiculturalism’ were manifest in narrow, essentialist and singular expressions of ethnic pride as an oppositional identity to Anglo-conformity and color-blindness, rather than an embrace of pluralism and multiculturalism per se. By highlighting how members of multicultural student organizations navigate this troubling paradox, our study raises important questions about the concept of multiculturalism, especially as it is constructed and enacted by the millennial generation.
The rise of global human rights has been presented as compelling evidence for cosmopolitan progress, especially in Europe, with particular benefits for ethnic and religious minorities. New conceptions of citizenship – post-national, de-nationalized, disaggregated and cosmopolitan – have been used to show how minorities have created and profited from European cosmopolitanism. Some theorists have pointed to human rights activism, especially around the foulard affair, to illustrate the arrival of cosmopolitan justice. However, this paper suggests that cosmopolitan optimism has misjudged the magnitude of the impact of human rights. European cosmopolitanism’s commitment to ‘cool’ attachments has difficulty with ‘thick’ religious attachments. Muslim cosmopolitanism – expressed for example though religious pilgrimages – makes Muslims ‘bad’ cosmopolitans in the European version. This clash needs to be reconciled before Europe can define itself as the unrivalled source of cosmopolitan justice.
In the UK, the diversity of ‘national’ experiences provides a comparative framework for understanding the salience of national symbols. Using survey data, this article examines which symbols people in England and Scotland see as important to British culture, and to English/Scottish cultures; how their own national identity affects those choices; and the relationship between political and cultural aspects of their national identity. The English and the Scots agree broadly on what constitute important symbols of British culture, but their perceptions of English and Scottish culture differ considerably. The key finding, however, is that people’s sense of their own national identity makes little difference to their perceptions of the important symbols of British culture, whereas at the national level feeling strongly English or Scottish is associated with seeing the ‘national’ flag, the flag of St George and the Saltire respectively, as important. ‘Britain’ remains an important and meaningful concept in symbolic terms even though increasing numbers of English as well as Scots do not define themselves primarily as British.
The last 20 years have seen a flood of studies of resistance, ranging from collective to individual acts of resistance, from the study of material aspects to its more ideational ones. Yet students of resistance have neglected the psychological dimension of everyday individual acts of resistance to power. This article is a first step to remedy that oversight. Inspired by Butler’s reading of Foucault’s notion of power at work in subjection and resistance, the article uses Goffman to substantiate such an account. Based on a 20-month ethnographic study of a traditional immigrant suburb north of Stockholm, Sweden, which is being redeveloped into a high-tech region, it offers empirical insight into the psychic life of resistance. Further, a particular resistance strategy is identified: symbolic dislocations through adherence to a boundary other than the one subjecting the self in the first place.
Labour market participation is commonly conceptualized as an indicator of immigrant integration, although integration is not something that should be conflated with inclusion. The mere fact of employment is no silver bullet. The sociology of work needs to consider experiences of exclusion both before and after entry to the labour market. This article is based on a 25-case selection of 50 in-depth interviews that we conducted with young adults of ethnic minority background in Norway. We analyse their experiences of, and reactions to, exclusion in the labour market. While for several interviewees the possibility of being met with ethnic prejudice from employers looms large, more experiences of this sort were reported among interviewees engaged in customer contact, where the inside of an organization intersects with the outside world.
In the last decade, the political rhetoric around citizenship for ethnic minority groups, particularly recent migrants, in Aotearoa/New Zealand has been influenced by two dominant paradigms. In the wake of the post-neoliberalism advanced by the Fifth Labour Government (1999–2008) and the efforts to build an inclusive state, the idea of the ‘active citizen’ has evolved, encouraging ethnic migrants to contribute to their own communities and to a wider New Zealand identity. Equally, broader discourses on the recognition of group-based citizenship have helped ethnic communities in securing a multicultural framing of social rights. Based on qualitative analysis of interview and policy documents, this paper argues that the active citizen and the rights-bearing citizen emerge from discrete paradigms that reveal a fundamental tension between policy-centred celebration of diversity and the political recognition of difference.
Muslim public opinion polls are mostly taken at face value as the direct and unbiased voice of British Muslims, but, as this article argues, most of the public opinion polls are commissioned by the media and suffer from similar framing effects to those seen in the general media coverage of Muslims. At a time of national crisis, following the London terrorist attacks in 2005, it has become especially clear that the media have been following their pre-existing narrative on Muslims rather than responding to public interest. We analyse all public opinion polls conducted in the 18 months following the 7 July attacks and all their broadsheet newspaper coverage to show that the media-framing effects influence both the creation of Muslim opinion polls and their reporting.
This article examines the formation of European identity among children in two very different countries: the traditionally Eurosceptic United Kingdom and the enthusiastic EU newcomer, Bulgaria. The paper revisits existing debates about the relationships between European identity, knowledge and the political and historical context, paying particular attention to the meanings attached to Europe. It demonstrates that children who identify as European are more likely to see Europe in geographic terms, which facilitates the perception of the European identity as ‘default’. In contrast, children who refuse to describe themselves as European see Europe as an exclusive political entity, associated with high standards and distant elites. These perceptions are significantly more common among Bulgarian children, who often depict Europe as a dream, and perceive the European identity as an ideal they aspire to reach. The article also shows how ethnicity and the images of Europe influence the relationship between national and European identities.
In this article, I analyze how government policies and social reception shaped Latin Americans’ patterns of incorporation and identity formation in Ireland, a new immigrant destination country in Europe where Latin American migrants lack both historical presence and (neo)colonial linkages, in the early 2000s. I show that Latin Americans in Ireland perceived a weaker form of racialization, not only than several other immigrant, refugee and racial groups there, but also than Latin Americans going to the USA, Spain, and (for Brazilians) Portugal. I then argue that these results illustrate how many Latin American migrants are now embedded within a transnational social field that connects flows of people and ideas across several different receiving countries – both traditional and new – which in turn shapes their relative evaluations of individual national receiving ‘contexts of reception’. I conclude by examining the implications of these results for immigration and Latino Studies scholarship.