Nationhood and muslims in Britain

These are difficult times to be British,” Andrew Gamble and Tony Wright maintain. Their assessment centers on how “the state which underpinned British identity is no longer the confident structure of earlier times.” They are not alone in coming to this view, and at least two implications follow from their observation. One is that the political unity of the administrative and bureaucratic components of the state is related to cultural features of British nationhood, including the ways in which people express feeling and being British. This is perhaps a familiar assessment of the configuration of all nation-states, though it could also imply that the state has been one—though not necessarily the most important—touchstone in the historical cultivation of British as a national identity

A ‘Jeffersonian’ wall or an Anglican establishment: the US and UK’s contrasting approaches to incorporating Muslims

Drawing on their recent research Nasar Meer and Tariq Modood consider whether the British or American social compact is conducive to the incorporation of Muslims, and find that while the US may be more of a secular state, the UK is a more secular society and with a more secularist political culture. They argue that both can offer meaningful routes to not only political participation, but also meaningful incorporation of Muslim minorities

Migration and cultural diversity challenges in the 21st century

In this discussion we will consider some of the literature that seeks to take stock of the challenges and opportunities for liberal citizenship regimes that follow processes of migration; a body of thought that has variously centred on ways to reconcile political unity with ethnic, cultural and religious difference (e.g., Young, 1990; Taylor, 1992; Kymlicka, 1995; Parekh, 2000; Modood, 2007). In addition to this prevailing ‘canon’ there is a sustained and interdisciplinary body of theory and research exploring configurations of national membership, within and across a number of European polities, especially in terms of citizenship and national identity (e.g., Brubaker, 2001; Joppke, 2004; Koopmans et al, 2005; Banting and Kymlicka, 2006; Jacobs and Rea, 2007; Uberoi; 2008; Joppke, 2009; Meer, 2010; Faas, 2010; Triandafyllidou et al, 2011; Modood, 2013). We begin by noting the perpetual role that migration plays in unsettl ing existing configurations, before elaborating a rationale for remaking forms of collective memb ership in a manner that includes new groups too. Multiculturalism, we argue, is the foremost example of this even though its political fate remains uncertain. To support our reading we positively contrast it with categories such as interculturalism and superdiversity

Migration and cultural diversity challenges in the twenty-first century

This chapter considers some of the challenges of theorising the new cultural – ethnocultural, ethnoreligious, and ethnoracial – diversities. These are both of how to use the resources of liberalism as well as noting that liberal understanding of equality and social identity are unable to do justice to the phenomenon of people having and valuing group identities. There is a sociological argument that the challenge of diversity, namely, the accommodation of a limited number of new, relatively stable groups has been superseded by ‘superdiversity’. We examine the claim that there are too many groups, constantly being added to by newer and ongoing flows of migration or the fragmentation of more stable groups such as Black or Asian, and that their groupness is along different cross-cutting dimensions – race, religion, language, national origins and further intersected by socio-economic factors, gender, sexuality – to be caught in a single policy framework. We discuss how multiculturalism some time ago ceased to have vitality or public support. The thread running through the chapter is that the presence and capacity of multiculturalism as a political perspective seeking to locate itself in contemporary liberal democracies is not negligible; while new rhetorics – integration, interculturalism, human rights – may have displaced it somewhat, it still seems to be growing as a policy tendency

Multiculturalism, interculturalism and citizenship

In this chapter we engage with some recent authors who believe that an alternative to multiculturalism must be sought in order to understand and live with diversity. These authors are not anti-diversity, on the contrary, but they share the view that multiculturalism is no longer a persuasive intellectual or policy approach. For example, the Council of Europe’s White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue (2008) included the finding that the majority of practitioners and NGOs across Europe had come to the conclusion that multiculturalism was no longer fit for purpose, and needed to be replaced by a form of interculturalism. Similar views were expressed in the UNESCO World Report, Investing in Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Dialogue (2008). More recently still, Ted Cantle (2012: 2) has described interculturalism ‘as an opportunity to replace multiculturalism as a conceptual and policy framework’, while Maxwell et al (2012: 429) maintain that ‘Interculturalism represents a gain over Multiculturalism while pursuing the same set of most uncontroversial political ends…’. These statements therefore invite the question: in what ways – if at all - is interculturalism different, substantively or otherwise, from multiculturalism

Beyond methodological Islamism? A thematic discussion of Muslim minorities in Europe

In this discussion we offer an overview of the place of Muslim actors in European scholarship. We especially focus on the second and subsequent generations of European Muslims, and how future research agendas could conceptualise the relationship between contemporary Muslim identity and citizenship regimes in Europe. We explore the way in which our understanding is formed by a concern with socio- economic processes, cultural adaptations and civic status. We include questions of citizenship and “difference”, and the extent to which there has been a re-imagining and re-forming of national collectivities in the face of Muslim claims-making. By claims-making we invoke a further register which centres on the creation of a Muslim infrastructure, perhaps through modes of religious pluralism (or opposition to it), and how this interacts with prevailing ideas that to greater and lesser extents inform public policies e.g., multiculturalism, interculturalism, cohesion, secularism, or Leitkulture, amongst others. While the latter register focuses more on nation-state politics, there is a further transnational dimension in the Muslim experience in Europe, and this assumes an important trajectory in the ways discussed. It is argued that Muslim identities in Europe contain many social layers that are often independent of scriptural texts; such that the appellation of “Muslim” can be appropriated without any unanimity on Islamic matters. We conclude by observing how this point is understudied, and as a consequence the dynamic features of Muslims’ leadership in Europe remain unexplored.

Muslim - state relations in Great Britain : an evolving story

The concern of this chapter, as that of the book as a whole, is to explore contemporary relationships between Muslim minorities and the state, with a particular focus upon structural and cultural dynamics. In this regard the case of Britain is illustrative. This is because an analysis of political and institutional responses to Muslim ‘difference’ in Britain details a pattern of engagement that has evolved over a period of time. This can be framed in terms of rising agendas of racial equality and multiculturalism to which Muslims have become central – even while they have challenged important aspects of these. This implies that these developments have neither been linear nor unproblematic, and have been characterised by various ongoing contestations and revisions. According to some authors, what this engagement has accomplished presently looks to be in retreat and at best remains uncertain

A plural century : situating interculturalism and multiculturalism

This book explores the topics of interculturalism and multiculturalism, including their relationships to each other and to public philosophies more broadly. In many respects it is a timely and perhaps overdue intervention that locates the debate about interculturalism and multiculturalism in amongst a series of sociological and political developments. It is widely accepted that the significant movement and settlement of people outside their country of birth ‘is now structurally embedded in the economies and societies of most countries’ (Pécoud and de Guchteneire argue, 2007: 5). The prevailing context is that the majority of the world’s population resides in one hundred and seventy five poorer countries relative to the wealth that is disproportionately concentrated in around twenty. With levels of migration fluctuating but anxieties constant, it is common to hear governments and other agencies favour ‘managed migration’ and strategies for ‘integration’ which, though meaning different things in different places, registers migration and post-migration settlement as an intractable feature of contemporary society

Sociologists, archbishops, and 'making a verb of a noun'

Contemporary discussion about race has a tendency to set off out without first checking the rear view mirror. In Theories of Race and Ethnicity: Contemporary Debates and Perspectives, in contrast, Murji and Solomos identify what has and has not been covered, and so appeal at the outset for a 'more sustained' account of changing research agendas of race and ethnic relations. Taken as a whole, the collection allows the editors to contemplate 'what factors explain the mobilizing power of ideas about race and ethnicity in the contemporary environment?' and whether indeed 'it is the "real" rather than race that should be placed in quotation marks'