Multiculturalism, Muslims and Citizenship

A European Approach

Tariq Modood, Anna Triandafyllidou, Ricard Zapata-Barrero

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9780415355155
• eBook ISBN: 9781134255603
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

This informative collection investigates the European dimension of multiculturalism and immigration. It argues that political theory discourse of multiculturalism and resulting EU policies assume an interpretation of liberalism developed chiefly from the American experience, and that this issue must be addressed as the European experience is entirely different (with the main influx being non-white, ethnic and religious groups challenging liberalism and existing notions of citizenship).

Presenting a fresh and unique perspective of multiculturalism and citizenship in Western Europe today, this book offers a comparative series of national case studies by a diverse range of leading scholars that together provide a theoretical framework for the volume as a whole. The contributors investigate the extent to which we can talk about a common Europe-wide multiculturalism debate, or whether here too there is a Europe of two (or more) gears, in which some countries address multicultural claims swiftly whilst others lag behind, busy with more basic issues of immigrant acceptance and integration.

Comprehensive and interdisciplinary, this text is essential reading for advanced undergraduates, researchers and policy makers interested in immigration, multiculturalism, European integration, Islamic studies and ethnicities.

1 European Challenges to Multicultural Citizenship Muslims, Secularism and Beyond

Anna Triandafyllidou, Tariq Modood and Ricard Zapata-Barrero

DOI: 10.4324/9780203001820-1

Introduction

After the relative prominence of multicultural citizenship theoretical debates and multicultural policy developments in the 1990s, we witness today a change of direction. This crisis of multiculturalism comes at a time of heightened security awareness as a result of the events of New York (9/11, 2001), Madrid (14/3, 2004) and most recently in London (7/7 and 21/7, 2005). European citizenship is disorientated, increasingly linking a religion (Islam) with violence and anti-Western values. The upsurge of international terrorism has led to the increasing securitization of migration agendas. Even though suspected terrorists are apparently to be found among the educated, middle-class, legal immigrants – the ‘good’ kind of immigrants for whom Western societies and economies have been competing in the past decade – the argument of terrorism is now used in the policy debate to justify tougher controls of migration in general. In this context of high security awareness, existing models and policies of immigrant integration and the accommodation of (Muslim) minority claims are questioned. The governments of several ‘old’ immigration hosts like the Netherlands, Britain or France are tempted to adopt assimilationist approaches to counteract what they perceive as a (relative) failure of their former multicultural policies. New hosts like Greece, Spain or Italy and ‘old’ hosts that did not consider themselves as such (for example, Germany) find it even harder to adopt a multicultural approach even if political elites recognize the need to integrate immigrants.

This book has a twofold objective. At the empirical and policy level, we highlight some of the weaknesses, the ambivalence and the major challenges of multicultural citizenship policies in Europe today. At the theoretical level, we argue that the debate on multiculturalism and citizenship has to be context oriented and develop new theoretical insights related to the specific European context. In Europe, multiculturalism challenges relate above all mainly to the successful integration and participation of Muslim citizens and residents into European societies. We shall therefore concentrate our empirical and theoretical enquiries on the ways in which Muslim claims and issues are integrated and accommodated in the multiculturalism agendas of the countries under study.

The book adopts an interdisciplinary approach and methodology. Although one of our aims is to address some important limitations of contemporary multiculturalism theory in political science, the authors of individual chapters combine political scientific, sociological and discursive methods in the undertaking of their case studies. This work thus makes a contribution to the multicultural citizenship theoretical and conceptual debate from a bottom-up approach that brings social reality closer to philosophical and theoretical enquiry.

Starting from a set of seven country studies, five among Northern European states (Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France and Germany) and two located in Southern Europe, namely Spain and Italy, we analyse the multicultural citizenship and integration debates developed in these countries. The debates investigated were started in relation to controversial issues such as the headscarf affair and overall legitimization and accommodation of claims by Muslims in Belgium, Britain, France and Germany, the building of new mosques in Italy and Spain, the challenge of citizenship acquisition by Muslims in Germany and the overall acceptance/rejection of the Muslim community in Denmark. The authors contributing to this volume examine what kind of multicultural citizenship claims were raised in the countries studied, how these were framed in the national public and political debate and what type of measures, institutions or regimes of integration were proposed to accommodate these claims in each case. Special attention is paid to the ways in which the national ideology, national political culture, tradition and past experience of each country shape both the debates and their outcomes.

Belgium, France and Britain have a relatively long experience in developing institutions and policies related to immigrant integration. This process has also involved, in differing degrees and directions, a re-elaboration of national identity with a view to incorporating cultural and religious diversity. France and Britain may be considered ideal—typical cases of different models of immigrant integration. The former privileges individual integration into a civic culture, leaving religion and ethnicity to the private realm and following a relatively open citizenship policy. The latter has also adopted a relatively liberal citizenship policy but followed a community-based integration model where not only individual but also collective rights and claims of ethnic and religious groups are recognized and accommodated. The case of Belgium, however, is complicated by its internal divisions and federal structure. Immigrant claims and rights are enmeshed in a complicated federal politics and risk disturbing the sensitive balance between the two Belgian communities, the Francophones and the Flemish.

Denmark and Germany have taken more time to develop deliberate processes of integration despite their strong welfare system models. In Denmark the relevant public and political discourses emphasize a universalistic public self-conception as a highly egalitarian welfare state, at the expense of Muslim immigrants’ claims framed as particularistic and ethically inferior. Germany’s closure to long-term immigrant residents has been related to its predominant understanding of German society as mono-national and monocultural despite a large immigrant population present in the country for several decades. Although citizenship laws and naturalization processes have recently been liberalized, many are worried about cultural and political changes related to a growing number of naturalized immigrant residents. Such changes are seen to threaten the cultural ‘authenticity’ of German society as well as the established power structures.

The two Southern European cases presented in this volume examine two ‘new’ immigration hosts, Italy and Spain, which have been transformed from sending to receiving societies in the course of the last two decades. Even if the immigration population in these countries still amounts to less than 5 per cent of the resident population, a percentage clearly lower than that registered in France, Britain or Belgium, immigration has been a ‘hot’ public issue in both. The arrival of legal and undocumented immigrant workers has been given high visibility in the Italian and Spanish media (see, for example, Penamarin, 1998; Perez Diaz et al., 2001; Zapata-Barrero, 2003; ter Wal, 1996; 2002a; 2002b), becoming a contested issue in the political debate. The newcomers have largely been perceived by both lay people and politicians as threats to the host country’s security, cultural authenticity and affluence. Only in the last few years has the issue of immigrant integration, and more particularly the accommodation of cultural and religious claims raised by Muslims, acquired more prominence as a legitimate and important objective of national immigration policy. The case studies presented here show how multicultural citizenship claims are framed and debated in Italy and Spain and link these debates to the more advanced claims for multiculturalism made in Northern European countries and elaborated in multiculturalism theories.

Although this volume has a wider interest in multiculturalism challenges, particular attention is paid here to the question of religion and more particularly to the claims made by Muslim residents/citizens in the countries studied. Indeed, there is a widespread perception that Muslims are making politically exceptional, culturally unreasonable or theologically alien demands upon European states. It is our contention that the logic of Muslim claims-making is contemporary but also particularly European. Their challenges expose the taken-for-grantedness of secularism in most European countries. They press politicians and intellectuals to rethink what is secularism, whether it has ever truly characterized modern European societies and most importantly why and in what versions it is still desirable. These questions lie at the heart of the philosophical and political discourses of European modernity and may as such be considered as peculiarly European even if generally modern.

The relation between Muslims and the European societies in which they live has to be seen in terms of rising agendas of multiculturalism where Muslims have become central to these agendas as an exemplary ‘problem case’. However, a focus on Muslims exposes and contests the narrow definitions of racism and equality and the secular bias of the discourse and policies of multiculturalism in Europe.

These debates and challenges acquire increased salience in the post-9/11 context where security issues and representations of Muslim immigrants as potential terrorists tend to overshadow the everyday experience of millions of Muslims living and working in European countries and their just claims to difference, recognition and multicultural citizenship rights.

Limitations of the Multicultural Citizenship Literature

While in some countries a policy discourse of multiculturalism emerged in the 1970s, it was only in the 1990s, led by scholars in Canada and the United States, that a political theory of multiculturalism emerged. In the first instance it was seen as an extension of debates around liberal democratic citizenship, concerned as it was with the impact of multiculturalism on the legitimating principles of democracy and liberalism. Since then, the relationship between citizenship and multiculturalism has become one of the dominant topics of theoretical—political research programmes today, especially in the anglophone world.¹

This book shares this dominant unit of analysis and follows two premises beforehand. First, it is a debate within our society and not among societies. That is, it is an internal debate forming part of the liberal democratic tradition, and not a debate on cultural models of societies or civilizations (Wieviorka, 2001: 22, 67). The authors share the view that to interpret the citizenship multicultural debate as along the lines of the ‘clash of civilizations’ discourse but within states is not only a logical fallacy, but politically damaging. Second, it is a debate on how to manage the public space, and not the private realm. That is, it is concerned with so-called process of the multiculturalization of the public sphere.

Both premises are at the basis of most of the arguments in this book. The first premise concentrates more on the change in cultural traditions and value systems that is taking place.² Almost the entire body of existing literature assumes that the theoretical challenge produced by the growing presence of immigrants forces us to re-examine almost all the traditional categories that have helped to describe and explain our liberal democratic tradition. When applied to circumstances of multiculturalism (Kelly, 2002) the main pillars of our political thought paradigm lose their solid cores.

The second premise is concerned with how our public sphere is structured, who decides its nature and limits, and how and why such limits are politically imposed. It is based on the belief that the way such public spheres are structured is directly related to a type of citizenship attitude, behaviour and practice that on many occasions lead to conflict with immigrants. That is why one must assume that the limits and nature of citizenship’s area of action need to change.

To sum up, these normative and institutional effects confront political scientists with new scenarios in a twofold way. First, their interest has been incorporated into what are understood as normative challenges that cultural plurality poses for a liberal theory of justice (Favell and Modood, 2003). The plurality can be understood as a value heterogeneity (Rawls, 1993), as groups oppressed on the basis of their ‘difference’ (Young, 1990), as historic cultural communities (Taylor, 1994) or as indigenous peoples and nations in multinational states (Kymlicka, 1995). While the conceptualization varies in North American discourse, it is generally understood that the presence of new, especially non-white, ethnic and religious groups formed by migration is one of the constituent elements in contemporary plurality that is challenging liberalism and existing notions of citizenship.

The second political science development is a cross-national focus on the national regimes and institutions that shape the socio-political context, which facilitates or impedes the integration of immigrants and the second generation. Again, initially led by some North Americans (especially Brubaker, 1992), this approach has focused much more on European states and has given rise to a number of studies and research networks, gradually including since the mid-1990s not only Western but also Central and Eastern European countries (see, for instance, Brubaker, 1996). Some of these studies have focused on the ideological aspects of citizenship and nationalism_ for example, that there is an ius soli and ethnic conceptions of citizenship with their own distinctive characteristics operating in different countries. Moreover, some countries see migrants as sojourners; others insist on assimilation and actively promote naturalization; yet others are more tolerant of group difference but treat some forms of group (for example, racial) differently to other kinds (for example, religious). Thus different countries can be said to have different ‘philosophies of integration’ and these have become the topic of some studies (Favell, 1998a; Joppke, 1996). Others have focused, increasingly, on a comparative institutional and mobilization analysis. They show how the political framework has developed in different countries, trying to explain why different legislation, institutions and policies have emerged in different countries and why different kinds and intensities of migrant mobilization have occurred. They also show how these factors have shaped the self-proclaimed identities and political strategies of migrant ethnic groups (Kastoryano, 1997; Koopmans and Statham, 2000).

One important shortcoming of the existing political science literature is that the normative and the institutionalist enquiries have so far been conducted quite separately from each other. While the latter are not typically institutionally reductionist and include fine examples, including those mentioned above, of conceptions and norms of citizenship and other ideas implicit in various state responses to immigration and multiculturalism, they rarely connect such ideas-in-institutions with the political philosophy of multiculturalism.

Similarly, the normative analysis of multiculturalism works at the abstract conceptual level of autonomy, recognition, gro...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 European challenges to multicultural citizenship: Muslims, secularism and beyond—ANNA TRIANDAFYLLIDOU, TARIQ MODOOD AND RICARD ZAPATA-BARRERO
• 2 Multiculturalism, citizenship and Islam in problematic encounters in Belgium—HASSAN BOUSETTA AND DIRK JACOBS
• 3 British Muslims and the politics of multiculturalism—TARIQ MODOOD
• 4 French secularism and Islam: France’s headscarf affair—RIVA KASTORYANO
• 5 The particular universalism of a Nordic civic nation: common values, state religion and Islam in Danish political culture—PER MOURITSEN
• 6 Enemies within the gates: the debate about the citizenship of Muslims in Germany—WERNER SCHIFFAUER
• 7 Religious diversity and multiculturalism in Southern Europe: the Italian mosque debate—ANNA TRIANDAFYLLIDOU
• 8 The Muslim community and Spanish tradition: Maurophobia as a fact, and impartiality as a desideratum—RICARD ZAPATA-BARRERO
• 9 Secularism and the accommodation of Muslims in Europe—TARIQ MODOOD AND RIVA KASTORYANO
• 10 Europe, liberalism and the ‘Muslim question’—BHIKHU PAREKH
• Index