Gender, Race and Religion

Intersections and Challenges

Martin Bulmer, John Solomos

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415686327
• eBook ISBN: 9781317995692
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Gender, Race and Religion brings together a selection of original papers published in Ethnic and Racial Studies that address the intersections between gender relations, race and religion in our contemporary environment. Chapters address both theoretical and empirical aspects of this phenomenon, and although written from the perspective of quite different national, social and political situations, they are linked by a common concern to analyze the interface between gender and other situated social relationships, from both a conceptual and a policy angle. These are issues that have been the subject of intense scholarly research and analysis in recent years, as well as forming part of public debates about the significance of gender, race and religion as sites of identity formation and mobilization in our changing global environment. The substantive chapters bring together insights from both theoretical reflection and empirical research in order to investigate particular facets of these questions. Gender, Race and Religion addresses issues that are at the heart of contemporary scholarly debates in the field of race and ethnic studies, and engages with important questions in policy and public debates.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Islam, gender, and immigrant integration: boundary drawing in discourses on honour killing in the Netherlands and Germany

Anna Korteweg and Gökçe Yurdakul

Abstract

Public discourse on Muslim immigrant integration in Europe is increasingly framed around the presumed incompatibility of Islam and Western values. To understand how such framing constructs boundaries between immigrants and majority society in the media, we analyse newspaper discussions of honour killing in the Netherlands and Germany. These debates reinforce existing bright boundaries, or a strong sense of us versus them, between immigrants from Muslim and/or Turkish backgrounds and the majority population. Limited elements of boundary blurring are also present. We extend existing theory by showing that these boundaries are inscribed in the intersection of ethnicity, national origin, religion and gender.

In 2005, public debate on family violence among Muslim immigrants, especially honour killing, intensified in the Netherlands and Germany. In the Netherlands, such debates ignited after the murder of Theo van Gogh, whose film Submission criticized violence against women in Muslim societies. After his murder, an ongoing political debate on the incidence of domestic violence in the Netherlands came to intersect with a debate on the position of Muslims in Dutch society. In Germany, a similar set of questions came to focus on the issue of honour killing after the brutal murder of 23-year-old Hatun Sürücü by her brother at a Berlin bus stop (Ewing 2008).

In this article, we treat newspaper discussions of honour killing as a site in which boundaries between immigrants and majority society in the Netherlands and Germany are drawn. Boundaries create a sense of ‘they are not like us because …’, or a strong sense of us versus ‘not us’, capturing the social or cultural distance between immigrant and majority society (Zolberg and Long 1999, p. 8; Alba 2005, p. 22–3). Whether boundaries are ‘bright’ or ‘blurred’ has implications for the kinds of immigrant integration that are possible. Bright boundaries imply that society is structured around a sharp ‘distinction between insiders and outsiders’ so that individual members of minority groups (but not groups in their entirety) can cross into majority society only if they give up part of their group identity and adopt some of the practices of majority society (Zolberg and Long 1999, p. 8; Alba 2005). By contrast, blurred boundaries imply tolerance for various forms of difference and for multiple memberships in different groups so that, for example, an immigrant group can be considered Muslim and Dutch. Blurring bright boundaries entails a change in the dominant perception of immigrants as dramatically different from majority society (Alba 2005).

In the literature, boundaries are seen as cultural (Zolberg and Long 1999) or ethnic, rooted in part in Weber’s ‘subjective belief in common descent’ (in Alba 2005, pp. 22–3). Boundaries are analysed in the divergent domains of language, religion, citizenship, and race, tracing how collective identity and notions of difference are shaped through various institutions. We focus on one such institution, the media. In our analysis, we treat boundaries as cultural, defining culture as providing shared meaning through which to articulate belonging to social groups. The boundaries between Muslims and majority society in European immigration countries are generally bright (Zolberg and Long 1999; Alba 2005). An analysis of honour killing, which in media discourse is treated as an extreme example of the differences between Muslims and majority society, allows us to show; a) which elements of culture are mobilized in the drawing of boundaries; b) that such boundaries can be blurred; and c) the implications of these processes for immigrant integration. We find that in this case cultural differences are articulated in reference to ethnicity, national origin, religion, and gender, requiring an intersectional analysis to illustrate how these elements interact in drawing bright or blurred boundaries.

Extending theories of boundary formation

The focus on boundaries between immigrants and majority society comes out of a renewed interest in the concept of assimilation (Alba and Nee 1997, 2003; deWind and Kasinitz 1997; Brubaker 2001; Joppke and Morawska 2003). In the contemporary era many immigrants eventually integrate into their host societies while retaining some aspect of their (group) identity. This empirical reality has generated a shift in the definition of assimilation from the old-school assumption and even normative goal of complete absorption into majority society to one in which assimilation is achieved when (perceived) differences no longer have an impact on life chances (Alba and Nee 2003; Alba 2005; see also Brubaker 2001).

In theories of boundary formation different integration or assimilation trajectories are associated with three ‘distinct patterns of negotiation between newcomers and hosts’: crossing, blurring, and shifting (Zolberg and Long 1999, p. 8; see also Bauböck 1994; Alba and Nee 2003; Alba 2005). Boundary crossing and boundary blurring are particularly relevant here. Boundary crossing coincides with bright boundaries – only individuals can cross such boundaries, and crossing entails the adoption of majority society attributes, practices or values (Zolberg and Long 1999; Alba and Nee 2003; Alba 2005). In addition, crossing does not affect the boundary itself; if anything, crossing affirms the existence of the boundary. In the extreme, bright boundaries do not allow for group incorporation with retention of group identity markers, and assimilation is associated with giving up important aspects of immigrant culture. Boundary blurring is indicated by immigrants’ ability to cross as a group into majority society without relinquishing distinct aspects of their identity. Simultaneously, the majority society changes its legal, social, and cultural institutions to enable multiple memberships and the participation of immigrants (Zolberg and Long 1999, p. 8).

Boundaries have strong cultural components and it is culture that concerns us here (see also Lamont and Molnar 2002; Alba and Nee 2003). In boundary theory, the term culture refers to everything from ethnic food and leisure activities (Alba and Nee 2003) to ‘fundamental beliefs and ideas regarding existence’ (Zolberg and Long 1999, p. 8). We use the term to denote shared meaning involving the imputed norms, values and traditions of a perceived group.

In the European context, dominant understandings of Islam inform the drawing of bright boundaries between Muslim immigrants and majority society (Zolberg and Long 1999; Alba 2005). Yet, oftentimes it is not Islam in general but gender inequalities attributed to Islam that are the basis for drawing these bright boundaries (see Norris and Inglehart 2002; Razack 2004). Hence we argue that we need to unpack which sources of meaning are mobilized in processes of boundary formation.

To understand the linkages between cultural elements deployed in boundary formation, we use intersectional theory, which sees markers of difference that inform the production of meaning, such as race, class, or gender as mutually constituted, with each given meaning through the others (Yuval-Davis 1997; Glenn 1999). We argue below that in discussions of honour killing ethnicity, national origin, religion, and gender are the relevant differences and that the ways they intersect to exclude immigrants from majority society is understudied.

Making these cultural sources of meaning and their intersections explicit advances the concept of boundaries in two ways. First, it brings the interacting effects of ethnicity, national origin, religion, and gender’s cultural dimensions to the foreground in the process of boundary formation. Here, we build on work arguing that ethnicity and national origin intersect to create ethnonational identities but find that religion and gender play a similar role (Fenton and May 2002; see also Brubaker 2004). Second, this analysis lets us draw some tentative empirical conclusions about the kind of integration (or assimilation) that is possible for immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries in Western European countries.

Immigrant integration in the Netherlands and Germany

Immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries entered the Netherlands and Germany as guest workers starting in the 1960s, with current immigration resulting mainly from family reunification and marriage. These immigrants now make up an estimated 4.5 per cent of the total population in the Netherlands and, depending on the source, 3.8 to 4.2 per cent in Germany (Forum 2008). They lag behind majority society socio-economically. For example, between 1996 and 2006, non-Western immigrants were 3.5 times more likely than non-immigrant Dutch to be unemployed (Jaarrapport Integratie 2007, p. 139). In 2006, the unemployment rate for Turkish immigrants in Germany was 31.4 per cent and approximately 10 per cent for Germans (Bundesagentur für Arbeit 2007).

Historically, the Netherlands and Germany approached the integration of immigrants in different ways. Starting in the early twentieth century, the Dutch approached confessional political conflict through ‘pillarization’, or the institutionalized recognition of different forms of Christianity through the establishment of Protestant and Catholic schools, political parties, and social welfare organizations. Large-scale immigration from Muslim countries led the Dutch government to establish a Muslim pillar, thus marking immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries by their religion as well as their national origin (Entzinger 2003; Koopmans et al. 2005). However, in recent years, Dutch multiculturalism has been challenged by a new emphasis on cultural integration through mandatory language classes and integration exams even for long-term immigrants (Entzinger 2003, 2006; Korteweg 2005).

In Germany, religious discourse is often masked by discussions of ‘cultural competence’ and national differences between Turks and Germans. This also fits with historical understandings of citizenship, which root belonging in an ethnic conceptualization of nationhood (Brubaker 1992; Koopmans et al. 2005). At the same time, a more multicultural approach to immigration developed in the 1990s with the rise of the Red–Green coalition of the social-democrats and the Green Party. The implication of these different national trajectories is that boundaries might be drawn differently, with religion more influential in the Netherlands and ethnic understandings more prevalent in Germany.

Violence against women, honour killing, and boundary formation

Discussions of gender also mark Muslim immigrants as different from majority society in both countries with violence against women in Muslim immigrant families – in its most extreme form honour killing – cast as impeding immigrant women’s integration in both societies. In the Netherlands, reports show that domestic violence is even more prevalent in immigrant communities than in non-immigrant ones (Privé Geweld, Publieke Zaak 2002; Commissie Blok 2004; TransAct 2005). Similarly, in Germany, recent research has shown that while violence against women is an issue for all women in Germany, immigrant women, particularly Turkish women, suffer disproportionately (Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend 2004).

In the literature and public debate, honour killing is a particular response to the sense that a woman or girl has violated her family’s honour, usually because of perceptions of sexual impropriety (Sev’er and Yurdakul 2001; Van Eck 2003; Mojab 2004). Men are obligated to guard their family honour and honour killings are planned by family councils. Many scholars argue that honour killing is an outcome of patriarchy rather than Islam (Pitt-Rivers 1974; Mojab 2004; Kvinnoforum 2005, p. 16). In this context, patriarchy is a form of rule through kin relations in which family and society closely overlap, and in which family is stratified according to gender and age (Kandiyoti 1988). At the same time, contemporary economic and social forces, including the migration experience, also shape the guarding of women’s honour (Maris and Saharso 2001; Abu-Lughod 2002; Kogacioglu 2004; Warr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction: Gender, race and religion: intersections and challenges
• 1. Islam, gender, and immigrant integration: boundary drawing in discourses on honour killing in the Netherlands and Germany
• 2. You’re Brazilian, right? What kind of Brazilian are you? The racialization of Brazilian immigrant women
• 3. Cigar production: how race, gender and political ideology were inscribed onto tobacco
• 4. Religiosity and gender equality: comparing natives and Muslim migrants in Germany
• 5. Suicidal behaviour of young immigrant women in the Netherlands. Can we use Durkheim’s concept of ‘fatalistic suicide’ to explain their high incidence of attempted suicide?
• 6. Marriage in colour: race, religion and spouse selection in four American mosques
• 7. Why do bilingual boys get better grades in English-only America? The impacts of gender, language and family interaction on academic achievement of Latino/a children of immigrants
• 8. What is the meaning of ‘black’? Researching ‘black’ respondents
• Index