Icon-ising national identity: France and India in comparative perspective

The article embeds the arguments of cultural theory and art history in a political science framework, in order to explain the construction of national identities. In comparing the French national allegory Marianne and her Indian counterpart Bharat Mata, the authors set out to trace the conceptual development of the icons, the psycho-history underlying their ongoing formative processes and their strategic function as signifiers that reinforce national identity. The conceptual prism of icon-ising, as one learns from this comparative analysis is what makes the study of processes of cultural negotiation, and an exploration of their impact on identity-formation possible.     

Examining educational inequalities in two national systems: a comparison of the North African second generation in France and the Mexican second generation in the United States

This paper aims to compare the educational outcomes of children of immigrants in France and in the United States to highlight the ethnic educational inequalities in both countries. The comparison focuses on children from two groups: North Africans in France and Mexicans in the United States. By using two longitudinal datasets, the French Educational Panel Survey and Add Health, we examine aspirations, expectations, and secondary attainment in the two contexts. We explore in particular the role of parental education on attainment. Immigrant families have high educational aspirations in both contexts. North-African families express higher aspirations than native French with similar background, while there are no significant differences between second-generation Mexicans and the majority group net of parental education. Second-generation children are disadvantaged in school in both countries; they are more likely to drop out and less likely to graduate from high school, but most of the disadvantage is related to their social background. Net of social background, the Mexican second generation does not differ from the majority group while the North African second generation is more likely to get the French high school diploma than their peers of French origins, in line with their high aspirations. However, North Africans are more likely to receive the technological baccalauréat than the general baccalauréat.     

流动穆斯林与大城市回族社区——以南京、上海等城市为例

本文从群体互动的视角研究了流动穆斯林与大城市回族社区的相互关系。本文认为,流动穆斯林大量进入大城市给回族社区带来了重要影响:(1)增加宗教氛围;(2)为清真寺职能发挥提供物质支持;(3)协助实现有效的社会管理;(4)解决"清真饮食难"问题;(5)改善文化结构,促进城市的经济社会发展。同时大城市回族社区也在几个方面影响了流动穆斯林:(1)职业结构发生较大变化,经济收入明显增加;(2)为流动穆斯林提供生存空间;(3)提供宗教功课和文化交流的场所和平台;(4)促使流动穆斯林自身实现文化转型;(5)相对在家乡而言部分流动穆斯林宗教生活淡化。总之,流动穆斯林促进了大城市回族社区和整个城市的经济、文化发展,同时也适应了城市生活方式,促进了自身的现代化。     

Will to love,will to fear: the emotional politics of illegality and citizenship in the campaign against birthright citizenship in the US

Anti-immigration activists argue that the broad inclusivity of the birthright citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment is a national security concern that enables criminalized migrant mothers to give birth to citizens who can later harm the US through violence and resource consumption. Seeing this argument as representative of the problem of inclusivity inherent to citizenship in a liberal democracy, this essay asks how the children of undocumented and temporary migrants are constructed as what Mae Ngai calls ‘alien citizens.’ Drawing from Sara Ahmed's affective economy of emotion, I find that affect and emotion figure prominently in how citizens are made ‘alien.’ Specifically love and fear function as pivot points in the anti-birthright citizenship argument, wherein the ‘real citizen’ is ‘willed’ to love and be loved by the nation and to fear the nation's Others. Moreover, the emphasis on national feelings does not evacuate white supremacy or heteronormativity from its imagination of citizenship, but instead displaces these loci of power into feeling and affect. Thus, this essay claims that the birthright citizenship argument illustrates how national love and fear work in tandem to uphold, naturalize, and expand the racial and sexual exclusions inherent to citizenship in a nation-state.     

Reproducing the nation: reproduction,citizenship and ethno-demographic survival in post-communist Romania

The steady decline of fertility rates in Europe raises a number of important questions about the demographic and cultural reproduction of national societies. Apart from being confronted with population shrinkage and ageing, most European societies are also becoming more diverse. Demographic changes tend to exacerbate nationalist anxieties about the physical and cultural survival of the nation. This article develops the concept of national reproduction regime in order to analyse strategies and interventions at the biological, formal, and ethno-cultural levels of reproduction through which states seek to ensure the physical and cultural reproduction of the nation. It outlines the national reproduction regime of post-communist Romania by way of mapping and discussing key policies on biological and formal reproduction, as well as public discourses that frame these policies.     

Marketing an imagined Muslim woman: Muslim Girl magazine and the politics of race,gender and representation

This article examines the magazine Muslim Girl (started publication 2007) and explores how the representations on the magazine's pages construct a particular type of identity for Muslim women: an ‘idealized’ Muslim woman who is both North American/Western and Muslim. Such a woman is portrayed as liberal, educated, fashionable, a ‘can-do’ woman, who is also committed to her faith. This ‘ideal’ woman is situated squarely as a neo-liberal subject in an increasingly consumerist world: she is ‘marketable’ (and marketed) as the ‘good Muslim’ (Mamdani, 2004) and is positioned as the ‘familiar stranger’ (Ahmed, 2000) in North America. This so-called ‘modern’ Muslim (read: ‘good Muslim’) is juxtaposed both against the ‘fundamentalist’ Muslim (read: ‘bad Muslim’) and the ‘normalized’ white North American subject. Against the discourse of post 9/11 nationalism and within the context of (gendered) Orientalism, this article argues that such idealized representations present easily recognizable tropes, which serve important political, ideological and cultural purposes within North American society. An analysis of these representations – and the purposes which they serve – provides an important window into the nuances of the structured discourses that seek to control and discipline the gendered Muslim body. On the one hand, the representations in Muslim Girl focus on the so-called ‘integrated North American Muslim’ – a ‘modern’ or ‘good’ Muslim – within the context of the multicultural, neo-liberal and post 9/11 nation-state. On the other hand, these representations also highlight examples of Muslim women, who seemingly remain committed to their faith and community. Such representations of hybridized North American Muslims speak powerfully to the forces – ideological, cultural, political and social – that are at play in the post 9/11 world. In analyzing the representations found in Muslim Girl, this paper provides an insight into some of these forces and their implications.     

Changing patterns of mobility,citizenship and conflict in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Mobility and migration are inherent ingredients of Indonesian cultures. In an archipelago with thousands of islands of various size, character and nature, mobility is an important means to make a living and to survive by migration. The right to free movement in Indonesia is constitutionally granted. It can create mobility and give expression to equal citizenship rights at the same time as it can trigger the enforcement of borders among cultural groups and the ethnification of local and regional politics. Mobility thus always comes along with immobility. Physical mobility of one group of people might cause immobility of another group or it might create cultural and political immobility in the same group. In places such as Eastern Indonesia, people have developed reciprocal means to integrate newcomers. Whereas the immigrants are usually disadvantaged citizens with regards to land and customary rights, those living in the area for generations have nonetheless become integral parts of quite peaceful local settings, one way or the other. The advancement of decentralization, democratization and direct elections of political representatives can lead to political empowerment, the promotion of ethnicity as election capital and changing patterns of belonging. This paper illustrates these ambivalences by looking at mobility in Indonesia more generally and how changing national policies and laws lead to reinterpretations of mobility patterns and trigger changes in relations between local population groups and existing mechanisms of cultural and political inclusion and exclusion. Butonese migrants in Maluku will here serve as a case study.     

Forced Migration and the Expatriation of the Rohingya: A Demographic Assessment of Their Historical Exclusions and Statelessness

This paper attempts to outline the forced migration and consequent flee and displacement of the Rohingya Muslims in Northwestern Arakan State of Myanmar after several violent clashes and insurgencies between the Rohingya Muslims, the Buddhists and government security forces. More than 400,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled from Myanmar in August 2017 violence which has been described as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing” by United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR). Being only visible as “refugee problem” of this mass expatriation, the continuous forced migration and displacement of the Rohingya have been rendered invisible. In this context, this paper attempts a demographic assessment of Rohingya people through historical process of their exclusions and the magnitude of the forced migration to the neighboring countries as illegal, economic burden, stateless migrants. This paper analyses the historical origin of the underlying situation, identity politics, ethnic crisis, and statelessness for better understanding the demographic decline of the Rohingya in this geographic region. Finally, it highlights the international community's responses to this undergoing humanitarian crisis of the Rohingya.     

Circumcising the body: negotiating difference and belonging in Germany

ABSTRACT

The circumcision debate in Germany in 2012 is an exemplary case for symbolic struggles over national boundaries. The debate became a site for the negotiation of traditions practiced by religious minorities. We ask, first, how the clinical gaze constitutes Muslim and Jewish others. Second, we investigate how ‘writing around’ the debate’s center, bodily integrity, became meaningful through analogies to other practices said to harm it. We compare newspaper coverage in Germany, Israel and Turkey, and reveal transnational discursive dynamics that transgress national boundaries. We show how ‘otherness’ of Muslims and Jews remains present in a self-perceived secular, liberal imaginary.     

Muslims in Great Britain: the impact of mosque attendance on political behaviour and civic engagement

Is mosque attendance associated with withdrawal from civic and political life and the endorsement of politically motivated violence (PMV)? We draw from a large multi-ethnic survey in the U.K. to answer this research question. Our analysis is unique in that we compare Muslims to Christians to show that mosques, just like churches, can enhance the civic and political participation of their adherents. Drawing from scholarship on religious institutions, social capital, and social identity, we claim and empirically show that mosque attendance is associated with increased electoral and non-electoral political participation, higher levels of civic engagement, and the rejection of PMV. Our findings not only advance the current scholarly understanding of the attitudes and behaviours of Muslims in the West, but also have important policy implications in that they help dispel stereotypical and sensationalist accounts of Mosques and their adherents in the post-Brexit U.K.     

Ethnic Origins and Religious Transformations in the Afro-Colombian Muslim Community of Buenaventura

The aim of this article is to analyse the origins and transformations of a Muslim community in western Colombia. The history of this small religious group of Afro-Colombians is presented over a period divided into four phases. This division is based on four dominant interpretations of Islamic doctrines adopted by the majority of the group over a period of time. These changes were not only due to religious motivations but also due to changes in the social milieu and the need for taking advantage of emerging opportunities. The religious conversion of Afro-Colombians to Islam took place within the complex socio-political context of the Colombian conflict which began in mid-1960s and is still ongoing. The adoption of this new religious perspective did not evolve in an isolated manner, rather, it transformed the identity of the community by strengthening the value of ethnic differences in a place of segregation. In this context, this paper analyses the role of religion as an important element in the construction of ethnic identity. It is also important to recognize that this cultural negotiation happens at the margins of the dominant society, which views Afro-Colombian minorities negatively or simply ignores their presence.     

Syrian refugees in Turkey: pathways to precarity,differential inclusion,and negotiated citizenship rights

This article addresses the question of how to understand the relation among precarity, differential inclusion, and citizenship status with regard to Syrian refugees in Turkey. Turkey has become host to over 2.7 million Syrian refugees who live in government-run refugee camps and urban centres. Drawing on critical citizenship and migration studies literature, the paper emphasises the Turkish government’s central legal and policy frameworks that provide Syrians with some citizenship rights while simultaneously regulating their status and situating them in a position of limbo. Syrians are not only making claims to citizenship rights but they are also negotiating their access to social services, humanitarian assistance, and employment in different ways. The analysis stresses that Syrian refugees in Turkey continue to be part of the multiple pathways to precarity, differential inclusion, and negotiated citizenship rights.     

The Vernacular International: Heimat,Modernism and the Global Market in Early Twentieth-Century Germany

This article proposes a reconceptualisation of regionalism, nationalism and globalisation as simultaneous and causally connected phenomena, which first peaked in the early decades of the twentieth century. Focusing on figures such as Hermann Muthesius, Fritz Schumacher and others active in the Deutscher Werkbund, it examines how competition in the global market inspired a search for modern yet uniquely national forms that derived their 'authenticity' from vernacular culture. Yet paradoxically, the visual vocabulary of Heimat was frequently inspired by English and American models. This article interprets the aesthetic and political translations which the peripatetics of localism entailed, and shows how consumer goods 'made in Germany' came to be invested with a sense of cultural mission.     

Mexican illegality,black citizenship,and white power: immigrant perceptions of the U.S. socioracial hierarchy

While some scholars contend that immigrant integration is predicated on a strategic distancing from Blacks and closeness to Whites, others argue that highly racialised immigrants share more commonality with Black Americans than Whites. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Mexican immigrant newcomers to Los Angeles, California, this article examines how immigrants make sense of their position in U.S. socioracial hierarchy vis-à-vis other racialised groups. I show that as immigrants navigate U.S. social, racial, and political landscapes, they come to view ‘American-ness’ and the citizenship status inherent in it as a key marker of distinction between themselves and those they deem ‘American’. Immigrants thus view their group status as an inferior one relative not only to the dominant White group, but also to Black Americans, albeit for qualitatively different reasons. Findings highlight how the vulnerability of ‘illegality’ not only reinforces existing social boundaries with Whites, but also shapes the nature of socioracial boundaries with Black Americans that can hinder the potential for racial solidarity and has broader implications for the U.S. socioracial hierarchy.     

Moving citizens: citizenship practices among Polish migrants in Norway and the United Kingdom

ABSTRACT

Following post-EU-accession migration, Poles currently form the largest group of foreign nationals in Norway and the second largest group of foreign born residents in the United Kingdom. Given the considerable volume of new arrivals, there is a growing literature on Polish migration to both countries; however, there is little comparative research on Polish migration across different European settings. By exploring how Polish migrants reflect on the possibilities of settlement or return, this paper comparatively examines the effects that permanent and ‘normalised’ mobility has on Polish migrants’ self-perception as citizens in four different cities. In addition to classic citizenship studies, which highlight the influence of a nation-state based institutionalised citizenship regime, we find that transnational exchanges, local provisions and inter-personal relationships shape Polish migrants’ practices of citizenship. The resulting understanding of integration is processual and sees integration as constituted by negotiated transnational balancing acts that respond to (and sometimes contradict) cultural, economic and political demands and commitments. The research is based on semi-structured interviews and focus groups with a total of 80 respondents, conducted in two British and two Norwegian cities that experienced significant Polish immigration, Oslo, Bergen, Bristol and Sheffield.     

Consequences of religious and secular boundaries among the majority population for perceived discrimination among Muslim minorities in Western Europe

While the concept of symbolic boundaries and ethnic boundary-making is well established in social research, the direct consequences of these boundaries for the integration of migrants have not received much attention. This paper thus analyses whether religious and secular boundaries of national belonging among the majority population have an impact on perceived discrimination among Muslim minorities in Western Europe. To analyse this linkage, data from the International Social Survey Programme measuring the importance of religion as a symbolic boundary of national belonging among the majority have been aggregated as a regional context condition and combined with a Muslim minority subsample from the European Social Survey. The results of the multilevel models reveal that the salience of religious boundaries is associated with less perceived discrimination among Muslim minorities, while secular orientations among the majority seem to be more decisive for subjective perceptions of feeling discriminated against. Overall, the results thus challenge the role of religion as an ethno-religious demarcation and point to the relevance of secular boundaries of belonging for immigrant integration.     

Fluid adaptation of contested citizenship: second-generation migrant Turks in Germany and the United States

This paper explores belonging in the context of legal citizenship for second-generation Turkish immigrants in Berlin and in New York. Fluid adaptation refers to the discursive boundaries of immigrant identity articulations, the contextual and shifting adjustments immigrants make to their sense of belonging. Immigrant belonging, gauged by ‘encounters’ with bureaucracies and participatory expressions, is shaped in large part by the receiving state's legal framework and citizenship status. Belonging is complicated by racialization and exclusion, and affected by intersectionalities of immigrant experience. Limited citizenship models necessitate deployment of fluid and alternative membership models. Alternative forms of belonging underscore the power of the nation-state in delimiting belonging.     

Gender and citizenship in academic career progression: an intersectional,meso-scale analysis in German higher education institutions

ABSTRACT

In tune with the fundamental shift in Germany’s skill-b(i)ased immigration policy since 2005, higher education institutions (HEIs) are increasingly becoming ‘magnets’ for a skilled migrant workforce. While ‘internationalisation’ is often understood as something to be celebrated and (further) accomplished, some observers speak of clear signs of discriminatory experiences among racialised and migrant academics. This is a new aspect, as social inequalities have by and large been considered in migration studies to be the sole terrain of labour mobility into less-skilled sectors of the economy. Meanwhile, abundant literature on gender and higher education shows that women academics have poorer access to career progression than men, demonstrating gender-based academic career inequalities. However, the insights generated in these two strands of scholarship have seldom been in conversation with one another. This paper takes stock of the lack of an intersectional perspective, focusing on citizenship and gender within HEIs as hiring meso-level organisations that are becoming increasingly transnationalised. It explores the intersectionality of citizenship and gender in accessing academic career advancement by examining three key career stages, that is, doctoral researchers, postdoctoral researchers, and professors, in two case-study HEIs.     

Fetal citizenship in the borderlands: Arizona's house bill 2443 and state logics of racism and orientalism

In 2011, Arizona passed the ‘Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011’, which makes it a felony for doctors to knowingly perform an abortion for race or sex selective reasons. To convince the House and Senate to pass House Bill 2443, advocates constructed African American, Asian American and Asian immigrant women's reproduction as troublesome: these women were either victims of a racist, eugenicist family planning organization that sought to limit fertility or they were victims of a sexist heteropatriarchal family structure that prefers male sons. Or, in another rendering, Asian women were cast as ‘backward’ migrants who have not assimilated to American gender equality. My essay argues that House Bill 2443 appears to be about reproduction, but must be understood with a lens that is attentive to racism, colonialism, and anti-immigrant sentiments in Arizona's past and contemporary moment. In other words, state measures that criminalize abortion need to be read against the on-going cultural genocide of Indigenous peoples and recent laws that criminalize Latin@ migrants. In the borderlands, reproduction is intimately tied to citizenship and state repression.