Muslims’ social inclusion and exclusion in France,Québec,and Canada: does national context matter?*

This article compares the social experiences of Muslim minorities in three contexts – France, Québec, and English Canada – each reflecting a different approach to immigrant integration. France’s republican model emphasises cultural assimilation and the exclusion of religion from the public sphere; Canada’s multicultural model advocates official recognition of minority cultures; Québec shares Canada’s tradition of large-scale permanent immigration but embodies a unique intercultural discourse of integration, in some ways resembling France. We compare the social experiences of Muslim and non-Muslim minorities in these three settings using the French ‘Trajectories and Origins’ survey (2009) and the Canadian ‘Ethnic Diversity Survey’ (2002) data on reports of discrimination, friendship networks, social trust, voluntarism, and national identity. We find the Muslim/non-Muslim gap in social inclusion is significant in all three settings and results from ethnic, cultural, or racial differences, more than religion. In assessing immigrants’ social inclusion, we suggest consideration be given to: (i) the reality of ‘national models’ in the community, (ii) a tendency for minorities to locate in more accepting segments of mainstream society, and (iii) the limited impact of policies based on national models.     

The Modern Colonial Politics of Citizenship and Whiteness in France

While there is no blatantly racist discourse among the French political class per se, the modern politics of citizenship in France is rooted in France's racialized colonial legacy. Upon critical examination, contemporary French political discourse and policy implementations indeed speak to France's colonial past. The concept of ‘otherness’ is situated at the centre of French political discourse, and is manifested in constructions of whiteness. ‘Otherness’ has created a double standard for legal non-European immigrants compared with French and European citizens. The politics of integration and assimilation are founded on the ideological backdrop of universality, which falsely represents French society in colour-blind terms. This is evident in both moderate and extremist political party rhetoric in regards to new policies of immigration, citizenship and nationality. We contend that the contemporary political discourses in France closely resemble the colonial period in spite of (and precisely because of) France's historical amnesia. In this article, we explore the redefinition of French citizenship as an expansion of whiteness as rooted in the concept of ‘otherness’. In so doing, we contextualize the contemporary discourse of inclusion, exclusion, citizenship, and whiteness on the backdrop of France's colonial legacy.     

More than just shopping: Ethnic majority consumers and cosmopolitanism in immigrant grocery shops

This paper explores ethnic majority consumption practices in immigrant economies. Drawing on recent debates on cosmopolitanism, we focus on the question of how the use of immigrant shops by members of the ethnic majority is intertwined with the erosion and/or the (re)production of symbolic boundaries. We conducted 31 in-depth interviews and 15 go-alongs with consumers in immigrant grocery shops in Vienna. Our findings show how consumption is based upon and shaped by the various ways consumers attribute meaning to the shops, the products on offer as well as their shopping experiences. We identified five different types of consumption: consuming nostalgia, consuming patronage, consuming change, consuming alterity and consuming diversity. However, we only consider the latter two as cosmopolitan consumption in a narrower sense. We show that within these types, the expression of openness towards ‘the other’ constitutes a form of cultural capital displayed by members of the privileged classes. The article argues in favour of a more comprehensive understanding of consumption practices in immigrant economies. This encompasses that not every act of shopping in immigrant businesses is cosmopolitan and that research is called to consider that the various types of consumption effect boundaries along ethnicity and class in manifold ways.     

Renovating ethnic identity on Restaurant Makeover

Food can be a novel way of understanding and explaining some of the pointed paradoxes of multiculturalism and the ‘management’ of ethnicity. Many studies of culinary culture are attentive to the exoticization of ethnicity in and through food media, which now includes a vertiginous array of cookbooks, travel literature, magazines and, most important for our purposes here, television series. Among various programs is Restaurant Makeover, a popular Canadian reality series broadcast on Home and Garden Television (HGTV) as well as the Food Network Canada. In each episode, dining experts are hired by struggling restaurateurs (often ethnic) to ‘spice up’ the existing menu, ‘modernize’ the décor and, by extension, ensure the welfare of the (immigrant's) family. While the series is not explicitly directed at ethnic restaurants, it seems to be increasingly interested in ‘non-white’ establishments (i.e., Mexican, Chinese, Thai, etc.). This participation in culinary multiculturalism may be symptomatic of wider political changes in immigration and ‘diversity’ in Canada. Based on the authors analyses of specific episodes this paper argues, firstly, the growing interest in ethnic cuisine on Restaurant Makeover can be read as a (neo)liberal response to an emerging conservative ‘multicultural’ agenda that recognizes migrants predominantly as laborers (as opposed to citizens) and, secondly, that behind its rehearsal of liberal benevolence is a skewed set of power relations that authorize the experts’ (re)construction, cultivation and containment of ethnicity.     

An intergenerational conceptualisation of Italian-Australian ethnic identity through Bourdieu and Heidegger

ABSTRACT

This paper provides a phenomenological reconceptualisation of ethnic identity. Drawing upon a case study of a family originating in Calabria, Italy, and living in Adelaide, South Australia, I consider the way in which the three generations perceive their ‘being ethnic’ across time and space. The first-generation participants were born in Italy and migrated to Australia during the 1950s; the second generation are their children; and the third generation are the children of the second generation. The findings show a widespread intergenerational identification of ethnicity as ‘being Italian’, which, however, has different meanings across the three generations. This depends on the participants’ phenomenological perceptions of being thrown into the world [Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time. (J. Macquarie & E. Robinson, Trans.). New York, NY: Harper]. Some 40 years after Huber’s [(1977). From pasta to Pavlova: A comparative study of Italian settlers in Sydney and Griffith. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press] study about the assimilation of Italian-Australians published in her book From Pasta to Pavlova, the present paper shows a movement from pavlova to pasta, especially by the third-generation participants, who experience a sense of ethnic revival. Essential in such a shift of ethnic identity is what I refer to as institutional positionality; that is, one’s perceptions of the position of one’s ‘ethnic being in the world’. This is investigated by combining with the sociology of migration, including the Bourdieusian conceptual apparatus of capital [Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research in the sociology of education (pp. 241–258). New York, NY: Greenwood Press], a Heideggerian existential theory [Heidegger, 1962]. Such a juxtaposition provides further reflexivity through a reconceptualisation that considers the role of ontology in the sociology of migration.     

Eating cultures: Incorporation,identity and Indian food

Abstract

Linking the colonial British ‘fabrication’ of curry powder to the colonial fabrication of India, this paper explores the connections between colonial attitudes to India and to Indian food. The paper then looks at the links between food norms, and religious and political animosities in contemporary India. It then proceeds to use food to think about the place of the Indian community in contemporary England, and about the problematic roles assigned to women in immigrant Indian communities. The paper goes on to reflect on the notions of ‘food colonialism’ and ‘culinary imperialism’, arguing that the social meanings of ‘ethnic food’ in western contexts must also be considered from the point of view of immigrants to western contexts. The paper ends by arguing that concerns about multi‐culturalism and respect for other cultures must focus not only on relationships between ‘mainstream citizens’ and ‘ethnic Others’, but on the relationships between various ‘ethnic’ groups.     

Navigating Americanized Identities: Bicultural Ethnicity,Race, and the Incorporation Experience

This paper reports on the complex ways in which immigrant young adults make sense of their Americanized ethnic and racial identities. The analysis draws on a large set of in-depth interviews (N?=?233) collected with immigrants between the ages of 18 and 29 across three regions in the US (California, New York, and Minnesota) in the early 2000s and is in dialogue with emerging new theories of immigrant incorporation which combine the insights of traditional assimilation and racialization frameworks. The identity narratives that emerge from these interviews demonstrate the overarching significance of racial and ethnic identification for young adults across various immigrant communities. The narratives also highlight some of the contextual factors involved in the construction of an ethnic identity in the US such as experiences with discrimination; or the presence of co-ethnic communities. The final substantive section explores how young American immigrants in the transition to adulthood attempt to cultivate hybrid, bicultural identities that balance their American-ness with the ongoing experience of living in a deeply racialized society. The paper concludes by discussing implications for the literature on identity formation and the transition to adulthood as well as on the immigrant incorporation experience.     

Chinatown 2.0: the difficult flowering of an ethnically themed shopping area

Right in Amsterdam’s picturesque Canal Zone, on and around Zeedijk, Chinese entrepreneurs have carved out a presence in what seems like the local Chinatown. The businessmen have been targeting Asian and non-Asian customers by offering products that – to an extent – can be associated with Asia, China in particular. Since the early 1990s, individual entrepreneurs and their business organisations have campaigned for official acknowledgement of Zeedijk as an ethnic-only district and for governmental support of the enhancement of Chineseness. Following Hackworth and Rekers. [(2005). “Ethnic Packaging and Gentrification. The Case of Four Neighborhoods in Toronto.” Urban Affairs Review 41 (2): 211–236], we argue that this case challenges traditional understandings of ethnic commercial landscapes. In sharp contrast to the current orthodoxy, which would conceive the proliferation of such an ‘ethnic enclave’ as part of a larger process of assimilation, we have approached Amsterdam’s Chinatown first and foremost as a themed economic space: Chinese and other entrepreneurs compete for a share of the market and in doing also for the right to claim the identity of the area. What is the historical development of the Zeedijk area, how did Chinese entrepreneurs and their associations try to boost Chinatown and negotiate public Chineseness, and how did governmental and non-governmental institutional actors respond to those attempts?     

Québec in France: towards an understanding of the trans-Atlantic French-Québec subject

This paper examines the events commemorating the 400th anniversary of the founding of Québec City in 2008 and, in particular, the ways in which the Québec 400 was celebrated in Western France. The author argues that the events provide an instance of trans-Atlantic subject formation. Through analyzing a series of public events that took place in the La Rochelle region of France in 2008, the author argues that this extra-national raciality was constituted through two specific modes: practices of territoriality that signify a ‘cartography of origins’ and tropes of family that affirm the racialized dimensions of Québécois belonging in France.     

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.     

The Power of Ethnic Nationalism: Foucault's Bio-power and the Development of Ethnic Nationalism in Eastern Europe

Although the ‘civic’ and ‘ethnic’ brands of nationalism are frequently contrasted, the origins of the civic/ethnic dichotomy remain under-theorised. By building upon Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality, Volume 1, this article argues that, during the eighteenth century, the articulation of power shifted across the board from a pre-modern control over the ending of life, to a modern expression of power as control over the production of life (dubbed ‘bio-power’ by Foucault). Given the Foucauldian claim that power is built upwards from ‘its most infinitesimal mechanisms’, it is suggested that expressions of bio-power were first enacted in that social structure most amenable to biological manipulation—the family—and then expanded upwards towards the widest understanding of a kin collective—the ethnic group. As the shift to bio-power took hold, so too did visions of the political nation-state begin to take shape in Eastern Europe. A fusion of doctrines of self-determinism with the expression of power as ‘control over the production of life’, then saw the ethnic nation-state gain credence as a social and political construct in Central and Eastern Europe. This article takes Romania as a case study through which the mechanisms of this exploratory argument can be illustrated.     

Social identity in the modern United States Virgin Islands

The United States Virgin Islands (USVI) is a complex society with multiple diverse ethnic groups: Black Virgin Islanders, Eastern Caribbean islanders, Puerto Ricans, Spanish Dominicans, French Islanders, Americans (Continentals), Arabs and Asians. These ethnic differences as well as United States cultural imperialism have stymied any uniform Virgin Islands identity. Even though various ethnic groups share fundamental social characteristics, they nonetheless maintain their institutional and cultural differences. Continuous migration from the world over and out-migration of ‘native’ Virgin Islanders have led to ethnic particularism that undermines a contemporary common island identity. Nonetheless, social identity in the USVI can be conceptualized into the bi-level structural analysis of national and trans-Caribbean.     

‘Settling’ the multicultural nation-state: Little Mosque on the Prairie,and the figure of the ‘moderate Muslim’

This paper analyzes Little Mosque on the Prairie, its characters and themes within the context of post-9/11 discourses of nationalism and citizenship. Against the backdrop of the Canadian national narrative, I argue that the sitcom foregrounds a ‘moderate Muslim’ that demarcates the boundaries of the multicultural nation-state, especially when juxtaposed against the racially and sexually coded Muslim ‘other’ on the global landscape. The moderate Muslim is represented as ‘liberal’ and ‘modern’, one who seeks to integrate her faith into the multicultural fabric of society. Such a figure, represented both as a ‘good’ Muslim/immigrant and a ‘good’ Canadian citizen-subject, illuminates the boundaries of ‘acceptability’ within the Canadian national imaginary. The figure of the moderate Muslim reinforces the racial coding embedded in this imaginary, while enabling the state to proclaim its ‘multicultural tolerance’ and benevolence. Building on previous scholarship on race, citizenship, and nation-building, I argue that the moderate Muslim – as exemplified in Little Mosque on the Prairie – serves important ideological functions in (re)defining the internal (and racially coded) borders of the nation. While Little Mosque on the Prairie makes an important contribution to the representation of Muslims, challenging some stereotypes, I argue that it does not deliver on its considerable potential to articulate nuanced representations of Muslims. Through its foregrounding of the figure of the moderate Muslim, the sitcom reaffirms key norms, engages in a politics of authenticity, and reinforces hegemonic messages, both within Muslim communities and in Canadian society. Thus, the moderate Muslim becomes a key player in enabling the state to render invisible its exclusion of the ‘Muslim Other,' while maintaining its non-racist credentials.     

Interview for the 9th Spanish Sociology Conference, 2007

Born in La Plata (Argentina) in 1939, Néstor García Canclini took his doctorate in the Humanities Faculty there, and, in 1978, obtained his doctorate in philosophy from the Université de Paris with a thesis on epistemology and history under the direction of Paul Ricoeur. He has resided in Mexico since 1976, and for many years was Director of the Program in the Study of Urban Culture at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana de Mexico. He has worked as a professor in the universities of Buenos Aires, San Pablo, Barcelona, Austin, Duke, and Stanford, and is the author of several books, some of which have become standard references in the field, such as Hybrid Cultures. In 2005, he was nominated by the French magazine Nouvel Observateur as one of the 25 most important world thinkers outside France.     

Devout Muslims or tough highlanders? Exploring attitudes toward ethnic nationalism and racism in Europe’s ethnic-Chechen Salafi communities

This is the first article that systematically deconstructs the idealised, widely shared view and formal self-representation of Salafis as a de-culturalised group of Muslim believers who are solely devoted to the idea of a uniform Muslim identity and are indifferent to the notions of ethnic nationalism and racism. Drawing on unique interviews with EU-based ethnic-Chechen émigré Salafis, the article illuminates the ways they draw boundaries and consequently construe their ethnic and racial identities as superior and opposed to Muslims stemming from the Middle East and Central Asia. Below the surface of coherent ideologically shaped self-representations, the diaspora Salafis’ identities reflect the idea of Chechnya’s mountainous topography being conducive to a superior ‘national mentality’, racial purity, and cultural uniqueness. Intriguingly, the diaspora-Chechen Salafis’ attitudes toward Middle Easterners and Central Asians employ a rhetoric which entails similarities with the notion of imagined geographies and to some extent resembles Western Orientalist discourse. In stark contrast to leading Salafi scholars’ statements emphasising a united Muslim identity, which are routinely echoed by outsiders, this article points out the maintenance of strong ethnic-nationalist and racist resentments amongst individual members of this religious community.     

The peasant matrix for nation building: an effective model? Some reflections on the Belarusian case

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the challenges and difficulties faced in using a peasant model to create a national matrix for Belarus. The sense of belonging to a nation generated by the ‘community of the soil’ [Foucher, M. (2007). L'obsession des frontières [Obsession of the Frontiers]. Paris: Perrin] has a special significance for ‘community of destiny’ [Weber, M. (1995). Économie et société: tome 2 [Economy and Society: vol. 2]. Paris: Plon] for the Belarusian nation in that Belarus is a peasant nation. ‘The peasantry is the most authentic expression of the relationship between a nation and its land; peasant customs become ethnic symbols and referents’ [Thiesse, A.-M. (1999). La création des identités nationales: Europe XVIII^e–XX^e siècles [The Creation of National Identities. Europe XVIII^th–XX^th centuries]. Paris: Seuil, 159]. By studying the origin of the sense of belief in a community, Weber (1995) notes that it may originate from the similarities of the exterior habitus [Bourdieu, P. (1964). Le déracinement [Uprooting]. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit] adaptation to external conditions, and imitation of a neighboring group. These assumptions are of significant importance for the study of Belarusian identity, an understanding of which cannot be reached without taking into account the fundamental role played by the peasantry in the history of Belarus. Historical analysis indeed bears out the importance of the peasant stratum in the Belarusian socio-political and identity structure. Many scholars insist on the fact that identity-building process are inherently territorial Foucher (2007), relating to the ‘soil’ of the nation [Balibar, E. (2005). Europe. Constitution. Frontière [Europe. Constitution. Frontier]. Paris: Editions du Passant], which is particularly important for peasant nations, as Belarusians.     

Je suis un Italien de Paris: Italian migrants’ incorporation in a European capital city

ABSTRACT

Italy has experienced a new wave of population outflows, in particular since the end of the 2000s, with France as one of the top destinations. This paper investigates the structural and socio-cultural integration of Italian migrants in Paris. The paper is based on a mixed-methods approach, using in-depth interviews, census data and an online survey. We found that the profile and incorporation patterns of post-crisis migrants reflects a long-term trend of middling migration out of Italy. Similar to other studies, we show that current Italian migrants are prevailingly highly skilled and employed in non-manual jobs. As for socio-cultural integration, the paper highlights the symbolic value of the host city, to which migrants are strongly attached. Moreover, the longer the Italian’s stay in Paris, the higher his/her integration in Italy-oriented activities, both within Paris and in Italy. This indicates a complex incorporation model that is at odds with assimilation but at the same time departs from ethnicised and community-based patterns. Italian migrants combine being both Parisian and Italian in a ‘synergistic balancing act’ (Erdal and Oeppen 2013. ‘Migrant Balancing Acts: Understanding the Interactions between Integration and Transnationalism.’ Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39 (6):867–884.) of integration and transnationalism.     

‘No more Turkish music!’ The acculturation strategies of teachers and ethnic minority students in Flemish schools

ABSTRACT

While considerable research has focused on the process and factors affecting acculturation, there is little research that investigates how members of minority and majority groups define acculturation in educational settings. Ethnographic research and qualitative interviews in three secondary schools in Flanders (Belgium) show that teachers and ethnic minority students have different ideas and expectancies regarding the concept ‘integration’, which appears to affect student–teacher relationship. Berry et al.’s [1989. “Acculturation Attitudes in Plural Societies.” Applied Psychology: An International Review 3 (2): 185-206. doi:10.1111/j.1464-0597.1989.tb01208.x.] acculturation orientations are used as a theoretical template to analyse teachers’ and ethnic minority students’ discourses about acculturation. Analyses reveal that students of immigrant descent perceive acculturation mainly in terms of the establishment of intergroup contact. In contrast, teachers find it harder to disconnect cultural maintenance from contact and participation. By suggesting some form of cultural adoption, teachers hope to socialise their ethnic minority students into the culture of the dominant ethnic group and prepare them for their future. These distinct interpretations of ‘integration’ in everyday life (which actually refers to acculturation) often leads to misunderstandings between ethnic minority students and their teachers, even to conflict, as many students feel that their cultural background is disparaged and not fully valued in school.     

Flexible ethnic identity,adaptation, survival,resistance: The Garifuna in the world-system

In this paper we examine flexible ethnic identity formation as a mechanism of accommodation and resistance deployed by a particular social group with origins in the periphery as they respond to changing political and economic forces in the world-system. This paper addresses criticisms that world-system analyses are ‘too macro’ or ‘structurally deterministic’ by examining on the ground action and responses by a local oppositional movement within its broad political and economic context. Its focus is an historical case study of a particular group of people whose origins lie in European colonial expansion into the Caribbean in the seventeenth century. The paper begins by recounting ethnographic reports of Garifuna origin myths, then sketches this group's forced incorporation in a colonial world-system (and their responses), discusses their assignment to ‘minority group’ status within newly independent Belize at about the same time they are establishing transnational communities via migration to the United States, and concludes with some thoughts on the emerging ‘virtual communities’ of Garifuna and indigenous peoples around the world that are emerging on the worldwide web today. We explore what the notion of ethnic identity means in this particular case, and how and why it changes over time. We also try to understand if this flexible identity, and the social movements that arise as it is redefined, can be understood as a form of ‘resistance’. Finally, we ask if diasporic identity movements of indigenous people, like the Garifuna, actually or potentially can contribute to rising challenges against the forces of contemporary ‘globalization’.     

‘Mixed’ Japanese-Filipino identities under Japanese multiculturalism

ABSTRACT

The ways in which multiculturalism is debated and practiced forms an important frame for ‘mixed’ ethnic identities to take shape. In this paper, I explore how young migrants of Japanese-Filipino ‘mixed’ parentage make sense of their ethnic identities in Japan. My key findings are that dominant discourses constructing the Japanese nation as a monoracial, monolingual and monoethnic nation leave no space for diversity within the definition of ‘Japanese’, creating the necessity for alternative labels like haafu or ‘mixed roots’. Japanese multiculturalism does not provide alternative narratives of Japaneseness but preserves the myth of Japanese racial homogeneity by recognizing diversity while maintaining ethnic and racial boundaries. Lastly, these categories have not been actively questioned by my respondents. Rather, they show flexibility in adopting these various labels – haafu, ‘mixed roots’, Filipino, Firipin-jin – in different contexts.