Islam, Migration and Integration: The Age of Securitization (Migration, Minorities and Citizenship)

Migration, Minorities and Citizenship General Editors: Zig Layton-Henry, Professor of Politics, University of Warwick; and Danièle Joly, Professor, Director, Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick Titles include: Muhammad Anwar, Patrick Roach and Ranjit Sondhi (editors) FROM LEGISLATION TO INTEGRATION? Race Relations in Britain James A. Beckford, Danièle Joly and Farhad Khosrokhavar MUSLIMS IN PRISON Challenge and Change in Britain and France Thomas Faist and Andreas Ette (editors) THE EUROPEANIZATION OF NATIONAL POLICIES AND POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION Between Autonomy and the European Union Thomas Faist and Peter Kivisto (editors) DUAL CITIZENSHIP IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE From Unitary to Multiple Citizenship Adrian Favell PHILOSOPHIES OF INTEGRATION Immigration and the Idea of Citizenship in France and Britain Agata Górny and Paulo Ruspini (editors) MIGRATION IN THE NEW EUROPE East-West Revisited James Hampshire CITIZENSHIP AND BELONGING Immigration and the Politics of Democratic Governance in Postwar Britain John R. Hinnells (editor) RELIGIOUS RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORAS From One Generation to Another Ayhan Kaya ISLAM, MIGRATION AND INTEGRATION The Age of Securitization Zig Layton-Henry and Czarina Wilpert (editors) CHALLENGING RACISM IN BRITAIN AND GERMANY Jørgen S. Nielsen TOWARDS A EUROPEAN ISLAM Pontus Odmalm MIGRATION POLICIES AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION Inclusion or Intrusion in Western Europe? Aspasia Papadopoulou-Kourkoula TRANSIT MIGRATION The Missing Link Between Emigration and Settlement

Jan Rath (editor) IMMIGRANT BUSINESSES The Economic, Political and Social Environment Carl-Ulrik Schierup (editor) SCRAMBLE FOR THE BALKANS Nationalism, Globalism and the Political Economy of Reconstruction Vicki Squire THE EXCLUSIONARY POLITICS OF ASYLUM Maarten Vink LIMITS OF EUROPEAN CITIZENSHIP European Integration and Domestic Immigration Policies Östen Wahlbeck KURDISH DIASPORAS A Comparative Study of Kurdish Refugee Communities

Migration, Minorities and Citizenship Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–333–71047–0 (hardback) and 978–0–333–80338–7 (paperback) (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and one of the ISBNs quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

Islam, Migration and Integration The Age of Securitization Ayhan Kaya

© Ayhan Kaya 2009 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his rights to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin's Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–51679–3 hardback ISBN-10: 0–230–51679–3 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kaya, Ayhan. Islam, migration and integration : the age of securitization / Ayhan Kaya. p. cm.—(Migration, minorities and citizenship) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–230–51679–3 1. Muslims – Europe. 2. Muslims – Cultural assimilation – Europe. 3. Europe – Ethnic relations. 4. Europe – Emigration and immigration – Social aspects. I. Title. D1056.2.M87K39 2009 305.6⬘97094—dc22 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

2008052853

For my beloved family: Marco, Kaan, Defne and Bianca

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Contents List of Figures

ix

List of Tables

x

List of Maps

xii

Acknowledgements

xiii

Preface

xiv

Introduction The overall socio-political context: the stigmatization of Islam Securitization of migration as a form of governmentality: migrants as anti-citizens Security sector: winners and losers Fortress Europe: ultra-politics of symbols Migrants in post-social state: from welfarism to prudentialism Management of ethno-cultural and religious diversity The scope of the study

1 4 7 11 14 24 28 36

1

Germany: from Segregation to Integration Hyphenated citizenship: German-Turks Anatomy of German-Turkish transnational space Habitats of meaning for German-Turks

39 45 52 57

2

France: from Integration to Segregation Stigmatization and statisticalization of illegal migrants Weakening of Egalitarian Republican rhetoric From assimilation to the Communautés Crisis of French universalism: affaire des foulard Banlieu riots: a quest for Republican resistance Puissance: the power of collectivity

62 67 70 75 78 81 88

3

Belgium: a Culturally Divided Land The migratory process in Belgium: From Gasterbeiders (guestworkers) to Vreemdelingen (foreigners) Diverse understandings of citizenship Integration of immigrants: Walloon and Flemish models Attitudes towards foreigners

93

vii

98 100 103 111

viii

Contents

4

The Netherlands: from Multiculturalism to Assimilation Pillarization (Verzuiling) and depillarization of Dutch society Fifth column: Islam in the Netherlands Muslims in the Netherlands: colonial legacy Ethnic minority policy Naar Netherlands (Coming to the Netherlands) Structural outsiderism among Muslims Dutch minority research industry

116 117 120 123 127 134 136 138

5

Building Communities: Comfort in Purity Making and unmaking communities ‘Imported’ brides and bridegrooms: search for purity Multiculturalism: a neo-colonial technique of governmentality The failure of republicanism and multiculturalism The need for political integration of migrants

141 142 147 152 155 161

6

Accommodation of Islam: Individualization vs. Institutionalization Religion and state in different countries Euro-Islam: politics of honour The individualization of Islam among younger generations Religion as a tool for emancipation: portable Islam The other side of the coin: institutionalization of Islam

168 168 177 180 187 194

Conclusion: Transnationalizing Integration Transnationalizing integration

201 207

Notes

210

Bibliography

223

Index

245

Figures 1.1 How often do you go to Turkey? 1.2 What is the purpose of your visits to Turkey? (More than one answer) 1.3 How often do you watch German/Turkish television channels? 1.4 How often do you use the internet? 1.5 How often do you read German/Turkish newspapers? 1.6 How often do you listen to German/Turkish Radio channels 3.1 Do you feel yourself affiliated closer with Belgium or Turkey? By region 3.2 Which identification suits you most? 4.1 Unemployed working population according to ethnic group and background characteristics (education), 2004. 5.1 Do you have German/French/Belgian citizenship? 5.2 Do you feel yourself affiliated closer with Germany/ France/Belgium or Turkey? 5.3 Which identifications suit you most? 5.4 Which identification suits you most? By Birthplace? 6.1 How do you define yourself with the following statements regarding your faith?

ix

56 57 58 58 59 60 112 113 137 164 165 166 166 185

Tables 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7

Net migration in western countries Estimates of Turkish migrant stocks worldwide Estimates of Moroccan migrant stocks worldwide A schematic account of the evolution of a liberal welfare regime Dominique Schnapper’s classification of German, French and British integration models Management models of cultural diversity Form of assimilation/integration in four countries Foreigners in Germany Germany’s Non-German population and Turkish minority Naturalization of German-Turkish population Naturalization of Turkish origin migrants and their descendants between 1980 and 2006 National origins of the Muslim population Population living in France according to nationality and place of birth, in 1999 Primary problems of Belgian-Turks in everyday life (Multi response) What is the primary problem you face in Belgium? By gender What is the primary problem you face in Belgium? By age groups What is the primary problem you face in Belgium? By social economic status Foreign population in Belgium, by region (2000–2007) Number of naturalized foreigners between 1996 and 2007 Number of naturalized Belgian-Turks between 1990 and 2006 Unemployment rates in Belgium of foreign-and native-born populations Population of the Netherlands including the volume of immigration and emigration Migration motives of non-Dutch migrants, 2003 Non-western allochthons in the Netherlands, 2004 Total population in the Netherlands in 2004 Population by origin and generation in the Netherlands, 1 January 2007 Number of the MVV applicants in the Netherlands in 2006 Labour market position of persons aged 15–64 years according to group of origin, 2003 x

20 21 22 27 30 34 35 41 42 48 49 64 73 97 97 98 98 100 105 105 107 117 121 124 125 126 135 137

Tables xi

5.1

What is the primary problem you are facing most in the host country as a Turkish person? 5.2 Would you agree with the idea of bringing brides and bridegrooms from Turkey? 6.1 How do you define yourself with the following statements regarding your faith? By birthplace? 6.2 Has your religious faith become stronger or weaker than before? By ages of intensive internet users (209 persons in total out of 400)

148 149 186

191

Maps 0.1 Recent migration routes 0.2 Armed forces routes in World War II

xii

16 17

Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to the Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA), the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBI˙TAK), and Istanbul Bilgi University Research Fund for their generous support for my ongoing research activities. I would like to express my gratitude to the King Baudouin Foundation for their generous support and friendship throughout the research process in Belgium. I am grateful to Saida Sakali, Françoise Pissart, Sami Zemni, Frieda Lampaert, Benoit Fontaine, Tom De Bruyn, Helena Vansyngel and Anne Bruwier for their continuing support and friendship. I am very grateful to Bianca Kaiser, Martin Greve, Ural Manço, Altay Manço, Adam Saligman, Susanne Stone, Ece Öztan and Tural Fincan who have given me support and academic insight. I am also thankful to the Open Society Institute, Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and EU Communication Group in Ankara for supporting the research in Germany and France. I want to thank Soli Özel, Lale Duruiz, S¸ule Kut, Aydın Ug˘ ur, Og˘ uz Özerden, Hakan Altınay, Umut Özkırımlı, Pınar Uyan, Taner Berksoy, Cathrine Campion, Gülten Kazgan, Nihal Incioglu, Nermin Abadan-Unat, Alan Duben, Nes¸e Erdilek, Gizem Kulekçioglu, Bas¸ak Tanülkü, Tutku Vardag˘lı, Fügen Ug˘ur, Emre Is¸ık, Erhan Dog˘an, Mehmet Eks¸i, Neco Çelik, Nihat Kentel, Rana I˙ren, Clémence Delmas, Joss Dray, Malika Chafi, Dominique Vital, Eric Mace, S¸irin Dilli, Verda I˙rtis, Sezgin Tüzün, Özge Onursal, Güls¸ ah Çapan, Senem Aydın, Annika Hinze, Burak Onaran and Stephene de Tapia for their continuous support throughout the entire research in Germany and France. I also thank Kerem Yavuz Demirbas¸ for drawing the maps for me. I want to express my gratitude to Suna Gökçe, Gülperi Vural, Refika Saldere for their support, friendship and valuable insights.

xiii

Preface I have always perceived Migration Studies as an interdisciplinary field providing me with the tools to scrutinize not only the life worlds of immigrants and their descendants, but also the ways in which the receiving countries have politically, socially, culturally, economically and legally changed over time vis-a-vis immigrant origin populations. This is why I have preferred to understand the transformation of the modern nation-state through the lens of Migration Studies. And I have chosen to try to grasp the changing habitats of meaning of migrants and minorities in order to actually comprehend majority societies. Although this book seems to be on Muslim origin migrants living in the West, it is actually not. This book is about the changing face of the nation-state in Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands at a time distinguished with (marked by) securitization, prudentialism, Islamophobia and violence. I claim that the fear of migrants and Muslims prevalent in the West cannot have material sources; it is in fact a constructed and fabricated fear, serving the interests of nation-states which are no longer equipped with the tools to redistribute justice and peace relatively equally. Migration has for a long time been a source of contentment and happiness for the West. But now it is seen as a source of instability and insecurity, or it is portrayed as such by parochial political elites as a form of governmentality to maintain their power. I have come to the conclusion that most of the controversies and debates on migration have essentially been designed to conceal the most persistent structural problems leading to inequality, poverty and discrimination. I also find it very worrying to see that migration is being very disapprovingly perceived at a time when net migration is becoming even (−) minus in most of the European Union countries. This book has written itself over the years in so many different places and occasions. Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, New York, London, Florence, Istanbul, Diyarbakir, Mersin, Bairut, Jerusalem, Nalchick and so on. Every single individual I met in the fieldworks, interviews, conferences, workshops and lectures have taught me a lot. All these journeys have given me the chance to learn from the act of migrating and travelling. I believe that the act of migration was my own Ithaca which gave me a ‘marvellous journey’, and I know that ‘without her I wouldn’t have set out’ as the prominent Greek poet Constantin P. Cavafy once said in his poem ‘Ithaca’. The whole journey was ‘full of adventure’ and ‘full of discovery’ ... Ayhan Kaya Istanbul

xiv

Introduction

This work is an attempt to compare and contrast the contemporary regimes of migration, integration and citizenship of Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands vis-à-vis Muslim origin immigrants and their descendants with a particular reference to a qualitative and quantitative research that I conducted on the Euro-Muslims in general, and Euro-Turks in particular, residing in those countries. As someone working on Turkish transnational communities in Germany since 1994 with a special focus on the ways in which German-Turkish youth cultures have incorporated themselves into the globalizing youth cultures, I decided to expand the research into a larger domain covering the construction and articulation processes of social, political and cultural identities of Turkish-origin immigrants living in Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The scope of research then covered the North African origin immigrants and their descendants as well. The research was composed of a variety of stages. The first stage was a comparative qualitative and quantitative research held by myself and a sociologist Ferhat Kentel from Istanbul Bilgi University in Germany and France between 2003 and 2005. The research included in-depth interviews and focus-group discussions, as well as 1,065 structured interviews with 90 questions in German, and 600 interviews in France. They were conducted in December 2003 and January 2004 by two local public-poll companies in Germany and France, with the involvement of Turkish-speaking university students who were also fluent in either German or French. The interviews were conducted in one of three languages (Turkish, German and French) depending upon the choice of the interviewees. The research team set up a quota sampling in both countries, paying particular attention to the density of Turkish-origin population in the urban space and the rural space. The quota sampling covered the variables of age, gender, occupation and region in order to obtain a representative picture of the Euro-Turks (Kaya and Kentel, 2005). The same kind of research with the same set of questions including a separate philanthropy section was later undertaken in Belgium with a sample of 400 structured interviews as well as in-depth interviews 1

2 Islam, Migration and Integration

and focus-group discussions (Kaya and Kentel, 2007). The research on the Dutch-Turks, which was conducted in the winter of 2007, consisted of only qualitative research techniques. In addition to the research on Euro-Turks, I also conducted research on other Muslim origin communities dwelling in each of the four countries. A separate research was held in the summer of 2006 in the banlieues outside Paris to inquire about the life worlds of the North African origin immigrants in France. A similar research was held in Belgium and the Netherlands in the winter of 2007. I also relied on the secondary literature to collect data on the North African origin immigrants settled in those countries. The research on the Euro-Turks has produced a very fruitful set of data to compare German, French and Belgian integration regimes, which respectively reflect ‘culturalist’, ‘civilizationalist’ and ‘culturalist-civilizationalist’ statecrafts.1 The book reveals the processes in which Muslim origin migrants and their children construct hyphenated identities in their countries of settlement. It shall be claimed that the hyphen between the two positionalities imbedded in, say ‘Euro-Muslim’ identity, has a great potential in delineating the contemporary political, cultural and economic subjectivities of those migrants of Muslim origin who are dwelling in a newly emerging transnational space between/beyond/above their countries of settlement and of origin. This book will, in fact, be a critical follow-up of the path-breaking book by Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationality in France and Germany (Routledge, 1992) in which he praised the republican regimes of citizenship, integration and migration in France, and heavily criticized those in Germany. Undoubtedly, he had evidential data to do so. However, since then things have changed to a great extent in both countries. Continuing urban violence in France raised by the North African origin Beurs since the early 1990s reveals that there are serious challenges to the deep-rooted republican understanding in the country. Whereas, the rise of the number of migrants of Turkish origin participating in social, political and economic processes in Germany indicates that Germany has changed for better during the coalition government of Social Democrats and Greens in the late 1990s and early 2000s. As known the French form of the republican ideal of integration was put into force in the aftermath of the French Revolution with the aim of manufacturing equal political citizens irrespective of ethnic, religious, racial and gender differences. The republican model was considered to be the answer to social and ethnic cleavages of the nineteenth century. However, the very same republican model is nowadays at stake, and it is being challenged by migrants of all origins such as Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian and Turkish. The Equalitarian model of the nineteenth century is now being called ‘assimilationist’ and ‘exclusionist’ by migrants and their children, and a polemical citizenship model to assimilate those arriving into the French civilizational project through language, Laïcité,

Introduction

3

modernism, state-centrism, Western-centric universalism, and rationalism. While cultural, ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity has usually been undermined in France, the institution of citizenship has been prioritized. Thus, one could claim that politically defined citizenship has always had a primary place over culture-specific nationality. However, civilizational discourse has always been implicitly embedded in the French republican model. To a certain extent, civilizational model refers to the imposition of a particularist European mode of thought on the newcomers originating from non-European space. Hence, integration refers to the acculturation of foreigners into the dominant French culture, which has a universalist claim. Acculturation in this respect means Franco-conformity, or assimilation into a particularist form of culture. On the other hand, dominant discourses of multiculturalism, cultural diversity and pluralism in Germany have recently led around three million German-Turks to represent themselves with their own ethno-cultural and religious identities in the public sphere. Such popular discourses, reinforced by the Social Democratic and Green coalition policies between 1994 and 2005, have also resulted in the political, economic, and cultural integration of German-Turks into all spheres of life. The number of parliamentarians of Turkish origin in the local, national and European Parliaments indicates that German-Turks politically integrate; the visibility of German-Turks in the cultural sphere also implies that Turks culturally integrate; and the rising amount of investment in the domestic economy by the German-Turks proves that Turks economically integrate too. These facts actually contradict the stereotypical belief in Germany that Turks do not integrate. On the contrary, Turks are integrated into German political, economic and cultural ways of life. This may be a result of the culturally differentialist features of incorporation policies in Germany, or of the existence of a large Turkish population in the country. However, there is an even larger population of North African origin in France who are not politically as integrated as the German-Turks. One could realize that the Social Democrat – Green coalition government has made the greatest impact in democratizing immigration and integration policies in a way that has changed Germany from a segregationist country into an integrationist country. Belgian and Dutch policies of migration, integration and citizenship will also be compared and contrasted in the same vein. Regional divergence of Walloon-Belgium and Flemish-Belgium will be detailed to underline the two separate traditions of integration and citizenship respectively resembling the difference between the civilizationist French model and the culturalist German model. Correspondingly, the present radical transformation of Dutch policies of integration and citizenship will be delineated to expose the reasons behind the scepticism demonstrated against deep-rooted multiculturalism. One should bear in mind that the world has been through a tremendous transformation in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War

4 Islam, Migration and Integration

since 1989. The changes in migration, integration and citizenship policies of Western European countries are highly influenced by structural and conjunctural changes prevailing in the world. These changes are namely stigmatization of Islam, securitization of migration, changing nature of security threats, the rise of Fortress Europe, changing character of racism, demise of welfare state, and rise of prudentialism. In what follows, the current global context will be delineated with respect to the aforementioned social and political changes.

The overall socio-political context: the stigmatization of Islam During the 1960s, migration was a source of content in Western Europe. More recently, however, migration has been framed as a source of discontent, fear and instability for nation-states in the West. What has happened since the 1960s? Why has there been this shift in the framing of migration? The answer to such questions lies in the very heart of the changing global social-political context. Undoubtedly, several different reasons such as de-industrialization, rising productivity, unemployment, poverty, exclusion, violence, supremacy of culturalism and neo-liberal political economy turning the uneducated and unqualified masses into the new ‘wretched of the earth’ to use Frantz Fanon’s (1965) terminology, can be enumerated to answer such critical questions. There have been some other events, which are specifically connected to the changing perception of migrants with Muslim background: Iranian Revolution (1979), Rushdie Affair (1989), Gulf War I (1990), Gulf War (1991), Bosnian War (1992), 9/11 (2001), Afghanistan War (2001), and the Gulf War II (2003), murder of Theo Van Gogh (2004), and Cartoon Crisis in Denmark (2006). All these events have, in one way or another, shaped both the ways in which Muslims have been perceived by the Western public, and the ways in which Muslims have comprehended the West. One should not also underestimate the influence of enormous demographic changes, led by the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc. 1989 signalled the beginning of a new epoch that resulted in massive migration flows of ethnic Germans, ethnic Hungarians, ethnic Russians and Russian Jews from one place to another.2 The post-Communist era has also brought about a process of re-homogenization in Western nation-states like Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands. Political instability and ethnic conflicts in the former Eastern Bloc (USSR and former Yugoslavia) on the other hand pushed some ethnic groups to emigrate to Western European countries in which they could find ethnic affinities. The mobility of millions of people has stimulated nation-states to ethnicise their migration policies in a way that approved the arrival of co-ethnic immigrants, but disapproved the status of existing immigrants with different ethno-cultural and religious backgrounds from that of majority society. Nation-states were not suitably equipped in the 1990s to absorb the spontaneous arrival of so

Introduction

5

many immigrants. This period of demographic change in Western Europe occurred in parallel with the rise of heterophobic discourses such as the ‘clash of civilisations’, ‘culture wars’, ‘religious wars’ and ‘Islamophobia’, as well as with the reinforcement of restrictive migration policies and territorial border security vis-à-vis the nationals of countries outside the European space. Richard W. Bulliet (2004) eloquently criticizes what ‘the clash of civilisations’ thesis has implicitly advocated: Since Jews, Christians, and Western secularists have named themselves as charter members of the civilisation club, the ideological or behavioural shortcomings, from the majority’s point of view, or this or that Jewish or Christian group do not impugn or threaten the civilisational inclusion of those religious traditions as a whole. Christianity and Judaism pass by definition the civilisational litmus tests proposed for Islam even though some of their practitioners dictate women’s dress codes, prohibit alcoholic beverages, demand prayer in public schools, persecute gays and lesbians, and damn members of other faiths to hell. Muslims of every stripe, on the other hand, stand accused of being party, by reason of religious belief, to the worst behaviours manifested by some groups of their coreligionaries ... . (Bulliet, 2004: 12) Muslims are increasingly represented by the advocates of the same thesis as members of a ‘precarious transnational society’, in which people only want to ‘stone women’, ‘cut throats’, ‘be suicide bombers’, ‘beat their wives’ and ‘commit honour crimes’. These precudiced perceptions about Islam have been reinforced by the impact of the previously stated events ranging from the Iranian Revolution to the Cartoon Crisis in Denmark in 2006. Recently, it has become inevitable for some people in the West to have the urge to defend the Western civilization against this ‘enemy within’, who is culturally and religiously dissimilar with the ‘civilized’ western subject. Samuel Huntington interpreted the Islamic resurgence as an attempt to counter the threat of Western cultural advance. He noted that the resurgence is a broad global movement that represents an effort to find solutions not in Western ideologies, but in Islam (Huntington, 1996: 110).3 Silvio Berlusconi, then the Italian Prime Minister, is one of those to have this urge: We are proud bearers of the supremacy of western civilisation, which has brought us democratic institutions, respect for the human, civil, religious and political rights of our citizens, openness to diversity and tolerance of everything ... Europe must revive on the basis of common Christian roots (The Guardian, London, 27 September 2001: 15) The American President George Bush’s speech regarding the ‘axis of evil’ (29 January 2002) was also perceived by the American public in particular as

6 Islam, Migration and Integration

an attempt to demonize ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ and the ‘enemies of freedom’ (Asad, 2003: 7). Although Bush as well as some European leaders like Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac, have stated repeatedly that the war did not represent a fight against Islam, the American public especially was highly engaged in deepening the Islam-bashing displayed very explicitly in the following speech of George Bush: Our military has put the terror training camps of Afghanistan out of business, yet camps still exist in at least a dozen countries. A terrorist underworld – including groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Jaish-i-Mohammed – operates in remote jungles and deserts, and hides in the centers of large cities ... First, we will shut down terrorist camps, disrupt terrorist plans, and bring terrorists to justice ... While the most visible military action is in Afghanistan, America is acting elsewhere. We now have troops in the Philippines, helping to train that country’s armed forces to go after terrorist cells that have executed an American, and still hold hostages. Our soldiers, working with the Bosnian government, seized terrorists who were plotting to bomb our embassy. Our Navy is patrolling the coast of Africa to block the shipment of weapons and the establishment of terrorist camps in Somalia ... Our second goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction. Some of these regimes have been pretty quiet since September the 11th. But we know their true nature. North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens ... Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people’s hope for freedom. Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility towards America and to support terror ... States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic. (George Bush, 29 January 2002)4 Similarly, Italian journalist and novelist Oriana Fallaci is another disputed figure, who generated a very contested discourse in the aftermath of September 11 vis-à-vis Muslims: ... I say: Wake up, people, wake up! ... You don’t understand, or don’t want to understand, that what is under way here is a reverse crusade. Do you want to understand or do you not want to understand that what is under way here is a religious war? A war that they call Jihad. A Holy War. A war that doesn’t want to conquest of our territories, perhaps, but certainly

Introduction

7

wants to conquer our souls ... They will feel authorized to kill you and your children because you drink wine or beer, because you don’t wear a long beard or a chador, because you go to the theatre and cinemas, because you listen to music and sing songs ... (Cited in Marranci, 2004: 108) This right-wing stream of reactions also echoed in other parts of the Western world. Dutch media presenter and politician Pim Fortuyn (2001) published a book entitled Against Islamization of Our Culture, in which he simply claimed Islam was a threat to Western civilisation. Islam has also been demonized by various scholars in a way that has radically changed its image in a global scale. Mohammad Waseem (2005: 3–5) addresses the writings of Manfred Halpern (1962), Stephen Schwartz (2002), Daniel Pipes (2002), Graham Fuller (2003), and Bernard Lewis (2004), who treat Islam as equal to fascism, violence, anti-modernism, irational, and incapable of human rights, democracy, modernity, and tolerance. He critically assesses contemporary Western orientalist thinking about Islam as (a) a discourse of essentialist difference reproducing the boundaries between the West vs. Islam; (b) a selective reading of fixed, timeless and classical religious texts rather than specific regional contexts, leading to treating Islam as a ‘undisciplined, medievalist and irrational force inherently disruptive of modern civilisation’; and (c) the metaphysics of terrorism, making Islamic militancy a self-propelling mechanism. After the strikes against the United States on 11 September 2001, the ‘Muslim’ became reified as the enemy of the state, as a regressive, violent, bloodthirsty and menacing fanatic: the typical terrorist. Corey Robin (2004) explicated very well the ways in which the Muslims and the Middle Easterners, especially Iraqis, were stigmatized by the Bush administration as ‘typical terrorists’ with reference to the anthrax scare in the wake of 9/11. Between October and November 2001, when the story broke, five people were killed by anthrax, and 18 others were infected with it. Government officials immediately hunted for signs that the attack originated in the Middle East, particularly Iraq. These incidents were providing the Bush administration with a good excuse to go after Iraq. However, nobody could find any evidence linking the anthrax attack with the Middle East. Later it was revealed that the perpetrator of the attack was probably a US citizen, with likely connections to the US military (Robin, 2004: 16–17). This example illustrates very well that fear can be politically fabricated by the administrators in order to legitimize some of their prospective actions in a way that leads to the securitization of migration.

Securitization of migration as a form of governmentality: migrants as anti-citizens The present usage of the term ‘security’ goes beyond its conventional limits. During the Cold War period, the notion of ‘security’ used to be defined in

8 Islam, Migration and Integration

political/military terms as the protection of a state’s boundaries, its integrity and its values against the dangers of a hostile international arena (Doty, 2000: 73). Nowadays, however, security concerns are not only reduced to protecting states against ideological and military threats: they are also related to issues such as migration, ethnic revival, religious revival (Islam), identity claims and sometimes supranational entities such as the EU. Lately, migration has been presented in the Western public space as a security threat that must be dealt with. One could argue that modern states tend to extend the fear of ‘migrants’ and ‘others’ by categorizing, stigmatizing and coupling migration together with major problems such as unemployment, violence, crime, insecurity, drug trafficking and human smuggling (Doty, 2000: 73; and Huysmans, 1998, 2006). This tendency is reinforced by the use of racist and xenophobic terminology that dehumanises migrants. One can see this racist tone in the terms such as ‘influx’, ‘invasion’, ‘flood’ and ‘intrusion’, which are used to mean large numbers of migrants. Issues have recently become security issues through a process of social construction, namely ‘securitisation’ (Doty, 2000: 73). As the main rationale of the security discourse seems to have shifted from protecting the state to protecting society, so protection of society against any kind of ‘evil’ has become the pillar of the security discourse in a way that has popularised the term security in all spheres of life. The securitisation of migration, or in other words stigmatization of migrants, became a vital issue after the 9/11 attacks in the United States and related ones in other places, notably Madrid (11 March 2004) and London (7 July 2005). Much of the response to these attacks has focused on immigration issues, even though the perpetrators of the bombings were mostly products of the ‘society’ they attacked (Collyer, 2006: 267). The categorization of those responsible as migrants seems to be a systematic attempt to externalize the structural failures produced by the social-political structure. The security discourse conceals the fact that ethnic/religious/identity claims of migrants and their reluctance to integrate actually result from existing structural problems of poverty, unemployment, discrimination, xenophobia, heterophobia, nationalism and racism. To put it differently, the public perception of migration as the principal source of present disorder masks the actual causes of the globalized socialpolitical discontent. It is likely that modern states tend to employ the discourse of securitization as a political technique that can integrate a society politically by staging a credible existential threat in the form of an internal, or even an external, enemy, an enemy that is created by security agencies (like the police and the army) by categorizing migration together with drug trafficking, human trafficking, criminality and terrorism (Huysmans, 1998, 2006). Immigration resulting from poverty and anti-democratic regimes in the countries of origin has become one of the principal worries of Western countries. Immigration has been defined as a threat, not to the survival of

Introduction

9

the state, but to societal security. This is in line with the way that Campbell (1992: 195) has conceptualized the role of ‘discourses of danger’, which in defining what to fear establishes a ‘we’ to carry these fears. The key principle of societal security is identity, and societal insecurity is defined as the identification by communities of threats to the survival of their community. Such discourses of danger seem to distance migrant communities from incorporating themselves into the political, social, economic and cultural spheres of life of majority society in a way that prompts them to invest in their ethno-cultural and religious identities. Ethnic and/or religious resurgence, which appears among some migrant groups as a reaction to poverty, unemployment, insecurity and institutional discrimination, seem to be decoded by the states as a challenge to societal, political, cultural and economic security, a challenge that must immediately be restrained (Weiner, 1993: 10–18). This work aims to reveal whether ethnic and religious revival among immigrants and their descendants with Muslim backgrounds should be translated as the reason for continuing problems such as xenophobia, discrimination and conflict, or as the outcome of these problems. Recent research on the securitisation of migration (Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde, 1998; Doty, 2000; Sassen, 2003; Huysmans, 2006; and Düvell, 2006) rightfully draws our attention to the fact that, at the official level, modern state institutions address only an insignificant correlation between undocumented migration and the problems of global poverty, debt, health, environment and unemployment fostered by the neo-liberal economic model (Sassen, 2003). The issue of the so-called illegal migrants has lately been picked up by Western political elite and state administrations as the very source of some endemic problems such as unemployment, violence, terror and some other social and cultural problems. The way illegal migration has been perceived also shapes the public perception of regular migrants. William Walters (2006) eloquently reveals that nowhere in the official programmes of anti-illegal immigration appear the complex histories of Fortress Europe’s economic, geopolitical, colonial and postcolonial entanglement in the regions and borderlands, which it now designates as ‘countries of transit’ and ‘countries of origin’. Instead, we are presented with an external force of ‘illegal immigration’, rooted in regional disorder, for which the EU is then positioned as a benign framework of protection and prevention. Unlike other scholars working on the securitization of migration who rather tend to privilege popular/media discourse and political rhetoric, Walters is more interested in examining how the domain of official policy documents is constitutive of particular identities and objects with regard to the seuritization of the so-called illegal migrants. Anti-illegal immigration activity operates as a technology of anticitizenship portraying those to be excluded from citizenery (Inda, 2006), and implies crucial issues of belonging, identity, inclusion and exclusion. It is surely an arena much in need of such attention. Inda (2006: 53) addresses

10 Islam, Migration and Integration

the following kinds of people as anti-citizens picked up by the state to be excluded: petty criminals, muggers, prostitutes, pimps, the homeless, gang members, drug offenders, murderers, illegal migrants, refugees, and the like. The archetype of this anti-citizen is the North African in France, the Turk in Germany, Belgium or the Netherlands, and African-American or Latino in the United States. In this regard, one could argue that both securitization of migration and anti-illegal immigration activities, techniques and programmes serve as a form of governmentality in the interest of the political authority. Governmentality refers to the practices which characterize the form of supervision a state exercises over its subjects, their wealth, misfortunes, customs, bodies, souls and habits. Foucault’s modern ‘administrative state’ is based on the idea of a ‘society of regulation’ which differs from ‘the state of justice’ of the Middle Ages which was built on the idea of a ‘society of laws’ (Foucault, 1979: 21).5 Similarly, Didier Bigo (2002) eloquently explains the ways in which the act of governmentality operates in relation to the foreigners: Proliferation of border controls, the repression of foreigners and so on, has less to do with protection than with a political attempt to reassure certain segments of the electorate longing for evidence of concrete measures taken to ensure safety Governmentality is the art of governing a population rather than a territory. The deterritorialization, uprootedness, decoding, transnationalization that accompany the flows of globalization raises the issue of the definition of the society in need of self-protection. Doty (1999: 597) draws our attention to the fact that the tension identified in governmentality, which underlines the well-being of the population, is important because immigration raises the question ‘who is to be considered the population’. Then, Roxanne Doty (1999) rightfully argues that the immigrant, the stranger, the excluded, the one who does not belong to the prescribed national unity is ideologically portrayed by the conventional and culturalist elite as the ‘enemies within’. That line of thinking which excludes those who do not culturally, ethnically and religiously belong, presumes the immigrant against whom the nation, the population, should be redefined. This is a kind of neo-racism, ‘which functions as a supplement to the kind of nationalism that arises from the blurring of boundaries and the problematizing of national identity that the deterritorialization of human bodies gives rise to’ (Doty, 1999: 597). From late 1970s, the discourse on immigration focused on the immigrant as anti-thetical to the interests of the nation-state, and since the early 1980s it has become commonplace to hear that migration is a threat to national identity. The architects of the EU policies regarding justice and home affairs described first in the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 and then in the Amsterdam

Introduction

11

Treaty of 1997 have indeed contributed to a ‘discourse of othering’. As is known the EU has created an area of ‘Freedom, Security and Justice’ in order to protect the member states from the increasing ‘intrusion’ of the so-called illegal immigration.6 Referring to Jacques Rancière and Slavoj Zizek, Walters (2006) states that the leaders of the EU countries engage in a kind of ‘ultrapolitics’, which frames anti-illegal immigration activities as a battle between ‘us and them’, with sometimes a struggle to death. Framing the issue as such puts it outside the space of dialogue and forecloses the possibility of politics and citizenship.

Security sector: winners and losers One of the areas of migration policy most frequently characterized by scholars, columnists, politicians, security agents and bureaucrats is migration control – understood as policies to exclude irregular migrants or other unwanted foreign nationals through entry restrictions, border control, apprehension, detention and deportation. It seems that the threat of terrorism provided a pretext for the more rigorous exclusion of immigrants through these instruments of migration control. Stigmatization and securitization of migration, especially of ‘illegal’ migration, in the aftermath of 9/11, has prompted the states to invest more in the protection of national borders against the ‘intrusion of illegal immigrants’. The states have been investing immensely in an impressive array of policing technologies – personnel (Border Patrol agents), material structures (fences and lights), and surveillance devices (helicopters, ground sensors, TV cameras, and infrared night vision scopes) – at the borders in order to keep undocumented immigrants out of the land. Inda (2006) explicates very well in detail the ways in which the US-Mexican border has been protected with the assistance of all that hi-tech surveillance. However, statistics indicate that there is a negative correlation between the militarization of the US-Mexican border and the volume of ‘illegal migration’. Saskia Sassen reveals that further securitization of the borders does not bring about what the government aims at: Many of the facts are by now familiar, but some are not. After 15 years of increased militarizing of the border, we have an all-time high in the estimated unauthorized immigrant population (ca. 12 million). The annual INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service] budget rose from $200 million in 1996 to $1.6 billion in 2005. The number of Border Patrol officers increased from 2,500 in the early 1980s to around 12,000 today ... Before 1992, the cost of making one arrest along the US-Mexico border stood at $300; by 2002, that cost had grown by 467% to $1,700 and the probability of apprehension had fallen to a forty year low, despite massive increases in spending on border enforcement. Finally, the escalation of border control has raised the risks and costs of illegal crossing, which in

12 Islam, Migration and Integration

turn has changed a seasonal circulatory migration – with workers leaving their families behind – into a family migration and long-term stays. The Border study established that in the early 1980s, about half of all undocumented Mexicans returned home within 12 months of entry. By 2000 the rate of return migration stood at just 25%. In brief, the results were the opposite of what the government aimed at: border militarization did not reduce the probability of illegal crossings on the US/Mexico border, forced unauthorized immigrants to stay longer than they wanted and to bring their families even when they would rather not. (Sassen, 2006: 6–7) The use of surveillance technologies in the United States by the former INS dates back to the 1970s and 1980s when low-light video cameras and portable electronic detection ground sensors were used at the border. In 1997, the INS developed the ‘Integrated Surveillance Intelligence System’ (ISIS) which deployed motion, infrared, seismic and magnetic sensors; some 13,000 ground sensors were deployed by 2000. The seismic and infrared sensors can detect motion and heat within a 50-foot radius and the metal sensors have a 250-foot range. When combined with remotely controlled video cameras that have a five mile radius, border patrol agents can detect clandestine entries, train cameras on illegal migrants and smugglers, determine their numbers and whether they are carrying weapons and then dispatch the appropriate patrols (Daté, 2000). The United States government is spending almost two billion dollars a year to militarize border control with such high-tech surveillance and protection systems (Sassen, 2006). The fact that the number of so-called illegal immigrants arrested has not increased as much as the volume of expenditure on the border security technologies brings up some critical issues. First, INS budget has mainly benefited the makers and sellers of armaments and surveillance technology. Sassen (2006: 7) draws attention to the lobbying efforts of armament makers7 and large corporate employers in agri-business, meat-packing and other sectors known to employ significant number of unauthorized immigrants. Second, compared to the rapidly rising number of border patrol agents, there is a very minimal number of INS inspectors and green card processors. While more than 10,000 patrol agents survey the Mexican border, less than 100 patrol the worksites in the whole country to spot the ‘illegal migrant workers’ who are desperately needed by employers (Romellón, 2006). This discrepancy in fact implies that the US government is not really interested in controlling immigration. If real immigration control had been wanted, employer penalties for hiring undocumented workers could have been pursued more effectively. One should not forget that unauthorized labour migrants come not only because they want to but because they are wanted, if not by everyone, at least by a large number of employers and firms in labour intensive industries like agriculture, construction, low-tech manufacturing, and services. Besides, declining domestic fertility leads to slower labour-force growth; an

Introduction

13

increasingly educated US workforce is reluctant to accept menial jobs; and basically industry desires cheaper workers (Portes, 2007). And consequently, one should not also underestimate that smuggling has become very much professionalized in the wake of border militarization. This is why the probability of apprehension went down to 21 per cent in the last years (Portes, 2007: 27). Sassen rightfully argues that there are winners and losers in the border security policy framing: The winners include armament makers, some large corporate employers in particular sectors of the economy, various types of lobbies, employers of undocumented immigrants generally insofar as employers’ sanctions are not seriously enforced, and the growing numbers of smugglers whose fees and whose business have increased sharply as our policies have made border crossing more difficult and risky. The losers include citizens whose taxes are paying for a far larger and costlier border control operation that is not even reducing illegal crossings ... The losers also include the migrants themselves whose crossings have become far more difficult, dangerous, sometimes deadly ... They also include the INS inspectors who have not seen sharp increases in their numbers and resources to enforce employers’ sanctions ... (Sassen, 2006: 7–8) Compared to the United States, the EU is spending a modest amount of money to improve controls over the flow of people across 91,000 km of land and sea borders, and to provide better consular services abroad. The amount reserved in the External Borders Fund for these purposes in 2007 was €170 million.8 The EU can certainly learn something negative from the US border control policy and how not to do it. Apparently, the EU is more sensitive in trying to reveal the actual sources of illegal migration mostly originating from Africa in the last two decades. In an international meeting held in Burkino Faso, the EU and African governments set out plans to improve job opportunities in the African regions with the highest outward migration. The EU promised to provide these countries with education and training programmes focused on local needs. Accordingly, the EU is now working to establish a number of ‘job centres’ throughout Africa. These offices are expected to warn migrants of the hardships and disappointments in illegal migration as well as providing them with job training, helping with transferring money from diaspora, and finding them job opportunities in the domestic labour market (Kroeger, 2007). The first EU Job Centre is expected to open in Mali in 2008 in order to promote legal and temporary immigration from Africa.9 Besides, the EU remains the world’s largest donor of Official Development Aid (ODA), accounting for almost half of the global total. In 2006, the EU spent €48 billion, the equivalent of 0.42 per cent of gross national income, compared with 0.17 per cent in the United States and 0.25 per cent in Japan (Brady, 2008: 10).

14 Islam, Migration and Integration

The borders of the EU record approximately more than 300 million crossings per year around 1,700 checkpoints. The EU’s border agency, Frontex, is responsible for coordinating border control across most of Europe. Frontex has 21 airplanes, 27 helicopters and 116 boats to deploy in an emergency (Brady, 2008: 8). However, there is also a groundless way of managing the border controls in the European area. The EU Council’s Border Programme placed a strong emphasis on maritime borders in June 2002, and decided that the southern European countries would not bear the cost of this alone. Nor would they be solely responsible for patrolling their own coastlines. An EU coastal police force was also generated in embryonic form via the maritime border project ‘Ulysses’. In 2003 joint coastal patrols of the Mediterranean between Algeciras and Palermo were launched. Ships from Spain, Britain, France, Italy and Portugal patrolled sections of Europe’s Mediterranean coastline with the aim of detaining and deterring the hundreds of small, overloaded boats that headed north from the African coast. It was the first time that the EU member states had acted in this way – and the result was an unqualified failure in 2003. While the operation overspent its €1.2 million budget, it failed to stop one single ‘illegal’ boat (Independent, 11 March 03). Regarding operational cooperation in addition to the operation of ‘Ulysses’, there have been a considerable number of joint operations and projects (such as ‘Triton’, ‘Rio III and IV’, ‘Nettuno I’, ‘Nettuno II’, ‘Semper Vigilia I’ and ‘Semper Vigilia II’ in 2003 and 2004) in which land and/or sea border guard services from several Member States have participated (Monar, 2006). The Hague programme on the strengthening of the area of freedom, security and justice, which was approved by the European Council on 4 November 2004, underlines the importance of financial solidarity and takes a further step in this direction.10 In May 2005 the Commission proposed a total of €2.152 billion for this fund over the period 2007–2013. This proposal implies the willingness of the European Commission to invest a vast amount of money on the installation of freedom, security and justice, and thus on the protection of external borders. One could not do without asking the question: if the hi-tech surveillance systems do not bring about expected results, then why do the states go on investing so much money in the securitization of borders? Is it because securing the borders is basically to prosper the agents of the security sector? Perhaps, not only that! In investing in the protection of borders, governments also ensure that the masses would be mobilized along with their policies. It turns out to be an efficient form of governmentality as ‘borders are privileged sites for the articulations of national distinctions’, and thus, of national belonging (Sahlins, 1989: 271).

Fortress Europe: ultra-politics of symbols Given the importance of regional cooperation on migration control it is also worth briefly considering how the linkage between migration and terrorism

Introduction

15

was treated in political rhetoric at the EU level. The Council of Ministers in the area of Justice and Home Affairs held extraordinary meetings following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, as well as those of 11 March 2004 in Madrid and 7 July 2005 in London. In their 20 September 2001 Declaration, the Council did state the need to ‘strengthen controls at external borders’; but the only explicit linkage to migration was the ‘risk of large-scale population movements as a result of heightened tensions following the attacks on the US’.11 In the meeting held on 19 March 2004 in the aftermath of the Madrid bombings there was again a reference to ‘strengthening border controls’, and the initiative to create ‘an integrated borders management agency’ was mentioned as relevant to counter-terrorism activities. But migration control was not otherwise mentioned, except in the context of the problem of support for religious extremism amongst members of EU countries,12 a theme that received greater attention in the statement following the London bombings. EU discussions on migration policy, meanwhile, continued to follow the timetable and goals set out in the European Council conclusions that pre-dated 9/11. Migration control remained high on the list of priorities, but the explicit rationale for this focus was the need to combat trafficking, and better protect Europe’s external borders from unwanted immigration. Previously, the Schengen Treaty (1985) was signed by the EU countries to abolish the internal borders within the Union, to reinforce the external borders against illegal migration, human smuggling, drug trafficking and organized crime, to create a buffer zone with the neighbouring countries, to pursue a common visa policy, and to form an Information System amongst the contracting parties. Starting with five member states, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, the Schengenland has now reached 24 countries including the two non-EU countries, Norway and Iceland. Similarly, the most significant European Council document emerging from the period after 2001, The Hague Programme, again failed to draw a link between terrorism and migration control. It stressed the need for better managed migration in order to prevent ‘humanitarian disasters’ – but again, migration control was not defined as a means of excluding potential terrorists.13 The problem lies in the very nature of the EU, which has gradually become like a territorial state over the last 20 years. In this regard, maps, media images and statistics become influential ideological tools contributing to the production of a sterile European space free of others who are ethnoculturally and religiously different. For instance, maps displaying the routes undertaken by ‘illegal migrants’ to get into the EU, have been employed as ideological tools in order to territorialize the European space in a way that permits the European subject to internalise the territorial Europe easily. Maps can also frame others as enemies. This is the most cunning and radical version of ultra-politics. As Slavoj Zizek (1998) defines it, this is ‘an attempt to de-politicise conflict by way of bringing it to an extreme, via the

Map 0.1 Recent migration routes

Map 0.2 Armed forces routes in World War II

18 Islam, Migration and Integration

direct militarisation of politics: the “foreclosed” political returns in the real, in the guise of the attempt to resolve the deadlock of the political conflict, by its false radicalisation, that is by way of reformulating it as a war between “Us” and “Them”, our Enemy, where there is no common ground for symbolic conflict.’ What is the difference between the two maps? The former (Map 0.1) displays the east-west and south-north migration routes while the latter (Map 0.2) shows the movement of armed forces during World War II. Both maps present the direction of threats coming from somewhere and heading for another destination. Migrants and armed forces are perceived as identical challenges in the imagery of individuals. In other words, maps make objects visible. As Susan Bassnett contends (1993: 43), the map-makers are engaged in a process of manipulation rather than of objective and faithful representation. Then, maps certainly offer powerful evidence of an ideologically motivated re-organization of geographical space. Maps are ideological installations. On the one hand, they portray accumulated modern understandings of how the world should be represented (i.e., the Arctic is on top and Antarctica on the bottom), but they also portray more specific ideological or cultural narratives. For instance, for European students, the maps they have on the walls of their classrooms, with the Europe front and centre, are ‘correct’ maps. These maps lead Europeans to construct an ethnocentric perspective, locating Europe in the very centre of the World. On the contrary, the maps that Japanese students draw, have Japan front and centre, and Europe on the far-left of the map.14 There are other tools operating in the same way: surveys, reports, newspaper columns, statistics, pictures, numbers, charts and graphs. All these routine tools render things into visible, calculable and programmable forms. These are all the mundane tools operating to demonstrate the phenomenon of migration as a threat to national, societal and cultural security of a given territory. Similarly, the dominant regimes of representation are performed in a way that migrant groups, or their descendants, are stereotypically perceived and represented by the majority media. To illustrate these dominant regimes of representation, a brief examination of some of the media and ‘scientific’ works produced in Germany is quite revealing. Der Spiegel (14 April 1997), a prominent liberal weekly magazine, denounced the ‘foreigners’ in the country as ‘dangerously alien’ and as the cause of the failure of the ‘multicultural society’. In the magazine, Turkish youths in Germany were presented as ‘criminals’, ‘fundamentalists’, ‘nationalist’ and ‘traumatic’. A similar trend to the media coverage of the Turks in Germany was also exhibited in academia. Wilhelm Heitmeyer et al. (1997), who was referred to in the Der Spiegel article, has become a polemical name after the publication of his book on the German-Turkish youth, Verlockender Fundamentalismus (Enticing Fundamentalism), in which he concluded that it is the Turks who are not tempted to integrate and incorporate themselves into the system. His main

Introduction

19

criterion in declaring the self-isolationist tendency of the Turkish-origin youths was their contentment to live with Islam and Turkishness.15 The process of ‘othering’ of migrants in public imagery is also apparent in the ‘statisticalising’ of illegal migrants through the use of a variety of numerical technologies such as statistics, population, counts, demographic trends, economic forecasts, and the like. Statistical data on illegal migrants usually draw security forces’ attention to refugees and asylum seekers originating from Third World countries, who often travel in those ‘boats’ and ‘trucks’ that have become indispensable scenes in our daily news media. However, there have recently been some studies that have examined and decoded some of these data, and they reveal that most of the so-called illegal migrants are not actually those ‘boat people’, or ‘truck people’ suffering inhuman conditions. Instead, the figures actually hide ‘overstayers’, who go on staying in countries even after their visas expire (Walters, 2006). Interestingly enough, most of the illegal migrants in Australia are British overstayers, whilst it is the Americans in the United Kingdom, not the Africans or Asians. Frank Düvell (2006) cites studies that suggest that for all the media frenzy generated by images of boats emptying desperate travellers on Italy’s islands and shores, only 10 per cent of the irregular migrant population arrived in Italy on boats (Düvell, 2006: 17).16 Statisticalizing of migration has apparently given ‘illegal’ immigration visibility as a phenomenon of ‘great’ magnitude. Words such as ‘flood’, ‘invasion’ and ‘out of control’ have often been used to characterize the flow of ‘illegal’ migrants all around the world. Politicians, journalists and sometimes scholars17 have picked up and reported on the enumeration of ‘illegal’ migrants as a challenge to be tackled. A comparative study of parliamentary discourse in various Western European countries (France, the Netherlands, Austria, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom) it was revealed that: Refugees are [...] primarily seen as a financial burden, and virtually never as an opportunity for the country. They tend to be associated with illegality, if not with crime, and in many other respects are represented in negative ways. Politicians, in their parliamentary speeches, will thus on the one hand present themselves as tolerant and understanding, but more often than not their speeches will more subtly or blatantly convey the idea that refugees are not welcome in Europe. The same is true for debates about residing minority groups within the country. Except from a few notable antiracist voices, the discourse of the political elites thus confirms and reformulates the broader antiforeigner sentiments in the European Union. (Wodak and van Dijk, 2000: 10–11) Immigrant-bashing has become a popular sport by ministers, politicians, media specialists and even prime ministers in the EU as well as in other parts of the world. Today, hostile language, offensive language, racist

20 Islam, Migration and Integration

statements, and anti-immigrant policy propositions or real measures take place every day in the news. Conversely, aggressive language and threats directed against politicians who are perceived to be at fault, for whatever reason, have spread as well. The language of hatred replaces the language of dialogue. Another important issue to be underlined with respect to the perception of migration by the public as a substantial threat is the way in which the phenomenon of migration is being discussed in international documents, basically highlighting statistics, the demographic deficit and the labour deficit of the West, rather than addressing the social, cultural and humanitarian aspects of migration. Referring to the UN Report on Replacement Migration (1997), one could argue that within these kinds of reports, migration is problematized and statisticalized through its probable impact on total fertility rates and potential support ratios against a space of demographic and social processes (Walters, 2006). Within this discursive space, the question of Europe’s security is framed not in terms of dangerous flows transgressing its borders, but as the challenge of declining fertility rates and their consequences for economic productivity and the sustainability of welfare systems. One should also keep in mind that ‘immigrant-bashing’ is becoming a social sport at a time when net migration is close to becoming negative in several countries, including France, Germany, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands (Table 0.1). There are already some concerns in the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands, for instance, which reveal that these countries are likely to face a remarkable demographic problem very soon due to the decreasing fertility rate, increasing emigration and rising racism and xenophobia. For instance, the figures display that the number of people immigrating to the Netherlands increased by 9,192 from 2005 Table 0.1

Net migration in western countries

Country Netherlands Denmark Germany United Kingdom Italy Austria Norway Sweden European Union France

Net migration (per 1,000 people) 2.63 2.50 2.18 2.17 2.06 1.91 1.72 1.66 1.60 1.52

Source: 2007 CIA World Factbook.

Country Belgium Spain Czech Republic Finland Cyprus Russia Turkey Poland Latvia Estonia

Net migration (per 1,000 people) 1.22 0.99 0.97 0.78 0.42 0.28 0.00 −0.46 −2.26 −3.46

Introduction

21

to 2006. In 2005 the number of immigrants who settled in the country was 92,297. In 2006 the number was 101,489. The increase is attributed mostly to Dutch emigrants returning home, as well as the influx of new EU citizens coming from Eastern Europe, particularly from Poland. However, in 2005, the number of people who emigrated from the Netherlands was 92,297. In 2006, the number was 132,682 – an increase of 40,385 (Statistics Netherlands). One of the reasons for the rising emigration numbers could possibly be attributed to lower housing prices and attractive mortgage taxes in neighbouring countries such as Belgium and Germany. Similarly, there is also an increase in the number of German citizens who have recently left Germany to settle in other countries. It is reported that in 2006, 155,300 German citizens emigrated, the highest number of emigrants since 1954.18 The migration experiences of EU member states can be described by various categories. Dynamic immigration countries are those rapidly adding to their already elevated stock at net immigration rates of around eight per 1,000 per year. As seen from Table 0.2, recently there is no country as such in the EU. Classic immigration countries such as Austria, Belgium, Sweden, Germany, France, and the Netherlands have low but positive immigration rates of around two per 1,000 per year. And legacy immigration countries

Table 0.2 Estimates of Turkish migrant stocks worldwide

Country

Turkish Citizens

Country

Germany France Netherlands US UK Northern Cyprus Austria Saudi Arabia Switzerland Australia Denmark Greece Canada Belgium Sweden I˙srael Russian Federation Norway

1,738,831 423,471 364,333 250,000 52,893 31,977 113,635 120,000 73,861 64,500 54,859 48,880 41,000 39,664 63,580 30,000 22,808 15,356

Azarbaijan I˙taly Romania Kazakistan Lebanon Finland Turkmenistan Japan United Arab Emirates Afghanistan Kyrgizistan Kuwait Dubai Poland Jordan Syria Libya Others

Total Source: Turkish Ministry of Labour and Social Security as of 31 December 2006.

Turkish Citizens 16,000 14,124 12,000 9,593 7,748 7,000 7,000 6,309 5,484 4,500 3,380 3,260 3,000 2,500 2,500 2,350 1,350 35,375 3,693,121

22

Islam, Migration and Integration

(Poland, Estonia, Latvia) have experienced a large influx of migrants in the historic (Soviet) past but are now experiencing modest net emigration of around one-three per 1,000 per year (Brücker and Weizsäcker, 2007). This fact also makes the securitization of migration a rather nonsensical process. One can recall how conservative political circles raised the ‘Polish plumber’ issue in France on the eve of the European Constitutional referendum on 29 May 2005.19 The French Society of Plumbers revealed that the total

Table 0.3

Estimates of Moroccan migrant stocks worldwide Population registered in Moroccan consulates (2002)

Year

Source

1,024,766

1999

Netherlands Belgium Germany Spain

276,655 214,859 99,000 222,948

2005 2000 2000 2005

Italy

287,000

2004

30,000 17,000 13,593 2,185,821 85,000

2000 — —

IOM 2003:217 (French census; only Moroccan nationals) Statistics Netherlands IOM 2003:101 IOM 2003:33 Ministry for Employment and Social Affairs, Spain Istituto Nazionale di Statistica Collyer 2004 — —

2000

70,000 155,000 120,000 63,000 16,414 11,973 8,359 12,216 231,962 —

— — — — — — — — — 2005

Country France

UK Scandinavia Other Europe US Canada North America Libya Algeria Tunisia Saudi Arabia UAE Other Arab Arab countries Israel Sub-Saharan Africa Other countries Total

5,355 3,959

— —

US Census Bureau (only Moroccan nationals) — — — — — — — — — Total immigration 1948–2003 (CBS Israel) — —

2,581,557

Source: Hein de Haas (2005), ‘Morocco: From Emigration Country to Africa’s Migration Passage to Europe’, Migration Information Source (October), available at http://www.migrationinformation. org/Profiles/display.cfm?ID=339, entry 21 May 2007.

Introduction

23

number of plumbers of Polish origin in France at that time was only 140 at that time, which was an insufficient number to challenge the domestic labour market (Cited in Rybin´ski, 2006). And one should not also deny that modern times make it possible that British, or German, plumbers prefer to operate in the Spanish, or Turkish, Riviera. Stereotypically casting migration and emphasizing its disruptive consequences, the media also play a role in the securitisation process of migration. Migration is often presented as an imagined alien enemy that undermines a society’s culture, saps its scarce resources, steals its jobs and introduces alien customs and religions (Shapiro, 1997: 1). Furthermore, recent scholarship aiming to contribute to the de-securitisation of migration in the European space has become particularly critical of both the contemporary state of European studies and of migration studies. Scholars who are critical of the securitization of migration show disapproval of mainstream European studies because they happen to believe that European studies researchers have recently generated a clientalist relationship with the EU Directorate General for Education and Culture, and have thus partially lost their objective and critical gaze. They also happen to believe that there is a similar clientalist relationship between migration studies researchers and the institutions of individual European nationstates, as well as the EU institutions. European studies and migration studies both seem to contribute to the securitization and statisticalisation of migration, and thus to neglect the social, political, cultural and economic gains that migrants are likely to bring to receiving societies. Such studies have also become more stagnant and conservative in a way that underlines the notion of preventing the national, social, ethnic and ‘racial’ body from becoming ‘polluted’ and ‘contaminated’. It seems that the modern state is now more concerned with the protection of the social and cultural body of the nation in order to keep it ‘sterile’ from contamination by cultural and religious differences.20 This book claims that Migration Studies has recently become a field contributing to the production of modern technologies of governmentality made use of by the state in fighting against all kinds of immigrants, be they legal or illegal, who are believed to be challenging national, societal and cultural unity. Migration Studies no longer underlines enough the positive impact of migrants on the majority society. It is no longer a common inclination to refer to the works of Georg Simmel (1971), George Herbert Mead (1934), Jean Baudrillard (1993), Stuart Hall (1989), Jacques Derrida (1976) and Emmanuel Levinas (1986, 1987, 1998) who attach importance to ‘the other’, ‘the stranger’, ‘the significant other’, or ‘the migrant’. It is not very often that we hear the echoes of what Baudrillard stated once: the other is what allows us not to repeat ourselves forever (Baudrillard, 1993: 174). One could also argue that the condition of existence of every identity is the affirmation of a difference, the determination of an ‘other’ that is going to play the role of

24 Islam, Migration and Integration

a ‘constitutive outside’. Migrants’ fundamental unconnectedness with the majority society provides them with the specific attitude of objectivity that is a particular structure composed of distance and nearness, and indifference and involvement. Georg Simmel defines the stranger as a potential wanderer who unites two opposite terms, namely liberation and fixation, in his/her personality. The stranger is not the wanderer who comes today and goes tomorrow, but instead who stays tomorrow. Objectivity is by no means non-participation or detachment but a positive and specific kind of participation (Simmel, 1971/1908: 145). The stranger is a constitutive element of the group itself – an element that is both inside and outside the group. The stranger develops a unity of closeness and remoteness in her/his human relationships. As Simmel (1971/1908: 143) pointed out, the distance within this relationship indicates that one who is close by becomes remote, but his/ her strangeness indicates that one who is remote becomes near. Although the stranger is excluded, and distances himself/herself, from the receiving society, s/he imports qualities into it, which do not spring from the group. Accordingly, his/her distance to the group itself enables him/her to develop an objectivity. On the contrary, the discipline of Migration Studies has recently started to operate as an ideological discipline producing a kind of knowledge that constructs illegal migrants, and sometimes legal immigrants too, as a threat to labour market, national culture, societal security, and to the overall wellbeing of the social body. Such a kind of knowledge contributes to the portrayal of immigrants as lawbreakers, criminals, job takers, public burdens, and now terrorists (Inda, 2006). Social scientists as well as bureaucrats, policy analysts, politicians and the popular press implicitly, or sometimes explicitly, act as ideological actors in reducing the structural problems arising out of the demise of the welfare state, deindustrialization, and globalization, to the migrants’ challenging the unity and the purity of the nation. The way migrants and Muslims are recently being perceived in the West takes me to suggest that the road from national purity and genius to racism is relatively direct.

Migrants in post-social state: from welfarism to prudentialism The fact that migrant communities and their descendants form their own ethno-religious based solidarity networks in their countries of settlement seems to be encouraged by the post-social state, which has already left its major responsibilities of education, health, security and pension services to a multitude of specific actors such as individuals, families, communities, localities, charities and so forth (Inda, 2006: 12). Individual actors, families, migrants, excluded and subordinated groups are expected to secure their

Introduction

25

well-being. The market is believed to be playing a crucial role in assuring the life of the population with respect to prevention of the risks related to old age, ill health, sickness, poverty, illiteracy, accidents and so forth. Thus, the rationality of the post-social state, or market state, is thus extended to all kinds of domains of welfare, security and health, which were formerly governed by social and bureaucratic state (Inda, 2006: 13). Public provision of welfare and social protection ceases to exist as an indispensable part of governing the well-being of the population. Heteronomous communities of all sorts have become essential in the age of post-social state, because as Jonathan X. Inda (2006) rightfully claims the post-social form of governmentality requires the fragmentation of the social into a multitude of markets and the new prudentialisms – a point I shall elaborate in the following chapters. This implies that individuals are expected to take proper care of themselves within the framework of existing free market conditions; social welfare state is no longer there to finance and to secure the well-being of the population as the prudent, responsible, self-managing and ethical political subjects are in charge to take over its role. This is what Inda (2006) calls the transition from welfarism to prudentialism. As a consequence of this shift from welfarism to prudentialism, social policy now is increasingly based upon the notion of stakeholdership, promoting the idea that individuals can be responsibilized and empowered by social policy to become a part of the club of stakeholders (O’Malley, 2000; and Gilling, 2001). The logic of stakeholdership is to pathologize and blame those who fail to become stakeholders. From the nineteenth century onwards, O’Malley argues that being a respectable working man required him to be acting in a prudent way. Being prudent refers to joining insurance schemes, making regular payments in order to insure his/her own life, and that of his/her family members against any possible misfortune (Defert, 1991). Prudence is a modern phenomenon. Prior to the sixteenth century, prudence was socially frowned upon, associated primarily with cowardliness, lowliness, frugality, selfishness, lack of honour, and so on. Only from the sixteenth century onwards did prudence gradually emerge to become a sign of wisdom and was accepted as a proper moral obligation (Hacking, 2003: 25–26). Nikolas Rose states that this new prudentialism uses the technologies of consumption such as advertising, market research and niche marketing to aggravate anxieties about one’s own future and that of one’s loved ones, to encourage us to subdue these risks and to repress our fate by purchasing insurance tailored specifically for our needs and individual situation (Rose, 1999: 159). What is actually promoted here is individual consumption to reduce the risks embedded in everyday life. Active individual citizens must then be responsible for a variety of risks ranging from the risk of sexually acquired disease to the risk of physical/mental disorder. This kind of prudentialism can actually be considered as a technology of governmentality

26 Islam, Migration and Integration

that responsiblizes individuals for their own risks of unemployment, health, poverty, security, crime and so on. It can be seen as a practice producing individuals who are responsible for their own destiny with the assistance of a variety of private enterprises and independent experts that are the indispensable actors of a free market economy. Universal welfare policies are no longer announced by the nation-states. What we are witnessing is a reconfiguration of welfare policies, which are no longer directed towards ‘society’, but towards ‘communities’: ... it seems as if we are seeing the emergence of a range of rationalities and techniques that seek to govern without governing society, to govern through regulated choices made by discrete and anonymous actors in the context of their particular commitments to families and communities. (Rose, 1996: 328) Furthermore: ‘ “the social” may be giving way to “the community” as a new territory for the administration of individual and collective existence, a new place, or surface, upon which micro-moral relations among persons are conceptualized and administered’ (Rose, 1996: 331). Currently, Rose identifies a strategic shift regarding politics of security. Once again we are supposed to take responsibility for our own and our family’s situation by insuring ourselves against risks, for example through private health insurance, private pensions, and so on. This has been labelled the ‘new prudentialism’ where the middle classes are expected to take care of themselves through various mutual arrangements, and welfare policy becomes something quite different: In this new configuration, ‘social insurance’ is no longer a key technical component for a general rationality of social solidarity: taxation for the purposes of general welfare becomes, instead, the minimum price that respectable individuals and communities are prepared to pay for insuring themselves against the riskiness now seen to be concentrated within certain problematic sectors. (Rose, 1996: 343) We, hence, need management of what has developed into ‘new territories of exclusion’ and this is being done through various policies of activity for the marginalized, so that they can learn to be responsible, make calculated choices and live up to community obligations. In the neo-liberal ideology, objectives of equality and social justice are no longer concerned with material outcomes, but with opportunity structures. The primary role of social policy is not the distribution of resources to provide for people’s needs, but to mitigate risk and to enable people individually to manage risk. Old forms of liberal governance are therefore giving way to what Rose (1999) calls ‘advanced liberalism’ that is based

Introduction

27

upon promoting self-provisioning, prudentialism and an individualistic ethic of self-responsibility. Post-materialist subjects are constituted as consumers whose capacity for long-term self-sufficiency and responsible selfmanagement is to be promoted, enabled or regulated. Advanced liberalism has a desire to enforce the responsibilities of the poor to sustain themselves. This approach has been aptly characterized as ‘the new paternalism’ (Mead, 1997). Social policy is characterized by a creeping conditionality not only in the developed world but also in some parts of the developing world. This is also the case in the migration context. Provision of social benefits for the poor is made conditional upon their willingness to seek employment, undertake training, attend health clinics, and/or send their children to school. Neo-liberal economics is harnessed to an illiberal paternalist social agenda that associates poverty with individual irresponsibility, or with the failure to manage risk. It represents the final challenge to material dependency upon the welfare state, a renewed assault upon the chimera of the dependency culture and an attempt to establish and consolidate an alternative ethical basis for the workfare state era. Recent welfare reforms in countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United States and Australia reflect an incremental change in the principles that inform welfare provision. Hartley Dean (2006) presents a schematic account of the evolution of the welfare system in the United Kingdom, as a liberal welfare regime being transformed from welfare state to workfare state. Although the table is designed to display the way the liberal state incrementally changes, it could also be extended to portray the other Western liberal states (Table 0.4). In fact, this table is a

Table 0.4

A schematic account of the evolution of a liberal welfare regime Defining concepts

Administrative basis

Mode of governance

Principle of welfare

Poor Law era

classical political economy and pauperism

local/ decentralized

utilitarian: illiberal coercion; stigma and manipulation

‘old’ pastoral paternalism/ case-work

Welfare State era

Keynesianism and social citizenship

centralized bureauprofessional

disciplinary: rules, incentives, and pecuniary sanctions

dispensing/ adjudicating social rights

Workfare State era

monetarism and consumerism

contractualized – managerialist

‘advanced’ liberal: promoting selfgovernance

‘new’ civic paternalism/ welfare-towork

Source: Dean, 2006: 2.

28

Islam, Migration and Integration

very eloquent summary of the transition of the modern liberal state from welfarism to prudentialism.

Management of ethno-cultural and religious diversity Against the global background displayed above, this work is designed to compare the changing aspects of migration, integration and citizenship policies of Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands in the aftermath of 9/11 attacks. Germany and France have long histories of importing labour from other countries – especially eastern and southern Europe, but also other parts of the world – during periods of labour shortages. In spite of this fact, Germany has generally been viewed as a labour exporting, rather than importing, nation. In the late 1880s, for instance, Germany sent a million people overseas, mostly to the United States. By the beginning of World War I, there were over 3 million Germans overseas, and Germany, in return, had received 1 million foreign workers, mostly from Poland (Sassen, 1999: 52). In contrast, France suffered from persistent labour shortages, and thus the French were considerably less inclined to emigrate than their German counterparts. Immigration played a far more important role in nineteenth century France than emigration. The maintenance of a significant agricultural sector until well into the twentieth century ensured the possibility of a livelihood in the countryside, and created a demand for immigrants (Ibid.). Since 1945, both countries have become major immigrant-receiving countries of continental Europe. Today, almost 8 to 9 per cent of the population in both countries is made up of immigrants. Muslims, who are predominantly Turks in Germany, and Moroccans and Algerians in France, represent large numbers in both countries: 3 per cent in Germany and 7 per cent in France (Table 0.3). When compared, German and French forms of statecraft are significantly different. The French form of statecraft springs from the Enlightenment tradition, based on the material civilizational idea, which sought to impose Western universalist ideals on remote lands. This tradition was colonial in the sense that it was determined to constitute a homogenous and monolithical world political culture based on Western values, namely, fraternity, liberty and equality. However, the German form of statecraft comes from the anti-Enlightenment idea of Aufklärung, which rather emphasized the romantic culture idea of perceiving all cultures as equal to each other. Thus, two alternative models of statecraft are different from each other: on the one hand, the French civilizationist project tracing its roots back to Enlightenment philosophers such as Rousseau and Montesquieu; and on the other, the German culturalist project tracing its roots back to Gotfried von Herder and Johann Gottlieb Fichte. This differentiation is a great aid in understanding and comparing the nationhood, citizenship, immigration, integration and assimilation regimes of both countries as well as of other

Introduction

29

countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands. Rogers Brubaker’s work entitled Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (1992) is based very much on such a differentiation: If the French understanding of nationhood has been state-centred and assimilationist, the German understanding has been Volk-centred and differentialist. Since national feeling developed before the nation-state, the German idea of the nation was not originally political, nor was it linked to the abstract idea of citizenship. This prepolitical German nation, this nation in search of a state, was conceived not as the bearer of universal political values, but as an organic cultural, linguistic, or racial community – as an irreducibly particular Volksgemeinschaft. On this understanding, nationhood is an ethnocultural, not a political fact. (Brubaker, 1992: 1) Comparisons between the two countries’ understandings of nationhood go back to the early nineteenth century. They were first formulated by German intellectuals who sought to distance themselves from the allegedly shallow rationalism and cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment and the French revolution through a historicist celebration of cultural pluralism (ibid.). Brubaker also states that French and German traditions of citizenship and nationhood may be stigmatized by conceptual dualities such as: universalism and particularism, cosmopolitanism and ethnocentrism, Enlightenment rationalism and Romantic irrationalism, assimilationist and differentialist, civilisational and cultural, and political and ethno-cultural. When it comes to migrants, Brubaker praises the French politics of citizenship due to its universalist and inclusive nature, which easily moulds migrants into citizens. He implicitly condemns German politics of citizenship as it has a particularist and exclusive nature making settlers, but not citizens, of migrants.21 However, things have changed dramatically since Brubaker wrote his ground-breaking piece in 1992. Those countries which were known to have inclusive, democratic and universalist incorporation regimes visà-vis migrants have turned out to be more restrictive and exclusive. The United Kingdom, United States, Ireland, Austria, Denmark, Greece and the Netherlands are some examples, adopting a restrictive citizenship regime and giving up the jus soli principle in granting citizenship to migrants. The Netherlands is the most dramatic example of a turnabout of a previously liberal naturalization policy (Bauböck et al., 2006). On the other hand, Germany, known as differentialist, particularist, culturalist, ethnonationalist and exclusionary in terms of citizenship policies, has become more democratic and inclusionary since the year 2000. German citizenship law of 2000 became more liberal than the French unlike what Roger Brubaker claimed in 1992. Further liberalizations took place in the citizenship laws of various countries such as in Belgium in 2000, in Luxembourg and Sweden in 2001, in Finland in 2003, and in Portugal in 2006. These liberalizations

30 Islam, Migration and Integration Table 0.5 Dominique Schnapper’s classification of German, French and British integration models

France Germany Britain

Cultural integration

Political integration

Economic integration

Very Strong Very weak weak

Very weak strong strong

Very weak strong strong

Source: Schnapper (2007).

have strengthened the principle of jus soli, have reduced residence and other requirements for naturalization, or have permitted applicants to retain a previous nationality. Subsequently, Italian and Spanish laws also became more liberal (Bauböck et al., 2006). Dominique Schnapper (2007)’s comparative work with French, German and British models of integration also confirm the findings of Bauböck et al. (2006) (Table 0.5). The data gathered in the field research conducted in the framework of this book between 2003 and 2008 indicates that Brubaker’s statements concerning the citizenship regimes of Germany and France no longer pertain to the reality of the situation. To make it more precise, one could see that dominant discourses of multiculturalism, cultural diversity and pluralism in Germany have recently led German-Turks to represent themselves with their own cultural identities in the public space. Such popular discourses, reinforced by the Social Democratic and Green policies, have also resulted in the political, economic, and cultural integration of German-Turks into all spheres of life. The numbers of parliamentarians of Turkish origin in the local, national and European Parliaments indicate that German-Turks politically integrate; the visibility of German-Turks in the cultural sphere also indicates that Turks culturally integrate; and the rising amount of investment in the domestic economy by the German-Turks is proof that Turks economically integrate. These facts actually contradict the stereotypical belief in Germany that Turks do not integrate. On the contrary, Turks are integrated into German political, economic and cultural ways of life. This may be a result of the culturally differentialist features of incorporation policies in Germany, or of the existence of the large Turkish population in the country. However, it is likely that it is the Social Democrat – Green coalition government, in power between 1998 and 2005, which has had the greatest impact in democratizing immigration and integration policies in a way that has changed Germany from a segregationist country into an integrationist country. On the other hand, the French form of the republicanist ideal of integration is said to resemble assimilation: a citizenship model to assimilate those arriving into the French civilizational project through language, Laïcité,

Introduction

31

modernism, state-centrism, Western-centric universalism, and rationalism. While cultural diversity is usually undermined, citizenship is underlined. Thus, politically defined citizenship has always had a primary place over culture-specific nationality. The dominance of citizenship over nationality, of political over ethno-cultural conceptions of nationhood, is perhaps best expressed in one of the revolutionary French parliamentarians, Jean Lambert Tallien’s remark in the spring of 1795: ‘the only foreigners in France are bad citizens’ (Cited in Azimi, 1988: 702). However, civilisational discourse has always been implicitly embedded in the French republican model. Integration simply refers to the acculturation of foreigners. Acculturation in this respect means Franco-conformity. According to Tribalat (2003) the major weakness of the ‘French Melting Pot’ resides in its difficulty in producing professional and social mobility, a phenomenon that involves the whole of society, but which is more difficult for populations of foreign origin. One should not forget that around 80 per cent of young people with immigrant roots between 20 and 29 years old are children of workers, that is almost twice that of young native French. This book is not only about the citizenship, migration and integration regimes of the two countries, but also about that of Belgium and the Netherlands, which are also in various ways similar to France and Germany. As will be discussed in broader detail, Wallonian tradition of citizenship is identical to that of France, and Flemish and Dutch models of citizenship resemble that of Germany. Belgium was a country of immigration in the nineteenth century. At the end of the century, the Belgian mining industry started to recruit foreign labour, mainly from Poland, Italy, Hungary, Morocco, Algeria and the Balkans. The first wave of labour migration to Belgium stopped in 1929 due to the economic crisis. The second wave of migration started in the aftermath of World War II and lasted until the global economic crisis of 1974. Most of the immigrant population in Belgium are the Turkish and Moroccan communities of migrant origin constituting around 5 per cent of the total population of 10.5 million. Since 1993, Belgium has been divided into three linguistic and cultural communities (Flemish-speaking, French-speaking and a very small German-speaking community) and into three geographical, political, administrative and economic regions (Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels). Nearly all authority for economic development, education, transportation and social programmes has been transferred to the regions, leaving the central government as a regulator (Erk, 2003). Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels have followed separate paths to integrate migrants. Somehow, Belgium is caught somewhere in between the German and French traditions of integration. The Frenchspeaking part of Belgium tends to follow the universalist and civilisationist French tradition of refusing ethnic categorisation, while the Dutch speaking Flemish part tries to copy the particularist and culturalist German model in distinguishing foreigners and autochthones. Integration policy in Belgium

32 Islam, Migration and Integration

is a policy competence of the three administrative regions of Brussels, Wallonia and Flanders. The major element of the definition of integration targets very specifically the notion of active civic participation. Integration is considered to be insertion of migrants into Belgian society according to three guiding principles: (a) assimilation where the ‘public order’ demands this; (b) promotion of the best possible fitting in according to the orientating social principles which support the culture of the host country and which are related to ‘modernity’, ‘emancipation’ and ‘true pluralism’; and (c) unambiguous respect for the cultural diversity-as-mutual-enrichment in all other areas (KCM, 1989: 38–39). It should be addressed that the framework for any policy regarding immigrants in Belgium has been devised in 1989 by the Royal Commissariat for Migrant Policies (RCMP). This semi-official government body under the supervision of the prime minister was set up in order to develop and monitor policy related to the integration of foreigners and ethnic minorities. In 1993, the Commissariat was replaced by a permanent institute, the Centre for Equal Opportunities and the Fight against Racism (CEOFR), still attached to the administration of the prime minister. The Flemish and Francophone policies towards immigrants and ethnic minorities were all designed in accordance with the integration framework of the RCMP and CEOFR (Bousetta et al., 2005). The Flemish government has had a clear preference for supporting active participation through self-organisations of migrants which are willing to co-operate in federations. In the framework of a rather multiculturalist perspective, the Flemish government has financially supported local participatory initiatives aimed at urban renewal and integration of deprived groups residing in marginalized neighbourhoods. On the other hand, as in the assimilationist-republican model of France, the Walloon and Francophone (Community) government has not been willing to recognise ethnic categories. Wallonia is inspired to a certain degree by French assimilationist ideas of republican integration. In the Walloon government approach, ethnic minorities are at best defined either as immigrants or as people of ‘foreign origin’, and the emphasis is on intercultural relations. Policy initiatives are often framed in such a way that immigrants are not specifically defined as target groups. The same can be said of several measures taken by the Region of Brussels-Capital. However, the large numbers of foreign residents and the residential concentration of ethnic minorities have nevertheless forced officials in Brussels towards a more multicultural stance. The Netherlands is also a unique country with her colonial legacy giving a different flavour to her multiculturalist policies of integration. According to population statistics, 16.5 million people are currently living in the Netherlands, of whom around 9 per cent are officially labelled non-western ‘ethnic minorities’ mostly, Moroccans, Turks, Antilleans, Surinamese, and

Introduction

33

Indonesian. If persons born in the Netherlands with one or two foreignborn parents are also included, then the percentage of foreign origin people rises from 9 per cent to 17 per cent. Similar to Belgium, the largest numbers of immigrants in the Netherlands come from Morocco and Turkey. One could also argue that Dutch policies of integration of migrants contradict with the French tradition of integration. To put it differently, Dutch and French models set up two essentially different Weberian ideal types in a way: multiculturalist polity vs. republicanist polity. However, this work will also claim that essential differences between those two models have recently become less and less visible in the age of securitization of migration. The principal framework of the Dutch integration model was designed by the Minority Policy of 1979, which aimed to support and to empower different ethnic communities. Under this multiculturalist form of policy, the major ethnic minorities established state-funded advisory bodies, through which they could be represented on a wide range of issues affecting them. The opinions of these bodies had to be taken into consideration by all state bodies. The advisory bodies still exist today, although they are given less importance. In addition, as a continuation of the idea of pillarization, the state promoted radio and television production in minority languages and allowed different denominations and religious groups to set up religious schools, hospitals, newspapers and places of worship . It also ensured that students of immigrant families receive mother-tongue lessons. The underlying ideal of state assistance to promote equality of minority groups is based more on the concept of ‘Verzuiling’ (pillarization), which constituted the historical foundation of the Dutch nation-state. Pillarization refers to a system of intentionally organized and vertical ideological segmentation generated by structural links between religious and secular world views. Since the end of the nineteenth century, the Netherlands had become segmented into several religious and secular blocs, or pillars, such as Catholics, Protestants, Socialists and Liberals (Dekker and Ester, 1996; and Bruquetas-Callejo et al., 2008). The different groups are therefore represented in state policy through structured negotiations within the polder system. The participation of ethnic minority groups in society was facilitated in 1985 by granting local voting rights to foreigners, a comparatively easy naturalization process and comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation introduced in 1994. The approach therefore involved placing an emphasis on consensus and tolerance. However, this internationally praised ‘multicultural paradise’ was dismantled by the assassination of the filmmaker and columnist Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam in November 2004. As will be elaborated further in the following chapters, Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands have had various forms of integration policies implemented in the aftermath of World War II (Table 0.6). They all include different aspects of integration, or assimilation. Germany hardly produced

Table 0.6

Management models of cultural diversity

Management models of cultural diversity

Political Ideology of the model

Country

Features of the model

Segregationist model

Germany (until the late 1990s)

Immigration is mainly determined by the conjunctural needs of the labour market, and the presence of immigrants is seen as temporary. There is no need either to reinforce immigrants’ legal status, or to reflect on the consequences of cultural diversity. Integration of migration is not one of the main concerns of the state. Claims of migrants are managed through the principle of differential exclusion.

Exclusionist ‘timid-unityin-diversity’

Assimilationist model

France and Wallonia

Immigration is seen as permanent, immigrants are welcome, and they are given a legal status on the condition that they are willing to assimilate into the mainstream cultural pattern. Immigrants are seen as individuals in this model, and the notion of minority communities is alien to this model, which is difference-blind. Claims of migrants are managed through the principle of Individual rights.

Liberal Pluralist ‘Unity-overdiversity’

Ethnic minorities model

Netherlands and Flanders

Immigration is seen as permanent, but immigrants are defined in terms of their ethnic or national origin. They constitute new communities, and are culturally different from the majority society. The main challenge of the state is to make these communities live together in harmony. Claims of migrants are managed through the principle of group rights.

Multiculturalist ‘Unity-indiversity’

Note: For an alaborate comparison of several other classifications of cultural diversity management models. Source: Entzinger (2000).

Introduction

35

any policy of integration until the late 1990s, whereas France has always been a country of integration, or rather of assimilation. Belgium has experienced a mixture of assimilationist and multiculturalist integration policies, while the Netherlands has kept its paternalist colonial legacy transformed into a form of multiculturalism. In his renowned work entitled Assimilation and American Life: The Role of Race, Religion and National Origins, Milton M. Gordon (1964: 71) identifies seven types of assimilation/integration: 1. cultural or behavioural assimilation (acculturation); 2. structural assimilation, which involves entrance into organizations and institutions of the host society at the primary group level; 3. marital assimilation (amalgamation); 4. identificational assimilation (creation of a sense of peoplehood at the societal level; 5. attitude receptional assimilation (absence of prejudice); 6. behavioural receptional assimilation (absence of discrimination); and 7. civic assimilation (generating a shared identity of citizenship). According to Gordon, structural assimilation is the most essential of all. Once it occurs, all others inevitably follow. The table below displays the form of assimilation/integration in four countries as far as Euro-Muslims are concerned (Table 0.7). The four countries have different traditions regarding management of ethno-cultural and religious diversity. In what follows I shall delineate some of the major theoretical assumptions with respect to the management of cultural diversity in Western Europe.

Table 0. 7

Form of assimilation/integration in four countries

Form of assimilation Cultural or behavioural assimilation Structural assimilation Marital assimilation Identificational assimilation Attitude receptional assimilation Behavioural receptional assimilation Civic assimilation Source: Author’s own.

German

French

Walloon (Belgium)

X

X

X X

X

X

Flemish (Belgium)

Dutch

X

X

X

X X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

36 Islam, Migration and Integration

The scope of the study Chapter 1 will elaborate current state of affairs in Germany regarding the transformation of migration, integration and citizenship policies turning the country into a country of immigration (Einwanderungsland). Germany’s political leaders have, until recently, refused to accept that their country has become a ‘country of immigration’. This resistance flies in the face of the fact that Germany is home to approximately 8 million foreign residents, more than 30 per cent of whom are of Turkish origin. Moreover, Germans have traditionally defined citizenship (Staatsangehörigkeit) with the principle of jus sanguinis. This chapter aims to investigate the linkages between nation, culture, identity and citizenship in Germany with a special focus on the Turkish-origin immigrants and their descendants residing in the country. After presenting the migratory processes of Turkish migrants in Germany, I shall describe the legal and political aspects of citizenship laws in Germany with a particular emphasis on the hyphenated German-Turkish identity. Subsequently, I will scrutinize the topography of the German-Turkish transnational space constructed by transmigrants. Consequently, I shall display German-Turks’ habitats of meaning shaped by the contemporary processes of globalization. Chapter 2 aims to reveal the ways in which contemporary French republicanism has recently been criticized by the Muslim origin immigrants and their descendants. The French Republican understanding reinforced by the so-called emancipating discourse of ‘equality, liberty, fraternity and Laïcité’ has been lately debated due to several domestic and international predicaments emerging in and outside France: the rising presence of Islam, veiling issue, challenge of terror, unequal allocation of welfare in global scale, devolution strategies promoted by the EU, quest for autonomy by the Corsicans, international migration, unemployment, and the rise of racist Front National. These are just some of the issues faced by the French state and public. Probably, one of the biggest challenges the French state has recently come across is the question of politics of identity. The problem is now how to restore cohesion in a society, which is increasingly subject to centrifugal pressures coming from immigrant origin communities. Chapter 3 will shed light upon a rather more complicated country, Belgium, divided into three linguistic and cultural communities (Flemishspeaking, French-speaking and a very small German-speaking community) and into three geographical, political, administrative and economic regions (Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels). Each of these three administrative regions has generated their own political tradition with respect to social, political, economic and cultural inclusion of immigrants. This chapter will discuss the republicanist Walloon policies of integration in comparison with multiculturalist Flemish policies. It will also be claimed that Brussels has a rather different experience of integrating non-European immigrants. Belgium will

Introduction

37

be portrayed as a culturally divided country, but with a successful political unity inspiring the EUintegration. I shall argue that the charm of the Belgian model of unity is that it does not underline what is cultural and national, but rather highlights what is political due to historical reasons deriving from the threats of the two historically hegemonic powers of France and Germany. Chapter 4 will review historical, social and political reasons of the transformation of Dutch integration policies from a multiculaturalist approach to an assimilationist one. It will be argued that immigrants have generated some social and political participation strategies along with the channels provided for them by the state. The deep rooted model of pillarization erected to protect the cultural and religious boundaries between religious and secular groups has also compelled Muslim origin immigrants to mobilize themselves through religious parameters. This chapter will highlight that the Dutch model of multiculturalism, which has so far been popularly praised, has produced its own structurally excluded ghettoes in a similar vein with the French model of republicanism. It will also be argued that Dutch multiculaturalism has the legacy of Dutch model of paternalist colonialism. Consequently, this chapter will claim that multicululturalist form of governmentality has created a wide ‘integration industry’, which is bound to keep the issue of integration always alive. Chapter 5 will revolve around the structural constraints which compel the Muslim origin transmigrants to build their heteronomous communities to protect themselves against the detrimental effects of external forces such as poverty, unemployment, exclusion, racism and Islamophobia. In what follows, I shall discuss the role of arranged marriages among Muslim origin migrant families with spouses from the countries of origin in the accomplishment of building and sustaining communities. In doing so, patriarchal and individualistic sources of arranged marriages will also be anthropologically revealed. I shall also analyse the ideology of multiculturalism as a neo-colonial technique of governmentality, which is designed to keep and even deepen ethno-cultural and religious boundaries between majority and immigrant origin groups. This chapter will claim that both trajectories of multiculturalism and republicanism have failed in incorporating transmigrants into political, social and economic spheres of life of receiving societies. Neither republicanism nor multiculturalism has managed to prevent immigrants and their descendants from being imprisoned in their parallel societies. Eventually, this chapter will conclude with the need for political integration of migrant origin communities to prevent them from investing in ethno-cultural and religious boundaries. Finally, Chapter 6 will discuss the ways in which Islam is being accommodated by the German, French, Belgian and Dutch states. I shall also debate a new social and political phenomenon in Europe, which comes into fore along with the visibility of Islam in the public space. In addition to

38

Islam, Migration and Integration

revealing the sources of religious resurgence among Euro-Muslims, I will argue that there are two simultaneously running processes regarding the changing nature of Euro-Islam, which seem to be paradoxical: individualization of Islam vs. institutionalization of Islam. It seems that while the processes of globalization seem to compel younger generations of Muslim origin to liberate themselves from the pressures of their patriarchal parental and community culture, Western states and ethno-cultural and religious brokers engaged in ethnic and religious associations are inclined to reify, or reinforce, the existing ethnic and religious boundaries. This implies that the children of migrants seem to have been caught between individualization and institutionalization of Islam. Referring to the interviews made in various countries, I will put emphasis on the differences made by young Muslims between religion and culture. Religion seems to be displayed by some youngsters, especially women, as a source of emancipation rather than being a source of repression.

1 Germany: from Segregation to Integration

Germany, with a population of 82.4 million, has the largest Muslim minority – 3.2 to 3.4 million – in Western Europe, after France – around 6 million. However, use of the designation ‘Muslim’ may be misleading to define an internally diversified population. Approximately more than threequarters – 3 million – are immigrants from Turkey and/or their descendants, who are more than a third of the country’s 7.3 million foreigners and some 3.5 per cent of the general population. The remainder originate in nearly all parts of the Muslim world but only 5 per cent are of Arab origin. Those with origins in Turkey are divided into subgroups with little in common along: ethnic lines (Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians), class, urban or rural origin, religion (Sunni, Alevi, Shiite), degree of modernity and religiosity (secularists and Muslims), and political status (German citizens and noncitizens). As opposed to North African and South Asian Muslim populations in Europe, the majority of the Euro-Turks are influenced by the modernist Kemalist tradition, which subordinates Islam to the modernist-nationalist interests of the state. Moreover, Turks in Germany are not former colonial subjects, but mostly economic migrants. Attitudes are marked by Atatürk’s reforms and the Turkish state’s impact on religious practice through the directorate for religious affairs, its NATO membership and its candidacy for EU membership, which have no direct equivalent in the Arab world. Germany was a country of emigration until the 1950s. Over 7 million German origin emigrants fled to the United States between 1820 and 2000. Germans were one-third of the immigrants arriving in the United States during the 1850s and 1890s. The 1980 population census revealed that around 60 million Americans, one in four, reported German roots (Martin, 2004: 223). In the beginning of the twentieth century, Germany was transformed from an agricultural into an industrial nation in a way that intensified eastwest domestic migration slowing down the pace of transatlantic migration. Most of the domestic migration was from East Prussia towards the central German cities of Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden, and later to the western Rhine and Ruhr river valleys (Bade, 1987). Poles and Italians were recruited then 39

40 Islam, Migration and Integration

to work in Ruhr-area mines and factories as well as in big farms. The population of foreigners was around 1.2 million in 1910 and 1920 censuses, numbering 2 per cent of the population. Ruhr Poles and Italians stayed although they were supposed to leave the country when their contractual obligation expired. During World War II, the German work force was mainly comprised of workers coming from the occupied nations. In August 1944, 2 million prisoners of war and 5.7 million civilian workers originated from occupied countries, and they were about one-third of the total labour force (Herbert, 1997). World War II also brought about substantial demographic changes, displacements and deportations; and some 8 million refugees and people were displaced because of the war in the Western occupied zones, and some 3.6 million people in the Soviet occupied eastern part of Germany in the period of 1945 to 1949. The years after the set up of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) saw massive migration movements from East to West Germany. Until the building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 around 3.5 million people crossed the GermanGerman border to settle in the west (Münz, 1997: 37). Migration of ethnic Germans accelerated further in the 1990s after the end of the Cold War. Nearly all these immigrants meanwhile came from the former Soviet Union, whereas other countries of origin, such as Romania, Poland or Hungary have become completely negligible since the 1990s. With the Kriegsfolgenbereinigungsgesetz (Law on Resolving Long-term Effects of World War II) of 1993, the immigration inflow of post-war ethnic German repatriates to the FRG was limited by an annual quota of 225,000; since 2000 the quota has been curbed to some 103,000 annual immigrants. The actual number of new immigrants has considerably dropped in the meantime. In the year 2003 the number amounted to almost 73,000 and in 2004 to some 59,000 (Hirschler-Horáková, 2003). The economic miracle of the post-war era (Wirschaftswunder) in the FRG resulted in an increased demand for labour. Certain areas of the labour market began to show signs of short supply already in the 1950s. In addition, the building of the Berlin Wall stopped a considerable influx of labour in 1961. As a response to the labour shortage, the FRG started recruiting foreign ‘guest workers’. Between 1955 and 1968, the FRG concluded intergovernmental contracts with eight Mediterranean countries: first Italy (1955), then Spain and Greece (1960), Turkey (1961 and 1964), Morocco (1963), Portugal (1964), Tunisia (1965) and Yugoslavia (1968) (Table 1.1). The German Federal Labour Office (Bundesanstalt für Arbeit – BFA) set up recruitment offices in the countries concerned. Employers seeking workers had to apply to the BFA and pay a fee. The BFA then selected suitable workers, tested their work skills, gave them medical check-ups and screened police and political records.1 Migrants were recruited at first for agriculture and construction, later for all branches of industry, where they generally had low-skilled manual jobs (Castles and Kosack, 1985). Guest-worker programmes were designed to solve immediate

Germany 41 Table 1.1

Foreigners in Germany

Year

Total population

Foreigners

Percentage of foreigners

Increase of foreigners in %

1951 1961 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

50,808,900 56,174,800 59,926,000 60,345,300 61,069,000 60,650,600 61,502,500 61,776,700 62,090,100 62,048,100 61,746,000 61,489,600 61,389,000 61,331,900 61,402,200 61,653,100 61,719,200 61,604,100 61,370,800 61,089,100 61,020,500 61,140,500 61,238,100 61,715,100 62,679,000 63,725,700 80,274,600 80,974,600 81,338,100 81,538,600 81,817,500 82,012,200 82,057,400 82,037,000 82,163,500 82.259,500 82,440,309 82,536,700 82,531,671 82,500,849 82,437,995 82,351,000

506,000 686,200 1,806,653 1,924,229 2,381,061 2,976,497 3,438,711 3,526,568 3,966,200 4,127,366 4,089,594 3,948,337 3,948,278 3,981,061 4,143,836 4,453,308 4,629,729 4,666,917 4,534,863 4,363,648 4,378,942 4,512,679 4,240,532 4,489,105 4,845,882 5,342,532 5,882,267 6,495,792 6,878,117 6,990,510 7,173,866 7,314,046 7,365,833 7,319,593 7,343,591 7,296,817 7,318,628 7,335,592 7,334,765 6,717,115 6,755,811 6,751,000

1.0 1.2 3.0 3.2 3.9 4.9 5.6 5.7 6.4 6.7 6.6 6.4 6.4 6.5 6.7 7.2 7.5 7.6 7.4 7.1 7.2 7.4 6.9 7.3 7.7 8.4 7.3 8.0 8.5 8.6 8.8 8.9 9.0 8.9 8.9 8.9 8.9 8.9 8.9 8.1 8.2 8.2

— +35.6 +163.3 +6.5 +23.7 +25.0 +15.5 +2.6 +12.5 +4.1 −0.9 −3.5 −0.0 +0.8 +4.1 +7.5 +4.0 +0.8 −2.8 −3.8 +0.4 +3.1 −6.0 +5.9 +7.9 +10.2 +10.1 +10.4 +5.9 +1.6 +2.6 +2.0 +0.7 −0.6 +0.3 −0.3 +0.3 +0.2 −0.0 −8.4 +0.6 −0.1

Source: Ministry of Interior, 2007, available at http://www.bamf.de/

42 Islam, Migration and Integration

Table 1.2

Germany’s Non-German population and Turkish minority

Year

Non-German population

%

Turkish minority

%

1961 1970 1973 1977 1987 1989 1990 a 1991b 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

686,200 2,600,600 3,966,200 3,948,300 4,240,500 4,845,900 5,342,500 5,882,300 6,495,800 6,878,100 6,990,510 7,173,900 7,314,000 7,365,800 7,319,600 7,343,600 7,296,800 7,318,600 7,335,592 7,334,765 6,717,115 6,755,811 6,751,000

1.2 4.3 6.4 6.4 6.9 7.7 8.4 7.3 8.0 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.9 9.0 9.0 8.9 8.8 8.7 8.9 8.7 8.1 8.2 8.2

6,700 249,400 605,000 508,000 1,453,700 1,612,600 1,675,900 1,779,600 1,854,900 1,918,400 1,965,577 2,014,311 2,049,060 2,107,400 2,110,223 2,053,600 1,998,500 1,947,900 1,912,169 1,877,661 1,877,661 1,764,041 1,738,000

1.0 16.5 15.2 12.9 34.3 33.3 32.0 303 28.6 27.9 28.1 28.1 28.0 28.6 28.8 27.9 27.3 26.6 26.2 25.6 27.9 26.1 25.7

Notes: a Data from 1961–1990 for the ‘old Länder’. b Data from 1991 for the ‘old’ and ‘new’ Länder. Sources: Statistisches Jahrbuch für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 2007.

labour shortages in Germany by recruiting workers on temporary, shortterm residence and work permits (Castles et al., 1984). The Turkish population in the FRG rose from 6,700 in 1961 to 605,000 in 1973 (Table 1.2). At the time when recruitment was stopped, some 4 million foreign nationals were already living in western Germany, whose number was to increase in the years to follow. Between 1961 and 1973, the number of foreign labour increased from 550,000 to 2.6 million. In total, some 14 million foreign workers came to Germany during that period, of whom about 11 million left the country again. For instance, in addition to almost 3 million Turkish origin population residing in Germany, it is also known that some 2.5 million Turkish guestworkers had temporarily worked in Germany in the form of circular migration. In 1989, the number of the foreign resident population in the Federal Republic amounted to almost 4.9 million. The GDR also started recruiting ‘foreign workers’ for some years of sojourn on the basis

Germany 43

of bilateral agreements starting from the mid 1960s, although to a much lesser extent. First, migrant workers mostly came from the European member states of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, later also from Algeria, Cuba, Mozambique, Vietnam, Mongolia, Angola and China (Kuck, 2003). In the early stages of migration, Turkish migrants were mainly men between the ages of 20 and 39, relatively skilled and educated in comparison to the average working population in Turkey, and from the economically more developed regions of the country (Abadan-Unat, 1976; Abadan-Unat and Kemiksiz, 1986; Martin, 1991). The proportion of rural migrants at this stage was just 17.2 per cent. In the second half of the 1960s, recruitment primarily consisted of rural workers (Gökdere, 1978). Between 20 and 30 per cent of the Turks employed in Germany during the late 1960s and early 1970s went first as tourists (Martin, 2004: 227). As shown in Table 1.2, there has been a continual increase in the non-German population through the post-war period. Guestworker recruitment peaked between 1968 and 1973, when the migrant labour rose from 1 million to 2.6 million (Martin, 1981). In the early 1970s, over a thousand migrants sometimes arrived in a single day. Phillip Martin (2004: 228) rightfully argues that two myths discouraged planning for their settlement and integration: rotation and return. Germany’s rotation policy prompted foreign workers to work one year, perhaps another two years if the worker was especially good, and then to return home in order for another fresh recruit to arrive in. Meanwhile, the other myth was the myth of return. German Foreigners Office (Beauftragte, 2001: 5) reveals that between 1960 and 1999, 70 per cent of the 30 million foreigners who stayed in Germany more than 90 days left the country, but the other 30 per cent remained. No German was prepared for the settlement of those 30 per cent foreigners, corresponding to 7.3 million people in 2000. The rule of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) starting in 1983 brought about a different climate into the country with respect to the way Ausländerpolitik (Foreigners Polity) was held. By the early 1980s the ‘Foreigners Problem’ had become a major issue in West German politics. While in power, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) had moved towards increasingly restrictive policies on migrant rights. In the meantime, the CDU was proposing to implement stricter policies for the control of foreigners and encouragement of repatriation. A CDU resolution in the Federal Parliament in 1981 stated: ‘The role of the FRG as a national unitary state and as part of a divided nation does not permit the commencement of an irreversible development to a multiethnic state’ (Castles, 1985: 528). Consequently, Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s government in coalition with the Christian Socialist Party (CSU) and Free Democratic Party (FDP) radicalised the Ausländerpolitik, aiming for the restriction of further immigration and encouragement of repatriation. By ‘integration’, the conservative government meant that those foreigners who were unable to adapt themselves to the German norms, values and

44 Islam, Migration and Integration

laws were to be deported to allow those remaining to be assimilated. In addition to the so-called integration the government restricted the entry of further immigrants, spouses and dependent children of immigrants by applying new quotas. Finally, the government encouraged repatriation with a decree between 30 October 1983 and 30 June 1984 by offering premiums of DM10,500 plus DM1,500 per dependent child if they left the country immediately. The government also ‘guaranteed’ the reintegration of repatriating children to the new conditions in Turkey by subsidizing some adaptation schools and providing German teachers in these schools. Germany may have drawn some lessons from the French experience, which was put into practice between 1977 and 1981 by the French government. Between 30 October 1983 and 30 June 1984 unemployed immigrants were encouraged to return to their countries with their families by 30 September 1984. Although 300,000 persons left Germany, the government decided not to conduct such an operation again due to its overwhelming financial cost (Kaya, 2001). Official recruitment of foreign unqualified labour coming to Germany for more than 90 days ceased to exist in 1973. However, Germany launched a seasonal foreign labour recruitment programme in the 1990s admitting workers for up to 90 days. There were 129,000 seasonal worker admissions in 1991, 226,000 in 1997, and 264,000 in 2000.2 Most of the seasonal workers came from East European countries, especially Poland. Seasonal workers are requested by individual employers, be it farmers, or construction contractors. Their pay, housing, and travel arrangements are specified in bilateral contracts approved by the German Employment Service, which certifies that local workers are not available. Some other additional guestworker programmes were launched in the 1990s to meet the immediate need for labour in particular sectors. One programme was designed to recruit workers from the Czech Republic and Poland to commute to German jobs within 50 kilometres of Germany’s eastern border and to stay overnight in Germany up to 2 nights a week. Germany also recruited 1,000 nurses from Yugoslavia in the framework of the guestworker programme (Nathans, 2004). Since 1973, when the recruitment of foreign labour officially ended the composition of the Turkish migrant population has tended to become a more general population migration in the form of family reunification and political asylum rather than mainly labour migration. Despite the significant transformation and upward mobilization they have undergone, GermanTurks have been continually misrepresented both in Germany and Turkey. The labels attached to them include derogatory terms such as ‘in between’, ‘foreigner’, ‘German-like’ (Almancı), ‘degenerated’, ‘conservative’, ‘radical’, ‘nationalist’ and/or ‘lost generations’. All these problem-oriented representations have acquired wide popularity in both countries. It seems that the popularity of these labels spring from a holistic notion of culture, which has wide usage in both countries.3 Turkish workers have generally been addressed

Germany 45

in the official German discourse as ‘Gastarbeiter’ (guestworker), ‘Ausländer’ (foreigner), and/or ‘Mitbürger’ (co-citizen) – terms which underline their ‘otherness’, ‘segregation’ and/or ‘displacement’ (Kaya, 2001). They are officially defined in Turkey as either ‘gurbetçi’,4 or ‘Almanya’daki vatandas¸larımız’ (‘our citizens in Germany’). German-Turks are stereotypically defined by their compatriots in Turkey as either ‘Almanyalı’ (the one from Germany) or ‘Almancı’ (German-like).5 Both terms carry rather negative connotations in Turkey. Their spoken Turkish and the way they dress up also contribute to the construction of an ‘Almancı’ image in Turkey. ‘Here we are called yabancı (foreigner), and there in Turkey they call us Almancı’ is a refrain one hears frequently especially amongst the German-Turkish youth.

Hyphenated citizenship: German-Turks The constitution of the FRG, the Basic Law (Grundgesetz), recognizes two categories of rights: general and reserved. General rights apply to all individuals in the FRG and include freedom of expression, liberty of person, and freedom of conscience (Art. 2, 3, 4 and 5). Reserved rights are restricted to German citizens, and include the right of peaceable assembly, freedom of movement, freedom of association, and freedom of occupation (Art. 8, 9, 11 and 12). The Basic Law does not prescribe how citizenship is recognized or conferred, but the criteria are based first and foremost on ethnic nationality. The rules governing the acquisition of citizenship are defined by Basic Law (Art. 116), the preamble to the Basic Law, and the 1913 Imperial and State Citizenship Law (Reichs- und Staatsangehörig-keitsgesetz), which was in force until 1999, and provide that citizenship is passed by descent from parent to child. Article 116 of the Basic Law reads as follows: (1) ... A German within the meaning of this Basic Law, unless otherwise regulated by law, is a person who possesses German citizenship, or who has been received in the territory of the German Reich as of 31 December 1937 as a refugee or expellee of German stock or as the spouse or descendant of such a person. (2) Former German citizens who, between 30 January 1933 and 8 May 1945, were deprived of their citizenship on political, racial, or religious grounds, and their descendants, shall be granted citizenship on application ... Although the Basic Law does not specify how citizenship is to be determined, it is inclined to prescribe a nationalistic perspective of citizenship. The Article 116 includes in its definition of the refugees and expellees of German origin residing in the German Reich according to the borders of 1937, and their descendants. Thus, the Basic Law implicitly prescribes exclusionary principle of jus sanguinis with a very strong emphasis on the holistic

46

Islam, Migration and Integration

notion of culture (Ziemske, 1994).6 In other words, ethnically non-Germans are excluded from the definition of a German citizen. This kind of segregationist accommodation of immigrants with no German descent also implies that Germany was inclined with a kind of what Pierre-Andre Taguieff (1988) calls differentialist racism. At the same time, the law sharply reduced the barriers to the repatriation of ethnic Germans (Aussiedler) from outside the Reich (Brubaker, 1992: 114–119; Marshall, 1992; Klusmeyer, 1993: 84). On the other hand, the Imperial Naturalization Law of 1913 was designed to make the acquisition of German citizenship difficult for aliens out of fear that the Reich was being invaded by immigrants from the East, especially Poles and Jews. 1913 Law promoted the Kaiser’s goal of binding the larger German empire firmly to the homeland, for it suggested that Germans who emigrated could remain German citizens indefinitely (Nathans, 2000: 169). Previously, the 1870 citizenship law had deprived emigrants of citizenship either upon their departure from Germany or, at the latest, ten years after they left in order to prevent Germans from migrating mostly to the United States. The change in the citizenship law was seen as a legal requirement for the implementation of the Wilhelmine Weltpolitik extending German trade and power around the globe in the late nineteenth century. The claim for naturalization has always been difficult for non-EU ‘foreigners’ in the FRG, and has required repudiation of citizenship of the country of origin. The non-EU ‘foreigners’ have usually been denied the right to dual citizenship; even the children of migrants born and raised in Germany could not automatically receive the rights of citizenship until January 2000.7 ‘Foreigners’ who are willing to renounce their previous citizenship can be naturalized only after they have lived in Germany for at least 15 years. In contrast, the Volksdeutschen (ethnic Germans defined by Article 116 of the Basic Law) – primarily Poles and Russians who can prove German ancestry – have a constitutional right to naturalization. However, the former German government, the Red-Green coalition of the Social Democrats and the Greens, established two mechanisms that, for the first time, endowed migrants with the right to acquire citizenship. According to the Ausländergesetz (1991) and the Gesetz zur Änderung Asylverfahrens, Ausländer- und staatsangehörig-keitsrechtlicher Vorschriften (Law Amending Regulations Concerning Asylum Claims, Foreigners and Nationality, 1993), two groups of Ausländer have become legally entitled to naturalization (paragraphs 85 and 86 of the Ausländergesetz). Paragraph 85 declares that ‘foreigners’ between the ages of 16 and 23, who have been residents of Germany for more than eight years, attended a school in Germany for at least six years and who have not been convicted of serious offences, have the right to be naturalized. In addition, paragraph 86 states that those ‘migrants’ who have been residents of Germany for at least 15 years and possess a residence permit, have the right to naturalization. The absence of a conviction on a serious criminal offence and the financial independence

Germany 47

of the applicant are also crucial for the acquisition of citizenship according to this paragraph. Non-EU immigrants, or resident aliens, have mostly been given what T.H. Marshall (1992) defined as social and civil rights, but not political rights. This is what Thomas Hammar once called ‘denizenship’ status.8 The immigrants built a real political presence in Germany where their political participation in the system was not legally allowed. The legal barriers denying political participation provided the basis for the Turkish immigrants in Germany to organize themselves politically along collective ethnic and religious lines. As a response to the German insistence on the segregationist ‘Ausländerstatus’, Turkish migrant communities have tended to develop strong ethnic structures and maintain ethnic boundaries. Lack of political participation and representation in the receiving country made them direct their political activity towards their country of origin. In fact, this homeoriented participation has received encouragement from Turkey, which has set up networks of consular services and other official organizations (religious, educational and commercial). Homeland opposition parties and movements have also forged an organizational presence in Germany. Until the new Law came into force on 1 January 2000, Germany required that applicants demonstrate an ‘identification with German culture’ (Bekenntnis zum deutschen Kulturkreis), a condition which could not be fulfilled if the applicant was actively involved in an ethnic association. Since 2000, this requirement has been dropped and replaced with more precise and extensive language criteria. The applicant must now have completed at least four years of schooling in Germany or have a certificate from a German language school. Otherwise the applicant must prove his/her competence in German during an interview with the naturalization authority. In most of the provinces, it is sufficient if the applicant is able to converse in German, but in Bavaria the applicant must pass a formal written language test. Furthermore, the applicant must sign a loyalty statement to the constitution. The new law has partially changed the principle of descent (jus sanguinis) that has so far been the country’s traditional basis for granting citizenship. Now, it is also possible to acquire German citizenship as a result of being born in Germany (jus soli). According to the new law, children who are born in Germany to foreign nationals will receive German citizenship when one of the respective child’s parents has resided lawfully in Germany for at least eight years and holds entitlement to residence, or has an unlimited residence permit for at least three years. Under the new law, such children acquire German citizenship at birth. The new law also created a transitional arrangement for children up to the age of ten, who were born in Germany before the ‘Act to Amend the Nationality Law’ was enacted, according to which those children were entitled to automatic naturalisation on application for such. In most cases, they will also acquire their parents’ citizenship

48

Islam, Migration and Integration

under the principle of descent. Such children will have to decide within five years of turning 18 – before their 23rd birthday – whether they want to retain their German citizenship. They must opt for one of their two nationalities.9 It is apparent that the number of ‘foreigners’ applying for naturalization has greatly increased after the introduction of the new citizenship laws. Following the introduction of the new laws the number of naturalizations rose by around 30 per cent in the year 2000 compared with 1999. According to the information provided by the Länder governments, 186,700 foreigners were granted German citizenship in the course of the year 2000, compared with 143,267 in 1999. Subsequently, a total of 178,100 foreigners were naturalised in 2001. This is a decline of 8,600 or 4.6 per cent from 2000. In contrast to the increase in naturalisation of foreigners in general, the rate of naturalisation of Turks in 2000 decreased by around 20 per cent compared with 1999. This trend remained the same in 2001, decreasing by around 9 per cent compared with 2000 (Table 1.3). There are two essential points to be raised in Table 1.3. The first point is the decline in the number of people of Turkish descent being naturalized between 2000 and 2001. After the new citizenship law came into effect in

Table 1.3

Naturalization of German-Turkish population

Year

Number of naturalisation

1972–1979 1980–1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

2,219 10,361 2,034 3,529 7,377 12,915 19,590 31,578 46,294 42,240 59,664 103,900 82,800 75,600 64,631 56,244 44,465 32,661 33,388

Total

736,495

Source: Federal Statistical Office Germany, Weisbaden, 2007.

Germany 49 Table 1.4 Naturalization of Turkish origin migrants and their descendants between 1980 and 2006 Year

Turks

Year

Turks

1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 Total

399 534 580 853 1,053 1,310 1,492 1,184 1,243 1,713 2,034 3,529 7,377 12,915

1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

19,590 31,578 46,294 42,240 59,664 103,900 82,800 75,600 64,631 56,244 44,465 32,661 33,388 683,391

Source: Statistisches Bundesamt 2007.

2000, naturalization became rather easier. There was a rule that children of foreign descent up to ten years of age could be naturalized right away, without any waiting period. Hence, the naturalization rate was higher than in 2001. The second point is a more complex one and needs further inquiry. As may be seen in Table 1.4, there is a considerable increase in the rate of naturalization in 1999 compared with 1998, and a significant decline in 2000 compared with the previous year (Kaya, 2005).10 The general trend for foreigners to naturalize was upwards: from 143,267 in 1999 to 186,000 in 2000. Yet, German-Turks proved an exception, in contrast to other foreigners although the new citizenship law was more liberal and inclusive. There may be several reasons for such a decline. It may be that GermanTurks are already satisfied with denizenship status, which gives them civil, social, and cultural rights but not political rights. Another reason may be that German-Turks had expected a more democratic citizenship law to be put into effect without any limitation for dual citizenship. But perhaps their expectations diminished, and they did not see any further benefit in acquiring German citizenship. In other words, they were disappointed with the new Law, which eventually had a limited liberalizing effect due to the political pressure of the CDU and CSU.11 A fourth possible reason may be that Turks, who reside mostly in urban space, preferred to ignore the new nationality law, which required a relatively more bureaucratic workload in city-states such as Berlin. This may have had a discouraging effect on the German-Turks in the process of naturalization. A fifth justification may be

50 Islam, Migration and Integration

that there is already a decline in the voting habits of German-Turks, who have not been given the right to vote in the Turkish general elections. The right to vote in their own residential areas is an issue of great importance for Turkish citizens living abroad.12 Another reason to explain the declining tendency of the German-Turks to naturalize could partly be their dislike of the obsolete rhetoric of national citizenship in the age of globalization. Last but not least, the processes of ‘globalisation from below’ (Brecher et al., 1993), which set up the pillars of modern diasporic identity, may also be a reason for German-Turks to question the understanding of traditional national citizenship (Gilroy, 1987, 1993, 1994, 1995; Hall, 1991, 1994; Clifford, 1992, 1994, 1997; Kaya, 2001). As known, the broad networks of communication and transportation between Germany and Turkey play a crucial role in the formation and maintenance of a diasporic identity among transnational communities of Turkish origin. The modern circuitry connects the diasporic subjects both to the homeland and to the rest of the world. This is the reason why it becomes much easier for German-Turkish transmigrants to live on ‘both banks of the river’ at the same time. Diasporic identity symbolically enables transmigrants to overcome the limitations and oppression of the country of settlement. In this context, traditional national citizenship discourse loses its accuracy and legitimacy for contemporary diasporic subjects. Therefore, this obsolete rhetoric should be replaced with new forms of citizenship such as double citizenship, multiple citizenship, post-national citizenship, transnational citizenship, or diasporic citizenship. The question here is whether the new laws leave space for such progressive forms of citizenship in Germany. The new citizenship laws permit the descendants of Turkish migrants to acquire dual citizenship for at least a certain period of time. The present legal reforms enable German born ‘foreigners’ to go beyond their previously defined ‘denizen’ status. They can thus enjoy political as well as civic, social, cultural and environmental rights. Hence, the present German citizenship laws have created a possibility for the introduction of a kind of limited ‘hyphenated’ citizenship for non-European ‘foreigners’ as well as for those of Turkish origin. The partial introduction of the principle of jus soli clearly indicates that the definition of Germanness is no longer limited to ethnic descent. It also suggests that ethnically non- German and non-European members of the Federal Republic can be incorporated into the political sphere through civic channels. Despite all the limitations of the new Law, these legal changes mean, in a way, the transformation of the culturally defined nation project towards a rather Habermassian ‘post-national society’ project, requiring the political recognition of newcomers (Habermas, 1999). In other words, the new laws distance us partially from the hegemony of once essentialized ethnic identities such as ‘German’, ‘Turkish’, ‘Kurdish’, ‘Iranian’, and so on. They have the

Germany 51

potential to open the way for the construction of hyphenated civic identities such as ‘German-Turkish’ (in Turkish language it literally means a Turk from Germany, Almanyalı Türk), ‘German-Kurdish’, or ‘German-Iranian’. Yet, it should be pointed out that these hyphenated civic identities and/or hyphenated citizenships are distinct from their equivalents in the American case. In the North American experience, when the hyphenated identities are spelled out, the emphasis is placed on the ethnic origin of individuals as in Irish-American, or Italian-American. The fact that the emphasis is on ethnic origin does not mean that Americanness is undervalued. On the contrary, what is implicitly celebrated is the Americanness in which the particularist ethnicities are embedded. Hence, the explicit celebration of ethnic origins implicitly celebrates Americanness. In contrast, in the German experience the emphasis is on the ‘German’ component of the hyphenated identity. Therefore, it seems that the precondition of granting a hyphenated identity such as ‘German-Turk’ in Germany is integration into the German way of life. In the United States, on the other hand, the granting of the hyphenated identity is relatively less conditional since the United States is by definition an immigrant nation. The usage of German hyphenated identities in both official and public discourses is an indication of the discursive shift in the perception of Germany as an immigration country by the German official authorities. This has actually been confirmed by the changes in the citizenship laws as well as by the report prepared by the Independent Commission on Migration to Germany.13 The Independent Commission on Migration to Germany prepared a report titled ‘Structuring Immigration – Fostering Integration’. The Report was published in July 2001 prior to 9/11, and contributed significantly to the public discourse on migration and integration issues. The passing of the Immigration Law in July 2004 is an important result of this debate and a major step towards the future, as Germany is officially beginning to consider herself a country of immigration. Simultaneously, the integration of immigrants is defined as a political objective for the first time. The new Immigration Law contains mandatory integration courses for immigrants newly arriving in Germany. The integration courses consist of a language course where language training is provided, and of an orientation course in which basic knowledge on Germany’s legal system, history and culture is to be conveyed. For long-term foreign residents the participation can be mandatory, under certain circumstances, but they can also attend the courses voluntarily. For initiating and accompanying the integration process, initial migration counselling services have been established. However, the new Law is still far from seeing the fact that processes of globalization require some alternative perspectives regarding the integration of transnational subjects who have become active political, social, cultural and economic agents connecting their countries of origin with Germany.

52

Islam, Migration and Integration

Anatomy of German-Turkish transnational space I shall now delineate the anatomy of German-Turkish transnational space as constructed between/beyond Germany and Turkey. Intensive networks of cultural, political, economic and social transactions taking place between German-Turks and Turks have served to closely link the two countries in a way that has mutually shaped the cultural-political economy of both countries. The same also, to a certain degree, applies to the Turkish origin migrants and their descendants settled in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Today German-Turks are a recognized and highly active section of the German population. For instance, more than 60,000 Turkish businesses in Germany currently employ approximately 420,000 workers in one hundred different fields of activity. Only 23 per cent of Germany’s Turkish businesses are in the traditional strongholds of restaurant and catering industries; 35 per cent are involved in retail/trade and 23 per cent in the services sector.14 They form a dynamic and flexible business sector that benefits the whole country. On the other hand, the ways in which German-Turks form civil society organizations have a strong impact in Turkey. Alevi organizations, some other religious organizations like the European Association of National Vision (Avrupa Milli Görüs¸ Tes¸kilatı, AMGT), and some gay-lesbian organizations15 have generated counterparts in Turkey, having a visible impact on social and political life there. For instance, Alevi organizations have strong links with their equivalent partners and political organizations in Turkey. Thus, growing breaches and competition between the diversified Turkish groups is transferred directly to Turkey. This is how diaspora has an influential impact on the political affairs of the homeland. The following two incidences illustrate this point: The religious based Milli Görüs association centred in Berlin transported its own audience to Turkey to vote in the early 1995 general elections; and the AAKM (Anatolian Alevis Cultural Center) organised free flights for Alevis to attend the opening ceremony in Ankara of an Alevi-based political party (Democratic Peace Movement) in August 1996. The flight was free of charge and those going to vote were paid extra on top of their travel expenses. The European Association of National Vision (AMGT) is a political organization in Germany which has a wide institutional network all around Europe.16 The organisation had organic links with the pro-Islamist Welfare Party (Refah Partisi) in Turkey.17 The movement has lately produced several off-shoots from within due to the impact of 9/11, corruption within the movement, and strong political criticisms from Turkey. Some of these offshoots have also gone through a transformation process in which they have generated an understanding to coexist with the morals and faiths of the receiving societies without challenging them. Cojépiennes, a contemporary Turkish youth organization in France, and MUSIAD, the Independent Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association, a Turkish origin employer

Germany 53

syndicate bringing together small and medium enterprises strongly imbued with a Calvinist work ethic, are some of these communities. It is also known that they have strong links with the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey, which was also an off-spring of the National Vision Movement. Those groups in diaspora have provided the AKP with a strong social and political capital to rely on. The Independent Association of Turkish Businessmen (MUSIAD), which represents primarily small business interests, is often referred to as the Muslim Association of Turkish Businessmen, using a word play substituting musulman for the Turkish word for ‘independent’ (mustakil). Groups such as MUSIAD – as well as the existence of high-profile Islamic corporations such as Kombassan – lend credence to suggestions that Turkey is increasingly seeing an opposition between ‘Istanbul’ and ‘Anatolian’ or ‘Islamic’ capital. Islamic capital has rather become extensive in the last couple of decades reaching out to the Central Anatolian cities, called Anatolian Tigers, and to the Turkish diaspora in the West. It is also evident that the Islamic communities of the Turkish diaspora have also been very effective in the accumulation of Islamic capital through ‘green money’ transfer from abroad to Turkey. Groups such as Kombassan grew rapidly as they issued shares in exchange for remittance income from migrant labour in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, and reinvested it in a variety of local businesses (Rubin, 2005). For instance, one of the notorious companies, Kombassan, began in 1989 as a local printing and packaging concern in Konya but grew to include more than 50 firms in such key areas as automotives, electronics, construction, textiles, petroleum, shopping centres and food, even purchasing Konya (a central Anatolian town)’s soccer team. At its height Kombassan boasted nearly 30,000 shareholders and owned companies in Turkey, Germany and the United States, which Rubin (2005) argues translated into political influence. Bayram and other Kombassan board members were widely known to have financed former premier Necmettin Erbakan’s Anatolia tour in the run-up to the 1996 elections and provided consistent support to his Welfare Party (RP) from which Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) emerged as an off-spring. Alevi revival is another illustrative example to reveal the impact of transnational communities on the social and political affairs in the homeland. Alevism is a heterodox religious identity which is peculiar to Anatolia. It is practised by some Turkish and Kurdish segments of Anatolian society. Turkish Alevis used to be concentrated in central Anatolia, with important pockets in the Aegean and Mediterranean coastal regions and the European part of Turkey. Kurdish Alevis were concentrated in the north-western part of the Kurdish settlement zone between Turkish Kurdistan and the rest of the country. Both Turkish and Kurdish Alevis have been leaving their isolated villages for the big cities of Turkey and Europe since the 1950s.18 Ethnicity and Alevism have become the main source of identity for the

54

Islam, Migration and Integration

Turkish-Alevis in diaspora. Previously, Turkish-Alevis used to identify themselves with their Turkishness. They used to carry Turkish ethnic symbols to express their ethnicity as a response to the rising racial attacks and discrimination in their countries of settlement: for example a Turkish flag on their belt buckles. Although most of the urban Alevis have always had to conceal their identities due to the supremacy of the Sunni order in the public sphere, they continued with their rituals in their private spheres. Their children had to play with the Sunni children in the streets without giving out any clue which might reveal their Alevism. In a way, they had to assimilate to the dominant ideology of Sunni-Turkism. Alevis have started to radically declare their religious identity publicly after the recent tragic incidents in Turkey, like the massacre of 37 Alevi artists in a central Anatolian city, Sivas (July, 1993) and of 15 Alevi people in an Alevi neighbourhood of Istanbul (Gaziosmanpasa, March 1995). When the leftist-oriented Pir Sultan Abdal association organized a cultural festival in Sivas, which is historically divided between Sunnis and Alevis – in July 1993, numerous prominent Alevi-origin artists and authors, including novelist Aziz Nesin (not an Alevi), attended. The festival was picketed by a large group of violent right-wing demonstrators who were clearly keen on killing Aziz Nesin who had previously provoked the anger of many Sunni Muslims by announcing his intention to publish a translation of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. Throwing stones and burning rags through the windows of the hotel, where the participants of the festival were staying, the demonstrators succeeded in setting fire to the hotel. Thirty-seven people were killed in this fire, due to the indifferent attitude of the police forces of the ‘Sunni’ Turkish state. This was a very crucial incident which has led to the radicalisation of the Alevi movement in relation to the sluggishness of the state apparatus. Relations between Alevis and the Turkish state reached even lower depths with clashes between the police and Alevi demonstrators in the Gazi neighbourhood of Istanbul in March 1995. Gazi suburb is a ghetto which is dominated by Alevi residents. The hostilities started when an unknown gunman in a stolen taxi fired a number of shots against a group of men sitting in a café, killing one Alevi. Police were remarkably slow in taking action, and the rumour soon spread that the local police post might have been involved in the terrorist attacks. The day after, thousands of Alevi people from the Gazi neighbourhood went on to the streets to protest about the murder. The police and the demonstrators clashed, and 15 Alevi demonstrators were killed by the police (Bruinessen, 1996: 9–10; Kaya, 2001: chapter 3). These incidents have opened a new era in Alevi revivalism both at home and in the diaspora. The incidents of Sivas and Gazi suburb have become the pillars of the political Alevi revivalism both in and outside Turkey.19 The blurring of the boundaries between the diaspora and the homeland is also detectable in the domain of popular culture. In 2007, the popular German TV series ‘Tatort’ (Crime Scene) provoked an uproar within a

Germany 55

segment of its Turkish community. Alevi Muslims expressed that the show had revived a centuries-old incest libel and inflamed immigrant tensions in Germany (Der Spiegel, 31 December 2007). The ‘Tatort’ episode, broadcast by the state-funded ARD channel on 23 December, portrayed murder and incest within a modern Alevi family in Germany. The young woman who was subject to the incest left home and married a man of Sunni origin. Being veiled too in her new family, the woman was portrayed as if she had found a refuge away from home. Such representation fuelled an already existing animosity between the Alevis and Sunnis not only in diaspora, but also in Turkey. Thousands of Alevis demonstrated against the show in Berlin, Hanover, Hamburg and Cologne. Around 200 buses were rented to bring thousands of Alevis from around Europe to Cologne. Up to 20,000 Alevi Muslims in Germany gathered in front of Cologne cathedral on 29 December 2007 to protest the ARD TV channel broadcasting the series called ‘Tatort’. Alevi leaders from Turkey were also involved in the debate depicting that the show played on a centuries-old prejudice against Alevis by showing a character involved in incest.20 The strong cultural and political links between Germany and Turkey are also visible in the constitution of certain professions. Prior to being a Republican People’s Party (CHP) Istanbul MP, Ali Rıza Gülçiçek was a resident of Cologne and president of the German-based European Federation of Alevi Unions (AABF). There are also several pop music singers, football players and artists born and raised in Germany who have pursued their careers in Turkey: Tarkan, Candan Erçetin, Özcan Deniz, Azer Bülbül, Sibel Sezal, Can Kat, Cartel, Erci-E, Karakan, Bay X, Rafet El Roman, Ahmet and Ünlü, Azize A, Fuat and Killa Hakan.21 German-Turks have also practically and symbolically made both Turkey and Germany into their own habitats. Frequent visits to Turkey, making investments in both places, constructing a ‘new home’ away from home architecturally resembling the place left behind, having an equal affiliation to both countries, and paying relatively equal attention to German and Turkish media, all serve to reveal that German-Turks simultaneously dwell in both countries, or to put it differently, live on both banks of the river. Places like Kotbusser Tor in Berlin, Kreuzberg, and Keupstrasse or Weidengassestrasse in Cologne are part replicas of Turkish towns in terms of colours, rhythms, clothes, symbols, architecture, names, sounds, traditions and images. The formation of a diasporic space in this reified mode of culture serves migrants as a ‘fortress’, protecting them against institutional discrimination, assimilation, racism, insecurity and ambiguity: An open air bazaar in Kreuzberg, a café as a male domain, a music store are like spaces cloned from Turkey (Kaya, 2001: chapter 3). Some findings from the EuroTurks research (Kaya and Kentel, 2005) reveal this wide-spread phenomenon (Figures 1.1–1.6). Cultural reification revives when individuals are no longer capable of understanding the outside world (Festenstein, 2005: 15).

56 Islam, Migration and Integration 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Germany %

Figure 1.1

More than once a year

Once a year

Once in every 2-3 years

Almost never

Rarely

How often do you go to Turkey?

The socio-cultural mapping out of Kreuzberg is very similar to that of some other districts, which exemplify a different kind of diasporic space such as Turkish Keupstrasse, Cologne (Kaya and Kentel, 2005), South Asian Southall, London (Baumann, 1996), Turkish Rinkeby, Stockholm (Ålund, 1996), Turkish Bos en Lommer, Amsterdam (Öztan, Forthcoming), Mexican 32nd Street, Chicago (Horowitz, 1983), Turkish Schaerbeek, Brussels (Kaya and Kentel, 2007), and Senegalese Granada, Spain (Suarez-Navaz, 2006). Diasporic characteristics of a particular townscape mainly spring from the way culture is reified by its immigrant dwellers. For instance, it is revealed that a high ratio of the German-Turks is visiting Turkey at least once a year (66 per cent). This implies that German-Turks have a great sense of attachment to Turkey. However, the primary motivation behind this attachment has changed in recent years. It is no longer only the wish to visit the relatives in the homeland, but also a desire to visit tourist places and the Turkish Riviera as well as to be engaged in business activities. Almost all German-Turks (94 per cent) are likely to go to Turkey in order to visit their relatives and hometowns. However, around 47 per cent also visit holiday resorts (Figure 1.2). This is a great indication of the volume and dynamics of transnational space between/beyond Turkey and Germany. German-Turks often remain actively involved in their homeland by maintaining kinship and friendship ties, but also by remaining involved politically, economically and culturally in the larger homeland society. For German-Turks, transnationalism is aided by geographic proximity making frequent trips home feasible. They have also become global villagers by taking advantage of communication and transportation technologies to forge transnational identities.

Germany 57 100 80 60 40 20 0 Germany %

Figure 1.2

Holiday, seaside, sun

Visiting relatives, homeland

Professional

Other

No response

What is the purpose of your visits to Turkey? (More than one answer)

Habitats of meaning for German-Turks It is a common belief that German-Turks do not show enough interest in the media of their countries of settlement, and that they are rather involved in the Turkish media. However, a recent research on German-Turks presents a different picture (Kaya and Kentel, 2005). German-Turks, generally speaking, are quite attentive to the media of their new destinations, and widely follow German TV channels and newspapers. The data show that 45 per cent of German-Turks watch German TV channels every day. Around 28 per cent of German-Turks either never, or rarely, watch German TV channels (Figure 1.3). It is also important to point out that approximately 54 per cent of German-Turks frequently use the internet (Figure 1.4). More than half of German-Turks seem to be engaged in internet activity. It should also be pointed out that almost 25 per cent of German-Turks report that they use the internet almost every day. The development of telecommunication technology has made the reception of almost all Turkish TV channels and newspapers possible in the EU countries.22 Turkish media in Berlin have achieved a remarkable cultural hegemony throughout the Turkish diaspora. To understand this, one has to examine the growing interest of the Turkish media industry among the Turkish population living in Germany as well as in several others. The major Turkish TV channels all have their own European units making special programmes for Turks living in Europe. TRT International (a state channel) was the first of these channels, with others which followed being Euro Show, Euro Star, Euro D, Euro ATV, TGRT, Kanal 7, Lig TV, Su TV, Düzgün TV, and Yol TV. 23 Su TV, Düzgün TV, and Yol TV channels may be received via satellite antennas, while the others are already available on cable.

58 Islam, Migration and Integration 80 60 40 20 0 German

Figure 1.3

Turkish

Almost every day

3-5 days in a week

Rarely

Never

1-2 days in a week

How often do you watch German/Turkish television channels?

50 40 30 20 10 0 %

Figure 1.4

Almost every day

3-5 days in a week

Rarely

Never

1-2 days in a week

How often do you use the internet?

The programme spectra of all these channels differ greatly. The stateowned channel TRT Int. tends to give equal weight to entertainment, education, magazine, movies and news. Since it is a state owned channel, it tries to promote the ‘indispensable unity of the Turkish nation’ by arranging, for instance, fundraising campaigns for the Turkish armed forces fighting in the South Eastern part of Turkey. There are also many programmes concentrating on the problems of German-Turks. This channel is also widely received in Turkey. Thus, in a way, it also informs the Turkish audience about the lives of Euro-Turks, and primarily German-Turks, whilst connecting modern transnational Turkish communities to the homeland. Euro Show, Euro D and Euro Star are private channels and broadcast secular based programmes. The majority of the programmes are composed of old Turkish movies, American movies, comedies, dramas, Turkish and European pop charts, sports programmes, reality-shows and news. On the other hand, TGRT and Kanal 7 are religious based TV channels. Besides the

Germany 59 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 German

Figure 1.5

Turkish

Almost every day

3-5 days in a week

Rarely

Never

1-2 days in a week

How often do you read German/Turkish newspapers?

actual programmes, these channels give priority to dramas and movies with religious themes. Traditional Turkish folk music programmes are also a part of the policy of these two channels. Satel is another channel, broadcasting the Turkish and European pop charts. It is the favourite channel of Turkish youngsters who have satellite antennae. Lig TV is a pay channel, broadcasting the Turkish Premier League football matches. Most of the major Turkish newspapers are also circulated in Germany. Hürriyet, Milliyet, Sabah, Cumhuriyet and Evrensel are some of the Turkish papers printed in Germany (Figure 1.5). There are also many other sports and tabloid style papers from Turkey available. Although the content of the papers is extremely limited in terms of news about the homeland, they offer a wide range of news about transnational Turkish communities in Europe. The Turkish media partly shape the life words of the German-Turks. They attempt to provide a stream of programmes considered suited to the ‘habitats of meaning’ of the Turkish origin transmigrants. For instance, GermanTurks are perceived by the Turkish media industry as a group of people who resist cultural change. This perception is the main rationale behind the selection of movies and dramas. A great number of the films on each channel are old Turkish films from the late sixties and seventies.24 The broadcasting of these movies, which touch upon some traditional issues such as Anatolian feudalism, blood feuds, migration (gurbet), ill-starred romance and poverty, reinforces the reification of culture within the Turkish diaspora. As Michel Foucault noted, such films attempt to ‘re-programme popular memory’ to recover ‘lost, unheard memories’ which had been denied, or buried, by the dominant representations of the past experienced in the diaspora (Quoted in Morley and Robins, 1993: 10). Hence, identity is also a question of memory, and memories of home in particular. Before the private TV channels began operating, it was the VCR industry that provided the Turkish diaspora with those movies.25

60

Islam, Migration and Integration 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 German

Figure 1.6

Turkish

Almost every day

3-5 days in a week

Rarely

Never

1-2 days in a week

How often do you listen to German/Turkish Radio channels

The Turkish media seem to contribute to the reproduction of traditions, values and discourses brought from the homeland at the beginning of the migration process, as the programmes have been produced mostly by those who do not have an insight into the conditions of German-Turks. However, recently there have been some new initiatives by local German-Turks to run private TV channels and radio stations. Aypa TV, TD1 and Radio Metropol in Berlin are some of these, run by local German-Turks who are better equipped to understand the social, political, and economic context of their communities (Figure 1.6).26 *

*

*

This chapter has been an attempt to expose an account of the debates on citizenship, nation, culture and identity regarding the German-Muslims in general and German-Turks in particular. It was revealed that the new citizenship law enacted in 2000 is more inclusionary, although still limited, in the sense that it provides German citizens of migrant origin with opportunities in civil, social, political, cultural and economic rights greater than before. However, the general requirement of having to relinquish one’s former nationality continues to prevent many German-Turks from integrating. Since the population of the German-Turks possessing German citizenship is limited to approximately 800,000, such a new policy formation could be an opportunity for German politics to prompt German-Turks to acquire German citizenship. Germany is now in a more favourable position to implement liberal policies of citizenship that allow diversity to flourish. However, there is still room to enact more liberal policies to be substantially inclusionary in a global context whereby transnationality has turned out to be one of the principal characteristics of

Germany 61

modern societies, especially of transnational migrant communities and their descendants. This chapter has also revealed that the German-Turkish diaspora has, at least in part, shaped social, political, economic and cultural spheres of life in Turkey. Agents of this transnational space are no longer migrants who left their homelands once upon a time to become imprisoned in the confines of a remote land. They have rather become transmigrants who can practically and symbolically travel back and forth between their countries of destination and of origin, and most German-Turks fit into this category. The habitats of meaning of German-Turkish transmigrants are shaped by social, cultural, economic and political imperatives of both countries in a way that equips them with a rather more vibrant set of identities, more cosmopolitan, more syncretic, more rhizomatic, and more transnational. The exposure of those cultural syncretisms, or processes of heterogenesis, in the transnational space could help us understand what Renato Rosaldo (1989: 26) once said: ‘Cultures are learned, but not genetically encoded’. Expressive cultures of German-Turks such as residential culture, music, painting, dance and literature clearly display the fact that they have developed something anew along the way. Therefore, these transnational communities cannot be studied along with culturalist and nationalist paradigms, notions and methodologies. New study techniques and methodologies must be developed by social scientists and anthropology has a key role to play in this endeavour.

2 France: from Integration to Segregation

It is difficult to estimate how many Muslim origin people reside in France as official surveys on population do not collect reliable data. Until 1872, the population census for France collected data on religious affiliation, whereas the Third Republic considered religious attitudes to be a private matter and stopped collecting data on religious affiliation in the census. It is often said that the Muslim population in France is around 5–6 million. French-Muslims predominantly live in regions where industrial activities and cheap housing are concentrated. Most of the Muslims originating from North African countries and Turkey have settled near their workplaces, and most have been employed in industrial sectors such as car production, construction sites, chemical industry and metallurgical industry. The Muslim population is overrepresented in various parts of the country, namely Alsace, Île-de-France, Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur (PACA), FrancheComté, Languedoc-Roussillon and Nord-Pas de Calais. The majority of French Muslims originate from North Africa. Although most migration happened after World War II, Muslim migration to France began before World War I. At the end of the nineteenth century, hundreds of Berbers1 lived in France and 5,000 new immigrants arrived each year before 1911. In Marseille, the first Berber workers were recruited in 1910 when Italian workers were on strike in various sectors. French employers then preferred to import labour from North Africa instead of being subject to the repeated strikes of Italian guestworkers. After the successful recruitment of Berbers, French companies initiated more recruitment of Algerian labour. In the meantime, during World War I, the colonial authorities recruited manpower from the French colonies and protectorates, and migrants were used as infantrymen in the army. After the end of the war, the soldiers recruited from the colonies decided to settle in France. During the interbellum period around 78,000 Algerians, and 55,000 Moroccans and Tunisians joined the first waves of immigrants (Lequin, 1992: 334). It was the colonial authority which organized the recruitment process of the workers. They established the recruitment contracts with mostly one year length, selected the labour 62

France

63

directly in the country of origin, and sent the workers to Marseille. After the arrival of the workers in the port of Marseille they were posted to other parts of the country (Temime, 1999). As the need for foreign labour increased due to the reconstruction of the country after World War I, the Société générale d’immigration (SGI) was created in 1924 to regulate the recruitment process. This was a public organisation, directed by employers from the industrial and agricultural sectors, which constituted the first stage of the public management of immigration to France. On arrival in France, the immigrant workers decided to settle down in big cities where they found employment, or where they had family members. Many settled in Marseille, Nice, Saint Etienne, Grenoble, Lyon, Vénissieux, in the north, and in the eastern suburbs of Paris such as Saint Denis, Aubervilliers and Boulogne-Billancourt. According to the data collected in the 1936 census, there were around 84,000 North Africans in France. France was faced with a need for foreign labour in the aftermath of World War II, and received migrant workers from the mid-1950s to the beginning of the 1970s. However, only a part of the postwar discussions on migration evolved around migrant workers; another important issue was the need for population growth in the face of decreasing domestic birth rates. By separating residence permits from work permits, the government opened the gates to workers seeking employment and their families. This helped migrants view themselves not as temporary workers, but as permanent residents (Kivisto, 2002: 172). Although there were no ethnic quotas, French administrations preferred migrants from former colonies and southern Europe. Algeria was followed by Portugal, Morocco, Italy, Spain, Tunisia, and Turkey chronologically and in number of migrants. The first settlers were French nationals living in Algeria, known as ‘pieds-noirs’2 and were followed by the harkis.3 Following the defeat of France, many allies of the former colonist were executed by Algerian nationalists, but more managed to escape to France. In 1962, shortly after the independence of Algeria, the two governments signed a workforce agreement that led to a concentration of Algerian population in Paris, Lyon and Marseille. On the eve of independence in 1962 there were 410,000 Algerians living in France (Weil, 1996). In 1963, the Prime Minister, Georges Pompidou, stated that ‘immigration is a means of creating a certain breathing space in the labour market and of resisting social pressures’ (cited in Marie, 1988: 77). In 1963 a labour recruitment agreement was concluded with Morocco, leading to a significant increase in the number of Moroccan workers from 33,000 in 1962 to 260,000 by 1975. Family reunification increased from the early 1970s and by 1999 there were more than 700,000 Algerians living in France, together with some 1 million French citizens of Maghrebi origin (Lanier, 1991; and de Haas, 2005: 8) and another estimated 300,000 Sephardic North African Jews (Morin, 1991). It is also estimated that half

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of the North African origin population in France are Berber speaking nonArab Kabyle people, and the other half are Arab origin. Besides the North Africans who came to France, there were also thousands of Muslims from Sub-Saharan Africa who chose France as their final destination. The first wave arrived in France as troops from the African colonies, providing assistance to the French forces during World War I. Most of the survivors went back to their homelands at the end of the war, but some stayed on in France. After World War II, there was economic migration, particularly from the countries of the Sahel area including Senegal, Mali and Mauritania (Dewitte, 1999). The French State preferred to select manpower in Sub-Saharan Africa in order to diversify its countries of recruitment in the reconstruction period after World War II. The suspension of economic immigration in 1974 had various consequences on immigrants coming from Africa. Sub-Saharans had emigrated without their families and wives at the end of the 1960s, and the government decision to stop the waves of immigration did not allow their families to emigrate. The new law of immigration of July 1974 stopping the immigration of non-EU workers imposed some conditions on those immigrants who wanted to bring their families to France such as proving self-sufficiency to accommodate a family. Despite the difficulties of family entry and settlement, many immigrants’ families decided to settle in France. The frequent changes of migration legislation in France encouraged Sub-Saharan Africans to stay on in France without legal residency permits. All these legal barriers explain why the proportion of people living in France without a residency permit is so big for immigrants coming from Sub-Saharan Africa. And the lack of a residency permit does not allow these immigrants to obtain a work

Table 2.1

National origins of the Muslim population

Country of origin Algeria Morocco Tunisia Black Africa Turkey Converts Asylum Applicants/Illegal Asians Other Total

Population 1,550,000 1,000,000 350,000 250,000 341,000 40,000 350,000 100,000 100,000 4,181,000

Note: Best estimates of an interior ministry source in ‘l’Islam dans la République,’ Haut Conseil à l’intégration, November 2000, p. 26; these figures are widely seen as undercounting the number of illegals.

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permit, so a lot of them decide to find an illegal job in the ‘black market’ (Hessel, 1996). In the 1970s, immigration occurred through family reunification, as families were reunited and many women and children joined the male immigrants. Most of the Sub-Saharan migrants settled in the Île-deFrance région, where 65.4 per cent of immigrants come from Sub-Saharan Africa (Table 2.1). Another group of immigrant labour came from Turkey. France signed a recruitment treaty with Turkey in 1966. The first workers coming to France were actually some of those who had applied to the Turkish Employment Office (I˙s¸ ve I˙s¸çi Bulma Kurumu) in order to go to Germany (Kastoryano, 1986: 165; Fırat, 2003: 76). As the German labour market was saturated at that point by the Turkish labour force, some of the Turkish applicants were given the opportunity to go to France. This stage of migration from Turkey is called anonymous migration. The next stage of migration from Turkey to France is called nominal migration, when workers were recruited upon calls from the private sector (Strassburger, 1995). Nominal migration was rather more popular in France compared to Germany, and it has led to the rise of chain migration. This form of migration inevitably resulted in the intensification of migrants from certain ethnic and geographical origins. It should also be noted here that there are remarkable differences between the migration patterns of French-Turks and German-Turks. French-Turks often speak of the fact that they came to France because they could not make it to Germany. The same fact applies to the Belgian-Turks and DutchTurks. When Turkish migration to France started, Germany had already gone a long way down the road to recruiting Turkish workers. Several of the French-Turks interviewed stated that they were planning to go to Germany after spending a few years in France. Migration to Germany has always been regulated by the German state, while the French state has delegated it to individual companies willing to recruit foreign labour. Formerly, the Office National d’Immigration (ONI) was formed in 1945 to encourage and regulate immigration from countries like Italy, Spain and Portugal, where it was located. However, the ONI was not able to supply the demand for labour quickly enough in a way that led many employers to recruit workers directly from other countries without official control and legal documents. The actual recruitment of foreign labour was handled by a private organization, the SGI, which was established back in 1924 (Weil, 1991). SGI was delegated by the French State to manage recruitment of foreign labour in collaboration with employers within the confines of the labour market. The Government was needed in this process as far as the diplomatic issues were concerned. Thus, individual companies prompted those first migrants to recommend their fellow countrymen to come to France. Thus French-Turks originating from the same region in Turkey have tended to concentrate in particular places in France (Heckmann and Unbehaun, 1999: 82; Fırat, 2003: 76). Such a background makes it more practical for the French-Turks

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Islam, Migration and Integration

to carry on their traditional solidarity networks for a longer period of time in comparison to the German-Turks. Labour immigration was halted in 1974 due to economic recession and electoral choices. The decision was taken as a result of the 1973 oil crisis and growing unemployment which lessened the need for foreign labour. An oil embargo by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEP) followed the nationalization of Algerian oil resources, which were under French control until then. Under such circumstances, the French public in general tended to associate the oil impoverishment and the economic crisis with ‘Arabs’. France went through a growing stream of anti-Arab violence between 1971 and 1973. The ‘problem of immigration’ became a pivotal issue in the pubic space in 1973 (Jelen, 2007: 4). However, the ‘problem’ was rather associated with the Muslims in general, and Arabs in particular, although there were several other foreigners of European origin such as those of Portuguese origin.4 During the presidency of Giscard d’Estaing (1974–1981), there was a radical shift from the open migration regime. The methods used to stop immigration produced many unintended consequences (Hollifield, 1992). The most important result was to accelerate the processes of settlement and family reunification of immigrants. The government was inevitably exposed to the uncontrollable effects of chain migration. The governments of Jacques Chirac (1974–1976) and Raymond Barre (1976–1981) tried to stop family reunification by denying visas and deporting family members. Although worker migration was banned by the conservative presidency of the Valéry Giscard d’Estaing administration in 1974, migration from North Africa, Central Africa, and Turkey continued in the form of family re-union and the illegal immigration of people entering as tourists. Giving the number of migrants of Turkish origin who settled in France by means of family unification would give a clue about the ratios. The Euro-Turks research (Kaya and Kentel, 2005) displays that 30 per cent of French-Turks came to France to work, while around 49 per cent of those reported that their main motivation in coming to France was either family reunification (22 per cent), or marriage (27 per cent). Similarly, it is also estimated that 30 per cent of the Maghrebians came to France as workers, and more than 60 per cent through family unification (Lloyd, 2003). Migration continues even today through marriage and asylum seeking. The French government attempted in the 1970s to decrease the foreign population in the country through repatriation campaigns that included financial incentives. Between April 1971 and November 1981, the Barre government of France paid each unemployed immigrant who volunteered to return home with his family the sum of 10,000 Francs (Hollifield, 1992; and 2004). Although this campaign was targeted towards non-EU nationals, very few migrants from the Third World accepted the offer. Returning immigrants were mostly from Spain and Portugal, where democratic governments had been re-established. Through

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these measures, the population of ‘foreigners’ remained constant throughout the last quarter of the twentieth century (Kivisto, 2002; and Lloyd, 2003).

Stigmatization and statisticalization of illegal migrants Parallel to the growing tension and xenophobia in France, there was also an electoral pressure for migration control in the 1970s and 1980s (Freedman, 2004: 12). As foreign labour recruitment was not centrally managed through the ONI by the State, many employers did not feel obliged to find accommodation for migrants. Instead, migrants had to find their own shelter in a process resulting with the construction of bidonvilles (shanty towns) on the fringes of cities with large immigrant numbers. The erection of public housing (habitation à loyer modéré, HLM) to get rid of such shanty towns also brought about new problems, tending to lead to the concentration of immigrants in working-class neighbourhoods. It is evident that the demographic and economic need for foreign labour recruitment in the 1960s turned out to be a great source of popular discontent in the late 1970s. This changing perception of foreign labour by the French public is also explicable through the transformation of the naming of non-European immigrants. The term ‘immigré’ has recently become highly politicized in France. The use of the word has come to bear very negative implications. The term ‘immigré’ is now contrasted with that of ‘étranger’ (stranger). The former refers to those non-European foreigners, who are mostly Muslims originating from North Africa, Sub-Sahara, and Turkey, whereas the use of the latter is mainly reserved for foreigners of European origin, who are mostly Christian. One should also bear in mind that the use of the term ‘immigré’ is not only applied to those who are themselves immigrants, but also to the children of immigrants born and raised in France. Many children and grandchildren of North African immigrants with French nationality still find themselves labelled as ‘immigrants’. Yvon Gastaut (2000) rightfully draws our attention to the transformation of public and official discourse from ‘migrant’ or ‘étranger’ to ‘immigré’ between 1973 and 1989. ‘Migrant’, or ‘étranger’, was used to refer to the temporary character of migration, while the term ‘immigré’ is being used to underline the permanent character of African immigrants, who are popularly believed to be threatening national, cultural and social unity with unwelcome cultural, religious, social and linguistic differences. Opinion polls in France indicate that over two thirds of the French public believe that there are too many immigrants in the country (Gastaut, 2000). An opinion poll held on 29 November 1985 revealed that two thirds of those questioned said France was in danger of losing her national identity if nothing was done to limit the foreign population (Hargreaves, 1995). Another poll carried out by SOFRES in 1990 indicated that 68 per cent of those interviewed felt that there were

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‘too many’ migrants in France, compared to those 1 per cent who felt that there were ‘not enough’ (Le Nouvel Observateur, 13 September 1990). Didier Bigo (1991) addresses certain demographers and some politicians in explicating the sources of the fear that France is being ‘flooded’ or ‘overwhelmed’ by immigrants. The work of certain demographers in predicting population trends in France after the year 2000 has contributed to the construction of a fear of massive immigration from the South. Hence immigration has been portrayed in terms of an ‘invasion’, or ‘flood’, threatening societal and cultural unity of the nation. This fear was very clearly reflected in an article by the former President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in Le Figaro Magazine (21 September 1991): Although in this sensitive area, it is necessary to use words with precaution because of the emotional or historical attachments that they may have, the type of problem with which we are now faced has moved from one of immigration to one of invasion. (cited in Freedman, 2004: 17) What was predominantly complained of in general by the political elite and public was actually the increasing visibility of the non-European and Islamic way of life in everyday life in France. The visibility of a different way of life was perceived by the mainstream popular culture as a threat against the Western civilisation, which has always been the constitutive leitmotive of the French Republic. This is why ‘difference’ was demonized in 1980s and 1990s, and it was regarded as an ‘irritant, a stain, a sign of parochialism, backwardness and tradition, which needed to be removed in the name of civilisation, enlightenment and progress’ (Silverman, 1999: 41). Thus, ‘respect for difference’ was associated with the new right and with Le Pen’s exclusivist brand of cultural nationalism. Similar to the stigmatization of migrants as invaders, statisticalization of migrants has also been a popular phenomenon in the French context. The number of ‘illegal’ migrants has been exaggerated in a way that strengthened the public fear that migrants have ‘invaded’ the country. Even moderate politicians and commentators have tended to overestimate these figures in order to gain public support during their electoral campaigns. Michel Massenet (1994) suggested that there could be about 1 million illegal immigrants residing in France. A similar figure was stated by the advisors of the Prime Minister Alain Juppé in 1996 (de Courson and Léonard, 1996). Contrary to such speculative and overestimated numbers, the probable sum of ‘illegal’ immigrants was much lower. A report prepared by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in 1991 estimated that there were about 300,000 people residing in France illegally. Jane Freedman (2004) also confirms the findings of the ILO referring to the number of dossiers submitted by the ‘illegal’ residents to the official authorities during the time of regularization of illegal migrants by the Socialist governments in 1981 and

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1997. She reveals that 130,000 people benefited from regularization in 1981, out of a total of 180,000 applications. Similarly, there were 150,000 applications presented in 1997 when the Socialist Lionel Jospin was in power. Accordingly, Freedman estimates that the total number of ‘illegal’ immigrants was probably a bit more than double that of those who did present their papers, and suggests that the total number was far from the million mark suggested by some ‘experts’ (Freedman, 2004: 19). Stigmatization and statisticalization of ‘illegal’ migration has recently been instrumentalized by French governments as a tool for governmentality attracting public support vis-à-vis an ‘enemy within’ fabricated through the actual politics of fear. Nicolas Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior, took action in 2003 to reduce the number of immigrants in France, pushing for a doubling of the numbers of illegal immigrants expelled from France (Law 2003–1119 of 26 November 2003 on immigration control, residence of alliance in France and nationality). Then, he even expressed his radical policies of ‘combating migration’ with his intention of sending a ‘charter’ flight full of expelled immigrants every week (Agence France-Presse, 26 March 2003). The French government has even put forward a plan to create special charter flights to deport illegal immigrants from EU territory. The proposal was initially presented to EU asylum and immigration experts at the end of July 2002, but it was not made public.5 Between 23,000 and 24,000 ‘illegal immigrants’ were expelled from France in 2007 – compared to around 10,000 in 2002. The French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said in February 2008 that the objective was to reach 26,000 expulsions in 2008.6 The Second Sarkozy law (law 2006–911 of 24 July 2006 on immigration and integration) was enacted in the aftermath of the 2005 riots and less than a year before the presidential elections in 2007. Laying down the pillars of the new legislation, Sarkozy stressed that ‘here at home, immigration still has a negative connotation. Why? Because it’s not regulated, because it’s not linked to our economic needs, and because it does not come with an ambitious policy for integration.’7 The primary emphasis of the second Sarkozy Law was on ‘selective’ immigration (immigration choisie) rather than ‘imposed’ immigration (immigration subie). In other words, ‘imposed’ immigration including family reunification and asylum seekers would be reduced, and ‘selective’ immigration would be tailored to France’s economic requirements , with the introduction of a renewable three-year residence permit called a ‘skills and talents’ permit (carte de competences et talents) for highly skilled non-EU workers (Marthaler, 2008: 390). In an interview made in Le Monde (28 April 2006), Nicolas Sarkozy stressed that xenophobia and racism are weaker in those countries where selective immigration is practiced more than imposed immigration. He therefore posed selective immigration as a defence against racism. His discourse implicitly perceives racism as taken for granted, or as a primordial phenomenon rather than a political ideology. Thus, the end of imposed

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immigration would reduce the incidence of ‘squads, ghettos and rioting’ as well as easing racism (Marthaler, 2008: 391). Apparently, Sarkozy expects qualified migrants to assimilate more easily. This kind of assimilationist line of assessment from Sarkozy continued after he became the President in May 2007. The new Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Co-Development deployed by President Sarkozy, was an explicit attempt to assert that migrants posed a threat against the French national identity. Its nationalist and xenophobic overtones drew criticism by the opposition Socialist Party (PS) and migrants’ associations. He took his polemical discourse even further, and once said in an address to the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) on 22 April 2006: ‘if there are people who are not comfortable in France, they should feel free to leave a country which they do not love’. This was not very different from the popular slogan first used by Le Pen in the 1980s: ‘Love France, or leave it’ (La France, aimez-la ou quittez-la) (Marthaler, 2008: 391). Undermining political equality of French citizens, such a defensive and assimilationist understanding of national belonging does not seem to be complying with the traditional republicanist rhetoric.

Weakening of Egalitarian Republican rhetoric Since the French Revolution, France has historically defined citizenship in political rather than ethno-cultural terms, and invited all foreigners, the ‘friends of Liberty’, to join the French State. The decree of 26 August 1792 granted French citizenship to foreigners, who by their writings or acts, had defended liberty and the principles of the Revolution. Alongside the principle of jus sanguinis attributing automatic citizenship to those born in France and to French parents, the revolutionaries attributed to the principle of jus soli specific conditions which guaranteed attachment and loyalty to France. The dominance of the principle of jus soli has remained the same since the revolution. While the 1851 citizenship law gave French citizenship to third-generation immigrants, the 1889 citizenship legislation automatically attributed French citizenship to second-generation immigrants (Brubaker, 1992: 85–86). The 1889 law, with small modifications, still exists today. The French Civil Code specifies that foreigners can only be naturalized if they are ‘assimilated to French society’ (assimilation à la communauté française), especially in the form of competence in the French language. French citizenship law contains two provisions embodying the principle of jus soli: Article 23, attributing citizenship at birth to third-generation immigrants, and Article 44, attributing citizenship at age 18 to second-generation immigrants born in France and resident there since aged 13, provided they have not opted out of French citizenship during the preceding year and they have not been convicted of certain crimes. French citizenship law also permits

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double citizenship. However, French citizenship law has been criticized lately by nationalists for turning foreigners into French citizens on paper without making sure that they were ‘French at heart’ (Français de Coeur). Nationalist critiques of the jus soli principle have become even stronger since the early 1990s when so-called Islamic fundamentalism is escalating in the west. While approximately 100,000 foreigners have acquired French citizenship annually since 1975, the percentages of citizens vis-à-vis noncitizens among first generation North African immigrants is lower than for Europeans. In 1999, for example, the proportion of immigrants with French citizenship by nationality were as follows: Italian (55 per cent), Spanish (54 per cent), Tunisian (40 per cent), Algerian (24 per cent), Moroccan (23 per cent) (Pauly, 2004: 47). The proportion of Turkish origin immigrants with French citizenship in 2004 was 36 per cent (Kaya and Kentel, 2005). The French saw themselves as an integrationist nation, but were unprepared against the rapidly rising presence of Muslims and people of other colours. Alec Hargreaves (1995: 26–27) summarises this situation as follows: The virtual invisibility of former generations of immigrants and their children as well as grandchildren is perceived as the evidence of their successful integration. It is felt that post-war migrants and especially the migrants of the last two decades threaten this tradition. It has become a common claim that it is harder to integrate migrants from the Third World as opposed to those from Europe. Instead of dissolving within the society without a trace, they are becoming more visible in an era when consecutive governments claim that ‘migration is over’. What is frightening is that migration is beginning to create permanent and diverse minorities within the French society. For an entire century, France defined second-generation immigrants as citizens. This was an undisputed practice until recently. However, the application of the ‘jus soli’ principle met with severe attacks from the extreme right. The National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen would openly say, ‘You must deserve to be French’ (‘Etre Français, cela se mérite’). Centre-right parties under the influence of the National Front proposed the rejection of automatic French citizenship, and brought up the issue during the 1986 legislative year. Second-generation migrants would no longer be granted French citizenship according to the ‘jus soli’ principle; they would have to apply for it and obtain the consent of the state. The Chirac administration proposed to limit the ‘jus soli’ principle in the case of migrants, but the proposal met with strong opposition, and was finally removed from the agenda. A commission that defended the expansion rather than the limitation of French citizenship rights was established (Brubaker, 1992: 138). The report of this commission became the foundation of the law (nr 93.933) adopted on 22 July 1993. The most significant aspect of this law was the principle

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of consent, which essentially stated that ‘anyone born of foreign parents in France will be entitled to French citizenship upon application between the ages of 16 to 21, provided the person has been residing in the country for at least five years and not been convicted of a crime’. Those who explicitly waive their right to become French citizens during the year before they reach adulthood, or are convicted of certain crimes, would not be entitled to citizenship. The 1993 Pasqua Laws directly challenged the republican ideal. Civil rights and social rights were restricted by denying the right of appeal of asylum seekers, by giving the police greater powers to detain and deport foreigners, and by denying foreigners’ access to the benefits of the social security system (Hollifield, 2004: 200). The final change in the Citizenship law was made in 1997 by the Socialists, who defeated the Conservatives in June 1997 general election. New legislation introduced by Chevenèment and passed by the National Assembly by a slim 276–254 margin in December 1997 included two provisions that eased citizenship burdens for foreigners. First, automatic citizenship was granted to children born of foreign parents in France provided the latter had lived there legally between the ages 11 and 18. Second, those parents can apply for citizenship on behalf of their children once they turn 13 (Pauly, 2004: 48). Accession to citizenship is secondary compared to obtaining citizenship. Contrary to the declaration, accession is optional, that is, contingent upon the control and approval of the authorities. The procedure requires five years of residence, reaching the age of maturity, knowledge of the language, assimilation into French society, having not received a jail sentence in excess of six months, or committed crimes against the security of the state, all of which mean ‘good standing’ (Table 2.2). Unlike many other nations, France does not require waiver of original citizenship. Accession is based upon assimilation, interest, affection, and loyalty of resident aliens; therefore, the applications of foreigners whose families live abroad are generally refused. It can be said that the principle of creating politically equal citizens in the Fifth Republic faces major dilemmas that began with De Gaulle and continues to date. Although France set out to create politically equal citizens with no regard to religion, language, race, ethnicity and gender, it no longer recognises the identity politics developed especially by migrants, ignores the cultural, religious and ethnic differences emphasised by minorities, and adopts an assimilation policy, all of which serve to show that the republican project and its values are under threat. These demands, voiced by migrants and minorities and left unsolved by the Republic, clearly show that the Republic at hand needs to be democratized. In other words, the real republicanism needs to be reformed along the egalitarian claims of migrant origin people who are affiliated with a true republican rhetoric underlining equality, justice and rights in all spheres of life including politics, education, labour market and culture. It is widely accepted that the French Jacobin republican rhetoric has been belied in practice since the early nineteenth century (Safran, 2003a; 2003b).

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Table 2.2 Population living in France according to nationality and place of birth, in 1999 Place of birth Nationality French by birth French by acquisition Foreigners Total population Of which Foreigners by nationality or origin Foreign born

Born in France

Born abroad

Total

%

51,340,000 800,000 510,000 52,650,000

1,560 1,580 2,750 5,870

52,900,000 2,360,000 3,260,000 58,520,000

90.4 4.0 5.6 100.0

1,310,000

4,310,000

5,620,000

9.6

4,310,000

7.4

Source: INSEE, Census 1999.

The ideal of a culturally uniform society merged with a centralized state had been based on the image of a French nation open to all regardless of their ethno-cultural and religious backgrounds. What originally defined Frenchness was a set of universalist ideals such as liberty, equality and fraternity, which provided the basis for the French mission civilisatrice (civilizing mission). However, this image was undermined by a number of developments: the French departure from the republican model during World War II; French collaboration with Nazi Germany; deportation of Jews; the colonial record of France; the French failure in integrating non-European immigrants; and the growth of European supranationality. Similarly, the principle of laïcite,8 an important element of Jacobinism, had already been diluted earlier. Despite the separation of church and state in 1905, an exceptional regime of public support of several religions has been maintained for Alsace and part of Loraine since 1918. Furthermore, although religion plays no role in French public schools, the wearing of Muslim headscarves by young schoolgirls in class has been sporadically permitted and Jewish students have been authorized by a regulation issued by the French Ministry of Education to absent themselves from school examinations on Saturdays. Similarly, building of mosques is widely considered a legitimate part of the exercise of religious freedom; the government support the Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab World Institute) in Paris; and a major step was taken to establish the French Council of the Muslim Religion (Conseil français du culte musulman) in 2003 in a way that led to the weakening of the principle of Laïcite. The debate about the redefinition of the state had two policy consequences: decentralization leading to the rise of greater individual and group autonomy, and privatization reflecting neo-liberal economic policies. French society has been evolving in a much more flexible and pluralistic fashion.

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The French Republican ideal has recently come under attack on several fronts. On the one hand, some changes in French public life are challenging the conventional assumption that ‘the French Republic is one and indivisible’. The ‘Territorial Laws’ for New Caledonia and French Polynesia and the granting of legislative powers to the Corsican Assembly have already demonstrated that the French Republic is still one, but no longer ‘indivisible’. Until recently, speaking about discrimination was a taboo because it was a threat to republicanism (Tribalat, 2003: 135). The opinions of Pierre Sadran (2003: 53) openly show the legitimacy crisis of the French republican ideology at hand: Contrary to the ‘Astérix’ village of incapable Gauls, the French have become less receptive to the myth of exceptionalism. First, because the nation-state has been destabilized from above and below: by the dynamic of decentralization and that of European Integration. Second, because French universalism has had to lower its ambitions and be content to embody one particular version of the universal ideal ... Finally, because the French model of social integration based on the republican school, does not work in the same way as in the past. Distinctive cultures have become legitimate in a France which showed in the World Cup of 1998 that it felt more at home with a Black-Blanc-Beur team (Blacks-WhitesFrench of North African origin) than with the blue, white and red of the national flag. Similarly, one should also remember the decrease of the public support in the 2006 World Cup for the French National Team that is basically composed of Muslim origin Black and Beur football players. After the victory against Brazil in the 1998 World Cup, President Jacques Chirac and the then prime minister Lionel Jospin described the victory as the outcome of the shining example of the development of an equitable, multicultural French society. Chirac awarded Zinedine Zidane, the captain of the team born to Algerian parents in Marseille’s poorest Muslim banlieue La Bricarde, and his team mates the Legion d’honneur. The change in the public perception of the football team in general goes in parallel with the racialization and culturalization of the mainstream political discourse in France (Body-Gendrot, 2002). Yet, while the World Cup victory helped to rally individuals of various ethnic backgrounds and social classes for a short period of time, it did not remedy the long-term economic, social and political exclusion of Muslims. It is certain that the French republicanism ideal has become diluted. There is a paradox deep within the country. On the one hand, the French state is changing due to decentralization and European integration, while on the other hand the social and political culture of the country is still being shaped by the myth about a holistic and republican state. Regarding migration policy, migrants still appear to be subject to the notion of universality

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that requires them to be assimilated in the traditional political values of the French nation. It is probable that the assimilationist integration which the migrants are subject to will result in culturalism and identity politics among them. Identity politics can be expected to fortify ethnic, cultural, and linguistic boundaries between the majority and the minorities. The way in which this whole process of culturalization and racialization of social mobility is presented by politicians, public servants, bureaucracy, judiciary, police and the media is reminiscent with what Étienne Balibar (2004: 33) calls ‘national republicanism’. Balibar (37–38) rightfully asserts that immigrants are lately being deprived of fundamental social rights such as schooling, housing, health care and unemployment insurance as a function of ‘thresholds of tolerance’ established in accordance with the criteria of ‘cultural distance’.

From assimilation to the Communautés The French integration model is portrayed to be highly assimilationist. Egalitarian assimilation seems to bear a resemblance to France’s colonial civilizing mission (mission civilisatrice) (Schnapper, 1992; Bleich, 2005). Advocates of assimilation in the nineteenth century presumed that natives of the colonies like Guyane, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion, Senegal, India and Algeria would pass through an initial stage of being culturally civilized before being eligible to become naturalized French. Unlike the British and Dutch model of colonialism, the French colonial elite preferred to form and strictly control centrally planned mission schools in her colonies, whereby colonized anthropos were indoctrinated through universal values to become a part of the humanitas (Asiwaju, 2001: 214). This centralized approach of the mission civilisatrice is also visible in the way the primary integration of the post-war France, the Fund of Social Action (FAS)9 was devised. The FAS was formed in such a way that has left no latitude to local governments to craft their own integration policies. However, the French polity of integration is not very much limited with an assimilationist character. It has rather been betwixt and between assimilation and a timid multiculturalism. Any desire to simply assimilate difference was short-lived and faded away long ago. By the 1970s, the French were quicker to admit the impossibility of absorbing large segments of non-Europeans, or Muslims, and simply gave up. In 1970s, the French state actively supported religious pluralism through tolerance of Islamic practices in factories and local public housing HLM; promoted cultural pluralism through sponsoring mother-tongue classes for schoolchildren of immigrant families and by developing cultural programmes on television, such as a one-hour Sunday night show called (Mosaic) (Weil, 1991: 245–249; and Bleich, 2005: 181). The republic situates ethnic and religious identities to the private sphere. A 1978 law clearly restricts official record profiling racial and ethnic data,

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and the last census indicating respondents’ religion was in 1872. The rationale behind this law springs from the appalling memories of Vichy France, which brought about an outrageous experience for the Jews. Besides, the law also aims to protect the notion of Laïcité, which has the risk of being threatened by the excessive emphasis on religious affiliation (Laurence, 2003: 2). However, France has gone through a major modification of the classic French model of integration, which has viewed the individual first as a citizen, not as the member of an ethnic, racial and religious group. As Jonathan Laurence (2003) rightfully points out the new integration model generated by the contemporary political establishment reflects a set of radical changes in comparison to the past experiences: firstly, religious minorities should be granted right to institutional representation; secondly, ethnic groups, particularly Arabs and Jews, should be protected against racists and xenophobic attacks; and consequently, extremist groups should be isolated. Despite all these radical changes, the French government is very careful in not using the two terms, multiculturalism and communitarianism, in naming their new integration polity. In one of his speeches, President Chirac openly said that contemporary French practice can tolerate ‘communautés’ but not ‘communautarisme’.10 The fact that the government subsidized SOSRacisme (a rainbow organization fighting racism), and pursued a policy of facilitating the insertion of rapatriés (French citizens who had lived in Algeria and other French colonies and who were repatriated to France after the independence of these colonies) and harkis (Muslims who fought on the French side during the Algerian war of independence) into the national economy reaffirms that the French republic is partly yielding to the existence of ethno-cultural communities along with the idea of a kind of ‘positive discrimination’ (Safran, 2003b: 452). Nicolas Sarkozy, then the Minister of Interior, established the French Muslim Council (CFCM) in December 2002 to include the Muslim community leaders within state-church relations. CFCM, composed of a Board of 17 members, an Administrative Council of 64 members, and a General Assembly of 197 members, discuss the issues of mosque construction, the organization of religious holidays (fasting times, pilgrimage trips, ritual slaughter, etc.), and the training of religious clergy in France. The Conservative government had also taken action in nominating a few Deputy Ministers of North African origin (Tokia Saifi, DM for Sustainable Development, and Hamlaoui Mékachera, DM of Algerian Affairs). However, there is still no MP of Muslim origin in the National Assembly. But the new integration policy has also made it more attractive for the Muslims to appoint candidates in the Spring 2002 National Assembly elections than ever before. The total number of those candidates was 123 out of 8,000. Chirac and Sarkozy also tried hard to win the hearts of the North Africans, opening a section on Islam at the Louvre, inaugurating the Place Mohammed in front of the Arab World Institute (Institut du Monde Arabe) and visiting Algeria. In

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November 2002, Chirac also decreed that the remains of Alexandre Dumas, ‘brown skin, frizzy hair and mixed blood’ be transferred to the Panthéon, the republican temple dedicated to France’s heroes (Laurence, 2003: 6). In the eyes of many people, Europeanization and globalization of the country has gone too far, and threatens the dominant position of the national culture and of the French language. The challenges to the French language have been met by three governmental decisions: a constitutional amendment in 1992, which made it clear that ‘the language of the republic is French’; several laws reaffirming the position of the French language;11 and the continued refusal to ratify European charters relating to the recognition of minority languages. However, the Constitutional Council12 decided to limit the sphere of influence of such laws, which banned the public use of foreign words. The Council concluded that such laws could be applied to official communications but not to language used by private individuals or firms in the market place, because such application would violate the freedom of speech clauses of the Declaration of Rights of 1789 (Safran, 2003b: 445). The Council actually confirms ethnocultural pluralism. The betwixt character of the contemporary French Republic has also somehow shaped the ways in which immigrés have politically mobilized themselves. It seems that there are two ways leading to political participation of Muslims living in France. The first is through ethno-religious associations with the capacity to present concerns of Muslim communities to government officials and take out concessions ranging from the provision of funds for the construction of mosques to the rights of schoolgirls to wear headscarves to public schools. The proliferation of Muslim organizations can be attributed to feelings of economic neglect, the influence of externally inspired Islamism, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the attacks of 9/11, and finally a growing awareness of Muslim electoral power. Muslim associations as well as ethnic organizations of Arab, Berber and Turkish origin boosted up with the passage of a law in October 1981 authorizing the creation of associations of foreigners. The 1981 Law was the confirmation of the droit à la difference (the right to be different) of individuals and groups (Hargreaves, 1995: 195; and Doty, 1999: 604). This law went further than the earlier (FAS) launched in 1959 in order to subsidize the cultural programmes of ethno-religious associations in maintaining their connections with their homeland and sensitizing the host society to the contributions of foreign cultures (Safran, 2004: 426). The formation of FAS also implied that ethno-religious groups, particularly Muslims, had the channels to inform municipal governments concerning their needs through the projects of integration. The second is through election to political office at local, regional, national and European level. So far, Muslims have achieved to represent themselves better in local municipal level than in national level. Muslims are hardly represented in the national parliament. In 1993, 1997 and 2002 there were several Muslim candidates for National Assembly elections, mostly through

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the PS, but none were elected. While no Muslim has ever been elected to the French Parliament, 130 were elected as municipal councillors in 2001. An example of local Muslim success is that of Malika Ahmed, a ‘second generation immigrant’ of Moroccan origin who became deputy mayor of the Paris suburb of Aubervilliers. Another example of Muslim success is Khedidja Bourcart, the deputy mayor of Paris in charge of integration (Safran, 2004: 440). There is no doubt that the political strength of French-Muslims is on the rise. As Muslims have become an increasingly strong political force in the country, contemporary French governments are inclined to have Muslim origin members in their cabinets. For instance, Tokia Saifi was in charge of sustainable development in the 2002 cabinet of Jean-Pierre Raffarin. Saifi was reportedly the first person born of North African immigrants to enter a government of the Fifth Republic. Similarly, Nicolas Sarkozy appointed Rachida Dati as the Minister of Justice. Dati is the first person from an ethnic minority to hold a senior French cabinet post. These symbolic acts seem to have recently gained a substance. While ethnic lobbies continue officially to be regarded as ‘un-French’, such lobbies do actually exist. Several organizations of Beurs, Turks, Jews such as France-Plus (a popular Beur civil organization in the late 1980s and 1990s), Renouveau Juif (Jewish Renewal in 1970s and 1980s) and Cojépiennes (a contemporary Turkish youth organization) were established in the last two decades, and politicians have responded to them. Similarly, although yielding to ethnic minority segments of the electorate is denounced, it has recently taken place in the form of trips by French politicians to the home countries of selected parts of the electorate such as Tunisia, Algeria, Israel and Portugal (Safran, 2003b: 454).

Crisis of French universalism: affaire des foulard Slavoj Zizek (1998: 1007) once maintained that the assumption made by the traditional French national elite attributing a very particularist character to the French universalism, indeed makes the French universalism an oxymoron. How is it possible that universalism is essentialized in a way that it is monopolized by France? Zizek challenges this assumption and he claims that French universalism is overtaken by American globalism. French republican ideology, Zizek states, is the epitome of modernist universalism: of democracy based on a universal notion of citizenship. France is lately being perceived as an increasingly particular phenomenon threatened by the process of globalization. In this regard, France turns out to be a particularist model, while the United States increasingly becomes a universal model. Gérard Noiriel (1988) displays in his book Le creuset français (The French Melting-Pot) that every migration wave in France has been considered inassimilable, but all have, by the third generation, become fully integrated, since the late nineteenth century. Rather than viewing the case of the FrenchMuslim immigrants and their children as exceptional and unique, Noiriel argues that xenophobia has always been there in France since the end of the

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nineteenth century. Rather than viewing the new immigrant as a source of the crisis of universalism, we may interpret the so-called inassimilability of the new immigrant as a symptom of a larger crisis of universalism.13 This was also visible in the affaire des foulard, which became the symbol of a long lasting political debate in France. The question of foulard or voile (Islamic headscarf)14 first hit the headlines in France in October 1989 when Ernest Chenière,15 a headmaster of Collège Gabriel Havez in Creil, a suburb of Paris in the North, refused to permit three Magrebian girls to come to school wearing their headscarves on the grounds that this would contradict the republican principle of Laïcité (Libération, 4 October 1989). Creil is one of those suburbs of Paris, housing thousands of ‘immigrés’ of North African and Sub-Saharan origin who came to France in the postwar economic boom. The affair was not represented in the media as a simple story of three veiled young women in Creil, but rather as revelatory of serious questions and anxieties amongst the French concerning the subject of the integration of Muslims into French society (Beski, 1997: 44; and Vertovec and Peach, 1997: 7). The Minister of Education, Lionel Jospin, intervened and overturned the suspension order.16 He announced on 25 October that even students who insisted on wearing headscarves had to be accepted in the school. First, Jospin reaffirmed the secularity of the public schools and underlined that they must not tolerate proselytism. In the name of furthering their children’s social ‘integration,’ he urged parents to accept that religion be treated as ‘a private affair.’ While instructing school officials to discourage students from arriving in headscarves, he ultimately declared that ‘the school must not exclude children;’ the proper role of public schools was, instead, ‘to welcome’ (Thomas, 2000: 183). However, both the right and, interestingly, the left entered the fray to condemn Lionel Jospin’s decision and support Chenière’s original suspension in the name of the French Republican tradition of laïcité. Intellectuals like Régis Debray and Alain Finkelkraut associated Jospin’s decision to France and Britain’s appeasement of Nazi Germany, making a comparison between the growth of Islam in France and the rise of the Third Reich. The other intellectual who entered the fray was Bernard-Henri Lévy who described the headmaster’s action as a victory for the enlightenment over the forces of darkness, obscurantism and the oppression of women. The polemics of the foulard did not remain limited to the time of the affair and became an electoral instrument to the extend that President Mitterand made an announcement on television in December 1989 that France had reached a ‘threshold of tolerance’ (seuil de tolerance) as far as the number of immigrants was concerned (Doty, 1999: 600–601; Freeadman, 2004: 134). Minister of the Interior, Charles Pasqua, complemented the President with the following words: France has been an immigration country, but she no more wants to be one ... The goal we set, given the seriousness of the economic situation, is to tend toward zero immigration. (cited in Hollifield, 2004)

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The issue was exploited even more by the Front National, whose spokesperson, Bruno Mégret likened the wish for wearing the headscarf to an Islamic ‘invasion’ of France in Le Quotidien de Paris on 18 October 1989: A Muslim civilisation has arrived in France. After its installation on French soil, it is now implanting itself symbolically by the wearing of the headscarf in schools. We must ask ourselves the question: Should France adapt her principles to those of immigrants, or should immigrants adapt their customs to the laws of our country? You can imagine our reply. (cited in Freedman, 2004: 133) In 2004, the French Justice Minister Perben barred a woman from a court jury for wearing a headscarf because he thought that overt signs of religious commitment prevented the neutrality needed in French courts. The very same year, the French Parliament passed a bill by 494 to 36 banning the Islamic headscarf and all other overt religious symbols from schools (Koopmans et al., 2005: 157).17 The idea of girls wearing a headscarf as a threat to the French Republic and its secular principles may seem rather exaggerated as far as the number of girls actually wearing headscarves is concerned. The Ministry of Interior estimated in 1994 that about 15,000 girls were wearing headscarves out of an approximate number of 350,000 Muslim girls attending public schools, which is only 4 per cent of Muslims schoolgirls (Hargreaves, 1995). The headscarf issue was mostly presented in the public debate as a faultline between modernity and tradition, between Westernization and Islamic fundamentalism, and between Laïcité and Islamism. Not only the Front National, or the other political parties, but also several prominent feminists like Gisèle Halimi (member of the SOS-Racisme, Quotidien de Paris, 2 November 1989), Yvette Roudy (a former Minister of Women’s Rights, Quotidien de Paris, 6 November 1989) and Dominique Schnapper (a leading sociologist, Libération, 24 November 1989) supported the laicist position and argued for the exclusion of girls wearing headscarves. Despite all these attempts at reducing the girls’ act of wearing headscarf to a kind of antimodernity, anti-Westernization and anti-secularism, there were some others who took the time to listen to Muslim women before making rigid judgements on the affiare des foulards. Françoise Gaspard, the Socialist deputy of the town between 1977 and 1983, and a militant anti-racist, who fought against the Front National in the town of Dreux,18 together with the sociologist Farhad Khosrokhavar, undertook a series of interviews with Muslim women to discover what the foulard actually meant for them. Their findings contradict the dominant representations in the French media, which displayed the girls at the centre of the affaire des foulards as lacking the capacity to make their own choices and as being exposed to the patriarchal structure of ‘Islamic culture’. They revealed that for many young Muslim women, the

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choice to wear a headscarf was an autonomous one taken not for militant political or religious reasons, but as an affirmation of identity, an attempt to break up the restrictive patriarchal norms and to become a part of the French public space combining French and Islamic identity with a hyphen. Gaspard and Khosrokhavar (1995) revealed very well that young Muslim women’s wearing of headscarves does not necessarily mean that they are engaged in a kind of ‘veiled militancy’ and oppose modernity: Finally the veils of the young women who claim a ‘veiled identity’ cannot be interpreted as a rejection of French citizenship, but as a desire for integration without assimilation, an aspiration to be French and Muslim. (Gaspard and Khosrokhavar, 1995: 204)19 Gaspard and Khosrokhavar do not necessarily treat the veil in the minority context as a symbol of oppression, rather as a tool for emancipation used by Muslim women to move out of segregated living spaces while still observing the basic moral requirements of separating and protecting women from unrelated men. In this regard, the veil, or the foulard, can be regarded as what Hanna Papanek (1982) calls ‘portable seclusion’, which makes it possible for the women to move around the patriarchal space rather freely. L’affaire des foulard seems to mask a deep-rooted anti-Islamic prejudice in France (Festenstein, 2005: 17). The problem indeed is not about the foulard, it is about the others who are not believed to be complying with the rules of the majority French nation. Furthermore, as Jane Freedman (2004: 140) rightfully argued, the headscarf has been the object of much unwarranted attention in France, serving to hide some real issues like inequalities of gender, class and race that actually exist in French society.

Banlieu riots: a quest for Republican resistance During the riots in France in November 2005, much was made of the increasing religious radicalism of the Muslim origin youth. This work claims that it is not so much cultural difference and Islamism that is taking young Muslims to the street, but it is rather the mass-reaction to two centuries of colonialism and racism, compounded by recent poverty and exclusion. Does the bell toll for French Republicanism? In the Western European context, neighbourly relations are transformed into relations revolving around religious, ethnic and cultural differences. It is known that one in ten residents in Western European nations is a migrant, and is likely to be ethno-culturally different from the majority. Meanwhile, only one in 70 people is a migrant in the southern hemisphere. This is the main reason that Western societies are different in terms of cohabitation with ethno-culturally and religiously different neighbours. This mode of relationship has created tension over the centuries, leading to the intimidation, annihilation or assimilation of some

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neighbours. Such tension has generally existed during eras of socio-political or social-economic structural problems. It is known that peaceful coexistence can prevail during times of wealth. However, during times of political, legal and economic crises, we have borne witness to many accounts where our ‘next door neighbours’, who have been subject to exclusion, isolation or minorization mechanisms, have become ‘the Others’, or ‘the enemies within’. A most obvious example of this experience is how Muslim origin migrants in Western societies are becoming the ‘Others’. Western democracies that do not grant sufficient political rights to migrants and do not support them to ensure that they are politically represented, face some important dilemmas. It is not surprising that such ‘democratic’ nationstates that cannot overcome their structural problems and thus encounter legitimacy crises, take a shortcut and place the burden of ongoing structural problems on the ‘guests next door’, turning them into ‘enemies within’. It is possible to explain the violent uprisings of Autumn 2005 in France in this framework. The problem of integrating the immigrant population was brought to attention once more following the acts of violence that took place in the suburbs of Paris during late October 2005, and which spread to other French cities, Belgium, Holland, and even Germany. When two young North African men were electrocuted on 27 October 2005 as they were trying to hide from the Paris police in a power transformer, thousands of young Muslims, most of them North Africans, took to the streets. How to interpret the actions of violence and hate, mostly by the third-generation immigrants in the country, has become a priority on the agenda of international community. President Chirac implied that the uprising was the consequence of structural problems, providing subtle hints of his awareness of the core of the problem, while the Secretary of Internal Affairs, Nikolas Sarkozy, chose to describe the Muslim suburban youth with attributes such as ‘criminal’, ‘vagabond’, ‘ruffian’ and ‘scum’ (racaille in French),20 demonstrating his effort to win the support of French public opinion: ‘You’ve had enough of this gang of scum, haven’t you? [...] Well we’re going to get rid of them’ (Kacem, 2006: 16; Khiari, 2006; and Jobard, 2005). He even claimed that those young Muslims had links with terrorist Islamic organisations such as Al Qaida.21 Sarkozy was not the only one in France, who attributed the macho attitudes of young men in the banlieues to Islam. Many French did not hesitate to do the same, forgetting the fact that similar incidences were experienced in very different contexts from Los Angeles to Moscow (Roy, 2007: 88). Joceyline Cesari very openly stated that it has become common in France to look into the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Islamist movements in Egypt or Algeria, or the Al Qaida in order to explain the sources of the Islamic revival in the country. The habit of automatically considering any form of Islamic expression such as the headscarf, or the rising number of prayer-rooms in low-income housing projects, to be influenced by the

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ongoing international political crisis ultimately masks the real nature of the new social and cultural dynamics of diasporic Muslim communities (Cesari, 2005: 40). Since French politicians and intellectuals are still far from bringing critical explanations to the substance of the matter at hand and easing tension within society, a dangerous chasm has opened between the mostly Catholic French majority, and the Muslim immigrants, whose population numbers close to 6 million.22 While this event seemed extreme, with the burning of several hundred cars, attacks on public buildings, aggravation of social tension and the championing of Muslim identity, it must be noted that similar events have been frequent in France in the past two decades. The story of North African bidonvilles has been narrated by academics, novelists, film directors and exbidonville residents such as Azouz Begag (1986) and Brahim Benaïcha (1999). Mathieu Kassowitz’s 1996 film, La Haine (Hate), had especially caught the attention of immigrant youth across the world. This cult film brought an acute and uninhibited perspective on the daily lives of the Muslim and Sephardic Jewish youth living in the suburbs of Paris. It disclosed the isolation, loneliness, and hopelessness of these young people as well as problems of education, employment, institutional discrimination and xenophobia they face, and made an accurate depiction of the protest culture (rap, graffiti, break-dance, hip-hop) they produce. Kasowitz underlined that especially the Northern African youth (beurs) found their salvation in militant Islamic movements and in street gangs. It should be remembered that similar events had occurred when a young motorcycle rider was shot dead by a policeman in the Vaulx-en-Velin suburb of Lyon, in October 1990 (Fetzer and Soper, 2005: 68). The most socially destabilizing manifestation of rising urban violence in the past decade came in the form of a series of subway bombings in 1995 carried out by a group of Maghrebians, some of whom grew up in Vaulx-en-Velin and were recruited by the radical Algerian Armed Islamic Group (Groupe Islamique Armée, GIA). The bombings were carried out in part by a radical cell led by Khaled Kelkal, an unemployed 24-year-old Algerian who settled in Vaulx-en-Velin, and left ten dead and more than 100 injured – most in an attack on Paris metro. Kelkal was later shot dead by French paratroopers in September 1995 in a controversial way which sparked riots among North Africans in banlieues across the country (Pauly, 2004: 50; Collyer, 2006: 264–265; and Khiari, 2006). Although Khaled Kelkal was a French citizen and was not deported, he was systematically referred to as an ‘Algerian terrorist’ in media and political discourse, due to his membership of the GIA. During both current and past uprisings (in the 1990s), public opinion underlined the progressively more radical Islamic identity adopted by the youth (Hargreaves, 1995; Bloul, 1998; Cesari, 2003). In view of the everincreasing popularity of Huntington’s ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis, developed in 1992, it becomes clear why Islamic entity is so intensively questioned

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and made an issue of in the West. It is apparent that identity politics with cultural, ethnic and religious features is primarily produced by the marginal, minority, and migrant groups that mostly belong to the working or lower classes. It is worth stressing at this point that ethnic groups and religious groups are being produced and reproduced as a form of communal political action. Max Weber’s classical discussion on the nature of ethnic groups particularly springs from his observations of German migrants and their descendants in the United States. He very eloquently revealed the persistent effect of childhood memories as a source of homeland sentiment even when immigrants were thoroughly adjusted to their relocation with no intention of return. Furthermore, a shared language, political memory and religious beliefs facilitated communal relations (Weber, 1965). The works of situationalist scholars like Max Weber (1965) and Fredrik Barth (1969) draw a picture of ethnicity as a rational choice: ‘the construction of ethnic boundaries or the adoption or presentation of a particular ethnic identity can be seen as part of a strategy to gain personal or collective political or economic advantage’ (Nagel, 1994: 159). Barth distinguished ethnicity as a feature of social organization rather than a tenuous expression of culture. He described his view of culture as constructivist, challenging the notion of cultures as homogenous, clearly bounded, distinct and separate. Actually, what is essential is the interactive delineation of boundaries rather than the primoridially defined ‘cultural stuff’ (Barth, 1969: 15). One should bear in mind that there are two basic differences between recent riots and preceding ones in France: firstly, the latest riots were not only limited to Paris but also reached out all around the country, and even to the neighbouring countries like Belgium and the Netherlands where there are African origin migrants; and secondly the intensity of violence was more than that of the former ones. The first Beur collective action which constitutes the turning point in terms of Beurs’ political visibility in France was the 1983 March for Equal Rights and against Racism (‘Marche des Beurs’). The March initiative was a reaction to the escalation of racist violence. It was partly inspired by the non-violent model of the US civil rights movement under the leadership of Martin Luther King. This choice partly reflected the individuality of the initial 40 marchers who started the march at Marseille to finish one month later in Paris with some 100,000 marchers. Beurs’ demands were expressed in moral terms such as a quest for equality, dignity and rights, a pacifist statement on solidarity (Bloul, 1999; Balibar, 2004: 32; Jelen, 2005; Khiari, 2006: 42). Ever since, the Beur movement has split itself between electoral politics and local social actions, in other words, between civic and civil movements. It is not clear yet which one is more peculiar to the Beurs: civic claims or civil claims? However, what is obvious is that the Beur movement is radicalizing itself since the early 1980s. There are lately strong indications that the recent rioters, who are the sons of 1983 demonstrators, have shifted their discourses from a pacifist Martin-Luther-King-like discourse to

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a more radical Malcolm-X-like discourse, which has a rather Islamic as well as a republican substance.23 Thus, not only social mobility among the Beurs had limited effects in terms of the integration of banlieues synonymous with ‘Muslim youth’, it also signified the failure of the Beur political elite of the 1980s. The failure of these elites and worsening social exclusion in the banlieues pave the way to the re-islamization of Beur youth in France – a country facing increasing economic difficulties and mounting racism (Bloul, 1998: 15; and Khiari, 2006). Ethno-cultural and religious identities generated by minorities should be conceived as a product of the quest for equality and justice. It should be remembered that Muslims, who are politically underrepresented and perceived as a threat to national, social and cultural security, can be expected to turn inward and establish parallel societies. The Islamic parallel societies manifest in Western countries such as France, Germany, England, Belgium, Holland, and Denmark are not the result of the conservatism of the Muslims, but their reaction to the structural and political mechanisms of exclusion. In other words, religiosity is too important to be limited to the beliefs of the said minorities, because what lies beneath religiosities are the structural problems of racism, xenophobia, poverty and unemployment. Although it is without doubt that social and class tensions erupt from such structural problems, conservative administrations, the state, the media, and even intellectuals, intentionally or unintentionally make wrong diagnoses of, and misrepresent, the issue to the public, which in turn make it almost impossible to solve it. Is it really their cultural differences, their antiintegrationist, reactionary attitude, and their Islamic identity that considers fighting against Christianity a religious duty that takes Muslims to the street? Or, are their mass-opposition and social movements the manifestation of a resistance against almost two centuries of colonialism, exclusion, racism, xenophobia, and the more recent conditions of poverty? Answers to these two essential questions provide clues to how individuals, institutions and the state approach the problem. Those who answer the first question positively find the Islamic, the culturally different, and the ethnically diverse ‘problematic’ by nature. The ‘Others’ are expected to eliminate their differences and become assimilated into the dominant civilization project. In the French example, the main problem is that they pose an attitude illsuited to the Republic of France, with its discourse of ‘equality, fraternity, liberty, Laïcité’, and its values. In fact, upon a deeper inquiry into the religious inclinations of millions of Northern and Central African Muslims living in France, it is seen that especially the religious identity adopted by the Muslim youth is not closely related to the dreaded ‘radical Islamic identity’. Needless to say, some young Muslims have chosen a more fundamentalist view of Islam under the influence of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) that is primarily organized in Algeria and earned a degree of legitimacy against the colonialist French

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state (Leveau, 1997). However, recent studies both in France and other countries show that young Muslims hold their Islamic identity only at a symbolic level, that most do not observe religious rites such as daily prayers and fasting (during the month of Ramadan), and that they adopt an increasingly secular (material) worldview (Hargreaves, 1995; Tribalat, 1995; Kaya, 2001; Safran, 2003a; and Kaya and Kentel, 2005). In fact, the works of Hargreaves and Tribalat mention that some young Northern Africans in France (‘beur’ in French) see themselves as ‘Muslim Atheist’ (Hargreaves, 1995: 120–121; Tribalat, 1995: 96–98).24 Safran (2003a: 78) precisely summarizes the ways in which any kind of religious revival, be it Islamic or Christian, is interpreted in France: To some observers, these developments tend to be conducive to the weakening of the role of the state in guarding the principle of separation of religion and state and to add the periodic worries of the French about their national unity. Such worries appear to be groundless, for, at this writing, religious identities are too diverse, weak and unthreatening to undermine the stability of the French political community or the principle of laïcité on which it is based. Franco-Algerian writer Sadek Sellam argues that young Muslims see what France has done to their parents, they see the bad housing, and they see that France is not interested in helping them make a better life, and they discover radicalism. Their parents said: ‘we are Muslims, why not?’ But these kids are saying: ‘We are Muslims. Now what?’ (cited in Pauly, 2004: 49) The bell tolls for the French Fifth Republic. The assimilationist character, the rigid structure that ignores differences, the inability to transfer political rights from theory to practice, the excessively centralized quality of the state, the exaggerated power of the national government, and the high age profile of the parliamentarians has given rise to a social opposition which may be expected to grow in various ways. While important for emigrants, the democratic republic project is also crucial for the French. European norms have recently been becoming definitive with respect to decentralized governance and the political participation of minorities. Cultural autonomy granted to Corsica, the election of two Muslim members to the European Parliament, the establishment of the Islamic Council of France in 2003 by the Union of Public Movement (UMP) are important indications that the republic is becoming further democratized. These institutional changes essentially correspond to the transformation of the Jacobin understanding of the Republic, which insisted that there be no intermediaries between the individual and the state, and hence rejected all mediating institutions,

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such as provinces, ethnic communities, trade unions and churches (Safran, 2003a: 54). Aside from these institutional changes, it must be stressed again that the Islamic languages used by young Muslim immigrants is of symbolic quality. This is an ethno-cultural language used by secularized masses. It should be noted that marginal groups who cannot enter the political platform through legitimate political channels will sometimes use the language of religion, ethnicity, and sometimes of violence. The language used by Beurs in France is, in this respect, the expression of such a political search. Many Muslims can find places in the French national team, the hip-hop culture, in cinema, visual arts and many other fields, while having absolutely no place in the political arena. This imbalance needs to be corrected. From this perspective, the events in France are actions of immigrants seeking political recognition and equality. It should not be surprising, and not be considered as a coincidence that France, the birthplace of the 1968 youth movements, is also the birthplace of immigrants’ movements, who have truly displayed their allegiance to the four pillars of the republican rhetoric underlining their quest for ‘liberty, equality, fraternity and Laïcité.’ France cannot provide migrants and their children with a venue where they can convert their cultural capital to economic capital upon graduation. As such, it can be said that France, much like many other Western nations, discriminates against migrant families on a business and economic level. Moreover, Tribalat asserts that illiteracy is higher among Moroccans and Algerians (Tribalat, 2003). As Tribalat (2003) put it ‘what is the point in working hard for success at school if you are going to be discriminated against?’25 She reports that the presence of discrimination raises the problem of coherence between republican principles and the reality of French society. One should remember that unemployment rate among the university graduates of French ethnic origin is 5 per cent, and 27 per cent among the North African origin university graduates.26 This ratio is much higher than it is in Germany (4 per cent and 12 per cent), Belgium (5 per cent and 15 per cent), and the Netherlands (3 per cent and 12 per cent).27 Data from the 1999 census indicate that the second generation of Maghrebi origin encounter more difficulties in the labour market. The children of immigrants (30 per cent) are more confronted with unemployment than their French native peers (20 per cent). When the parents are natives of Algeria or Morocco, the unemployment rate of the young people is approximately 40 per cent (INSEE, 2005). The inability of Muslims to socially mobilise themselves in public life leads to the emergence of strong mental constructs that define social, economic, and educational problems of the nation in terms of ‘backward cultures’.28 This mentality makes it difficult to implement an all-encompassing education system. Sociologist François Dubet observes the following: Relations in schools, much like relations in society as a whole, are becoming increasingly racialist. Individuals are perceived and branded

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as people with ‘ethnic identities’. To put it simply, whereas schools would define some students as working-class children in the past, now they define them as children of emigrants. While a child’s problems would be attributed to his/her father’s poverty in the past, now they are being attributed to the fact that his/her father is a migrant, even though the child belongs to the third generation. The behaviour of male children would be described as ‘hostile’ in the past; now the behaviour itself is being described as ‘ethnic’. (cited in Starkey, 2003: 120) Along with the racialization of the discourse on social mobility and educational failure comes the fact that almost no Muslim has a seat in the local or national parliaments today. The combination of the absence of successful models with racist branding makes it far more difficult for children of ethnic minorities to identify with the real republicanism that fails to provide any material capital to them (Ibid.). Lately, France has been meeting with much resistance in its effort to raise citizens loyal to the republican principles of ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Laïcité’. The education of citizens through the national school system was always considered as an apparatus to integrate various groups within a unitary educational system that was defined as republican. Universal and liberal values were always placed before cultural, ethnic and religious identities. This produces a static and assimilation-oriented French society to which children must conform.

Puissance: the power of collectivity Indepth interviews and observations held during and after the ‘Euro-Turks’ research between 2003–2005 revealed the unique condition of the youth, who directly feel and reflect social changes and crises. Just as ‘success’ and ‘integration’ is manifested in ‘hybrid’ form, so ‘failure’ is expressed in similar form. The inability to earn a place in education or work brings resentment. Isolation, humiliation, and racism, burdening especially young North Africans due to the difference in their colour, names, and religion, lay the ground for an anarchist attitude among them. The findings by Bloul (1998, 1999), Body-Gendrot (2002), Tribalat (2003), Cesari (2003) and Wacquant (2006) also address the detrimental effects of deindustrialization, deproletarization and structural exclusion to which the Beurs have been subject in the last couple of decades. The state these young people are in, is a kind of ‘dis-establishment’, and the only thing they can establish themselves in, or hang on to, is a feeling of ‘we’ produced through fictitious references. It is very easy for the statement ‘one can become a terrorist’ to enter the language of these youngsters. One could also observe the enticing potential power of the massive community discovered by the young Muslims during spontaneous riots. This is what Michel Maffesoli (1996: 1) calls Puissance (potential power), the ‘inherent energy and vital force of the people’ which becomes

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visible in heteronomic collective community formations as opposed to the institutions of ‘power’ (pouvoir) (Maffesoli, 1996: 1). The predominance of this spontaneous creativity or puissance leads to the emergence of a new type of heteronomic community called sociality, connecting tissues of everyday interaction and cooperation. It has a complex and organic structure which is composed primarily of ‘affectual tribes’ and essentialist communities, as opposed to modernity, which had a mechanical structure and was composed of contractual groups (Maffesoli, 1996: 6). Similarly, James Clyde Mitchell (1956) delineated a process of ‘retribalization’ among immigrant workers in mining towns of the Rhodesian Copperbelt, and a growing sense of ethnic identity in the context of interaction with strangers. It is not only the structural problems such as poverty, unemployment, discrimination and institutional racism which encourage ethnic minorities and migrant origin individuals to develop a community discourse, but it is also the fact that, paraphrasing Hall (1994), speaking from margins sometimes could make more echo. It is evident that several migrants and their descendants tend to construct a community discourse by reifying some aspects of their ‘authentic culture’. Mobilising authentic culture through mass ceremonies, gatherings and protests, for instance, provides, to use Gilroy’s words, ‘important rituals which allow its affiliates to recognise each other and celebrate their coming together’ (Gilroy, 1987: 223). Thus, in diaspora, highly effective informal networks forge a community of a sort that has never existed at home, as it attempts to worship and celebrate in concert (Mandel, 1996: 161). Habitual adherence to the rituals, as Russon (1995: 514) rightly posits, allows us to recognise ourselves as an ‘us’, as a ‘we’. Euro-Muslims who are engaged in the community discourse, at first glance, might seem as if they are practising a conventional and essentialist form of cultural identity which they have taken out of the ready-made package of cultural attributes carried across from their homeland by their parents. Such a conclusion would be misleading because the formation and articulation of cultural identity is a process, which is not free from the constant intercourse between various social groups, classes and cultures. As Czarina Wilpert (1989: 21) accurately states: The significance of the concept of cultural identity within this framework derives from the assumption that, in the construction of a collective ethnic identity, culture becomes a resource. It is not that culture, which may be in continual transformation, is viewed as something static and fixed, nor that an immigrant ‘community’ is considered to live as a homogenous closed cultural entity within a foreign society. Rather, elements of culture, its signs and symbols, may be transformed or filled with new meaning and take on a new significance in this process. This is accomplished in a particular context at a specific moment in history in interaction with the conditions and principles which structure the lives

90 Islam, Migration and Integration

of the immigrant descendants, and with reference to the resources they have at hand for understanding the world around them ... Hereby, Wilpert reminds us of two significant points. The first point to be considered is that reification of culture in the diaspora is a vital instrument to be employed in the process of identity formation. The second point to bear in mind is that the community culture formed in the diasporic space is not immune to the allure of the culture of the wider society, unchanging, or always clear and unambiguous. The demand for self-consciousness is met in a dialogue of mutual recognition which takes place in a collective process. Thus, there only remains a singular space for the individual at the margin to form his/her self-consciousness, that is the communal acts of mutual recognition within the boundaries of community. In this communal life, rituals and customs define who ‘I’ is. Sometimes it is the Muslim communality which offers the individual a ground to achieve self-consciousness. The failure of integration is also revealed by Dominique Schnapper (1991) who claims that whilst the migrant populations residing in France do not constitute any threat to national unity and whilst their cultural and religious diversity is not an obstacle to lucrative integration, the social and economic conditions of many of the population of immigrant origin pose a reason for concern. While some Muslim migrants in the West have some degree of social mobility, the rest are doomed to an existence of poverty and exclusion. It is very possible to hear in the suburbs of Paris like La Courneuve, St. Dennis or Crétil the voice of masses that are not employed in any formal job, become progressively poorer, and whose numbers are on the rise. Some of these benefit from the social welfare system by receiving unemployment compensation from the government, but an increasing number not only do not receive any aid from the state, but are in no position to contribute to the social security system due to their chronic unemployment. In January 1999, the unemployment rate in France was 10.2 per cent nationally. However, among North African Muslims, it stood at 33 per cent (Thave, 2000). In 1999, unemployment rates among individuals of Europeans and non-Europeans were as follows: Spanish (8.5 per cent), Portuguese (8 per cent), Algerian (32.5 per cent), Moroccan (38 per cent) (National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies, INSEE).29 Unemployment, no doubt, is the result of the global stagnation. Unemployed masses, frequently seen in neighbourhoods such as Kreuzberg (Berlin), Keupstrasse (Cologne), Villier le Bel, La Courneuve, St. Dennis or Crétil (Paris) are truly disadvantaged.30 To make it clear one could just refer to the unemployment rate of Berlin-Turks (40 per cent) and of Beurs in France (42 per cent). These figures are extremely high in comparison to the average unemployment rates of both countries (approximately 12 per cent). The state of structural exclusion and disposession they are in cannot be adequately described by ‘isolation’ or ‘marginality’, but in some cases with a term like ‘hyper-isolation’. Muslims in the

France

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suburbs of large cities attend their isolated schools, pray at their mosques, shop at their isolated stores and develop their own marginal economy. The advance of the Muslim middle-class from the suburbs to the new neighbourhoods has left only the poorest of the poor behind – increasingly distanced from the urban economy at large, and deprived of the institutional support that allows a bare existence in the ghettos of a hostile world.31 In an age when industrial production is in rapid descent, these people cannot adapt to the changing economy, and fall into a state of constant joblessness, exclusion and loneliness (Kivisto, 2002). Moreover, the cités (HLM) have been marked by significant physical collapse and the flight of local commerce, creating a feeling of isolation, distress and social exile for the poor. The lack of local capital along with occasional crime and property violence has brought about the closure of most of the shopping centres built at the centre of housing projects. Structurally, prefabricated materials used in the construction of the cités have not weathered well. As of the early 1990s, an estimated 80 per cent of the buildings suffered from some combination of water damage, insulation and electricity problems, broken elevators, or worse. Silverstein and Tetreault (2005) expose that a number of other structures were considered beyond repair, and were torn down in the interim. Since April 2005, the lack of safe public housing has brought about the death of 48 poor immigrants who died in three separate fires in makeshift municipal housing and abandoned buildings in Paris. This socioeconomic marginalization of the suburban cités has been paired with spatial isolation. The urban transportation network designed to connect the suburbs to the city centre has failed to do so. For instance, Parisian subway and commuter rail lines have only about 120 stops for several thousand communes in the region. Referring to a 1990 report from the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Research (INSEE), Silverstein and Tetreault (2005) point out that nearly 60 per cent of these suburban municipalities lack their own train station. Structural problems intermingled with the rise of a global resistance of Islam have prompted the North Africans to speak as Muslims. As Olivier Roy rightly observed the inhabitants of the banlieues use a very different discourse compared to their preceding generations: The immigrant of the 1970s was silent: others spoke for him. The young beurs of the 1980s, when they went outside their banlieues, laid claim to the prevailing language of integration instead of defending a difference, except for skin colour: they were above all antiracist, that is, against any insignia of otherness; they rejected any communitarianism and made no reference to Islam. This was the very nature of the march of the beurs in 1983, and it remains the line of the association of SOS-Racisme, which came out of the 1983 movement but is now disconnected from the banlieues ... (Roy, 2007: 5–6)

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Young generations of the banlieues however generated a more religious discourse, which is somehow linked to the ascending hegemony of the globalized Islamic resistance. What makes these youngsters different from the preceding ones is that they had the chance to speak out for themselves through their own organic intellectuals like rappers, sometimes imams, artists, writers and scholars, who transmit the problems of the banlieues into the prime-time of the media. *

*

*

The 2005 uprisings in suburban Paris expresses the reaction of French-African Muslim youth to joblessness, poverty, lack of education, inequality, racism, xenophobia, assimilation, loneliness, isolation, and exclusion. The resistance is also an indication that the myth of the politically equal citizen which the French Republican tradition aimed to bring about is dying out. The attempt to construct a ‘politically equal citizen’ has manifested itself to be a failure as French-Muslims seem to be deprived of fully achieved political rights. The fact that there is not even one single Muslim representative in the National Parliament of a nation that harbours nearly more than 5 million Muslims, and that Muslim citizens are faced with similar representation issues in local councils has become the leading dilemma of the French Republic. This dilemma is the product of the misinterpretation of recent developments by the French political elite, who have shut their eyes to differences and who have been seduced by the myth that all French citizens are equal regardless of religion, language, race, ethnicity, class and gender.32 As de-industrialization and rising inequality in politics, education and the labour market increasingly alienate immigrants from the republican project, they have come to hold on to religion, ethnicity, language and tradition, whatever they believe cannot be taken away from them, even more tightly. These parallel societal organizations are being misinterpreted by the majority, and being attributed to the conservativeness and resistance to integration of Muslim emigrants. As a result, the fact that the structural problems of unemployment, de-industrialization, isolation, racism and lack of global justice are what lie behind the formation of parallel societies, have traditionally become ignored. Conservative political elites like Nikolas Sarkozy, who are very populist, indulge in deliberate misreadings, which result in the syndrome depicting that immigrants are ‘enemies within’ who must be eliminated. Given the problematic representation and statisticalization of immigrants and Muslims in the media and political sphere, the issue runs into a dead-end. When all misinterpretations and misevaluations add up, it is easy to see how smoothly ‘neighbours next door’ can be turned into ‘enemies within’.

3 Belgium: a Culturally Divided Land

Since 1993, Belgium has been divided into three linguistic and cultural communities (Flemish-speaking, French-speaking and a very small Germanspeaking community) and into three geographical, political, administrative and economic regions (Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels). The Belgian federalization project has transferred nearly all authority for economic development, education, transportation and social programmes to the regions, leaving the central government as a weak coordinator with limited revenueraising powers (Witte, 1992; and Erk, 2003). The Flemish-speaking population is around 6 million, the French-speaking around 3.4 million, and the German-speaking around 70,000 people. Bilingual Brussels has around 1 million people. These communities have developed rather different kinds of belonging to Belgium as a result of historical, cultural, economic and political differences between the regions. The Flemish people generated the notion of a nation composed of ‘our people’ (ons volk) and an anti-Belgian attitude, which began and deepened during and between the two World Wars. This Flemish notion implies one nation (Flanders) within another nation (Belgium), rather than two distinct nations (Flanders and Wallonia). Wallonia, on the other hand, whilst it has not adopted the Flemish culturalist concept of belonging to a community of ‘our people’, has nevertheless developed an anti-Flemish political attitude, which is not anti-Belgian (Stengers, 2000; and Deprez and Vos, 1998). Finally, Brussels has a completely different model of belonging as well as a rather complex identity with a growing number of ‘new’ naturalized Belgians. Despite being culturally divided, Belgium maintained its political unity rather successfully in the aftermath of World War II, even to the extent of creating a model that flourished as the Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg), which in turn itself became a model for Europe-wide integration.1 The Belgian case also illustrates that the presence of strong regional or territorial identities has not prevented the emergence of a growing political Belgian identity. Belgium displays that identities can be complementary, they are not necessarily exclusionary. What is probably the charm of 93

94 Islam, Migration and Integration

the Belgian model of unity is that it does not underline what is cultural and national, but rather highlights what is political. One should bear in mind that there was a practical need for such political unity against the two historically hegemonic powers of France and Germany (Fitzmaurice, 1996). The lack of a homogeneous national culture in Belgium has brought about a popular mindset of mixture and blending, which lays emphasis on tolerance towards others. Furthermore, together with Spain, Belgium is the newest federal or ‘quasi-federal’ State of the EU. Unlike the other federal member-states of Germany and Austria, Belgium is a multi-national federation. In the same vein, unlike Germany, Austria and Spain, Belgium is marked by the absence of federation-wide political parties. As Swenden (2003: 3) rightly reminds us, nationalpolicy-making operates under consociational rules which prescribe the cooperation of political parties representing a majority of the electorate within the Flemish- and French-speaking communities. Prior to Belgian independence in 1830, Flemish had been cast as a peasant language, unsui. for business or the affairs of state. After independence, French was established as the official language of the state, leaving the Dutch-speaking majority in a subordinate social-economic position in a bilingual country but a monolingual state. Speaking French became the precondition of upward mobility and the upper class Flemish elite also opted to speak French. The industrial revolution and the discovery of substantial coal mines in Wallonia in the late nineteenth century created a strong Walloon middle class, who generated a hegemonic understanding of civilizing machinery over the Flemish community.2 The remaining – largely agrarian – Flemings responded to this social change by concentrating their efforts on the recognition of their mother tongue and the linguistic rights of Dutch speakers in education, the military and the courts. This was another battle between a ‘civilisational’ project and a ‘cultural project’ as was experienced elsewhere between France and Germany. The political expression of right-wing Flemish nationalism, separatism and irredentism was triggered by World War I and the introduction of universal suffrage with proportional representation. In 1919, the Frontpartij won five seats in parliament with 2.6 per cent of the national vote. The Frontpartij was founded by Flemish soldiers and sympathizers who had survived trench warfare in ‘Flanders Fields’, and contested that their officers were mostly French-speaking who could not communicate with their troops. In the 1930s, the Frontpartij was succeeded by the VNV (Vlaams Nationaal Verbond – Flemish National Union), a radical separatist and explicitly Catholic party that sympathized with National Socialism. In the 1936 general elections, it captured 10 per cent of the Flemish vote, but in the 1939 election it suffered a reverse of fortunes. The VNV collaborated with the Nazis, who recognised it as the sole representative of the Flemish people. The VNV served as a recruiting bureau to send Flemish soldiers to fight under German orders on

Belgium 95

the Eastern Front. A Flemish SS (Shutzstaffel) battalion was even formed. This open collaboration of a faction of Flemish nationalists expanded into the Flemish countryside and this issue remains on the agenda of the Flemish nationalist movement today. In the 1949 general election, the Vlaamse Concentratie (Flemish Concentration) presented electoral lists but did not win any seats. It was predominantly an ‘anti-repression’ party, without a genuinely Flemish nationalist programme. In 1954, the Christelijke Vlaamse Volksunie (Christian Flemish People’s Union) was founded. While this party carefully chose its leaders from nationalist circles that had not collaborated with the Nazis, at the lower levels it soon became the party of the ‘blackshirts’. It was similarly perceived by other parties, which actively opposed it. The Volksunie (VU) created a uniformed militia (VMO, Vlaams Militanten Orde), which first served as a security service at the first public party meetings of the VU, but later acted as stormtroopers against the extreme left in the 1960s and 1970s. Around this right wing faction within the Volksunie, a wide variety of extreme right groups flourished including Were Di, Voorpost, Nationalistische Studentenvereniging, Vlaams Nationale Jeugdverbond, Sint-Maartensfonds, Broederband and Hertog Jan van Brabant. Most of the older generation of leaders of the Vlaams Blok held some position inside the VU and they were also active in one of these extreme right fringe organizations, along with the young guard. The VU got one MP elected in each of the 1954 and 1958 elections. In the 1960s, the party – now called just Volksunie – grew considerably and reached its peak in 1971, when it achieved 11 per cent of the national vote and 18 per cent of the Flemish vote, its electoral target. After this rather sudden success, the party stalled and even declined slightly in the next elections in 1974 and 1977. Its first experience with governmental participation cost the party about one third of its voters in 1978. Some of them defected to the newly created Vlaams Blok, which was an electoral alliance of two dissident VU groups, one led by Karl Dillen (VNP, Vlaams Nationale Partij) and the other by VU-senator Lode Claes (VVP, Vlaamse Volkspartij). The Vlaams Blok began an active campaign against African and Turkish immigrants in the mid-1970s. The electoral cartel won 1.3 per cent of the national vote.3 This political transformation occurred at a time of great social and economic change that brought about a process of de-industrialization or postindustrialization. Globalized production schemes witnessed low skilled and labour-intensive jobs being moved out of Western Europe to areas of lower labour and raw material cost. Technological innovation required a labour force with more formal education, higher skills and specialized training and provided few opportunities for unskilled or semi-skilled workers (Wilson, 1996; Hossay, 1996; Kivisto, 2002; and Sassen, 2003). The industrial sites and mines in the heartland of Belgium were replaced by a developing service sector in a way that turned the uneducated and unqualified masses into the new ‘wretched of the earth’ to borrow Frantz Fanon’s wording. This process of de-industrialization has resulted in a more precarious employment

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situation for the working and lower-middle classes based on irregular, parttime or insecure employment with only marginal career potential. The number of unemployed people in Belgium jumped from 100,000 in 1976 to 550,000 in 1984 (Piaser, 1992). Long-term unemployment of those who have been unemployed for over two years has grown dramatically since the 1980s. In 1991, 41 per cent of the unemployed had been so for over two years and 63 per cent had been out of work for over one year (Hossay, 1996: fn. 5). The welfare state’s incapacity to provide security in times of such crises brought its very legitimacy into question and seemed to disrupt the post-war social contract. One of the highest public debts in Western Europe, political scandals, corruption, moral breakdown, bureaucratic malfunctioning, ineffective coalition governments and Europe’s largest budget deficit all intensify cynicism towards politicians in Belgium, and raise interest in anti-systemic political movements. Traditional political parties have thus lost many of their supporters, while alternative parties on both sides of the political spectrum have grown. The resulting decomposition of political alignments and increasing socio-political volatility has been accompanied by a shift in support away from the central parties to more radical alternatives. This social and political context has been very fruitful for the Vlaams Blok and now for the Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest),4 which initially attracted lower-middle class people with strong resentment against taxation, bureaucratic inefficiency and political corruption. Recently, however, the object of Flemish nationalism has been directed against Muslim origin immigrants. The emphasis on racist political tendencies in the Flemish part of Belgium does not necessarily mean that there is no racist political formation in Wallonia. The Front National was established in 1985, in emulation of JeanMarie Le Pen’s Front National in France. The Front Nouveau de Belgique and the Parti des Forces Nouvelles are the other two far-right political embodiments, both of which have failed to attract large parts of the electorate. These parties also use an anti-immigrant discourse (Mielants, 2006). Although organized racist political formations are not widely supported in Wallonia, it should be noted that everyday racism is remarkably high (Mielants, 2006). A public poll conducted in 1989 revealed that 67 per cent of Walloons and 57 per cent of Flemings believed that immigrants exploit the Belgian social security system (Swyngedouw, 1998: 124). The following table also reveals that racism and discrimination are reported to be the major problems experienced by the Belgian-Turks in everyday life (Table 3.1). The most important problem faced by Belgian-Turks is reported to be discrimination (31.8 per cent) and racism (28.5 per cent). There are some major regional differences regarding the primary problem underlined. For instance, while Flemish-Turks underline discrimination and racism, BrusselsTurks primarily address the contradiction of moral and religious values, and

Belgium 97 Table 3.1

Primary problems of Belgian-Turks in everyday life (Multi response)

Discrimination (Being treated as an alien) Racism Unemployment Contradictory moral values Lack of Flemish/French language Disrespect to our religion Disrespect to our Turkishness We are unable to protect our language and culture Loneliness and discommunication Widespread drug use Poverty Exploitation of our labour

Table 3.2

Flander (%)

Wallonia (%)

Brussels (%)

Total (%)

35.2

25.0

31.0

31.8

33.7 26.6 19.1 15.1 17.6 13.1 9.5

27.3 33.9 20.5 18.2 10.2 3.4 9.1

20.4 27.4 35.4 13.3 13.3 11.5 12.4

28.5 28.3 24.0 15.3 14.8 10.5 10.3

6.5 8.0 6.0 4.5

12.5 10.2 1.1 3.4

9.7 6.2 2.7 1.8

8.8 8.0 4.0 3.5

What is the primary problem you face in Belgium? By gender

Unemployment Lack of Flemish/French language Disrespect to our Turkishness We are unable to protect our language and culture

Female (%)

Male (%)

Total (%)

30.8 17.4 7.5 8.0

25.6 13.1 13.6 12.6

28.3 15.3 10.5 10.3

Walloon-Turks emphasize unemployment. These data reveal that BrusselsTurks are more inclined with communitarian perspectives. Contrary to Belgian-Turks, German-Turks mainly address at the contradiction in moral values (26per cent), and French-Turks report that their incompetence in the French language is their primary concern (18 per cent). Crosstabulations made above crystalize the problems expressed by Belgian-Turks with regard to the categories of gender, age group and social economic status. It is mostly the women and the elderly people who bring up the problem of ‘lack of French/Flemish language’ (Table 3.2). What is remarkable is the fact that those who complain about discrimination in everyday life (being treated as an alien) are mainly youngsters (Table 3.3). On the other hand, those who complain that they face racism, disrespect to religion, and disrespect to Turkishness are mostly coming from lower social economic status (Table 3.4).

98 Islam, Migration and Integration Table 3.3

What is the primary problem you face in Belgium? By age groups 15–19, %

20–29, %

30–39, %

40–49, %

50ⴙ, %

16.7 28.6 35.7

22.6 28.2 32.3

24.6 37.3 29.4

34.1 20.5 34.1

23.4 15.6 31.3

23.8 9.5 7.1 11.9 9.5 28.6 0 9.5

16.1 14.5 8.9 5.6 2.4 25.0 4.8 8.1

14.3 11.1 8.7 8.7 2.4 31.7 4.0 6.3

6.8 2.3 11.4 9.1 4.5 25.0 4.5 13.6

12.5 7.8 7.8 7.8 3.1 31.3 4.7 20.3

9.5

14.5

11.1

31.8

17.2

Contradictory moral values Unemployment Discrimination (Being treated as an alien) Disrespect to our religion Disrespect to our Turkishness Loneliness and discommunication Widespread drug use Exploitation of our labour Racism Poverty We are unable to protect our language and culture Lack of Flemish/French language

Table 3.4 status

What is the primary problem you face in Belgium? By social economic

Contradictory moral values Unemployment Discrimination (Being treated as an alien) Disrespect to our religion Disrespect to our Turkishness Loneliness and discommunication Widespread drug use Racism We are unable to protect our language and culture Lack of Flemish/French language

Highest %

Upper middle %

Middle %

Lower middle %

Lower %

22.8 25.7 25.7

16.9 25.4 42.3

29.3 35.9 33.7

30.6 29.4 28.2

15.7 21.6 31.4

15.8 13.9

15.5 9.9

13.0 4.3

11.8 10.6

19.6 15.7

8.9

14.1

7.6

9.4

2.0

6.9 28.7 11.9

8.5 26.8 4.2

5.4 25.0 9.8

9.4 32.9 9.4

11.8 29.4 17.6

15.8

9.9

20.7

14.1

13.7

The migratory process in Belgium: From Gasterbeiders (guestworkers) to Vreemdelingen (foreigners) In the nineteenth century, Belgium was a country of immigration. At the end of the century, Belgian mining companies started to recruit foreign labour, mainly from Poland, Italy, Hungary, Morocco, Algeria and the Balkans. In 1923, 10 per cent of miners were foreigners and in 1927, 14 per cent of them

Belgium 99

were Muslims. This first North African migration to Belgium was an extension of that to France. However, the economic crisis of 1929 ended this movement. Since that time, Belgians have had a tendency to make foreign workers scapegoats as the main source of unemployment. Algerians were the first group of foreign workers to be sent back to their country of origin (De Raedt, 2004: 14). On 31 March 1936 a royal decree introduced the establishment of a work-permit programme. The rationale behind this decree was to protect the Belgian labour market against the intrusion of foreigners as well as to secure employment in the industrial sectors where there was insufficient autochthon (native) labour power. Immigrant labour was therefore perceived to be an additional work force that temporarily supplemented the deficit in local labour: the workers were called ‘guestworkers’ (gastarbeiders, or travailleurs étrangers), and they tended to be unqualified. The Foreigner Police (police des étrangers) controlled immigrant entry, the length of their stay and their expulsion when their employers no longer needed them. In 1937, immigrants represented 4.1 per cent of the population and in 1938– 1939, between 20 per cent and 25 per cent of the miners working in Limburg and Wallonia were foreigners, most of whom were Polish, Italian, Spanish, or even Jews who had escaped from Nazi persecution (Lewin, 1997: 17). In the aftermath of World War II, instead of recruiting foreign labour from its colony, the Congo, Belgium signed bilateral recruitment treaties with Italy (from 1946 to 1960), Spain (1956) and Greece (1957). Immigration from these three countries was stopped between 1958 and 1961. Italians constituted the majority of those workers and these are now less regarded as ‘foreigners’ by Belgians. Belgium went through a new wave of immigration between 1961 and 1970 when more than 260,000 foreigners entered the country. In 1964, Belgium made an official request to enlist foreign labour from Morocco and Turkey, and bilateral recruitment agreements were signed in 1969 and 1970 with Tunisia and Algeria (Martiniello and Rea, 2003) (Table 3.5). Immigration to Belgium was facilitated between 1963 and 1967 after mitigation of the application of the 1936 royal decree through collaboration between the Ministry of Justice and the Foreigners Police. Employers were given the right to recruit immigrants via a work permit issued in the country of origin or via a work permit obtained in Belgium after entering the country with a tourist visa. Belgium was rather more liberal in granting migrants the right to migrate with their families in those days. This peculiarity of Belgium compared to the other European countries was also confirmed by the interviews made with the Belgian-Turks. Belgian-Turks have a common discourse concerning their affiliation with Belgium, which gives them a different identity from the other Euro-Turks living in Germany and France: the comfort of living in Belgium. A middle-aged opinion leader in Beringen explained this well: Belgium is very attractive for Turks, even for those Turks coming from Germany. Belgium is a paradise with respect to social rights and private

100 Islam, Migration and Integration

Table 3.5

Belgium male female Brussels male female Flanders male female Wallonia male female

Foreign population in Belgium, by region (2000–2007) 2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

897,110 465,903 431,207 273,613 138,434 135,179 293,650 154,632 139,018 329,847 172,837 157,010

861,685 445,908 415,777 262,771 132,443 130,328 280,962 147,556 133,406 317,952 165,909 152,043

846,734 438,115 408,619 260,040 130,954 129,086 275,223 144,761 130,462 311,471 162,400 149,071

850,077 439,652 410,425 260,269 131,370 128,899 280,743 147,660 133,083 309,065 160,622 148,443

860,287 442,639 417,648 263,451 132,195 131,256 288,375 150,693 137,682 308,461 159,751 148,710

870,862 445,710 425,152 265,211 132,172 133,039 297,289 154,419 142,870 308,362 159,119 149,243

900,473 459,070 441,403 273,693 135,869 137,824 314,202 162,576 151,626 312,578 160,625 151,953

932,161 474,435 457,726 283,527 140,845 142,682 331,694 171,317 160,377 316,940 162,273 154,667

Source: National Institute of Statistics (INS), 2008 (http://www.statbel.fgov.be/figures/d21_fr.asp#5).

property ... We invest here more than we do in Turkey. It is both because of the extensive property rights granted us by the Belgian government, and of the troublesome experiences of investment that we had before in Turkey. Belgium is like the centre of the European Union when it comes to comfort. Due to such advantages in Belgium we feel more Belgian. Here it is more multikulti, Germany and France are more monocultural. Walloons are not multicultural, but they are kind. The Flemish are in favour of cultural diversity. (Private interview, April 2007) The policy had specific objectives: firstly to fill the demographic deficit and secondly to attract immigrants to Belgium instead of their going to rival countries such as Germany, France and the Netherlands. This policy of familial grouping has also served to keep immigrants’ salaries within the Belgian economy instead of money being sent to their countries of origin (De Raedt, 2004: 15). This period marked the end of the classic guestworker approach, which had resulted in Islam becoming visible in the urban space. During the 1980s and 1990s, 90 per cent of Flemish-speakers preferred to use the term vreemdelingen (foreigners) to refer to Moroccan, Turkish and Arab immigrants (Mielants, 2006: 314).

Diverse understandings of citizenship The Belgian nation-state offers a unique example of state-building providing a setting in which diverse traditions, ethnicities, languages, cultures and narratives of at least two distinctive communities (the Walloons and the Flemings) merge to form a whole. Until 1831, there was no Belgian

Belgium 101

nation-state. Belgium became a nation-state in the second half of the nineteenth century. Today, Belgian citizenship has two levels, the regional and the federal. The Flemish concept of citizenship is based on the community, culture, language, ethnicity, territory, particularity and a holistic notion of culture (Hermans et al., 1992). The Francophone concept of citizenship, on the other hand, is based on the ‘political will’ of the people to live together as in the French model of nation building: having a common language, culture and historical traditions and having a sense of being a member of a universal civilization (Lefebvre, 2003). At a federal level, most of the rights attached to citizenship are still granted by the federal institutions: these include civil and political rights, social security and the determination of income tax and budget. While the Belgian Constitution clearly frames a single definition of citizenship, in fact two separate concepts of citizenship are present side by side. The Walloons take the pragmatic view that belonging to a region is basically a tool for economic development, whilst ‘culture’ has to do with participation in the local community or the region. In this traditionally industrial – and until recently declining – region, the new elite is mainly service-oriented. While the notion of cultural nationalism is foreign to the Walloons, the Flemish elite take a Romaic approach to the idea of citizenship, celebrating the ‘cultural Flemish genius’ which is famous worldwide for its art, literature, architecture and the like and see their region as a nation belonging to the world of nations (Lefebvre, 2003: 129). The 1830–1831 Belgian laws on nationality were rather restrictive, mostly based on the traditional concept of jus sanguinis, paternity and familial national unity. It was not until 1984 that a major reformulation of Belgian citizenship law was undertaken. This law ended the principle of familial national unity, recognizing the equality of genders, erasing discrimination between legitimate and illegitimate children and moving towards the integration of youngsters of migrant origin by accepting the principles of jus sanguinis and jus soli into citizenship policy. The 1831 Constitution took into account the unique religious and cultural history of Belgium and enabled the ‘practice of compromise’, which resulted from the desire for harmony and the avoidance of social, religious and linguistic conflicts. Belgians have tended to solve problems of separation by creating ‘families’ or ‘pillars’. These terms indicate societal clusters adapted to discussion and compromise and they have enabled Belgium to survive despite its ideological-religious, social-economic and ethno-cultural cleavages (Preuss et al., 2003: 12). Ideological-religious cleavage took place between Catholics and Liberals in a way that has been reflected in the contemporary divide between the Christian Democratic Party (Centre démocrate humaniste, CDH, Christelijk Democraat en Vlaams, CD&V) and the Liberal party (Mouvement réformiste, MR, Vlaams Liberaal Democraten, VLD). Social-economic cleavage was, on the one hand, between the Flemish Movement and its elite,

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and on the other hand, between the Walloon working-class movement and its Francophone elite. The traditional Flemish elites, the Fransquillons, had been pro-Francophone, but the Flemish lower clergy encouraged the establishment of new Flemish local elite, integrated with Flemish society. Ethno-cultural cleavages followed social-economic cleavages that existed between Walloons and Flemings and these resulted in the demands of the Flemish Movement (established in 1840) for linguistic separation in the realms of administration, education and the regional institutions of citizenship. The Movement also expressed its determination with regard to the ethnic and territorial separation of the Flemish region from Wallonia (Hermans et al., 1992). Belgium is still organized along ideological and social-economic pillars, but the two principle communities, Flemish and Francophone, have fractured these pillars along linguistic lines. The Belgian federal state, which emerged as a result of the gradual territorialization of the language conflict, has strong centrifugal features. The popular demands of the Flemish Movement were realized in the 1870s with the support of the Socialist Party, whose representatives came mostly from industrial Wallonia. New language laws of 1873 introduced Dutch into the courts, education and parliamentary debates. The Walloons on the other hand were calling for universal suffrage during those years. It was not until 1893 that male universal suffrage was adopted and Dutch was established as an official language. The German invasion of Belgium in 1914 divided the country into two administrative regions. Flemish support for the Germans provided them with a stronger status vis-à-vis the Walloons. Further language laws were introduced during the interwar period in a way that conceded full linguistic autonomy to the Flemish (Mabille, 1992). Exacerbated by the German occupation policies of the 1940s, the linguistic-territorial divide became even more politicized in the 1960s and 1970s. Political parties, universities, parliaments, labour unions and other state institutions all became organized on a regional basis. The next step came in 1998, when constitutional reforms gave Brussels its regional institutions representing both the Flemish and the Francophone communities in the capital city. In 1993, the institutions changed again and the Constitution officially declared Belgium to be a federal country. The major change was the direct election of regional parliaments and the reform of the Senate into a house in line with linguistic communities instead of regions. Belgium then became a federation of regions and communities based on territorialization by language. Each of the two language groups has its own society, its own parties, and its own party system. Belgium’s transition from a unitary state based on consociationalism (Lijphart, 1981) to a federal entity proceeded at the same rate as the EU integration process (Lefebvre, 2003: 128). Flemish demands for federal reforms have followed the institutionalization of a ‘Europe of regions’. Thus there is compatibility between the Flemish demands and the way the EU is evolving.

Belgium 103

Integration of immigrants: Walloon and Flemish models The 1967 economic recession brought an end to issuing work permits to tourists. This was also the time when the country was introduced to clandestine migration. Previously, it was left to gatekeepers in the voluntary sector, especially Catholic institutions, to assist foreign workers and their families in trying to incorporate into Belgian society. Labour unions played an equally important role in this process. Later, in 1965, the Consultative Council on Immigration (CCI) was established with the inclusion of representatives from central ministries, regional economic councils and provinces with numerous immigrant residents.5 The CCI was later followed by the establishment of the Liaison Committee for Immigrant Worker Organizations (CLOTI) which would bring together labour union representatives and immigrant workers’ own associations. These institutional activities later extended into Flanders in the late 1960s, when this region began to welcome foreign labour (Ireland, 2000: 251–252). On 1 August 1974, following the 1973 oil crisis, Belgium officially declared the end of any kind of immigration based on work. Days before, on 19 July 1974, Islam had been recognized in law as an official religion. It has been argued that this decision, enacted just before the planned visit of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia to Belgium, was a gesture to oil-exporting countries (Blaise and de Coorebyter, 1997; and Zemni, 2006: 245). Even though most Belgian-Muslims are of Moroccan or Turkish origin, the first debates on the Islamic presence were held between Belgian and Saudi Arabian diplomats and officials. Later, the Turkish and Moroccan embassies also played an essential role in the institutionalization process of Islam in the country, a process that can be divided into three historical stages. In the first phase, between 1974 and 1989, Belgian, Turkish, Moroccan and Saudi states were more involved in creating an Islamic presence in the country through direct official interventions.6 Such unconcealed control from abroad disturbed many BelgianMuslims. Later, in the 1990s, the Belgian state changed its polity towards Muslims, as the Belgian-Muslims faced significant structural problems including discrimination, high unemployment, criminality, exclusion and social deprivation. In the second phase, between 1989 and 1995, Islam became part of a larger multiculturalist polity, based on the notion of tolerance. Underlining the politics of identity and culture, multiculturalism became a rather successful form of governmentality, imprisoning Muslim origin migrants and their children in their own ethno-cultural and religious ghettos.7 Consequently, in the third phase between 1995 and 2000, a more technical and judicial approach towards Islam was substantiated. This was a phase that corresponded to the rise of Muslim claims in the public space. During this period, Muslims were asked to organize elections for the Exécutif des Musulmans de Belgique. In the first elections, held in 1998, Moroccans were over represented in the Muslim Council. However, in the

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2004 elections Turks were broadly mobilized to become candidates and to vote. The result was that 40 members of the Council of 68 were elected from among Belgian-Turks and 20 Moroccans. Moroccan participation in the elections dramatically declined due to the fact that elected members of the Council were subject to confirmation by the Belgian government.8 After the end of immigration in 1974, responsibility for the integration of immigrants and labour market issues was transferred to the regions and the linguistic communities, which gained cultural autonomy in 1971. Belgium was the forerunner in Europe to start a public debate to secure immigrants’ residency status and grant them political rights in 1969, that is the right to vote and to stand for local elections. Consultative City Councils of Immigrants (Conseils Communaux Consultatifs des Immigrés, CCCI, Stedelijke Migrantenraden) were set up in several cities to act as liaison committees between immigrants and the city authorities (Martiniello, 1997: 108–110). Although these Councils were functional in orientating immigrants to the Belgian way of life in a way that dissuaded them from getting involved in the political life of their countries of origin, they ended up becoming clientalist multicultural organizations that imprisoned migrants in their own inward-looking communities. Younger generations, however, preferred to participate in established Belgian political structures. However, the discussions revolving around granting immigrants the right to vote in local elections ended with an explicit refusal by the Christian Democrat – Liberal government of 1981–1987. Calls for collective integration of immigrants through granting them political rights were later transformed into efforts at individual integration through personal naturalization (De Raedt, 2004: 16). Then, the Minister of Justice, Jean Gol, initiated a new law, which shaped the pillars of Belgian immigration law. The Gol Law, enacted on 28 June 1984, had three specific objectives: (a) to limit illegal immigration; (b) to repatriate some immigrants and (c) to integrate other immigrants by naturalization. The Law brought equality for migrant men and women before the law, which also allowed mothers to automatically transmit their Belgian nationality to their children and reinforced the principle of meriting Belgian nationality. This liberal-republican intervention meant that candidates for naturalization were subject to enquiries in which they had to prove their attachment to Belgium. However, granting voting rights to immigrants has become a pivotal issue of the political agenda since the early 2000s. Socialists in the government exerted pressure on the federal parliament to pass the law. Unlike the Flemish political parties, all of the Francophone political parties were in favour of this new law project, even the Liberals who were traditionally opposed to it. The bill was passed by the Senate and the law came into force on 19 February 2004. Immigrants were then granted the right to participate in local elections on condition that they could furnish proof of five years’ residency in Belgium, registration to vote and that they engaged, in writing, to respect the Belgian Constitution and the laws of the Belgian people (De Raedt, 2004: 27, fn. 41).9

Belgium 105

The Gol Law was slightly amended on 3 September 1991 in order to relieve the requirements of naturalization. From then on, third generation children of immigrants have been automatically naturalized. A new law was enacted on 1 March 2000 to ease the naturalization process even further. According to this new law, candidates no longer have to prove their allegiance to Belgium. The National Institute of Statistics recorded that 239,834 foreigners opted for Belgian Nationality between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2004; in 2000, 61,981 foreigners became Belgian citizens; in 2001, 62,982; in 2002, 46,417; in 2003, 33,709; and in 2004, 34,745 (Tables 3.6 and 3.7).10 In Table 3.6 Number of naturalized foreigners between 1996 and 2007

Year

Number of naturalized foreigners

1996 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

24,581 34,034 61,981 62,982 46,417 33,709 34,745 34,754 31,512 31,860

Total

452,467

Source: National Institute of Statistics, 2007, http:// www.npdata.be/

Table 3.7

Number of naturalized Belgian-Turks between 1990 and 2006

Year

Number of naturalized Belgian-Turks

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998

706 1,020 4,044 3,415 6,263 6,925 7,066 7,835 6,932

Year 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

Total Source: National Institute of Statistics, 2007, http://www.npdata.be/

Number of naturalized Belgian-Turks 4,402 17,282 14,401 7,805 5,186 4,467 3,602 3,204 104,555

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short, Belgium encouraged individual integration through naturalization. This policy was codified as the Gol Law of 1984, its amendment in 1991, and the current Belgian Law of 2000. Non-autochthon Belgian citizens have recently started to become very active in politics. Almost all of them have run for office as candidates of the Socialist Party (Parti socialiste, PS and Socialistisch Partij en Anders, Sp.a). After the 18 May 2003 elections, nine seats in Parliament were occupied by Belgians of non-European origin; five seats out of 150 in the Chamber of Representatives; four out of 71 in the Senate; and one of the Secretaries of the State. Allochtone11 Belgians are becoming more and more involved in local and national politics in Belgium. By the 1980s, Belgian immigration had become almost entirely Moroccan and Turkish, with large Turkish communities developing in Limburg and Gent, and the largest number of Moroccans in Antwerp. These communities were separated from Belgian society in cultural enclaves with almost no naturalization and the migrants and their descendants tended to be viewed as temporary and culturally distinct gastarbeiders. In contrast to the French habitation à loyer modéré (HLMs), there is no public sector housing in the suburbs of Belgian cities and this explains why there have been almost no problems like those experienced in the Parisian suburbs in recent years. Problems caused by social exclusion occur mainly in the city centres of Antwerp and Brussels. Most communities live alongside each other without really interacting. Compared with Moroccans, Turkish-origin migrants are more marked by their rural origins, by their familial character and by a certain cultural reification, preserving their language and customs. Turkish migrants tend to set up their own solidarity networks ranging from hometown fellowship associations to businessmen’s associations. Turkish migration tends to be chain migration and was initially conceived more as a temporary family project, whereas for the politically motivated Moroccan emigration (especially for Berbers), there was less likelihood of return from the very beginning (Lesthaeghe, 2000: 19–20; and Manço and Kanmaz, 2005). Furthermore, as Altay Manço states, North African families can be credited with having made a considerable effort with regard to their children’s schooling (Feld and Manço, 2000). While the educational level of young North Africans’ fathers is hardly any higher than that of Turkish parents, students from North African families seem to have bridged much of the schooling gap between them and most other (European) immigrant groups in Belgium. This has an obvious impact on the success of entry into working life: 37 per cent of the Turkish workforce is unemployed, and the situation is even more troubling in the Walloon Region (40 per cent), which is experiencing an employment crisis (Manço, 2004). In employment, Muslims are overrepresented in precarious jobs, working in poor conditions for low wages. Furthermore, they seem to be the victims of discrimination, discarded easier than native Belgians with similar qualification levels. The employment rate for Moroccans and Turks is three times lower than that of the majority of the Belgian population, with only a quarter of the working-age population in paid work.

Belgium 107 Table 3.8

Unemployment rates in Belgium of foreign- and native-born populations Men

Native

Women Foreign born

Native

Foreign born

1995

2000

2005

1995

2000

2005

1995

2000

2005

1995

2000

2005

6.3

4.2

6.3

16.9

14.7

14.8

11.2

7.4

7.5

23.8

17.5

20.3

Source: OECD, International Migration Outlook: SOPEMI – 2007 Edition, OECD, Paris.

The unemployment rate is also much higher among the Muslim population, although there are important regional differences: the unemployment rates of Muslims in the Flemish part are five to six times the regional average, compared to twice the regional average for the Brussels and Walloon area (Table 3.8). Belgian-Turks on the other hand seem to have more property than the Moroccans. They are also quite involved with Turkish print media and audio-visual broadcasting both from Turkey and from Belgium.12 However, the Euro-Turks research (Kaya and Kentel, 2007) indicates that the high unemployment rate among Belgian-Turks does not necessarily mean that Belgium has a much bigger unemployment problem than France: the difference may be explained by Belgium’s welfare state system, which provides the unemployed with better unemployment benefits. The number of self-employed and temporarily working people among Belgian-Turks is respectively 9 per cent and 4 per cent (French-Turks 11 per cent and 8 per cent; and German-Turks, 4 per cent and 2 per cent). The situation of BelgianTurkish youngsters is also somewhat disconcerting: they seem to be highly attracted by the possibility of receiving unemployment benefits when they reach 18 years old. I want to be a football player. I have played football for the last ten years ... When the teachers ask their students about what they want to be in the future, most of them say that they want to live on unemployment benefits. (Personal interview, Brussels, April 2007) It should also be noted that there is a limited interaction between BelgianTurks and Belgian-Moroccans. Ethno-cultural boundaries between Turks and Moroccans are reinforced by certain mutually denigrating stereotypes: Turks call Moroccans ‘desert’ (çöl in Turkish) and cockroach (cafard in French) whilst Moroccans call Turks ‘onion’ (oignon in French). This kind of stereotyping is also common among the Belgian-Turks when they need a reason for the involvement of their children in drug-use: Our children have mingled with the Arabs. They get involved in the drug business. Frankly our children get involved too. There are people who sell joints in the streets. Every night there is an incident.

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However, it seems that there is a tacit agreement between Moroccans and Turks on anti-racism. Implicitly referring to xenophobic tendencies among the Flemings, both Turks and Moroccans refer to those who perform racist acts as ‘Flemish’. If one looks closely at relationships among communities, it can be said that there have been important changes over time. For instance, during interviews conducted in Beringen, conflicts among the communities, which were ingrained in the memories of our interlocutors, were brought up. They reported that conflicts among the communities had been much higher in previous times. Turks had fought a lot with Italians and had often fought with Greeks during the Cyprus war in 1974. What is really interesting is that Turks had also fought among each other, aligning themselves in function of regions, as Karadenizliler (fellows of the Black Sea Region) and Kayserililer (Fellows of the city of Kayseri). Even more interesting is that Turks of Beringen had also fought against Turks living in another city (Heuselen) close to Beringen. These fights symbolize the struggle to take hold of a location to which they have newly come, a struggle that cannot be completely internalized and mastered. Such tensions also show how communities that are constantly constructed and deconstructed can never become homogenized. Brussels sets up a unique example with regard to the ways in which migrant communities of Turkish origin interact with each other. What is peculiar to Brussels, more than any other European city, is the extent to which migrants from Turkey are so much divided in their everyday lives. Their institutions, discourses, tactics and the places where they meet differ broadly. What makes Brussels so different is the visible concentration of Kurds, Alevis, Armenians and Assyrians adjacent to Turks from Emirdag˘, a district of the central Anatolian city of Afyonkarahisar. The exemplary case of Brussels affirms that many transnational phenomena are mainly organized at the family or community level. Migrant families originating from a village tend to maintain and develop economic and social relations with that particular village, and not necessarily with the homeland as a whole (Friedman, 2005: 149). Ethno-cultural boundaries of transnational communities of Turkish origin have the risk of being reproduced further due to the social and political inconsistency in Turkey, which intensified prior to the 2007 electoral cycle. The murder of Hrant Dink,13 a popular TurkishArmenian journalist, by a 17 year-old Turkish ultra-nationalist, and the rising visibility of minority claims alongside the European integration process have deepened animosity between these groups. The attack, allegedly made by Turkish nationalists, on the Kurdish Cultural Centre of St. Joost on 31 March 2007 was the outcome of such an escalation of violence and animosity.14 As Arjun Appadurai (2006: 47–48) reminds us, ‘such violence is not about old hatred and primordial fears. It is an effort to exorcize the new, the emergent, and the uncertain, one name for which is globalization.’

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This nationalist mood was not very visible in 1999 when Turkey had been given an EU perspective at the Helsinki Summit. In fact, between 1999 and 2005 when accession negotiations started between Turkey and the European Commission, almost all segments of Turkish society in the homeland and the diaspora embraced the EU as a peace project. Formal and popular nationalism in Turkey has rather become visible prior to 2007, the year of general and presidential elections, along with the rise of political tensions, the antiAKP (Justice and Development Party) alliance of mainstream political parties and the army, violence, poverty, xenophobia and racism. Compartmentalized communities tend to generate their own solidarity networks without communicating with others. What happens is that multiple transnational communities are created, whose existence transcends territorial national boundaries. The Alevi network is a good example, which testifies to the transnational character of a community re-established across national boundaries. The Centre socio-culturel Alevi de Bruxelles (CSAB), established in 2003, is one of the four Alevi associations in Belgium (Charleroi, Brussels, Antwerp and Limburg). The CSAB has connections with diasporic Alevi organizations in other EU countries as well as with those in Turkey. Alevis have also become active agents and consumers of the global flows. They have generated their own solidarity networks, TV stations broadcasting from Germany to the rest of the world and to the homeland, radio stations broadcasting from Turkey, and numerous internet sites15 which have created a niche economy peculiar to the Alevis among the Euro-Turks in general. Kurds, Zazas, Armenians, Assyrians, Kemalists, nationalists and gays have all similarly developed their own survival strategies in diaspora. Flemish and Walloon approaches towards the integration of immigrants are remarkably different. The Flemish Community subsidizes migrant selforganisations in Flanders and Brussels. To be eligible for funding an organization has to be oriented towards emancipation, education and integration; it has to function as a meeting point and must fulfil a cultural function. In addition, the organization has to operate using (also) the Dutch language, if not all the time, then at least at the executive level. It should be underlined that the creation and functioning of ‘Flemish’ migrant self-organizations is indeed very actively stimulated by the Flemish Community Commission (VGC) and that this has given an important boost to immigrant associational life in Brussels and Flanders. In the second half of the nineties, the Flemish Community Commission even gave the Intercultureel Centrum voor Migranten (ICCM) organization the task of coordinating and supporting the ‘Flemish’ migrant self-organizations. Recent financial support by the (Flemish) government has also been a boon to immigrant associational life. On the other hand, being characterized by a republicanist form of integration policy, the Francophone and Walloon governments have not been willing to recognize the participation of immigrants in society as distinct ethno-cultural groups. Although in practice often primarily directed towards

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immigrant groups, policy initiatives are often framed in such a way that immigrants are not specifically defined as target groups. The same can be said of several measures taken by the Region of Brussels-Capital. However, the large numbers of foreign residents and the de facto residential concentration of ethnic minorities have nevertheless forced officials in Brussels towards a more multicultural stance. The Brussels Parliament, the Commission of the Flemish Community (VGC), the Francophone Community Commission (COCOF) and the Common Community Commission (GGC) have thus drawn up a special charter, the Charte des devoirs et des droits pour une cohabitation harmonieuse des populations bruxelloises, which stipulates the ground rules for coexistence of the different groups in Brussels. In addition, a ‘mixed’ consultative commission on immigrant issues in Brussels was created in 1991 and began functioning in 1992. The mixed commission had consultative powers on issues of particular relevance and/or importance to immigrant communities, including education, employment, housing, living conditions, relations with the police, problems associated with nonimplementation of laws, the teaching of Islam, local political participation, the rights and position of women in society and refugees. It is worth mentioning that instead of starting its second term in 1995, the mixed commission was split into two: a separate Francophone mixed commission and a separate Flemish mixed commission (Bousetta et al., 2005). For over a century, as long as Belgium was still a unitary state, the Flemish suffered francophone cultural domination, articulated through social practices and incorporated in state institutions. The celebration of cultural peculiarity has been the cradle of Flemish political identity and led to the creation of the federal state. One might argue that the Flemish elite would not want to impose on its ethnic minorities what it had experienced itself as a former subordinated minority group. In 1998, the Flemish government formalized the new policy line through the Minorities Decree (minderhedendecreet), which was partly copied from Dutch documents (Jacobs and Rea, 2006). However, an important point of difference with the Dutch system is that there is no explicit recognition of particular ethnic communities (as in ‘Turkish’ or ‘Moroccan’) as ‘official’ ethno-cultural minorities, which should be distinguished from each other. Paradoxically, the Flemish government is also taking some assimilationist steps, the so-called citizenship trajectories (inburgerinstrajecten), in which Dutch language lessons and lessons of introduction to Flemish/Belgian society are to be taken by certain categories of immigrants. This scheme, once again copied from the Netherlands, became compulsory for most non-EU newcomers to Flanders from April 2004 and optional in Brussels. Conversely, for the Francophone elites, the discursive preference for the French assimilationist position has a strategic significance. Ethnic difference is only applauded in the case of individual success and so support for ethnic diversity is thus limited to meritocratic multiculturalism. As a

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general principle, conformity and adaptation to the Belgian-Francophone culture is expected. In a federal state in which they now hold the minority position and are heavily dependent on Flemish (financial) solidarity, the Francophone establishment is faced with an assertive Flanders that pleads for more and more autonomy and questions its responsibility to maintain solidarity with its Francophone compatriots. While defending national identity and national unity, Francophones adopt a strategy of trying to transform new Belgians into Francophones (and not into sub-minorities). ‘Belgicizing’ and ‘Frenchizing’ newcomers helps in taking a stand against the powerful Flemish (Jacobs and Rea, 2006). Self-organization of ethnic minorities is not endorsed. Ethnic associations may get funding for broadly defined activities like education, sports or citizenship, but there is a refusal at discursive level to subsidize any activities with a dimension of ethnocultural identity. Overall, it can be argued that the integration policies of Belgian Francophones have been imported from France.

Attitudes towards foreigners In 1991, Bart Maddens, Jack Billiet and Roeland Beerten (2000) conducted research in which they tried to understand how Belgian citizens perceived foreigners. They concluded that in Flanders citizens who identified themselves as primarily Flemish tended to have a negative attitude towards foreigners, while those with a strong Belgian identity were more positive. In Wallonia, the opposite was true: the stronger the Walloon identity, the more positive the attitude towards foreigners. This could be explained by the two different understandings of the construction of the nation in Flanders and Wallonia: Flemish identity is associated with protection of the Flemish cultural heritage (the Flemish language) against any kind of ‘intruder’ (such as the French hegemony back in the nineteenth century). Walloon identity is primarily associated with the social-economic emancipation of the Walloon region and emphasizes its civic, open and non-racist nature (Ibid.: 47–48). Ron Lesthaeghe (2000: 44) states that a great majority of Belgians identify foreigners, or Belgians of foreign origin, as ‘Muslims’ or, in the Francophone part of the country, as ‘Arabs’. For Bruxellois and Walloons, the most disturbing attribute or custom of these foreigners is their religion, whereas the Flemings refer more frequently to the general category of ‘unadaptedness’. This difference between Walloon and Flemish perceptions of migrants is worth noting. Whilst secularly defined Walloons find it more difficult to be ready to accept the visibility of Islam in the public space, the culturally defined Flemish seem to have less problem with Islam. This does not mean that Flemish people are more tolerant of immigrants; on the contrary they are rather more exclusionary towards foreigners coming from different ethno-cultural and religious backgrounds. What is more interesting is the ways in which these two communities perceive Islam. What seems to be

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decisive here is the nature of the dominant public discourse in two regions. Wallonia is characterized by a civilizational discourse and Flanders by a culturalist discourse. Flanders has a culturalist and differentialist integration regime whilst that of Wallonia is civilizing and assimilationist. Flemish incorporation policies vis-à-vis migrants have so far been culturalist and communitarian. Interpretation of culturalist discourse by the Flemish regional governments has brought about segregationist Gastarbeider policies imprisoning migrants into their own cultural ghettos, or colonies, in a similar vein to what PierreAndre Taguieff (1988) calls differential racism. Walloon universalism and republicanism, on the other hand, has recently been accused of being assimilationist by the Walloon-Turks. Communitarianism in contemporary Flanders seems to provide the Flemish-Turks with a more liberal ground whereby they can integrate into mainstream society politically, socially, culturally and economically. The findings from the focus groups held in Belgium indicate that, generally speaking, Flemish-Turks are more communitarian, religious and inward looking than Walloon-Turks. Compared to Walloon-Turks, FlemishTurks seem to be less in favour of integration: they are content with their ethnic enclaves, religious archipelagos and traditional solidarity networks. The two figures below indicate that Brussels-Turks and Flemish-Turks are more affiliated with Turkey than the Walloon-Turks; and both BrusselsTurks and Flemish-Turks identify themselves more with their Turkishness compared to the Walloon-Turks (Figures 3.1 and 3.2). Let alone the fact that Brussels is a cosmopolitan urban space with more abrasive living conditions leading the migrant origin individuals to construct their own communities, culturalist Flanders seems to prompt the migrants of Turkish origin to invest in their communal borders (Kaya and Kentel, 2007). Flemish-Turks’ communitarian character is also somewhat visible in the way they treat their children learning Flemish. The level of difference between Flanders 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Flanders Turkey Figure 3.1

Belgium

Wallonia Equally close with both

Brussels Equally far with both

Do you feel yourself affiliated closer with Belgium or Turkey? By region

Source: Kaya and Kentel, 2007.

Belgium 113 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Flanders

Figure 3.2

Wallonia

Brussels

I am Turkish

First European and then Turkish

First Turkish and then European

Only European

Which identification suits you most?

Source: Kaya and Kentel, 2007.

and Wallonia with regard to the success of second-generation children with migrant origin is striking. A report published by the King Baudouin Foundation (2006: 11) reveals that migrant-origin children learn the local language better in Wallonia than in Flanders:16 In the French Community, similar trends to those found in other countries are observed: the second generation does better than the newcomers. If one looks at data within the newcomers, which the OECD has not done, it can be seen that children who arrived before the age of six (and who have thus only been schooled in the Belgian school system) have better results than children who arrived in Belgium when they were older. In the Flemish Community, a strange phenomenon is observed: the second generation has a lower score than the newcomers. After further analysis, one notes the influence of pupils who have come from the Netherlands who inflated the results of the group of newly arrived immigrants. The Belgian educational system, rated by the 2003 research Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)17 as one of the most efficient among European countries, actually seems to provide children of migrant origin with an opportunity to mobilize socially upwards. The same PISA study placed Germany and France among the lowest European rankings with regard to the educational success of migrant-origin children. Foreigners, immigrants, or newly naturalized Belgians of foreign origin and their descendants may very well never be perceived as ‘Flemings’ in Flanders, but the autochthon Flemings accept them as a separate cultural identity. In the Flemish-speaking region, as in the Netherlands, the term ‘allochtone’ is preferred for immigrants. In Flanders, intercultural education

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is more easily established than in the French-speaking region. The Flemish community finances independent organization of allochtone associations, while Francophones abandon them. The French-speaking region, influenced by France, has opted for a French-style republican and class-based assimilationist model where immigrants have to assimilate with the autochthon population and identify with either the people of Wallonia or the people of the Brussels region (Mangot, 1997). Immigrants cannot represent themselves as an ethno-cultural community in either Wallonia or the Brussels Region. After the murder of four non-autochthon girls, two of whom were from the Walloon region (Liège) and two from Flanders (Limburg), by an autochthon Belgian criminal, 300,000 people took part in a massive demonstration on 20 October 1996. Similar sensitivity was shown again by Belgians after the murder of another young girl of Moroccan origin by a natural-born Belgian. These atrocious events shook the whole country and reunited the Belgians around their national motto: ‘Unity provides strength’ (‘l’union fait la force’, ‘eendracht maakt macht’) (De Raedt, 2004: 24). *

*

*

This chapter has elaborated the ways in which non-European immigrants have so far been integrated in Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels. It was displayed that the multiculturalist Flemish administration subsidises migrant self-organisations in Flanders and Brussels. Accordingly, those ethnocultural and religious groups need to prove that they are oriented towards emancipation, education and integration in order to be eligible for funding. On the other hand, republicanist Walloon government is not inclined to recognize the participation of immigrants in society as distinct ethnocultural groups. Policy initiatives are often framed in such a way that immigrants are not specifically defined as target groups. The same applies to the Region of Brussels-Capital. However, the large numbers of foreign residents and the de facto residential concentration of ethnic minorities have forced officials in Brussels towards a more multicultural stance. It was revealed that the social, political, economic, cultural and linguistic integration capacity of Belgian-Muslims into Belgian society are primarily related to generational and social-economic status differences. Younger generations and groups with higher social-economic status seem to be more integrated than the elder generations, women and groups with lower social economic status who feel excluded from social, political and economic spheres of everyday life. However, such groups tend to generate their own alternative strategies of integration into the majority society through ethnocultural and religious institutions. Compared to the middle class groups complaining about ambiguity and insecurity, those with higher social status having stronger social and cultural capital, and those with lower social status having positive expectations about the future seem to be more affiliated

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with Belgium. These groups, though socially, economically and culturally different from each other, generate alternative forms of integration. It was also uncovered that Belgian-Turkish men are more affiliated with Turkish nationalism, while women seem to be more engaged in religiosity. Despite the fact that women are likely to have more religious tendencies, they also try out new tactics to transcend the patriarchal structure of the self-sustaining community. For instance, on the one hand there is a growing tendency among the women who try to have access to the labour market, they are more likely to identify themselves with the categories of ‘cosmopolitant’ and ‘Belgian citizen’ compared to ‘man’. Younger generations tend to generate similar tactics in everyday life to those of women in order to transcend the boundaries of the patriarchal community. These tactics are formed within the framework of a kind of symbolic religiosity as opposed to the hegemonic Turkish nationalism promoted by the recent developments in Turkey as well as the intrusion of the Turkish state institutions. For instance, while the youngsters are more in favour of the right to wear the headscarf in schools, they do not credit some of the interpretations of Turkish nationalism embodied in the following statement: ‘Turks do not have friends but Turks.’ They have the same pattern when they do not confirm to the authoritative control of the family as well as the State.

4 The Netherlands: from Multiculturalism to Assimilation

According to population statistics, 16.5 million people are currently living in the Netherlands, of whom around 9 per cent are officially labelled non-Western ‘ethnic minorities’ mostly, Turks, Moroccans, Antilleans, Surinamese, and Indonesian. The largest categories among them are Surinamese (1.9 per cent), Antilleans/Arubans (0.6 per cent), Turks (1.9 per cent) and Moroccans (1.6 per cent). If we include persons born in the Netherlands with one or two foreign-born parents, the percentage of foreign origin people rises from 9 per cent to 17 per cent. This implies that nearly one out of six persons in the Netherlands is an immigrant, or has immigrant parents, which is almost the same as the levels in the United States. The largest numbers of immigrants to the Netherlands come from Morocco and Turkey. Youngsters of both groups still tend to choose their spouses from their countries of origin. The Dutch fear that very soon Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Utrecht and The Hague will be dominated by migrants. Rotterdam is now 50 per cent minority, and already 65 per cent of primary and secondary students in Rotterdam and Amsterdam are of non-Dutch origin. Dutch-Muslims have significantly higher birth rates than native Dutch, whose population is ageing and shrinking. Coupled with low birth rates and an ageing population, it is reported that the Dutch population is expected to drop if something is not done. Some possible solutions recently put forth by an advisory board to the Dutch government are to implement a better immigration strategy to bring in skilled foreign workers and to reduce barriers to lesser skilled workers where possible, a point I will come back to shortly (Table 4.1). In the mean time, Christianity now ranks second to Islam as the Netherlands’ leading religious presence. Robert Carle cites what a Lutheran Bishop once said to underline the public fear caused by the Islamic ascendancy in the Netherlands: ‘I fear that we are approaching a situation resembling the tragic fate of Christianity in northern Africa in Islam’s early days’ (cited in Carle, 2006: 70). 116

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Pillarization (Verzuiling) and depillarization of Dutch society Recent Dutch political history can be divided into three periods. The first period comprises the two decades following World War II between 1945 and 1965. Dutch societal structure in these years can be characterized by pillarization. The second period lasts between 1965 and 1985. The structure of Dutch society in these two decades can be characterized by depillarization and a strong belief in governmental policies being able to bring about societal change (Rath et al., 1997). Finally, the third period starts in 1985 and continues until the present day. This recent period of time can be characterized by increasing civic demands on the government and efforts to close the gap between political authorities and the public. Dutch society in the first period was a society of tightly organized subcultures of minorities, called pillars. These subcultures were organized along religious and social-economic dimensions. The religious dimension referred to the divisions of a Catholic pillar, a Protestant pillar and a secular pillar (‘algemene zuil’, or general pillar). Of these groups, the Catholics constituted the largest group, corresponding to approximately 40 per cent of the population. The Protestant pillar was composed of around 30 per cent of the population. The secular pillar comprised both non-religious people and Christians who did not actively practise their religion. Besides the religious dimension, the social-economic dimension played a crucial part, and Table 4.1 Population of the Netherlands including the volume of immigration and emigration Year

Total population

Immigration

Emigration

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

14,892,574 15,010,445 15,129,150 15,239,182 15,341,553 15,424,122 15,493,889 15,567,107 15,654,192 15,760,225 15,863,950 15,987,075 16,105,285 16,192,572 16,258,032 16,305,526 16,334,210

128,824 129,958 129,887 137,795 133,471 135,675 137,561 135,783 137,482 140,487 140,527 140,377 142,355 141,936 136,553 136,402 135,809

117,350 120,249 116,926 119,154 99,311 96,099 108,749 109,860 122,407 119,151 132,850 133,404 121,250 104,514 94,019 92,297 132,682

Source: Statistics Netherlands, Voorburg/Heerlen 3/16/2007.

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divided the secular pillar into two sub-pillars: a liberal pillar and a socialist pillar. Pillarization structured political parties, but also trade unions, hospitals, schools, newspapers, and leisure activities. Nearly every aspect of social life took place within these pillars. Of all pillars, the Catholic pillar was the most strongly organized. A Catholic couple, for example, would vote for the Catholic People’s Party (KVP), read a Catholic newspaper, watch television programmes broadcasted by the Catholic Broadcasting Organization. And their children would attend Catholic schools and play in Catholic sports teams. There was hardly any social interaction between the people belonging to the different pillars. Intermarriage was extremely rare. There is even a Dutch proverb which translates into English as ‘two faiths on one pillow; between them sleeps the devil’ (Andeweg and Irwin, 2005: 24). An interesting question that intrigued many scholars is why, despite social heterogeneity, Dutch democracy remained so stable. According to Arend Lijphart (1977), the stability of the Dutch political system during the era of pillarization can be explained by the so-called politics of accommodation at the elite level. Whereas Dutch society was strongly segmented and organized in separate pillars at the mass level, the elites of the pillars were permanently looking for ways to cooperate. To make cooperation possible, the elites agreed on a number of ‘rules of the game’ (Lijphart, 1977). These rules included the agreement to disagree, the rule of proportionality, and depolitization in decision making. Above all, they agreed on the rule to consider politics not as a game, but as a serious business. This is what we call Polder Model. Dutch politics and institutions operate according to what has come to be known as the Polder Model, which is based on the principle of bargaining and consultation of organized interests. Although the model mainly applies to industrial relations in particular, political life also seems to be organized along the same model (Andeweg and Irwin, 2005: 155–156). Political legitimacy results from dialogue, compromise and consensus seeking strategies with the purpose of pacifying past and current conflict of interests and to ensure the wilful participation of all parties. Rejecting radical perspectives, Cartesian binary oppositions, black or white positions, the third space, or the grey middle ground based on compromise, tolerance and majority consensus, are perceived as the ideal bases from which to build. In this era, Dutch citizens’ political attitudes could be characterized by passivity. They accepted the authority of the elites. Thus, political participation was mainly the privilege of the elites and took place in the pillarized social organizations in business, education, health care and housing. The main rationale of this period was what Arend Lijphart (1977) called ‘segmental autonomy’ institutionalized by the peace-making efforts of the elite in the aftermatch of World War II: ‘good fences make good neighbours.’ The era of pillarization came to an end in the second half of the 1960s. In the 1967 elections the religious parties lost a substantial part of

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their votes. In the following years, the pillars began to disintegrate, and the dividing lines between the pillars also became less clear. Since the beginning of the seventies organizations that once were the strongholds of different subcultures began to merge. Examples are the Catholic and socialist trade unions that merged into FNV (Federation of Dutch Trade Unions) and the Catholic and Protestant parties that merged into one political party, Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA). Moreover, new political parties, like D’66, entered the political scene. Depillarization put a provisional end to the politics of accommodation. This development took place against the backdrop of a broader movement for democratization, anti-traditionalism and resistance to authority that originated from the youth cultures of WesternEuropean cities. The increase in the level of education and the role of what Diane Crane (1972) calls ‘invisible colleges’ such as radio and television are often mentioned as relevant factors explaining the movement for democratization. In addition to traditional forms of political participation, such as voting, new forms of participation arose outside the official political arena. Single issue action groups organized mass demonstrations or occupied public buildings in an attempt to influence politics. New social movements like the feminist movement, the squatters, the environmentalists, and the antinuclear movement, made their views heard through extra-parliamentary actions. But although the number of citizens that took part in these nontraditional forms of political participation was increasing steadily in the seventies and eighties, participation was to a large extent still the privilege of highly educated men between 30 to 49 years of age (Andeweg and Irwin, 2005: 36–44; and Rath et al., 1997). In the period of depillarization, the government’s paternalistic attitude towards its citizens conflicted to a certain extent with the wish of many citizens to create the rules that would rule them. While ever more citizens turned out on the streets and made their voices heard through non-traditional forms of participation, the political elites still favoured political participation only by verbal action. In practice, the opportunities for citizens to influence politics and policies remained limited to participation after the government had taken its own decisions. To put it differently, depillarization referred to the emancipation of individuals from the hegemony of the political elite. Since the second half of the eighties, concern has been growing among politicians about the relationship with the public. This third period is defined with the rising visibility of immigrants, especially of Muslims, in the public space (Rath et al., 1997). Islam became the third biggest religious denomination in the country with about more than 1 million Muslims. With around 500 mosques, 40 schools, various associations for employers, women and men, and a Muslim broadcasting association, Muslim appearance has become a threat for the native Dutch. In this period, traditional political parties began to decline, and Candidate Parties such as List Pim Fortuyn (LPF) have become more popular. There has also been a slight

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decrease in voter turnout and a substantial decline in the membership of political parties. These developments can partly be explained by sentiments directed against the political elites and politics in general (Andeweg and Irwin, 2005: 229). However, not all criticism is directed against politics itself and is voiced in anti-establishment votes. There are also people who criticize specific elements of the political system. They claim that citizens have too little power to influence the political and policy-making processes. As a solution to this problem, they advocate reforms of the political system. In the past few years, a number of constitutional reforms were proposed and have already been partly introduced. All proposals were meant to decrease the gap between politicians and citizens. Constitutional reforms had already been proposed in the 1960s and the 1970s, but they did not get ample political support at the time. Changes have also taken place in the policy-making process. Whereas in the 1970s and 1980s top-down policy-making and implementation were dominant, this began to change in the course of the 1980s. First, citizens, social organizations and companies were getting increasingly more involved in defining policy problems, in seeking for policy solutions and in policy implementation. Interactive policy-making, cooperation, public-private partnerships, networks, and horizontal governance are concepts that are often used in this context. Second, towns, hospitals, schools and housing organizations were granted more authority to determine their own policies (Andeweg and Irwin, 2005: 41–44). Apart from ideological reasons, the wish to cut government expenditure was also responsible for these developments. And third, government organizations paid increasingly more attention to their transparency and to their accountability towards citizens and organizations regarding their policies and outputs.

Fifth column: Islam in the Netherlands When Muslims came to the Netherlands, it was reasonable that the Dutch would allow them to build their own ‘Muslim’ pillar. Muslims were given the chance to emancipate themselves in the public space with their own ethno-cultural and religious identities. The government poured money in the 1980s into the construction of Muslims schools, ethnic organizations, newspapers, broadcasting facilities and mosques. The Dutch multicultural ideal presumed that the Muslims would build a Muslim pillar first, and then let it collapse into liberal individualism, following the same historic experience that Protestantism and Catholicism had gone through (Carle, 2006: 71). Until the 1980s there was hardly any association between the terms ‘Muslims’ and ‘Turks/Moroccans’ in the mainstream media. The reason for this relatively late association can be understood in terms of domestic and international events in which Islam played a central role. The Iranian revolution of 1979, the Rushdie Affair of 1989, the Gulf War I (1990), the

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war in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992), 9/11, the war in Afghanistan, and the Gulf War II (2003) are some of the international events which have made the Dutch citizens associate most of the non-Western migrants with Islam. Furthermore, in 1991, Fritz Bolkestein, the leader of the largest opposition party in the Netherlands, The People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), gave a speech in which he stated that Islam and Western values are incompatible. He suggested that Islam was a threat to liberal democracy and a hindrance to the integration of immigrants. Bolkestein’s speech allured most of the Dutch. His success led the government to reconsider its ethnic minority policy (Entzinger, 2003; and Fekete, 2006: 48). Events at a domestic level included the rapid increase in family reunions (Table 4.2), immigrants’ desire to preserve their cultural identity, construction of mosques, schools and community organizations, increasing visibility of Islam in the public space, and the murder of two polemical figures, the conservative politician Pim Fortuyn in 2001, and the filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004 (Shadid, 2006: 17). The Association of Muslim origin migrants with ‘radical’ Islam brought about a popular scepticism towards multiculturalism, which was the major integration discourse of the 1980s. Exclusion and disloyalization of Muslims in society became widely verbalized. The discourse of the Fifth Column also became broadly accepted. For example, some debates were held in the Parliament to prohibit the foundation of the Arab-European League (AEL)1 in the Netherlands, an organization established in Belgium by a Belgian of Arab descent (Shadid, 2006: 17). Hence, an increasing number of negative debates on the position of Islam and Muslims in the Netherlands has pushed the government into tightening its immigration and integration measures. The Integration of Newcomers Act of 1998 was a critique of the deep-rooted multiculturalism, and it aimed at the cultural harmonization of the Dutch society through implementing integration courses for those non-Western persons wishing to immigrate to the Netherlands in the context of family reunion or marriage (Shadid, 2006: 17; and Glastra and Schedler, 2004).

Table 4.2 Migration motives of non-Dutch migrants, 2003 Migration motivation Asylum Labour Family reunification Family formation Study Other Source: CBS (Statistics Netherlands).

% 26.3 19.5 21.3 19.5 7.8 5.7

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Multiculturalism also prompted the Dutch governments to give an emphasis on the recruitment of imams, Muslim priests, in order to provide Muslims with religious services. The majority of imams have been so far mostly ‘imported’ from migrants’ countries of origin, especially Turkey and Morocco. Imams were conceived by the Dutch government in the 1980s as potentially useful actors in fulfilling the integration of young generations of Muslim origin to the wider society. For instance, imams trained in Turkey and recruited through the Diyanet, Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs, have been considered as an effective force against radical Islam (Sunier, 2005: 91). The recent representatives of the Diyanet in the Netherlands want to perform a ‘bridge function’ between the Dutch-Turks and the Dutch majority society. They are quite critical of the fact that imams are imported from migrants’ countries of origin. They argue that Dutch educated imams would be better than the imams sent from Turkey. These imams do not speak Dutch, lack contact with, and understanding of, Dutch society, and will in the future have difficulties to understand their own congregation as the everyday life of the young Dutch-Turks differs day by day. Diyanet leaders in the Netherlands are very progressive in furthering their thoughts to the extent that they say their children and grand children will be DutchMuslims just like the other Dutch-Roman Catholics, Dutch-Jews and DutchProtestants (van Amersfoort and Doomernik, 2003: 185). In contrast to the 1980s, imams were negatively perceived by the Dutch public after 9/11 as they were believed to be preaching hatred and anti-Western sentiments. The government has even stated that the recruitment of imams from migrants’ home countries would be illegal from 2007 onwards. Instead, the Dutch government is planning to establish training facilities for imams to be entirely controlled by the state (Sunier, 2005: 92). Some Muslim origin associations such as The Center for Islamic Studies and the Union of Moroccan Muslim Organizations in the Netherlands (UMMON) also advocate state sponsorship for the education of imams. Conversely, some other groups like the Turkish-Islamic Cultural Federation do not comply with the proposal of educating imams in the Netherlands. Such factionalism within Muslim communities reveals that Muslims are not homogeneous at all, not only with regard to their ethno-cultural backgrounds but also to the ways in which they claim their own rights. This issue actually demonstrates that Dutch multiculturalism encourages Muslims to set up smaller denominational groups by establishing new organizations recognized and subsidized by the state. Formation of such smaller denominational groups sounds like the churchification of Islam in a way that disrupts the prescribed unity of Islamic umma, a point I will shortly come back to in the following chapters. Such a way of managing ethno-cultural and religious minorities prompts the Dutch society to be organized along with the collection of several different parallel societies. However, what is so remarkable in the 2000s differentiated by the attacks of 9/11, the murder of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh, is that Muslim

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representatives have become more visible in the public sphere to counter allegations about Islam using appropriate and effective communication skills. They were better equipped this time than they were after the Rushdie Affair in the 1980s. This time they were not only active in using the facilities of the media, but also became more involved in politics both at local and national level.

Muslims in the Netherlands: colonial legacy The Dutch did not consider their country as one of immigration. The government, on the contrary, regarded the Netherlands as ‘overpopulated’ and actively promoted emigration. Until 1983, the Dutch government openly denied that there were immigrants in the Netherlands. This is why the term ‘immigrant’ was deliberately avoided by the official discourse, and some other names such as ‘repatriates’ were used instead. Migration flows to the Netherlands in the aftermath of World War II mainly originated from the former colonies of Indonesia, West Indies (Surinam, or Dutch Guiana), and the Netherlands Antilles. After the occupation of the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) by Japan, migration flows towards the Netherlands started, and became even more intensive after the establishment of the Republic of Indonesia as an independent state in 1945. The number of the people who came to the Netherlands then is not really known, but is estimated to be between 250,000 and 300,000 (van Amersfoort and van Niekerk, 2006: 325). European origin colonial settlers, called ‘totoks’ in Malay language, were the first group of people who ‘repatriated’ to the mainland Netherlands, which they had probably never seen before. Another group of repatriates is called Indos or Indische Nederlanders, who were the descendants of DutchIndonesian intermarriages. Both totoks and Indos were legally Dutch citizens, but Indos were socially excluded in the Netherlands. And the final group of people migrating to the Netherlands was the remnant soldiers of the Royal Dutch Indian Army (Koninklijk Nederlandsch-Indisch Leger, KNIL), which was disbanded in 1949. Around 13,000 Moluccan origin soldiers, who were coming from the Moluccan islands in East Indies, were transported to the Netherlands in 1951 for a temporary period. They were discharged on arrival and temporarily accommodated in camps by the time it was possible for them to return to their homeland. However, they did not return. They were not granted Dutch citizenship for a long time. The special agency, ‘Commissariat Ambonezenzorg’ (CAZ), which was then established to deal with all kinds of daily matters of these temporary residents was dissolved in 1970, and finally the Dutch government admitted that the Moluccans were no longer temporary residents. Consequently, they were almost all granted Dutch citizenship (van Amersfoort and van Niekerk, 2006: 331). After the decolonization of the Dutch Caribbean in 1954, the Charter of the Kingdom (Het Statuut) was proclaimed and it was agreed that the Netherlands, Surinam and the Dutch Antilles would be the three autonomous regions to

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form the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The three regions would be free in governing their internal affairs, while foreign affairs and defence would be under the jurisdiction of the Kingdom. All inhabitants of the Kingdom, then, were considered to be Dutch citizens. Surinam gained independence in 1975, and the Dutch Antilles remained to be a part of the Kingdom. Since the beginning of the colonization of the Dutch Caribbean in 1667, thousands of slaves, concubines and students came to the Netherlands. Surinam lost almost 15 per cent of its population after the independence in 1975. Between 1974 and 1975, Surinam experienced a dramatic exodus as more than 50,000 people left the country. For a country of 385,000 inhabitants in 1971, this was a significant loss of population (van Amersfoort and van Niekerk, 2006: 335). Since then migration from Surinam to the Netherlands fell down, but never stopped. A second massive immigration of some 30,000 took place between 1979 and 1980. After independence, Surinamese residing in the Netherlands remained Dutch citizens, those who preferred Surinamese citizenship had the chance of becoming a Surinamese citizen. Surinamese residing in Surinam became Surinamese citizens. A five-year transitional agreement was held between the two countries to regulate migration until 1980, and the Surinamese who settled in the Netherlands could still choose to become Dutch citizens in the period given. Immigration from the Dutch Antilles (Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire Islands in the Caribbean) to the Netherlands is not a new phenomenon. The islands became Dutch colonies between 1634 and 1648, and since then there has been a constant migration pattern similar to that of the Surinamese. Slaves, wives, domestic workers, students, nannies, sailors and workers came to the Netherlands. From the 1950s onwards, employment opportunities in the oil industry implanted in the islands declined sharply and the withdrawal of oil companies in the mid 1980s was a heavy shock to the islands’ economy. The rise of unemployment in the islands resulted in massive immigration of the poorly educated and unqualified to the Netherlands from the early 1960s. While the Antillean population was around 34,000 in 1984, there were more than 130,000 persons of Antillean origin in the Netherlands Table 4.3 Non-western allochthons in the Netherlands, 2004 Non-western allochthons

%

Turkey Surinam Morocco Antilles/Aruba Other non-western allochthons

21 19 18 8 34

Source: CBS (Statistics Netherlands).

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in 2005 (Statistics Netherlands). Research reveals that there is a big divide between the old educational and qualified elite and the recently arrived young Antilleans with little or no education (van Hulst, 2000) (Table 4.3).2 Today, there are more than 3,088,152 allochthonous persons in the Netherlands, that is, people originating from outside the country, in comparison to 13,169,880 autochthonous/native inhabitants (Table 4.4 and Table 4.5). The Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS) bases its classification on the non-native place of birth of an individual or either of the parents. Thus, nearly 19.4 per cent of the 16.5 million Dutch citizens, including the queen herself, belong to this category. Today, there are more than 1.8 million non-Western immigrants residing in the Netherlands, almost half of Muslim background originating from Turkey and Morocco. Around 70 per cent of non-Western origin migrants reside in the big cities. For instance, in Amsterdam and Rotterdam they constitute around 35 per cent of the population, and in The Hague and Utrecht 30 per cent and 20 per cent, respectively (Shadid, 2006: 11). Moroccan migration to the Netherlands started in the beginning of the 1960s. As the Moroccan-Algerian border was closed due to the Algerian independence war, seasonal labour migration from the Rifean region of Morrocco Table 4.4 Total population in the Netherlands in 2004 Total population in the Netherlands Autochthonous population Allochthonous population Allochthonous population Western allochthonous population Indonesia Germany Belgium United Kingdom Non-western allochthonous population Turkey Morocco Surinam Antilles/Aruba Other non-western allochthonous population Other non-western allochthonous population China Former Yugoslavia Afghanistan Somalia Iraq Iran Former Soviet Union Cape Verde Islands Source: CBS (Statistics Netherlands).

16,258,032 13,169,880 3,088,152 1,419,855 398,502 389,912 113,081 76,457 1,668,297 351,648 306,219 325,281 130,722 554,427 41,694 76,346 36,043 25,001 42,931 28,438 42,033 19,666

126 Islam, Migration and Integration Table 4.5 Population by origin and generation in the Netherlands, 1 January 2007

Years

Total population

Natives

Total persons with a foreign background

1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007*

15,493,889 15,567,107 15,654,192 15,760,225 15,863,950 15,987,075 16,105,285 16,192,572 16,258,032 16,305,526 16,334,210 16,356,914

12,995,174 13,012,818 13,033,792 13,060,991 13,088,648 13,116,851 13,140,336 13,153,814 13,169,880 13,182,809 13,186,595 13,184,447

2,498,715 2,554,289 2,620,400 2,699,234 2,775,302 2,870,224 2,964,949 3,038,758 3,088,152 3,122,717 3,147,615 3,172,467

Source: Statistics Netherlands, Voorburg/Heerlen 24 March 2007.

to Algeria came to an end. Subsequently, Western Europe became an alternative destination area for the Moroccan labour force. The vast majority of Moroccans in the Netherlands originate from Northern Morocco and a large majority of those speak no modern standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic (Darija) or French. The massive increase in Moroccan migration to Europe took place against the background of the political struggle in Morocco between King Hassan II and the political parties, which ended in favour of the king. The announcement of the state of emergency in June 1965 and the murder of the most important opponent Mehdi Ben Barka, meant the beginning of an oppressive regime that continued in Morocco until the end of the 1990s. Mostly political parties and movements with a leftist overtone became the victims of this period (de Mas, 2007). After the economic recession of 1973, the Netherlands introduced recruitment stops for foreign workers in August 1974. The regularization of clandestines in 1975 caused a final peak in the immigration of Moroccan males of working age to the Netherlands. In this year the immigration of young Turkish and Moroccan males was even much higher than in the previous years (Barendse et al., 2006; De Mas, 2007). Family migration became the most important migration type between Morocco and the Netherlands since the second half of the 1970s. Dutch migration law required sufficient income and housing for former migrants to have their family members who wanted to join them. The Dutch authorities tightened the income requirement in 1993. Turkish migration to the Netherlands, on the other hand, started in 1964 with the official labour request of the Dutch Government. Following the labour recruitment treaty migration pattern in the early stage of the migratory process was a ‘circular’ one, which was basically initiated by mostly

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single men. The circular labour migration turned into ‘normal immigration’ when wives and children were brought over instead of the fathers returning home (van Amersfoort and Doomernik, 2002 and 2003). After 1973 when labour migration came to an end, the process of family reunification led to an increase in the number of immigrants. This migration process resulted in almost 400,000 persons of Turkish origin residing in the Netherlands in 2007. It is estimated that only around 20 per cent of Turkish and Moroccan origin migrants residing in the Netherlands have come to work; and the rest of the migrant origin population have predominantly come to the country through family reunion and/or marriage (FORUM, 2008).

Ethnic minority policy The Dutch government began to develop and implement policies aimed at the immigrant population under the heading of ‘minority policy’ in the 1980s. The term ‘integration’ was hardly used: terms such as ‘emancipation’ and ‘combating disadvantage’ were appreciated more in the early days. From the 1990s, however, the notion of integration became more popular, with the approach focused on full and equal participation, mutual acceptance, and non-discrimination. During the early 1990s, multiculturalism turned out to be the preferred policy approach. This meant that the entire population should be fully involved in society, with the goal of accepting differences. By the end of the 1990s, however, the policy of multiculturalism became questioned by the public. In 2000, a strong and well-timed essay published in one of the major national newspapers, the NRC Handelsblad, brought the debate to a new, more public level. A ‘multicultural drama’ was the way in which Paul Scheffer, a left-wing political commentator, described the experience of the previous 15 years. He attacked many taboos about diversity and multiculturalism, and the article became the foundation on which a series of public debates, responses, attacks, and counter-attacks were based. At the centre of the discussion was the future of Dutch integration policy, as well as the country’s immigration policy. Multiculturalism had been the catchphrase and the explicit principle of the government’s approach. After the 2003 elections, the word ‘multicultural’ disappeared from the plans of the centre-right coalition government. The new understanding was then that people must integrate into, and understand the norms and values of, a broadly tolerant Dutch community. Official Dutch Minority Policy (Minderhedennota) started in 1983 to manage the destabilizing effects of substantial remigration and marginalization of ethnic minorities after the oil crisis of the mid 1970s. Preceding the Minority Policy, the Dutch state made an effort to integrate some of the post-war migrants (the Indonesian Dutch) through the schemes originally developed for anti-social families before and after World War II. Detrimental effects of urbanization starting from the late nineteenth century and then

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World War II leading to the lack of moral substance, broken families and loss of religious faith compelled the Dutch state to take some precautions for the subalterns of those misfortunate periods. The targets of those precautions were the anti-social families, who were needed to be incorporated into the urban space. These ‘socially elusive’ and economically deprived people thought only of their own interests, did not take part in social, political, cultural or religious spheres of life, lived on their emotions, were uncritical, and were unconscious of moral values and social norms (Rath, 1999: 156; and van Wel, 1992). In order to integrate these families into urban life, both central and local governments as well as private institutions established a series of institutions. Particularly, after the formation of the Ministry of Social Work in 1952, social work expanded enourmously in a way that led to the increasing professionalization of the civilizing social work. In these social work institutions, men and women of anti-social families were given basic education and training. The men, who were said to lack responsibility for their spouses and children, were trained to turn up for work regularly and on time, work properly, behave properly to their superiors and fellow workers, and recognize their place in the hierarchy of power. The women were trained as mothers to learn some basic household skills, such as washing up, cooking and cleaning, and also tasks involved with bringing up and caring for children (Rath, 1999: 156–157). Social work, which was designed specifically to adjust the anti-social families, was indeed a modern tool for governmentality operating to involve those socially elusive groups in the capitalist production processes. When the Indonesian Dutch repatriated to the Netherlands in large numbers, the Ministry of Social Work set up a special Care Commission to prevent social degradation and if possible to cure it. The Commission was mainly composed of those professionals who were previously involved in the struggle against anti-social families. The repatriates were instructed in the Dutch style of housekeeping, bringing up children, budgeting, cooking, dress, language, home furnishing and so on. (Rath, 1999: 159). This kind of civilizing social work schemes were actually designed to combat antisocialness. Muslim origin guestworkers like the Turks and Moroccans are also lately being treated in the same way. Originating from the struggle efforts against the anti-social families, the civilizing machine of integration is there again now to incorporate ‘guestworkers’ into the Dutch way of life. Similar to anti-social families, Muslims are recently being considered to be generating deviant living and life styles (Van Wel, 1992). However, ‘guestworkers’ have been treated somewhat more cautiously. In 1970s, immigrant ethnic minorities were given the right to maintain their cultural identity in one way or another. This was to prevent them from getting alienated from their homeland cultures and was considered essential for those who would return to their home countries. Until the introduction of the new Minorities Policy

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in 1983, this segregationist policy vis-à-vis Muslims served to confirm their exclusion from the Dutch mainstream society. The need for formal regulation of ethnic relations in the Netherlands was actually triggered by the Moluccan revolts in 1970s (Thränhardt, 2000: 169). The Moluccan communities were mostly separatists who refused to integrate when they accepted refuge in the Netherlands in the 1950s. They were rather desperately oriented to the liberation of the Moluccan Islands from the Indonesian occupation. In time they felt increasingly disappointed and disillusioned about their situation, accusing the Dutch government of having breached their promises. In order to put pressure on the Dutch government and to demand that the Indonesian government evacuate the Moluccan islands, a group of youngsters hijacked a Dutch train in 1977. The official attempts to reach a compromise with the hijackers were in vain, and the armed response of the state ended up with the killing of two hostages and six hijackers out of nine. Moluccan revolt as well as marginalization of immigrants in the aftermatch of the economic crisis of 1973 gave rise to the establishment of the Department of Minorities Affairs within the Ministry of Home Affairs (Buruma, 2007: 13–14). Until the publication of the Minority Policy Note (Nota Minderhedennota) of 1983, it was taken for granted by the majority society that the Netherlands was a plural society anchored in the culture of tolerance for religious difference. This notion of pluralism was replaced by discourse of multiculturalism in 1980s and early 1990s. The principal pillars of the new policy were preservation and support of ethno-cultural identities of minorities, reducing their socioeconomic disadvantage, and fighting against ethnic discrimination to sustain an equitable social participation (Shadid, 2006: 13; and Carle, 2006: 71). Migrants were considered to be setting up a minority per se. Descendants of migrants received instruction in the language of their countries of origin within the primary education institutions. The rationale behind this policy in the 1970s was to keep migrants’ children prepared for an inevitable return to their homelands. In the 1980s, as it became apparent that the migrants were there to stay, the policy was redefined as a resource to strengthen ethno-cultural bonds and ethnic self-esteem as a basis for the emancipation of the group (Entzinger, 2003). However, this multicultural policy turned out to be contested in the 1990s as it was leading to further segregation of migrant communities (Glastra and Schedler, 2004). Subsequently, the Netherlands went through a process of policy reorientation in the late 1980s due to the economic crisis, which excessively affected minority groups, and increasing difficulties regarding the settlement of asylum seekers and refugees. The consensus on minority policy that emerged during the 1980s broke down during the 1990s. Opportunities granted to minorities for the purpose of integrating them into the Netherlands, were then considered to be an obstacle before integration. Along with the rise of the neo-liberal approach, the communitarian understanding was replaced

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by a liberal individualist perspective. The emphasis was no longer on rights, but on the obligation of individuals as citizens (Hart, 2007). Beginning on 1 January 1992, immigrants who wanted to naturalize in the Netherlands were no longer required to renounce their original citizenship. In 1997 the renunciation demand was reinstalled in the law. The new Dutch citizenship law of 2000 made the acquisition of Dutch citizenship even more difficult, while it became easier to retain dual citizenship. There were already some earlier signs in the Netherlands indicating the need to formulate a new Minority Policy transcending the limitations of multiculturalist perspective. The Scientific Council for Government Policy had prepared a ‘Minorities Policy Report’ in 1989 blaming the existing Minorities Policy for being too protective and group-oriented (BruquetasCallejo et al., 2008). The Council argued that the Government should try to concentrate on the incorporation of migrants to the spheres of education and labour, but not on sustaining their cultural identities. However, the Council also controversially claimed that education in languages and cultures of origin should not be a part of the regular curriculum. Instead, it underlined the instruction in Dutch as a second language starting from the pre-school stage. The new approach certainly differed from the former multiculturalist approach as the new approach assumed that official support of minority languages and cultures by the state would hinder integration. Thus, the new Policy of Integration of Ethnic Minorities (Contourennota integratiebeleid etnische minderheden, May 1994) described the preservation of minority cultures as a responsibility of each specific community and no longer a public commitment. The new approach was decisively abandoning the pillarization philosophy (Carle, 2006). The need for integration was replacing the previous emphasis on multiculturalism. Dutch withdrawal from multiculturalism is also a consequence of the visibility of the rising number of undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers in the public space. The Dutch public became aware of the presence of ‘illegal’ immigrants in the Netherlands in 1992 when an airplane crashed into a high building in southeast Amsterdam. The building was home to several immigrants, some of whom lost their lives in the accident (Muus, 2004: 277; and Musterd and Ostendorf, 1996: 124).3 The number of asylum seekers also drastically increased after the visa controls were extended in the 1980s to countries such as Turkey and Surinam. The fact that ‘illegal’ immigrants were tolerated in the Netherlands until the early 1990s and workplace checks were rather loose in the meantime, the resolution of the issue of ‘illegals’ was delayed until the issue has attracted public attention. Dutch immigration controls then became more restrictive, including tighter visa regimes, stricter workplace checks, firmer control of organized smuggling and trafficking of human beings, negotiating readmission agreements with countries of origin, and rejecting a high number of asylum applications (Muus, 2004: 280).

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A Law on the Citizenship of Newcomers became operative in 1998 along the same line of thinking, which was in search of structural integration of migrants. The new policy language is about demanding that immigrants familiarize themselves with ‘Dutch ways’ (Inburgeringwet – Integration Act) (Essed and Nimako, 2006). The Integration of Newcomers Act lays down a contract between newcomers and the Dutch State.4 According to the new Law, local councils are obliged to provide a settlement programme for newcomers to help them access education and labour market, and migrants are obliged to follow this programme. The agreement stipulates, for example, that all newcomers have the right to 600 hours of Dutch language lessons, familiarzsation with Dutch society and professional orientation. In return, newcomers must sign a contract agreeing that they will take full advantage of these services. If not they lose the provisional benefits they are entitled to. The Act also targets and engages employers to take an active part in the integration of the newcomers. The Dutch government introduced a set of targeted policies designed to tackle the high rates of unemployment among ethnic minorities. In 1998 the average unemployment figures of ethnic minorities was 16 per cent, while unemployment among indigenous Dutch people was 4 per cent. In order to understand the poor conditions in which ethnic minorities reside, one could also look at the quality of neighbourhoods. As of 1994, while around 10 per cent of the autochthonous Dutch people live in the poverty neighbourhoods, around 50 per cent of the allochthonous migrants are settled in such neigbourhoods (Bolt and van Kempen, 2003: 215). Turks and Moroccans mostly live in poverty neighbourhoods, and they are less likely to leave such neighbourhoods. Dutch-Muslims experience a structural segregation, which is reinforced through two separate mechanisms: chain migration and institutionalization. As Douglas S. Massey (1985) stated earlier, immigrants often arrive as chain migrants and tend to choose an ethnic enclave where they take advantage of the solidarity of their fellow countrymen and where they can maintain the lifestyle they had in the country of origin. The constant flow of immigrants is also expected to slow down the assimilation period of longer-established community members as the new immigrants bring about the maintenance of an active link to the culture and the language of the homeland. Similarly, the newcomers strengthen the possibilities of maintaining and even expanding ethnic niches in the labour market (Bolt and van Kempen, 2003: 210). When ethnic settlement reaches a critical mass of people, a process of institutionalization starts, ethnic stores opened, places of worship are founded, foreign language press begins to publish, and all kinds of formal and informal organizations boom up. The potency of ethnic services and organizations is not only dependent on the size of an ethnic group, but also on the cultural distance to the majority society. The larger this distance is, the greater the pressure upon the minority to establish their cultural infrastructure is (Massey, 1985; Bolt and van Kempen, 2003; and Jelen, 2007).

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As part of the scheme aiming at the empowerment of migrant origin population, the Dutch government set itself the ambitious aim of halving this figure by 2000. The government signed a covenant with the Dutch organisation of Small and Medium-Size Enterprises (SMEs), committing them to open vacancies to migrants and people from ethnic minorities. This scheme has proved very successful and has exceeded the targets set by the government. By 2000 the unemployment rate of ethnic minorities had come down to 10 per cent. As an addendum to the integration of newcomers to the labour market, the new citizenship policy was also designed to pursue cultural assimilation. Folke J. Glastra and Petra F. Schedler (2004: 50) clearly reveal that the idea of cultural assimilation was explicitly articulated in the National Minorities Debate, which took place at the beginning of the 1990s. The Debate was setting up the principles of the new citizenship law, which was designed to manufacture the new Dutch citizens: compliance with constitutional principles and laws such as the freedom of speech and the separation of state and church; recognition of the superiority of Christian humanist values like compromise, permissiveness, tolerance and equality; and adoption of Dutch middle-class values with regard to primary and secondary education. The new law of 1998 was based on the assumption that through compulsory education, newcomers would be in a better position to find paid work, after which their social-cultural integration would be a matter of time (Glastra and Schedler, 2004: 45). To put it differently, the main rationale of the new law was that employment was considered to be the key factor in integrating newcomers. However, after four years, the new law has encountered serious attacks. The main criticism was laid on the fact that newcomers were still unemployed, and lacked sufficient language skills. Both attempts for structural integration and linguistic integration of migrants seemed to have failed. Apart from the central government, municipalities, employers, job agencies, adult education institutions, and newcomers were all involved in the implementation of the new citizenship policy. Employers did not see any specific benefits to employing newcomers as they are mainly looking for productivity and efficiency. However, adult education institutions were more involved in the implementation of the new citizenship policy. Municipalities became obliged to purchase citizenship training programmes from those institutions (Glastra and Schedler, 2004: 48). Despite the fact that the Integration of Newcomers Act extensively differed from the former multiculturalist model of integration, they both inevitably brought about a very sizeable integration industry, which sustained a large number of people profiting from the emerging integration sector. Both sets of policies created what Jan Rath (1993) called an ‘ethnic minorities industry’, which was composed of a group of ‘ethnic brokers’, or what the journalist Martin Sommer called ‘minority brokers’5 who acted as a buffer between their own ethnic group and the administration. Through

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these mechanisms, group-specific political institutions become products of ‘minorization’, and utter the idea that ethnic minorities are not full members of the Dutch community of sentiments. An eventual outcome of this process of minorization is that migrants are not perceived as full members of the Dutch society, and they are likely to be tolerated but not accepted into key positions (Odmalm, 2005: 47). The failure of these two successive set of policies of integration have generated a political ground, in which migrants were blamed to be resistant and indifferent to integration. This was the time when Paul Scheffer, a columnist and a member of the Labour Party, published his essay entitled ‘The Multicultural Dilemma’ (Het multiculturele drama, NRC, 29 January 2000). Scheffer critiqued the discourse of multiculturalism and the minority research industry that supports such discourse. The ‘drama’ is that the Netherlands is creating an ‘ethnic underclass’ that consists of people who do not feel attached to Dutch culture and society and who are unwilling and unable to integrate. Eventually, the illiberal ideas of Muslims would undermine the social cohesion and the functioning of the liberal democratic state (Essed and Nimako, 2006: 304–305; and Carle, 2006: 72).6 Scheffer’s solution to the dissolution of the Netherlands was compulsory Dutch history lessons and assimilation into Dutch norms and values. In other words, he pleaded for a more nationalist and culturally assimilationist minority policy, which later became the mainstream understanding of integration in the public. Such public opinion was verified in the eyes of the wider society after the murder of Pim Fortuyn in 2001 and of Theo van Gogh in 2004 (Buruma, 2007). Pim Fortuyn was a former university professor of sociology, a political columnist, and a gay activist. He was well known for his extravagant, luxurious lifestyle. He was unable to find a place for himself within the established political parties, and he started his own party, LPF. He was in favour of lower taxes, less government, abortion rights and euthanasia. His views on immigration and Islam made him more popular. He called Islam a ‘backward culture’, and he was openly stating that ‘there were too many immigrants in the Netherlands’. Immediately before the elections he was assassinated by an animal rights activist. This was the first political assassination in the Netherlands in 400 years. On 15 May , the LPF received 17 per cent of the vote and 26 seats in the Parliament (Andeweg and Irwin, 2005: 16–17). With the assimilationist idea of Paul Scheffer and the ‘Islam is backward’ paradigm by Pim Fortuyn (2001) boosted by the media, the multiculturalist policy wind radically changed. Reservations about Dutch multiculturalism continued to be linked to the treatment of women in Islam. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a young Dutch Somali woman elected to Parliament in 2003, became a particularly prominent voice, representing Islam as responsible for forced marriages, female genital mutilation, and honour killings. She was a Muslim from Africa telling Europeans that Islam was a serious threat. This was the kind of message many people wished to hear. In 2004, she worked with

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filmmaker Theo Van Gogh on the film Submission I, which denounced violence against Muslim women. Van Gogh was subsequently killed by a young Dutch Moroccan, who left a letter warning that Hirsi Ali was his real target, and anti-Muslim violence temporarily erupted across the country. By December 2005, a majority of Dutch parliamentarians supported a motion calling for a ban on women wearing the niqab or burka in public spaces – not just a ban on teachers or pupils wearing it in schools, but a ban on any female walking down the streets dressed in a burka. Inspired by this, the minister for immigration and integration said she favoured the introduction of a code of conduct to emphasize Dutch identity, which would include an expectation that citizens speak Dutch in public (Phillips, 2007). Rotterdam, the country’s second-biggest city, passed a code in January 2006 that encourages residents to speak only Dutch in schools, at work and on the street as a precaution to integrate Turkish and Moroccan residents of the city.

Naar Netherlands (Coming to the Netherlands) Cultural naturalization of immigrants has become stricter in the Netherlands after the new Citizenship Law on Dutch Citizenship was put into force in 2003. The new Law includes a formal naturalization test in which the applicant has to demonstrate oral and written knowledge of the Dutch language as well as of Dutch society and politics. These new requirements complemented the citizenship courses (inburgeringscursussen) which were introduced in 1998. Subsequently, on 15 March 2006 the Netherlands initiated the ‘Civic Integration Abroad Act’ (Wet inburgering in het buitenland)7 and the accompanying orientation package including the film Naar Netherlands (Coming to the Netherlands). The entire package had enormous critiques particularly because of two controversial scenes shown in the film: Firstly, a topless woman sunbathing, and secondly, two gay men kissing. It has been questioned whether this content is appropriate and necessary, and whether it targets Muslim groups in order to discourage them from immigrating to the Netherlands. This test is not a citizenship test, but rather a test for the purpose of forming a family by marriage to someone in the Netherlands, or to join family members already living in the Netherlands. Such tests have also recently been introduced in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, and the United Kingdom. Contrary to most ‘integration’ tests, the test is not given after years of residence in the country of destination, but interestingly, before the applicant’s arrival in the Netherlands. The language requirement is set so high in the Netherlands as to exclude all but the most highly educated. The test is taken in the Dutch consulate in the applicant’s home country. The test consists of two parts: (1) Knowledge of the Dutch language, and (2) Knowledge of Dutch society. The introduction to the orientation pack recommends that the applicant should spend about 375 hours in total

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studying, 50–70 hours of which are recommended for the Knowledge of Dutch Society part. In preparation for the test, the prospective applicant buys an orientation pack available in online retailers. Included in the package is the film, Naar Netherlands in the applicant’s own language as well as in Dutch.8 There is also a booklet showing pictures from the film and a list of 100 possible questions that could be asked about the film. There is also an audio CD on which the same questions are recorded, and the answers are supplied for the applicant to memorize. The film and accompanying questions cover the following aspects of life in the Netherlands: geography and living in the Netherlands, history, constitution, democracy and legislation, the Dutch language, parenting and education, health care, and work and income. During the test at the Dutch consulate, the applicant is given a booklet containing 30 of the images from the orientation book. The test is taken orally, and the applicant is connected via telephone to a remote computer that asks the test questions and records the answers given. The questions appear as they have been given in the practice pack and are of three kinds: yes/no questions, open questions with a closed, unambiguous answer, and closed questions with two answer options. The test finds out whether the applicant has studied the film and understands enough Dutch to answer the questions. What is polemical and controversial about the test is not only limited to its content, but also there is a debate about who is required to take the test. The test is only required for ‘non-Western’ peoples.9 While the test is required for all ‘non-Westerners’, the addition of some fact and analysis shows that the test is oriented particularly towards applicants of Turkish and Moroccan, or in other words, of Muslim origin. In 2005, Turkey and Morocco were also Table 4.6 Number of the MVV applicants in the Netherlands in 2006 Country

Number of applicants

%

Turkey China Morocco India Suriname Indonesia Pakistan Brazil Russia Thailand Others

4,330 3,981 3,008 2,865 2,298 1,256 1,072 1,025 976 870 18,751

11 10 7 7 6 3 3 3 2 2 46

Total as of December 2006

40,432

100

Source: Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Department (IND), available at http://www.ind.nl/NL/ inbedrijf/overdeind/cijfersenfeiten/

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the countries with the largest number of applicants for the authorization for temporary stay, known as VVR (Machtiging voor Voorlopig Verblijf ). There were 5,700 applicants from Turkey and 4,500 from Morocco in 2005; and 4,330 from Turkey, 3,981 from China and 3,008 from Morocco in 2006 (Table 4.6).10

Structural outsiderism among Muslims As of the year 2000, unemployment rate among the Dutch-Turks is 9 per cent, Dutch-Moroccans 13 per cent and native Dutch 3 per cent. Moroccans and half of the Turks have a salaried job. Unlike the Moroccans, the Turks are more likely to be self-employed, and to have their own businesses. The average household incomes of Moroccans and Turks are more than one third lower than for the native Dutch. Their unemployment rates are also elevated: 27 per cent for Moroccans and 21 per cent for Turks, as compared to 9 per cent for the native Dutch. However, a middle class is beginning to emerge. There is evidence of a move towards higher level jobs within the younger generation, due mainly to their higher educational levels. Similarly, Rath et al. (1997) claim that the youths with migrant backgrounds, who are becoming more prominent, see their future in the Netherlands and are more orientated than their parents towards Dutch society (Table 4.7). Turkish and Moroccan pupils are more likely to attend schools, which will not allow them to participate in forms of higher education. Their chances of ending up within the university system are three times lower than for pupils from the native population. When the labour market position of schoolleavers from immigrant groups is compared with that of the native Dutch school-leavers, then it is found out that the situation for Turks is worst. The likelihood of having a paid job for Turkish origin school-leavers is smaller than native Dutch, Moroccan and also Surinamese/Antillian school-leavers (de Vries and Wolbers, 2004: 14–15). One of the main reasons for the failure of Dutch-Turks in the labour market is their lower achieved level of education and their lower social status. This is also because of the fact that Dutch-Turks possess limited number of resources like specific information about the labour market of the country and a good command of the Dutch language, which distinguish them from those who have easier access to the labour market. One reason often given for higher unemployment rates among immigrant origin people in the Netherlands is that the majority fit into the most vulnerable lower end of the labour market (Figure 4.1). It is mainly unqualified and uneducated workers who bear the burden of low-paid jobs. This is true of the first generation, who arrived basically as unskilled workers with low educational levels. However, figures indicate that things have not changed so much as far as the young generations with Dutch citizenship are concerned.11 Ethnic minority youths aged between 15–24 who have been through the Dutch school system still seem to be struggling with the unemployment problem to a greater level than native Dutch youths. The Surinamese and Antillian

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Table 4.7 Labour market position of persons aged 15–64 years according to group of origin, 2003 Non-western allochthons (%) Neth. Western Antilles Autochthons allochthons and Total Turkey Morocco Surinam Aruba Other (%) (%) Net labour participation Unemployment percentage

67

63

49

46

41

61

54

—

4

7

14

14

17

10

17

—

Source: CBS (Statistics Netherlands).

20

15

10

5

0 bao/vbo/mavo Turks and Moroccans

mbo/havo/vwo Surinam/Antilles

Other non-European allochtoneous

hbo/wo Autochtoneous

Total non-European allochtoneous

Figure 4.1 Unemployed working population according to ethnic group and background characteristics (education), 2004. Note: bao/vbo/mavo = up to lower general secondary; mbo/havo/vwo = intermediate vocational to pre-university; hbo/wo = higher vocational and university. Source: Jaarrapport Integratie 2005; Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau/Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek- en Documentatiecentrum/Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, Den Haag 2005.

youths suffer a very similar fate to the Turks and Moroccans (Vasta, 2006). Another research commissioned by the ILO, in the early 1990s in a number of European countries including the Netherlands, revealed that high levels of discrimination were experienced particularly among Moroccans at the point of entry into the labour market where ‘the possibility of actually getting a job is almost zero for the Moroccan applicant’ (Bovenkerk, et al.,

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1995: 52). A comparison between several countries indicated net discrimination rates at 37 per cent for the Netherlands, 36 per cent for Spain, 33 per cent for Belgium, and 19per cent for Germany (Taran, 2006: 3). The figure above indicates that in 2004 Turks and Moroccans who had lower educational levels, experienced three times as much unemployment as did the native Dutch with similar qualifications (Figure 4.1). The Turks and Moroccans who had intermediate vocational to pre-university qualifications also experience a high a rate of unemployment three times higher than the native Dutch. However, the ratio slightly changes for the university graduate levels. The more highly educated (higher vocational and university) among the Turks and Moroccans have more than double the unemployment rate while the Surinamese and Antillians have double the unemployment rate. The ‘other non-Western group’ like African refugees experience three to four times higher unemployment rates than the equivalent native Dutch. It is essential to look for other reasons, and here it could be suggested that deep rooted institutional racism is one of the major reasons which prevent non-Western allochtoneous people with university degrees from having equal access to the labour market in comparison to their autochtoneous peers with similar qualifications.

Dutch minority research industry Establishment of the Department of Minority Affairs within the Ministry of Home Affairs in 1983 also brought about the institutionalization of Minority Research (Minderhedenonderzoek). All research on ethnic minorities in the Netherlands is funded directly by government departments or, indirectly, via state-funded universities and non-governmental organizations. Most important academic institutions are the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NOW), and the Royal Dutch Academy of Science (KNAW). In the last two and a half decades, Dutch researchers have been producing reports and publications on ethnic minorities and their ethnocultural characteristics. Philomena Essed and Kwame Nimako (2006) call these government-funded research activities as Dutch minority research industry. The Netherlands is the only country in which social scientific research on minorities and immigrants depends heavily on government funding. Essed and Nimako trace the beginning of the minority research industry back to 1970s, which led to a coherent ethnic minority policy programme. This programme has been generated in five phases. In the first phase, the Scientific Council of the Government asked a scientific committee chaired by Rinus Pennix to conduct a comprehensive research on ethnic minorities. The report of the research was published in 1979 with the title of Ethnic Minorities. In the second phase, the government acted upon the findings of the research and accepted the contours of the report. Thirdly, the Ethnic Minority Unit of the Ministry of Home Affairs produced in 1981 a Draft Minority Policy based on the conclusions of the preceding two documents. Fourthly, civil society

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organizations were asked to reflect upon the Draft Minority Policy. Finally, on the basis of these reactions, the official Minority Policy Note was inscribed and presented to the parliament for approval in 1983. Essed and Nimako address two pivotal institutions and two important names dominating the Minority Research Industry: Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies (IMES) established in 1994 under the auspices of University of Amsterdam run by Rinus Pennix until 2005; and European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER) founded in 1993 at Erasmus University in Rotterdam and run by Han Entzinger until 2001. Pauline Meurs, chair of Scientific Council to the Government (WRR) is quoted by Essed and Nimako (2006: 294) to refer to the main actors of the research industry: Roughly put, two scholars have more or less monopolized minority research. We are talking about the Rotterdammers with patriarch Han Entzinger and about the Amsterdammers with Rinus Pennix ... In both cases the intertwining of roles started already at the beginning of their careers. Both Pennix and Entzinger started off as research officers at the then Ministry of Culture, Recreation and Social Work (CRM), with guestworkers and people from the colonies in their portfolios ... From there on, both went to science while maintaining their contacts in the department. A quarter of a century later they still dominate the policy science discourse ... This intervention underlines that access to state funds requires a very sound social capital bridging the Dutch minority research industry with the public fund resources. Essed and Nimako (2006) shed light on the cultures of scholarship and public policy on immigrants and ethnic minorities in the Netherlands. They have not only tried to make visible that dynamic networking between policy-makers and minority research exists, but also they examined the proliferation of minorities research institutes in response to public policy. They also revealed that public and civil servants in charge of advising the government about immigrant/minority policy become academic researchers in charge of conducting policy research. The nature of the formal state funding has, to a great extent, shaped the context and content of migration and ethnic studies in the Netherlands. It is still the case that minority researchers continue to advise the government on migrationrelated issues through specific assignments commissioned by the government. Furthermore, it is not surprising to see that minority researchers continue to rely on national or European funding for their research. *

*

*

Dutch society is historically organized along with some religious and secular pillars, which are mainly called the Protestant pillar, Catholic pillar,

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Liberal pillar and Socialist Pillar. Muslim origin immigrants have also been compelled to organize themselves along with the Fifth pillar, which is the Islamicpillar. Dutch politics is based on negotiation, compromise and tolerance embedded in the processes of interaction between these pillars. Dutch multiculturalism is also an extension of the pillar system as well as of the process of colonialization. However, democratization of the Dutch society after the mid 1960s has emancipated the public from the hegemony of political elite, and thus brought an end to the pillar system. Depillarization of the Dutch society was also partly an outcome of the rising visibility of Islam in the public space, which was a worrying phenomenon for the majority of Dutch society. Becoming the third biggest religious denomination in the country with about more than 1 million Muslims, around 500 mosques, 40 schools, various employers’ organizations and broadcasting associations, Islam has become a threat for the native Dutch. Depillarization of the Dutch society has also brought about the decline of traditional political parties, and encouraged Candidate Parties such as LPF to become more popular. Accommodation of Muslims in the Netherlands has always been a primary concern for the Dutch state. Muslims have also been accommodated through the Minority Policy (Mindehetennota), a policy designed to implicitly deny the fact that there were immigrants in the Netherlands. This is why the term ‘immigrant’ was officially avoided, and some other terms such as ‘repatriates’ were used instead to refer to immigrants. This chapter has argued that Dutch Minority policies, be it multiculturalist or not, have created a strong ethnic minorities industry, or integration industry. It was claimed that the legacy of the pillar system has actually installed a substantial number of ethnic brokers, or minority brokers, who mediate between those ethnic minorities and the state. Integration industry has also created a number of people such as researchers, social workers, teachers, doctors, consultants, and officers who are accommodated in the integration sector and who have vested interest in the maintenance of the sector. Following 9/11 and the killing of Theo Van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn, Muslims have become coupled with essentialism, fundamentalism, violence, terror and dissidence. Changing from a country of tolerance into a country of bigotry towards Muslims, the Netherlands have adopted new immigration and integration policies similar to those of the other countries attracting qualified immigrants and preventing unskilled ones from entering the country. It has also become apparent that Muslim origin migrants and their descendants are structurally excluded from the labour market, higher education and affluent neighbourhoods.

5 Building Communities: Comfort in Purity

In his latest work, Arjun Appadurai (2006: 7) states that where the lines between ‘us’ and ‘them’ may have blurred at the boundaries, globalization exacerbates these uncertainties and produces new incentives for cultural purification as more nations lose the illusion of national economic sovereignty. Appadurai goes on to argue that contemporary processes of globalization lead to uncertainties for individuals, and that these uncertainties prompt individuals to create a certain repertoire of efforts pawing the way to various forms of fundamentalisms. This is a kind of search for certainty in the age of endemic uncertainities brought about by globalization in order to generate previously unrequired levels of certainty about social identity, values, survival, solidarity, honour and dignity. Another way of demonstrating the search for certainty is to essentialize the notion of purity, which leaves no room for the recognition of difference. The search for certainty operates on an individual level irrespective of being in the majority, or in the minority. Hence, the temptation not to recognize ethno-cultural and religious differences has become a frequent act among individuals of any kind complaining about the destabilizing effects of globalizing uncertainties. Parochialism, nationalism, essentialism, fundamentalism of any type, ethnic cleansing, violence, racism, xenophobia, narcissism, patriotism and purity are all different forms of the manifestation of such a quest of certainty. The modern individual is subject to the detrimental effects of modernity in the age of globalization such as capitalism, industrialism, racism, surveillance, egoism, loneliness, insecurity, structural outsiderism and militarism. It seems that individuals tend to generate some solidarity networks in order to overcome these obstacles. Solidarity networks may lead to two antithetical formations: autonomy and heteronomy. On the one hand, religious, ethnic and traditional community structures provide migrants with the necessary equipment to struggle against the destabilizing effects of these challenges, in other words, to have a safe haven on earth. Such solidarity networks serve a platform for migrants whereby they may perform a politics of identity, 141

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which corresponds to what Ulrich Beck (1992) calls ‘sub-politics’, or what Anthony Giddens (1994: 14–15) calls ‘life politics’. This supplies migrants a kind of politics through which they may emancipate themselves from the arbitrary hold of capitalism, poverty and material deprivation. Such a politics of identity corresponds to a shield, which makes the migrants attempt to develop their autonomy. Purification, reification and miniaturization of the social world by means of the community building processes provide individuals with the sense of making a giant autonomous self. Hence, such solidarity network formations may also be conceived of as a survival strategy for migrants against the feeling of insecurity and loneliness. Thus, while the community formation, on the one hand, embodies the autonomous self, it also gives rise to what Zygmunt Bauman (2001) calls heteronomy in a way that pleases individuals in the safe atmosphere of community. Nostalgia, past, ethnicity, culture and religion turn out to be a kind of lighthouse waving persons back to shore – the one point on the landscape that gives hope of direction in a time characterized by prudentialism, post-social state, insecurity, loneliness, distrustfulness, aimlessness and anonymity (Stewart, 2000). These subdivisions constitute a focus of security beyond the family unit and perform a supplementary social function in an age of neo-liberalism characterized with the lack of a strong redistributive justice to be provided by the egalitarian social welfare state. It seems at first glance that heteronomic community formations are being operationalized by individuals as a rational tactic in everyday life to struggle with the destabilizing effects of globalization leading to the demise of ideology of welfarism. Though this analysis may be correct, it is not likely to reflect the whole underlying principle of community. Heteronomic communities may also be considered as a technology of governmentality utilized by the state to compensate the decline of welfare state, which is no longer apt for providing her citizens with social welfare services such as education, health, security and pension services. The mobilization of community by the state is visible in the contemporary programmes of urban renewal conceptualizing the problems of the inner city in terms of a lack of community spirit. This implies a lack of entrepreneurialism, collective pride and self-sufficiency (Inda, 2006: 42). The state tends to empower the local communities to use their own energies, connections, bonds and affiliations in tackling emerging problems of security, recreation, health and so on. Or consider the administration of AIDS and any other problem domains such as poverty, unschooling, illiteracy, domestic violence and honour crime given out by the state in order for civil society initiatives to come up with solutions.

Making and unmaking communities In order to provide reasons for the failure of the integration regime, one should look into the ways in which ‘communities’ are producing and reproducing themselves. Krezuberg (Berlin), Schaerbeek, Port Namur (Brussels),

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Keupstrasse (Cologne), Villier le Bel, La Courneuve, St. Dennis or Crétil (Paris) and Bos en Lommer (Amsterdam) provide good examples of locations where one can find intact Muslim origin communities. The first thing that a flaneur (someone strolling through the streets) of such diasporic spaces will notice is that the symbols, colours, languages, sounds, figures, postures and dresscodes are all replicas of what exists in the homeland. Such diasporic spaces provide the members of diasporic communities with a symbolic ‘fortress’ protecting them against unemployment, alienation, institutional discrimination, assimilation and racism. To put it differently, such places serve as a security valve for diasporic subjects to soften the firm strokes coming from the external world. A middle-aged-man interviewed in Schaerbeek said that ‘Schaerbeek is a place where “an ignorant peasant” from Emirdag˘ arrived just after he had put his shepherd’s stick on the shelf.’ The Schaerbeek community is a shelter, even a fortress, for the vulnerable social actor: According to me, the advantages of living in Schaerbeek are a lot more than the disadvantages. At least we are not dispersing and vanishing. If we dispersed and lived separately, our children would be in a worse situation: they would be exposed to degeneration. This way, at least they are familiar with our traditions. Because the wider society in which they live is an ‘alien’ society and full of ‘dangers’, the community provides them with a kind of social control: Let me be frank, it is very easy for a young man to obtain whatever he wants here. Let me be more frank, he can get women, alcohol, whatever he desires anytime. Prostitution is widespread. Drugs are available in certain areas. Their use is legal. Young people who came here from Turkey have also experienced deviation. But I cannot say that this is true for the majority. Maybe you will call it tribalisation, but I tell you there is an advantage in living together: it prevents us from dispersal. The community essentially presents a collective need. The community strategy of keeping people together is counteracted by individuals through a kind of what François Dubet (2002) calls ‘necessary conformism’. Conformism is a tactic deployed by individuals in order to comply with the rules of the game set out by the power of the community. The distinction between strategy and tactic, as put forward by Michel De Certeau (1984), implies that the compliance of individual members of a community with the communal rules does not necessarily mean that they internalize the community. Islam is one of the key elements in helping the communities with Muslim background conform. A young man defined religiosity in the district: Schaerbeek is number one in religiosity. Many young people attend Quran courses, generally at the Fatih Mosque or the Ulu Mosque ...

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While the community provides its members with the opportunity not to lose their religion or ethics, it also keeps the mother tongue alive. However, if the community is not properly regulated and governed, it may bring about failure to learn the language of the country of settlement: The children know neither Turkish nor French ... But the education is more serious in Flemish schools. I am sending my children to Flemish schools. The Turkish parents want to have money ... It seems that if the children earn money, the difficulties will end ... I am advising the children here to go to school. But at the same time, they should learn the Turkish culture. For this reason we go to Turkey in the summer holidays with the children. They get bored in Eskis¸ehir. They go out but after 2 hours they get bored. They want to come back here as soon as possible. Here is their place ... Despite all the protection provided by the community, its members bear other risks, in addition to failing to learn the language(s) of the host society: There is no way that you can suffer economically in Europe. But what is essential is the peace at home. The Turkish community is getting more restless. They experience the difficulties of being inward-looking. They cannot make their children attend school. The children envy the world outside ... It seems that the communities in diasporic spaces are going through a ‘transition process’ and their ‘ghetto’ qualities are dissolving. It is the younger generations that go through this process to a greater extent, and it is they who feel the difficulties of ghettoization. As they are loyal to their parents and families, they cannot get away from the restraints of their community, but their being in the community is rather symbolic. Their minds and behaviour transcend the boundaries of the community. They always feel the tension between the community and wider society in the process of individuation. Those who are aware of the crisis of the community and are experiencing the dangers and limitations of the ghetto are gradually leaving their communities in order to ‘protect their children’. They tend to move to other districts. Departure from the community is regarded as a path to success by the schooled generations, but this also creates certain problems. The traditional methods of older generations to ‘protect’ their children have proven to be unsuccessful. The ones interviewed during the field research explained this through stories of ‘lost generations’, ‘insecurity’ and ‘crime’: If parents are strict, then the children escape from their homes ... You cannot achieve what you want by locking them in. If you prevent your

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daughter from going out, she will run away as soon as she has the chance and become a prostitute ... As De Certeau (1984: 37) reminds us a tactic is an art of the weak. The more a power grows, the less it can allow itself to mobilize part of its means in the service of deception. Power is bound by its very visibility. Thus, the more the central power, community in this case, becomes mighty, the less it becomes effective and persuasive for its subjects. In this case, subjects tend to create their own centres of resistance. Failures continue along with the success stories. Despite all the limitations of the ghetto, many people try to find solutions to overcome their failures. It is possible to see several individuals who are traditional, modern, outgoing, introvert, democratic, nationalist and communitarian in the same person. For instance, a 16–17 year old teenager who was born in Schaerbeek and goes to Turkey every year, illustrated the difficulties of overcoming problems experienced in Turkey and Belgium: Here, we are deprived of the tastes that exist in Turkey. The Belgians think that there is happiness, money and everything in Belgium, in Europe, but on the contrary, here everything is more difficult. This is not the kind of life I want. How can I explain? The place we live in is very disordered. There is filth ... The environment is not good. Everybody is after money. What are they doing for money? They either sell joints, or steal, or cheat the ‘gavurs’ (a Turkish word for unbelievers). The Belgians and the others are afraid of us, and they say ‘They are foreigners and they rob us.’ The Flemish are afraid of Turks. When they realize that you are a Turk, they begin to fear. When I go somewhere, Belgians do not even turn and look at me. When a Belgian walks by right there at night, the policeman does not even look at him. But when we pass by, he keeps on looking at us and chases us to find out what we are doing there at night. For this young man, all Belgians are ‘gavur’ (unbelievers). He uses such a categorization of ‘exclusion’ and ‘othering’ with ease. Nevertheless, he also knows that he is subject to the same kind of categorization when he is in Turkey. As a response to this categorization of exclusion, he tends to demonstrate stronger loyalty to Turkey and Turkishness. This state of feeling even more Turkish is actually an individual tactic to overcome exclusion from within the Turkish nation: When we go to Turkey, we are not regarded as Turks. The neighbours in the village call us ‘gavur’. But despite all of this, Turkey is different. They say ‘the Gavurs have arrived’. They sell us things in the market at very high prices, they cheat us. Despite all these things, everything is different in Turkey. You are ready to pay 100 euros for something which

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actually costs 5 YTL. The taste of things is different. You do not want to spend money here. But it has a different taste when you spend money in Turkey. Although they prefer ‘the taste’ of Turkey to that of Europe, life seems to be imprisoned within a limited space for the youth who live in such ghettoes. Many of them do not have German, Belgian, French or Dutch friends except those at school. In fact they have no ties outside the ghetto. In contrast to the ways in which young males affirm the attitudes of the older generations towards them, young females feel rather confined. The fact that young women are not allowed to go out at night gives us some clues about a male dominated world. This ‘male to male world’ bears no hope for the future. The community is based on the constituents of religion, tradition, ethnicity and nation. When such a community goes into a crisis, the traditional imagination of community is replaced by another form of imagined community, that is ‘an essentialist and ethnicist national identity’ that is characterized by a concrete understanding of nation. A woman interviewee (28) in Charleroi draws our attention to the increasing level of isolation among the Belgian-Turks: What we heard from our parents is very different from what we experience now. When I look at my parents’ pictures I see that they were dancing with their Flemish landlords, neighbouring with the Greeks, having assistance from the Belgians. They had solidarity with the outside people then. Now, Turks are becoming more and more isolated in comparison to the past. The quotations extracted from the in-depth interviews and given below display the existence of a reflexive relationship between the ‘nationalist construction’ created in the homeland and diaspora, and demonstrate how the externally imposed nationalist identity fills the gap resulting from weakening communal ties due to the generational and structural social, political and cultural changes within the community. This transformation cor responds to a transition from religiosity towards nationalism: There has lately been an alliance among Belgian-Turks on issues like the position of Turks in Europe, Turkey’s situation vis-à-vis the European Union, the socalled Armenian Genocide etc. Conferences are held in the mosques on special days such as the anniversary of the establishment of the Republic (29th October), or 18th March, the Commemoration Day of Martyrs. Although the people attending such conferences and gatherings have different political engagements, everybody agrees on the survival of the state, the nation and the flag. Modern global circuitry of communication and

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transportation has partly erased the boundaries between homeland and diaspora. Hence, diasporic identities are subject to the constant interplay of the two locations, which have become almost overlapping in the symbolic world of migrants.

‘Imported’ brides and bridegrooms: search for purity Migrants of Muslim origin residing in the West have also developed another tactic to reinforce their community boundaries in trying to cope with the destabilizing effects of neo-liberalism, globalization, racism and Islamophobia: arranged marriages from their homeland. A significant issue among Euro-Muslims is the increasing number of spouses brought to Europe from the countries of origin. Such partners are known as ‘imported brides and bridegrooms’. Such arranged marriages are usually preferred by conservative families, who believe that brides from the homeland are culturally ‘pure’ and thus capable of raising ‘better-educated’ children. Bridegrooms on the other hand are usually chosen from candidates who fit the occupational prospects required by the extended family in question. For these families, marriage seems to be more a question of purely economic prospects, and/or that of an appropriate childbearing institution. The following figures indicate that 64 per cent of French-Turks, 55 per cent of Belgian-Turks, and 44 per cent of German-Turks are against the idea of arranged marriages. On the other hand, around 35 per cent of BelgianTurks, do not mind the idea of ‘importing brides, or bridegrooms’ from Turkey in comparison to 21 per cent who disagree with this idea. These percentages are respectively 40 per cent and 20 per cent for German-Turks, and 48 per cent and 18 per cent for French-Turks (Kaya and Kentel, 2005 and 2007). Similarly, for instance, among the second generation DutchMoroccans 56 per cent of the men and 62 per cent of the women have married a partner who lived in Morocco prior to marriage. These percentages are even higher for the first generation: 78 per cent of the men and 68 per cent of the women (Central Bureau for Statistics, CBS, Netherlands). The family remains one of the most important spaces of protection for Euro-Muslims, but it also produces constant tension and crises. The family provides transnational individuals with a sense of being protected, because it is where the socialization of diasporic culture starts. A Belgian-Turkish married couple, who displayed a multicultural capital, conveyed how Turkish culture provides an ideal intimate family atmosphere: ‘The best thing about the Turks is that they are attached to their families. I often see my parents, for instance.’ Similarly, German-Turks and French-Turks also underlined the significance of family during the field research conducted in the aftermath of the 2003 summer resulting in the death of thousands of elderly people in both countries due to extraordinary heatwave. Their

148 Islam, Migration and Integration Table 5.1 What is the primary problem you are facing most in the host country as a Turkish person?

% Contradictory Moral Values

EuroGermany France Flanders Wallonia Brussels Belgium Turks 25.8

17.5

15.0

8.0

23.2

15.8

24.7

Source: Kaya and Kentel, 2005; and 2007.

common argument about these deaths was that contemporary Western societies lack some essential values such as solidarity, respect for the elderly, family, and warmth. They made it clear that Euro-Turks still maintain such values, which give them what Bourdieau (1984) calls distinction vis-à-vis the majority society. Contradictory moral values have been reported by the Euro-Turks as the most important problem faced in everyday life in their countries of settlement (Kaya and Kentel, 2005 and 2007) (Table 5.1). Zemni et al. (2006) also observe a similar resistance among Euro-Muslims against arranged/forced marriages, revealing that for instance, young generations of Belgian-Muslim females raised in Belgium are more emancipated than they were ten years ago. Knowing what the Holy Book Quran says regarding the illegitimacy of forced marriages in Islam, young females now seem to have the courage to oppose their parents who may force them marry the men they appreciate (Ibid.: 12). Zemni et al. (2006: 93–100) also reveal that there are some major motives behind arranged marriages initiated by parents: they are concerned about the morality and good behaviour of their children who are believed to have come to the age of marriage; they are concerned about the risk of their daughter losing her virginity; parents believe that they make the best choice for their children; they are convinced that this is the ongoing tradition; they are concerned that their daughter shall not be able to marry if she exceeds the age of 25 or so; and finally they may be motivated to help someone in the country of origin with a lower social economic background, who is willing to go abroad through marriage. What is also striking is that parents present arranged marriages as a religious order, a manoeuvre which leaves no room for the youngsters to act. However, recently, youngsters have the potential power to challenge their parents trying to convince them that this has nothing to do with Islam, but with the traditions. The children of Euro-Muslims have a rather different process of socialization. They live simultaneously on both banks of the river. On the one hand they have to go through the diasporic form of socialization at home with their families, but on the other hand they interact with the wider society outside their family. Family expectations of their children concentrate on their wish to protect the boundaries of their culture. They encourage their children to marry brides, or grooms, from the country of origin in

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order to sustain the authentic culture (Table 5.2). A member of the Diyanet (the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs) addressed this issue: One of the main problems here is marriage. There are still families that bring brides from Turkey. This causes great unhappiness. Both brides and grooms are unhappy. Parents choose to marry their children to relatives who live back home. Brides and grooms who are brought from Turkey are treated like slaves. When the boys have their own girlfriends, the parents tend to prevent their sons from leaving home with a girl they do not approve of by bringing a bride from Turkey. They believe that the Turkish bride will keep their son on the straight and narrow. Turkish brides are considered to be more traditional than the Belgian-Turkish girls, who are believed to be less traditional. On the other hand, the parents tend to choose rather more educated bride-grooms for their daughters, because it is believed that Turkish boys are more modern than the Belgian-Turkish ones. It is estimated that each year some 17,000 brides and bridegrooms come from Turkey to Germany (Aydın, 2003), and 1,300 to Belgium (Akçapar, 2007). Compared to other immigrant communities in the West, Turks are known to be inclined most to arrange marriages from their homeland. 75 per cent of Belgian-Turkish families marry their sons to so-called imported brides, compared with around 70 per cent of parents marrying their daughters to ‘imported bridegrooms’ (Lesthaeghe, 2000: 20). S¸ebnem Akçapar (2007) reveals that there may be several reasons for this pattern: ● ●

Increasing restrictions on family unification in the West since the 1970s; Continued arranged marriages and endogamy within Turkish society;

Table 5.2 Turkey?

Would you agree with the idea of bringing brides and bridegrooms from

Germany

France

Bringing brides from Turkey? Agree 40.2 48.8 It doesn’t 40.2 33.8 matter Disagree 19.6 17.3 Bringing bridegrooms from Turkey? Agree 38.4 48.5 It doesn’t 40.2 33.7 matter Disagree 21.4 17.8

Flanders

Wallonia

Brussels

Belgium

EuroTurks

42.0 36.5

22.7 52.3

33.9 38.4

35.5 40.5

40.0 39.8

20.5

15.9

25.0

20.8

19.5

43.5 35.0

21.6 48.9

33.0 39.3

35.8 39.3

39.2 39.5

20.0

20.5

25.9

21.8

21.2

Source: Kaya and Kentel, 2005; and 2007.

150 Islam, Migration and Integration ●

●

●

Continued solidarity networks between transnational subjects and their kin in the homeland; The high number of young men expecting a better life abroad as well as those parents who are willing to benefit from marrying their daughters to a young man residing abroad; Concern about raising new generations with a pure culture – something that imported brides are expected to bring with them from Turkey.

Marrying someone from Turkey, for instance, certainly points to the willingness of migrant families to stay in touch with Turkey, as well as to protect cultural values such as honour. As explained above, honour is not only an individual value, but also something social and communal. Honour redraws the boundaries of the community. Cultural values such as honour become a source of distinction and difference in a remote land where the diasporic individual encounters the other. Honour and resistance to intermarriage may also mean a counter-attack to assimilation, especially in Wallonia. Marrying someone from Turkey not only functions as a tool for keeping a culture intact, but also as a tool for sustaining immigration (Bozarslan, 1996). On the other hand, imported brides and grooms may also provide migrants with the opportunity to generate strong families in which one of the spouses is likely to be dependent on the other due to lack of competence in the language and culture of the majority society. Claire Autant and Véronique Manry (1998: 73) claim that French-Turkish women are reluctant when their parents decide to marry them to a man from Turkey. Marrying a man from Turkey may in fact provide them with some advantages, such as the man becoming dependent on the bride because of a lack of competence in German, French, or Dutch and the loosening of parental authority on both sides. Gaby Strassburger (2004) has also claimed that the issue of parental suppression is relevant to a certain degree among Euro-Turks: apart from some exceptional cases, young people usually decide of their own free will to marry someone from their country of origin. However, the issue remains to be unresolved. A woman (40) in Beringen, who is a turcologist and social worker, describes the situation of the imported brides and bridegrooms as a trauma: Those brides and bride-grooms used to be called ‘tourist’ before. It is a very difficult task to live here within the Turkish community without knowing the Flemish language and having any contact with the outside world. It is a trauma actually. I am giving social guidance to such people, who could make it to attend our courses. However, most of the women are exposed to a pressure by their in-laws not to socialize outside their extended families. Social assistance is not enough for them, they also need professional psychological help.

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Akçapar (2007: 413) refers to the problems of those brides in becoming imprisoned in their own extended families with various testimonies of the brides themselves. A woman complains about the fact that she is detached from the Belgian way of life ever since she came to this country to marry a Turk: How could I know who the Belgians are? I hardly see them here in the Turkish neighbourhood ... I am not sure if I live in Europe. I cannot get out. The Turks here are much more conservative than they were in their villages in Turkey. If you go out, people immediately gossip about you. I have been here for almost nine years, but I have never been to any movie, theatre, or museum. (Quoted in Akçapar, 2007: 413) The interviewees were also quite sensitive about the ways in which the wider German, French, Dutch or Belgian society reduces the issue of arranged marriages to traditional Turkish culture and Islam without having an attempt to understand the actual description of the problem. One of the founders of the Turkse Unie, an umbrella association superseding around 60 Turkish associations in the Flanders region, states: Belgians tend to reduce the problem into Turkish culture and Islam. This is why the problem is likely to be stigmatized and politicized. The issue is rather a social problem, which has something to do with the need of the Turks to preserve their culture and the upcoming generations against alienation. And also for instance bride-grooms coming from Turkey work harder than the boys here. So the issue is not that simple, you can not reduce it to culture and religion. It is more complicated than that. Though, lately, people have become aware of the high risk of divorce among imported brides and bride-grooms resulting from their integration difficulties. This is why families are becoming more in favour of having their children married with the Turks born and raised here. The same interviewee also addresses the rising pattern of intermarriage among the Belgian-Turks with the Belgians: ‘Intermarriage is no longer considered to be a disgraceful act (ayip in Turkish). This is the learning process of the Turks here.’ This statement is also confirmed by the quantitative research which reveals that around 53 per cent of Belgian-Turks do not object to the intermarriage between Belgians and Belgian-Turks. Arranged marriages and honour crimes have recently been publicly debated in many of the European countries including Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. However the debates have usually been about reducing the sources of such acts initiated by migrant origin families and individuals to ethno-cultural and religious motives. The common discourse in the European countries is that Muslims are coupled with

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fundamentalism, conservatism, violence, terror, insecurity, resurgence and radicalism. This is why they may kill, and may not respect the free will of individuals. Following the same line, honour crime is portrayed as a part of the so-called Islamic culture. The ascendancy of culturalist rhetoric has made the European governments turn towards minority women such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Necla Kelek, Seyran Ates¸ and Samira Bellil, who do not criticize dominant culturalist narratives, but validate them. Such a line of critiques towards Islam was performed by Necla Kelek (2005), a German-Turkish sociologist, Seyran Ates¸ (2003), a German-Turkish lawyer, and Samira Bellil, a French-Alegrian feminist activist. Recently, ethno-cultural and religious discourse is gaining velocity in Germany. A conservative political climate has returned with the victory of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Socialist Union (CSU) in coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD); and this old-fashioned political discourse encourages the upsurge of conservative individual and academic discourses, which are truly essentialist, ethnocentric and heterophobic. Necla Kelek (2005)’s disreputable book, Die Fremde Braut (Foreign Bride), expresses the same predictable perspective, which reduces the whole discussion of the ‘impossibility of the integration of Turks’ to cultural and religious factors. The author, a Turkish-origin sociologist, mainly claims that Turkish culture and Islam are the two main reasons behind the impossibility of incorporating Turkish immigrants into the Western way of life. Islam and ‘archaic clans of a growing parallel society’ are the main reasons of the inability of the Turks to integrate. She actually treats Islam as if it is happening in a universe of its own, disconnected from any social forces, following its own authentic logic. Taking findings from personal interviews with Turkish woman immigrants and ‘imported brides,’ Kelek implicitly argues that it is the Turkish culture and Islamic religion which do not permit the emancipation of women in the Turkish diaspora from patriarchal exploitation and honour crimes (Miera, 2007). Culturalist rhetoric deployed by the author fits very well into the needs of the larger context, which is primarily defined by the infamous paradigm of ‘clash of civilisations.’ However, such holistic and reductionary ethno-culturalist discourses consequentially fall short of understanding the complex template of diasporic conditions with regard to the operational deployment of survival strategies of individuals. Similarly, Liz Fekete claims that such a biased campaign around ‘forced/arranged marriages’ reproduces Islamophobic and xenophobic discourses (2006: 13–14).

Multiculturalism: a neo-colonial technique of governmentality Communities are not only constructed by the members of those communities at stake. They are also compelled to be constructed by the state policies such as multiculturalism. Multiculturalism has become one of the most

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popular discourses in the West in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The ideology of multiculturalism aims to provide minority cultures with some platforms whereby they may express their identities through music, festivals, exhibitions, conferences and so on. However, multiculturalism has lately been criticized by many scholars (Radtke, 1994; Russon, 1995; and Rosaldo, 1989). In fact, the representation of a wide variety of non-Western cultures in the form of music, visual arts and seminars is nothing but the reconfirmation of the categorisation of ‘the West and the rest’. The representation of the cultural forms of those ‘exotic others’ in the multicultural venues broadens the differences between the so-called distinct cultures. Based on the holistic notion of culture, the ideology of multiculturalism tends to compartmentalize cultures. It also assumes that cultures are internally consistent, unified and structured wholes attached to ethnic groups. Essentializing the idea of culture as the property of an ethnic group, multiculturalism risks reifying cultures as separate entities by overemphasising their boundedness and mutual distinctness; it also risks overemphasizing the internal homogeneity of cultures in terms that potentially legitimize repressive demands for communal conformity. Constructed multiculturalism permits the supposedly ‘distinct cultures’ to express themselves on some public platforms. The multiculturalist metanarrative might, at first glance, seem to be a ‘friend’ as John Russon (1995: 524) stated. These multicultural platforms, in a way, hone the process of ‘othering the other’ in the imagery of self, or in other words, lead to a form of ethnic ‘exotification’. Russon (1995: 524) explains that: Now, it is fairly common gesture, in the name of pluralism, to insist that we treat others as others, and accept their ways as, perhaps, ‘interesting’, ‘private’ to them, and especially not the same as ours. [T]his exotification which ‘tolerates the other’ is another product of the alienating gaze of the reflective ego, and it fails in two important ways. First, it makes the other a kind of lesser entity open to our patronising support, despite our complete rejection of its value as analysing other than the cute contingencies of someone else’s culture; thus there is an inherent power relation here in which the other is made subordinate to our benevolence and superior reason. Second, it fails to acknowledge that, just as our program of tolerance has implications for the other – it contains that other in its view – so too does the ethnicity of the other contain us. Our so-called ‘democratic’ and pluralistic ideal is as much an ethnic expression as that of the other is an ethnicity ... Russon’s remarks on ‘tolerance’ remind us of the way in which public and private spheres are highly differentiated by the ideology of multiculturalism. This ideology, as John Rex (1986) has described, involves nurturing commonality (shared laws, open economy and equal access to state provisions)

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in the former, and ensuring freedom (maintenance of ethnic minority traditions) in the latter. Russon, first, prompts us to think that multiculturalism tends to promote the confinement of cultures in their own private spheres with a limited interaction with other cultures. The differentiation between public and private has always contributed to the reinforcement of the dominant class or group’s hegemony over the subaltern groups. Cultures which hardly interact with other cultures tend to become a static heritage. Thus, Russon, here, draws our attention to the point that the official discourse of multiculturalism contributes to the reification of culture by the minority communities. Secondly, he underlines the issue of power relations between the dominant culture and the others. This is the clientalist side of the policy of multiculturalism – a point to which we shall return shortly. Clientalism tends to petrify the existing social conditions without making any change in the power relations between ‘master’ and ‘disciple’. What Russon attempts to criticize in the notion of ‘tolerance’ is also raised by Rosaldo in a slightly different way. Researching the correlation between culture and power, Rosaldo (1989: 198–204) rightly claims that power and culture have a negative correlation. In saying so, he refers to the examples of the Philippines and Mexico. In the Philippines and Mexico, for instance, full citizens are those who have power and lack culture, whereas those most culturally endowed minorities, such as Negritos and Indians, lack full citizenship and power respectively. Thus, having power corresponds to being postcultural and vice versa: ‘the more power one has, the less culture one enjoys, and the more culture one has, the less power one yields. If they [minorities] have an explicit monopoly on authentic culture, we [majority] have an unspoken one on institutional power’ (1989: 202). Rosaldo takes the discussion further, and concludes that making the ‘other’ culturally visible results in the invisibility of the ‘self’. Thus, the policy of multiculturalism attempts to dissolve the ‘self’ in the minority. Dissolution of the ‘self’ is also related to the celebration of difference by minorities, as the notion of difference makes culture particularly visible to outside observers. Thus, not only multiculturalist policies, but also minorities themselves contribute to the process of dissolution of the ‘self’ as well as of institutional power within the minority. Eventually, multiculturalism is an inverted and un-confessed form of ‘distant’ racism respecting the identity of the other, conceiving the other as an authentic closed community with which the multuculturalist maintains a distance made possible by his privileged universalist position (Zizek, 1997: 225). Furthermore, multiculturalism is usually coupled with the term ‘tolerance’. However, the very etymological meaning of ‘tolerance’ jeopardizes the idea of multiculturalism. The etymology of the term ‘tolerance’ is also very illustrative to understand what it contains. It does not seem to be accidental that in most languages in which tolerance has been historically debated, the words tolerance (or its synonym, sufferance) and suffering have the same source. The

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Latin word tolerantia comes from tolere, to bear, and tolerare, to suffer, endure, and the same link exists in English (through the synonym, sufferance), in French (souffrir), Italian (soffrire), and even in Hebrew (sevel–sovlanut). This etymological fact happens to be philosophically significant. It indicates that there is no tolerance without suffering and its overcoming. Tolerating someone means recognizing an irreducible difference, a gap of alienness separating us, which nevertheless is accepted (Yovel, 1998). This implies a concealed hatred or contest between the tolerating and the tolerated party. By this very otherness, the other represents a challenge to the self in the form of a potential competition over goods, power, moral values, and so on. In French, there are many words revolving around ‘tolérer’ such as permettre (permission), souffrir (sufferance), endurer (endure) and accorder (accord). The word ‘tolérer’ was first used in France in 1562 by the Catholic French King to somehow let the Protestants stay in the country. The term was basically suggested by the King to set up a policy towards many types of evil and heresy like the Protestants and Jews. The term ‘permettre’ had even more positive connotations than the word ‘tolérer’, which was very negatively loaded. However, both terms revealed common assumptions about the nature of political power vis-à-vis the Church: control from above, surveillance of individuals’ beliefs, and organized pressure. Furthermore, the term Toleranz was used in German, and tolerantie in Dutch before tolerance became common in France, the Low Countries, and Switzerland.1 Referring to the Dutch authoress Margriet de Moor, Jürgen Habermas also underlines the difference between the past and present connotations of the word ‘tolerance’: Tolerance is often mentioned in the same breath as respect, yet our tolerance, and its roots date back to the 16th and 17th centuries, is not based on respect – on the contrary. We hated the religion of the respective other, Catholics and Calvinist had not one iota of respect for the views of the other side, and our Eighty Years’ War was not just a rebellion against Spain, but also a bloody jihad by the Orthodox Calvinists against Catholicism. (cited in Habermas, 2008: 5) Hence the word ‘tolerance’ has strong cultural and religious connotations, which authenticates the popularity of the culturalist, religious and civilizational discourse ordained to interpret the world through the paradigms of either ‘clash of civilizations’ or ‘alliance of civilizations’ – a point I shall come back shortly.

The failure of republicanism and multiculturalism Timothy Garton Ash (2007) once said that neither ‘secularist republican mono-culturalism’ nor ‘live-and-let-die separatist multiculturalism’ has

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worked out well. Ash’s intervention is quite timely, and it reminds us to question the very early origins of the ideas of both multiculturalism and republicanism. While multiculturalists appeal to the protection of collective identities and accuses the other side of representing a ‘fundamentalism of the Enlightenment’, the republicanists insist on the uncompromising inclusion of minorities in the existing secularist political frame and accuse their opponents of a ‘multiculturalist betrayal’ of the core values of Enlightenment’ (Habermas, 2008: 6–7). Historically speaking, ‘secularist republican monoculturalism’ has not worked out well as seen in the French republican model of integration. Referring to the French case, Balibar (2004: 38–42) explicitly claims that recently the way migrants are being accommodated in France is a continuation of the former process of colonialization for the following reasons: the first is the persistence of administrative methods acquired during contact with indigenous populations in the colonies, which have later been reintroduced and naturalized in the metropole; the second is the fact that contemporary migrants mainly come from the former colonies, which were exposed to French imperialist influence; and finally there is the ongoing supremacy of an imperial unification, which tends to legitimize assimilation in a way that positions the Francocentric (Eurocentric) universal to the particular, and the public to the private. Recolonialization of migration has become very discernible in the age of neo-liberalism when unqualified migrant labour has become exposed to the brutality of economic globalization and new inequalities created by it. Accordingly, constant urban riots in France could also be interpreted along these lines, as they directly set out to destroy public services such as schools, kindergartens, parks and fire brigades, which are likely to function as if on conquered territory, under siege from the hostility of the new barbarians (Balibar, 2004: 41). ‘Live-and-let-die separatist multiculturalism’ has not survived either as it has not really brought anything different from the former colonial regimes managing ethno-cultural diversity. Jan Nederveen Pieterse (2001: 399) claims that conceptions of multiculturalism actually derive from several different resources such as colonial society (e.g., Britain, Belgium, and the Netherlands), settlements of the Kulturkampf in European countries (e.g., pillarization in the Netherlands), combinations of both (e.g., the Netherlands and the Flemish Belgium), and adjustments to demographic changes (e.g., the United States, Canada, Australia and South Africa). Dutch multiculturalism is an example of this kind of multiculturalism, essentializing the boundaries between majority and minorities. The way Dutch multiculturalism has been so far implemented reveals that each multiculturalist project is very much associated with the past experiences of individual states. John S. Furnivall (1944 and 1956), a British colonial administrator in Burma from 1900 to 1921 who later studied colonial administrations during the two decades between the World Wars, used the notion of ‘plural society’ when he

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addressed the Dutch Indies, in which different ethno-racial groups encountered each other in plural economic space without having any interaction in their private spaces. What Furnivall calls ‘plural society’ is not a ‘pluralistic society’ as the phrase is often used in modern democracies today. Contemporary multiculturalism, in this sense, is not different from ‘plural societies’ of the age of colonialism (Vickers, 2004: 4). Furnivall’s sometime satirical narration of the Dutch colonial experiences in his Netherlands India (1944) explains very well the paternalist character of Dutch colonialism, which has lately been reemployed by Dutch multiculturalism: when referring to the tightening administrative hold of the Dutch on the Javanese peasantry in the early twentieth century ‘now one is told that “the villager cannot even scratch his head, unless an expert shows him how to do it and the Sub-district Officer gives him permission’ ” (Furnivall, 1944: vii). Furnivall very eloquently explicates the differences between British and Dutch colonial traditions. For instance, in the former the Civil Servant is ‘primarily a magistrate and a collector of revenue ... he is a servant of the law and must keep within the law; he has no police functions in the narrower sense of the term police ...’ In the latter, the Civil Servant is ‘primarily an instrument of police, and therefore a police officer both in the wider and narrower senses ...’ (Ibid.: 260–261). He implies that civil servants become ‘social engineers’ in Dutch colonial tradition, and the critical problem for engineers is the exaggerated paternalism by which civil servants say ‘let me do it for you’ rather than ‘let me help you’ (Ibid.: 389). Furnivall very soundly criticizes the way colonial administrations operated in the remote lands. He rightfully argued that the colony was simply run for the benefit of capital, and that the welfare and prosperity of the natives were not taken seriously. He was not even convinced by the Ethical Policy of 1901 inaugurated by the Netherlands to repay the debt of honour owed to the Dutch colonies. He was convinced that the Law only brought about a superficial set of changes, and that there was no fundamental change in the state’s attitude towards capital: ‘the Liberals entered “Love for the Javanese” in their published accounts, but did not let it touch their pockets; and when the Ethical leaders hauled down the Jolly Roger and hoisted the Cross, they did not change the sailing orders’ (Ibid.: 218). According to Furnivall, this was simply an economic policy oriented towards extraction of resources from the colony, rather than furthering the conditions of its inhabitants. In a similar vein, paternalist Dutch colonialism and multiculturalism also correspond to what Pierre-Andre Taguieff (1988) calls discriminatory racism, which tends to locate other cultures in a lower position than the Dutch culture. Pillarization was the Dutch model of cultural pluralism from the 1910s to 1970s. Pillarisation means the recognition of ethno-cultural diversity within the nation along religious lines, among Catholics, Protestants and the non-Church affiliated. The financing of schools founded by religious organizations set up the system of ‘pillarization’. Soon it took the form

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of trade unions, newspapers, universities and broadcasting for Catholics, Protestants and the non-Church affiliated. At a later state, the legacy of the system of pillarization provided the Netherlands with a convenient political ground for the implementation of the model of multiculturalism (Pieterse, 2001: 400). Against this background, one could argue that Dutch multiculturalism is partly an extension of Dutch pillarization and colonialism with respect to its paternalist nature imprisoning migrants and their children into the cluster of those allochthones who are always exposed to the compassion and understanding of the Dutch. Actually, the combination of the system of pillarization and colonialism constitutes what Arend Lijphart (1975) calls consociationalism, which is a model of ethnic conflict regulation reproducing clientalism, patronage and boundaries between the state and ethnic groups. Bhikhu Parekh remarks of Herder that ‘he cherishes a cultural plural world but not a culturally plural society’ (Parekh, 2000: 73). Contemporary multiculturalism, in a way, operates to make sure for the members of the majority nation that there would be no cultural/racial mixing, miscegenation and hybridity, of the kind expressed by Arthur de Gobineau in the nineteenth century (Grillo, 2003). This is what we call ‘new racism’, the roots of which could be traced back to the writings of de Gobineau (1816–1882) who was a French nobleman. The main concern of de Gobineau (1999) was to offer an answer to the ever-fascinating question of why civilizations rise and fall. De Gobineau argued that history is composed of continuous struggle among the ‘white’, ‘yellow’ and ‘negroid’ races. He underlined the superiority of the ‘white race’. The lesson of history, according to de Gobineau (1999: 56) argued in 1853 that ‘all civilisations derive from the white race, that none can exist without its help, and that a society is great and brilliant only so far as it preserves the blood of the noble group that created it, provided that this group itself belongs to the most illustrious branch of our species.’ He always complained about the mixture of the races (miscegenation), which, he believed, led to the crisis of civilization. The racist thoughts in Gobineau’s works spring from his fear of ‘Oriental’ attacks towards the ‘Occidental’ lands which would cause miscegenation and the fall of civilizations. His line of thinking resembles very well the contemporary debate regarding the alleged invasion of the West by Islam expressed by Theo van Gogh, Pim Fortuyn, Oriana Fallaci, Paul Scheffer and George Bush. Lately, it has often been claimed that the main reason for the so-called incapacity of migrants to integrate into the social, political and economic spheres of life of the receiving society, and thus to become more affiliated with ethnicity, religiosity and violence, is their ethno-cultural and religious distinctness from that of the majority society (Schlesinger, 1991; Hughes, 1993; and Scheffer, 2000). The rise of such an ethno-culturalist and religious discourse conceals deep-rooted structural problems such as deindustrialization, poverty, unemployment, exclusion, racism, heterophobia

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and xenophobia, which actually distance migrant communities from integrating. It should be borne in mind that it is actually the processes of globalization and deindustrialization, or post-industrialization, which have eventually led to the rise of ethno-cultural and religious identity formations on the part of uneducated, unqualified, unpropertied, subordinated and alienated immigrant communities as a reaction. Explaining the ‘incapacity’ of migrant origin individuals through their ethno-cultural, civilizational and religious differences is a rather reductionist perspective originating from the right-wing critique of multiculturalism, which is basically occupied with the protection of national interests. However, the imprisonment of the idea of multiculturalism into a nationalist stance seems to be outdated. As Pieterse rightfully points out the idea of multiculturalism stretches beyond the boundaries of the nation-state, and reiterates the post-national and post-civilizational character of transnational space constructed by transmigrants: The nation-state is no longer the ‘container’ of multiculturalism. Yet the multiculturalism literature remains overwhelmingly focused on the relationship between migrants and the host country and national policy options. This is unrealistic. It overlooks that for migrants and their offspring the conversation with the host nation is one among several, a conversation in which participation is optional and partial. The cultural ambience of the host nation is no longer encompassing; e-media tune to many worlds. Second, it underplays the dynamics of the host country – assimilation into what? The ‘nation’ is a series of vortices of change – local, regional, national, macro-regional, transnational. Asian Muslims in the UK function locally in their workplaces, neighborhoods and cities, regionally, in Yorkshire, etc., nationally, in the context of British policies and culture, move within the European Union on British passports, and relate to their country of origin’s culture and transnational Islam or Hinduism. Third, this overlooks the role of rainbow conversations and economies across cultures – such as South African Malays studying Islam in Karachi; Turks selling Belgian carpets to Moroccans in the Netherlands. Fourth, it ignores the emergence of intermediary formations such as ‘Euro-Islam’, which is neither national nor belongs to another civilisation. (Pieterse, 2007: 66–67) The growing role of ‘intermestic’ (international–domestic) or ‘glocal’ (global-local) affairs is a general trend. Thus one should also recognize the fact that the idea of multiculturalism goes beyond the relationship of migrants, or transmigrants, with the country of settlement. Transmigrants are also engaged with the politics, society and culture of their country of origin as well as with similar aspects of other communities whose existence matters for them. For instance, Dutch-Moroccans are not only bound to the

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hegemonic constraints of the Dutch nation-state, they are also occupied with the political, social and cultural issues of Morocco as well as with the conflicts which reverberate throughout the entire Islamic community from Afghanistan to Morocco. As Olivier Roy (2007) also put it very well, both republicanism and multiculturalism are in crisis. As I have tried to explain, those varying governmental policies concerning the immigrants – no matter if they were formed by the republicanists or multiculturalists – have contributed to the othering and minorisation of immigrant populations of especially Muslim origin in the European countries. Aras Ören, Turkish novelist and poet, warns of the dangers inherent in the acceptance of otherness and cultural difference: [I am afraid that while] the conservatives [republican assimilationists] lock us into our cultural ghetto by preserving the culture we brought with us as it is and by denying that there can be symbiosis or development, ... the progressives [multiculturalist liberals] try to drive us back into that same ghetto because, filled with enthusiasm, by the originality and excotism of our culture, they champion it so fervently that they are even afraid it might disappear, be absorbed by German [western] culture. (Quoted in Suhr, 1989: 102) Multiculturalism in the contemporary world could no longer be imprisoned in the terrain of the individual nation-states. The idea of multiculuralism has been at stake since the early 1990s when the Bosnian War (1992) allegedly proved at least for some people that different civilizations like Islam and Christianity cannot coexist in peace. Both trajectories of republicanism and multiculturalism have so far proved that migrants have been imprisoned in an ethno-cultural and religious discourse by the states in a way that distances them from the attempt to represent themselves through legitimate political institutions like national and local parliaments. The latest bombings in Madrid (11 March 2004) and London (7 July 2005) have made the European public revisit the popular sport of multiculturalism bashing. Many of those who bash multiculturalism have short-sightedly become supporters of mono-culturalism and assimilation. Nevertheless one should understand that the problem has very little to do with the cultural integration/assimilation of migrants. The problem seems to lie somewhere else. The problem is actually the lack of political will of the receiving states in taking measures in order to politically integrate migrants, that is, providing migrants with a political ground in which they could feel encouraged to elect and to stand as candidates in the local, national and European elections. For instance, the fact that there are only four Muslim-origin MPs in the multiculturalist British Parliament does not make it more favourable than the republicanist French Parliament where there is not even one single Muslim-origin MP. Once difference-conscious multiculturalism prompts

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migrants and minorities to mobilize themselves not along political lines but along cultural and ethnic lines, difference-blind republicanism fails in meeting identity based claims of migrants and minorities. Both perspectives seem to have strong pitfalls in prompting migrants and minorities to represent themselves in the legitimate political grounds such as parliament and political parties. On the contrary, both imprison migrants and their descendants into their distinct ghettoes.

The need for political integration of migrants Western European countries have recently become more engaged in culturally assimilationist policies vis-à-vis immigrants with Muslim background. The prevailing discourse within the European public is that ‘migrants do not integrate!’ It is generally denied that immigrants tend to comply with the social, political and cultural spheres of life of their countries of settlement, and that there may be structural constraints preventing them from integrating. Migrant communities differ from each other in building their survival strategies and identities. For instance, while the French-Turks develop a universalist, republicanist and laicist political discourse and identity, the German-Turks generate a more particularist, culturalist and religious political discourse. The rationale behind this differentiation is explicable through historical, political and economic differences of each country: France being more universalist, civilizationist and assimilationist; and Germany being more particularist, culturalist and pluralist. To give another example, while the Flemish-Turks in Belgium tend to generate a more culturally distinct identity away from the receiving society, the Walloon-Turks tend to incorporate themselves more into the Walloon culture. It is because the Flemish society is more inclined with the multiculturalist discourse of integration as in the Netherlands, and the Walloons, on the other hand, are more prone to assimilationist discourse. Similarly, Chandra Jayawardena (1980) compared Indian settlers in Fiji with those in Guyana, who had emigrated from the same region of north-east and southern India and were mainly rural dwellers. In Fiji, Indians were accorded a separate status from that of the native Fijians and they had retained more of their ancestral traditions than their Guyanese counterparts, including both spoken and written Hindi. Contrarily, in Guyana, Hinduism was more apparent in public ceremonies and temples, whereas it was more familial and private in Fiji. In other words, Indian culture was visible in the Guyanese public space, and restricted in the Fijian public space. Hence, those Fijian-Indians who felt threatened became more inclined to reify their culture; and those Guyanese-Indians who were well received in the public space did not see the need to reify their culture. Germany and the Netherlands have a culturalist and differentialist incorporation regime vis-à-vis migrants, and France has a universalist and assimilationist one with an undertone of timid multiculturalism. Flanders in Belgium

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resembles that of the Netherlands and Germany, whereas Wallonia is more universalist and assimilationist as in France. However, all these countries have become highly criticized with respect to the ways in which migrants and Muslims have been framed by the political elite and the mainstream media. Communitarianism in contemporary Germany and the Netherlands seems to provide the German-Muslims and Dutch-Muslims with a more liberal ground whereby they can politically, socially and economically integrate into the mainstream society. The data gathered by the structured and in-depth interviews in the course of the ‘Euro-Turks’ research (Kaya and Kentel, 2005; and 2007) indicate that German-Turks, Dutch-Turks, FlemishTurks, generally speaking, are more communitarian, religious and conservative than French-Turks and Walloon-Turks. Compared to French-Turks and Walloon-Turks, German-Turks seem to be less in favour of cultural integration, as they are content with their ethnic enclaves, religious archipelagos and traditional solidarity networks. However, other findings in the research indicate the contrary. Although, compared to German-Turks and DutchTurks, French-Turks and Walloon-Turks seem to be more engaged in the modern way of life, orientating themselves to integration, French language, secularism, laicism, and the French speaking media on the one hand; they are less engaged in French and Belgian domestic politics, internet, theatres, and cinemas on the other hand. Conversely, German-Turks, Dutch-Turks and Flemish-Turks seem to generate more cosmopolitan, hybrid, global, and reflexive identities in a way that redefines Europeanness, which is actually subject to constant change. Thus, their experiences actually seem to indicate that Islam does not necessarily contradict Europeanness, cosmopolitanism, modernity, and globalism. When the members of excluded or marginalized groups are oppressed because of their membership and ethno-cultural difference, their standing in the world becomes a collective, not an individual, issue. Germany, the Netherlands and some parts of Belgium have lately become fertile grounds for migrants to become politically active in both domestic and national levels, even in European level. One should not underestimate the fact that European Muslims have become even more politically mobile after the rise of Islamophobic tendencies in the West in the aftermath of 9/11. Local elections in both Belgium and the Netherlands in 2006 resulted in the political participation of thousands of Euro-Turks as both candidates and voters. Political participation among them has even become a source of distinction among the Turkish origin migrants and their descendants, which has given them a stronger status in the wider society. On the other hand, contrary to the common belief, Euro-Turks research (Kaya and Kentel, 2005; and 2007) reveals that there is a positive correlation between ethno-cultural membership of Euro-Turks and their political participation. The denser the network of associations of a particular ethnic group, the more political trust they have and the more they participate

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politically. Voluntary associations in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands create social trust, leading to more political trust and higher political participation (Jacobs and Tillie, 2004: 421). Furthermore, ethnic media also contribute to the political activities of the communities of migrant origin in the wider society. However, French-Muslims remain politically inactive. Furthermore, the findings of Jacobs and Tillie (2004) are complementary with the conclusions Jyette Klausen (2005) has made with regard to the profile of the political elite with migrant origin. In her recent work entitled The Islamic Challenge: Politics and Religion in Western Europe (2005), Jyette Klausen reveals that ‘Muslims are simply a new set of interest groups and a new constituency, and that the European political systems will change as the processes of representation, challenge, and cooptation take place’ (2005: 3). Based on interviews with 300 members of ‘Europe’s Muslim political elite’ in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Denmark and Sweden, the book focuses on the sociological profile of the new Muslim elite. Compared to the common assumption that native-born descendants of immigrants take the lead in political integration, she finds out that the current Muslim political leaders are actually of immigrant origin (2005: 16–17). Hence, migrant associations still remain to be the major vehicle of political mobilization of immigrant populations. There is lately a strong inclination among Muslim origin migrants as well as other ethno-cultural minorities in the West towards essentializing and reifying their identities, ethnicities, religions, pasts and purities. Majority societies tend to interpret such identity claims as an outcome of conservatism and essentialism featuring the Euro-Muslims in general, and Euro-Turks in particular. It is commonly argued that such an ethno-cultural essentialism poses a challenge to the national, societal and cultural security of the wider society in question. However, the Euro-Turks research undertaken among the Turkish origin migrants dwelling in three countries, Germany, France, and Belgium reveals that ethno-cultural revival among the Euro-Turks can be translated as a quest for justice and fairness, but not as a security challenge (Kaya and Kentel, 2005; and 2007). It is evident that liberal citizenship regimes are more welcome by migrants and their children. Western democracies and citizenship regimes seem to fail in treating minority claims as a quest for justice. As Kymlicka and Norman stated ‘immigrant groups that feel alienated from the larger national and [religious] identity are likely to be alienated from the political arena as well’ (2000: 39). Traditional citizenship rhetoric is inclined to advance the interests of the dominant national group at the expense of migrants. Hence, it is unlikely that the classical understanding of citizenship can resolve issues of co-existence of ‘culturally discrete’ entities. In order to avoid the potentiality of conflict and alienation, there is an essential task to be undertaken: citizenship laws must not be based on prescribed cultural, religious, linguistic and ethnic qualities. Moderate and democratic citizenship laws to be

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formulated in line with the task stated above can be anticipated to resolve the emphasis made on ethnicity, religiosity and nationality by migrant groups. For instance, the remarkable increase in the rate of naturalization among the German-Turks after the introduction of more liberal citizenship laws in 2000 clearly illustrates that migrants and their descendants positively respond to inclusive citizenship policies. Prior to the year 2000, the number of GermanTurks having German citizenship was around 350,000, and now this figure has gone up to more than 800,000. To put it differently, around 60 per cent of the German-Turks either have German citizenship or plan to have it soon. This percentage represents around 2 million people out of 3 million German-Turks in total (Kaya and Kentel, 2005). The new German citizenship law, although it has limitations, actually reveals that migrants can be quite receptive and incorporatist vis-à-vis democratic and inclusive political and legal changes. The percentage of German-Turks, French-Turks and Belgian-Turks who either have EU citizenship, or are planning to apply is respectively around 60 per cent, 74 per cent and 90 per cent (Figure 5.1). These relatively high numbers indicate that Euro-Turks are open to integration and political participation. Increasing tendency for naturalization of the Euro-Turks displays that they are becoming more integrated into their countries of settlement. The same applies to their affiliation with their new home away from homeland. Approximately 49 per cent of German Turks affiliate more with Turkey, 22 per cent with Germany, and 27 per cent with both countries. On the other hand, 36 per cent of the French-Turks and 35 per cent of the BelgianTurks affiliate more with Turkey, 25 per cent of French-Turks with France and 19 per cent of Belgian-Turks with Belgium, and 36 per cent of FrenchTurks and 42 per cent of Belgian-Turks with both countries of origin and of

80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Germany %

Figure 5.1

France %

Belgium %

Yes, I have it

I have already applied

I am planning to apply

I am not planning to apply

Do you have German/French/Belgian citizenship?

Source: Kaya and Kentel, 2005; and 2007.

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settlement (Figure 5.1). The reasons behind German-Turks’ low affiliation with Germany may be manifold, but the economic crisis seems to be one of the main reasons. Affiliation with the homeland, on the other hand, may result from either structural outsiderism as in the German case or assimilationist integration as in the French case. Both outsiderism and assimilation may lead to the construction of communal networks having defensive, nationalist, religious, laicist, Kemalist, and even Kurdish undertones. The percentage of those who affiliate equally with the countries of settlement is remarkably high: 27 per cent in Germany, 36 per cent in France, and 42 per cent in Belgium. These groups seem to constitute the bridge between Turkey and the EU as they have constructed more reflexive, active, transnational, postnational, universalist and cosmopolitan identities (Figure 5.2). These groups generally come from within those born in Germany/France/ Belgium. The data indicate that Turks no longer essentialize their homeland, and they actually challenge the ‘gurbetçi’ discourse common among the Turks in Turkey. They are no longer ‘gurbetçi’; they have already become active social agents in their new countries. They have actually accommodated themselves in the transnational space bridging the two countries, homeland and ‘hostland’. Figure 5.3 above shows that Euro-Turks themselves confirm their hyphenated identities: 74 per cent of Belgian-Turks, 60 per cent of German-Turks, and 70 per cent of French-Turks tend to identify themselves with hyphenated identities. Around 50 per cent of German-Turks, 59 per cent of French-Turks and 55 per cent of Belgian-Turks identify themselves as Turkish/European, and 9 per cent of German-Turks, 11 per cent of French-Turks and 15 per cent of BelgianTurks as European-Turkish. On the other hand, 37 per cent German-Turks, 24 per cent French-Turks and 23 per cent of them define themselves as ‘Turkish’

50 40 30 20 10 0 Germany %

Figure 5.2 Turkey?

France %

Belgium %

Turkey

Germany/France/Belgium

Equal affiliation to both

Equal detachment from both

Do you feel yourself affiliated closer with Germany/France/Belgium or

Source: Kaya and Kentel, 2005; and 2007.

166 Islam, Migration and Integration 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Germany % Only Turkish

France % First Turkish and then European

First European and then Turkish

Figure 5.3

Belgium %

Only European

Others

Which identifications suit you most?

Source: Kaya and Kentel, 2005; and 2007.

70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Turkey %

Germany %

France %

Only Turkish First European and then Turkish

Figure 5.4

Belgium %

First Turkish and then European Only European

Which identification suits you most? By Birthplace?

Source: Kaya and Kentel, 2005; and 2007.

(Figure 5.3). Furthermore, crosstabulations also reveal that young generations of Euro-Turks identify themselves more with hyphenated identities like ‘Turkish-European’ and/or ‘European-Turkish’. For instance, compared to 8 per cent of people born in Turkey identifying themselves as ‘EuropeanTurkish’, respectively 14 per cent, 23 per cent and 22 per cent of those born in Germany, France and Belgium identify themselves as such (Figure 5.4). *

*

*

This chapter has discussed the rationale behind the construction of communities by immigrants and their descendants. Community building has

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been presented as a practical tactic to be employed by transmigrants to come to terms with the destabilizing effects of the age of neo-liberalism such as poverty, unemployment, insecurity, exclusion, discrimination and racism. Furthermore, the ideology of multiculturalism has also been portrayed in the chapter as a neo-colonial technique of governmentality keeping ethno-cultural and religious boundaries intact. Besides, I also claimed that migrants of Muslim origin residing in the West have become more involved in arranged marriages from their homeland as a different tactic to reinforce their community boundaries in trying to come to terms with the problems of neo-liberalism, poverty, globalization, racism and Islamophobia. Arranged marriages from homeland are rightfully considered by the receiving states to be contributing to the protection of ethno-cultural and religious boundaries of immigrant communities in a way that dissociates them from integration. Against this background, the EU countries have recently tended to adapt more strict immigration policies to prevent immigrant origin individuals from getting married from their homeland countries. These new policies have become disputable in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Denmark on the basis of a violation of human rights. However, I argued that communities have their own learning processes. When some acts are no longer viable they are destined to be left out. This work has revealed that there is already a decline in the number of Muslim origin youngsters getting married from their countries of origin as the complications of such marriages have become more evident. I also proposed that learning processes should be fostered, but not morally and legally ordered as that is the dominant pattern now in most of the European countries. This chapter has questioned various critiques aimed at the idea of multiculturalism from both left and right. Accordingly, it was asserted that multiculturalism reproduces ethno-cultural boundaries in a way that reminoritize, or re-ethnicize, minorities, who actually struggle to overcome the burden of being a minority. It was also underlined that the term ‘tolerance’, which is embedded in the discourse of multiculturalism, actually implies a concealed hatred or contest between the tolerating and the tolerated party. I claimed that it is not only ‘live-and-let-die separatist multiculturalism’ which has not worked out well, but also ‘secularist republican mono-culturalism’ has not operated well either. Both understandings have failed in prompting migrants and minorities to represent themselves through legitimate political grounds. On the contrary, both of them have imprisoned migrants and their descendants into their own discrete ghettoes. Eventually, I elaborated the importance of political integration of immigrants in order to challenge the reification of ethno-cultural and religious boundaries built by migrant origin communities.

6 Accommodation of Islam: Individualization vs. Institutionalization

This chapter primarily delineates the ways in which Islam is accommodated by western states. Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands have recently generated similar patterns with regard to the accommodation of Islam, which has increasingly become visible in the public space. It is likely that Western states tend to have a textual and fixed understanding of Islam, which is far from reflecting some of the anthropological aspects of complexity of everyday life. Islamic presence in the West is more complicated than what the Western states tend to perceive. For instance, what is explicable through religion may very well be linked to the structural constraints such as poverty, unemployment and exclusion. The resurgence of honour among Muslims will be debated here as a form of politics generated by marginalized transmigrants in response to their deprivation. Subsequently, I shall claim that two anti-thetical processes are simultaneously undertaken by Euro-Muslims. On the one hand, contemporary flows of globalization prompt young Euro-Muslims to develop their own individual Islam, which is likely to emancipate them from the restraints of their patriarchal culture. On the other hand, both the community and the state are inclined to compel them to remain within the boundaries of Islamic community for the sake of management of an ethno-culturally and religiously different set of people by the so-called secular state.

Religion and state in different countries State accommodation of Islam has become a pivotal political issue across Western Europe. Around 20 million Muslims currently live in the European countries, including those residing in the Balkans. The number of Muslims in Europe has tripled in the last 30 years, Islam is now the third largest religion overall in Europe, and in most West European countries it is growing much faster than the historically dominant Catholic and Protestant churches (Fetzer and Soper, 2005). In Germany, there are close to 2,300 mosques or Islamic prayer rooms, over 1,500 in France, more than 350 in 168

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Belgium, and around 500 in the Netherlands, most of which have been organized in the past decade but which are still insufficient to meet the religious needs of Muslims in the respective countries.1 Islam certainly has become a significant social and religious force in Western Europe. The history of Europe is also known as the history of religions. The historical experience of the religious wars of the seventeenth century shaped the form of relationship between the state and religion in European countries. At the conclusion of these wars, France, Spain, Italy and Belgium remained Catholic, while Norway, Sweden and Denmark became Lutheran. Germany and the Netherlands, however, remained split between Catholicism and Protestantism. In order to sustain the peace domestically, German and Dutch politics needed to avoid religious conflicts while also integrating the churches into the political system by offering them opportunities for cooperative engagement in education and social services. Cooperation between the state and the churches in Germany includes the area of religious education in public schools. About 80 per cent of German pre-schools are run by churches as are most private schools, and churches are the most important employers in the social services field. Religious education in all European countries reflects each country’s particular historical context. France has not had religious education in its public schools since 1905, when the concept of ‘Laïcité’ was adopted by the state. However, these legal and political changes do not radically transform social-cultural dispositions of the French public. Until at least the middle of the nineteenth century France was a predominantly agricultural civilization, based in villages whose inhabitants preserved long local memories and who were uncomfortable with outsiders. Catholic rituals were very decisive in everyday life (Weber, 1976: 377–398). To be French meant to be Catholic, to have rural roots, and to speak a regional dialect (Safran, 2003b: 441). Thus, Protestants, Jews and Muslims fall out of the category of ‘true French’. It is as if one must leave one’s Jewish, or Muslim, identity in order to become French, but not necessarily one’s Catholicism. French republican ideal was designed to counter such centrifugal tendencies and to shape policies that would lead to cultural unity. Belgium also has a laicist constitution underlining the principle of freedom of religion. Nevertheless, the monarchy has a reputation of deeplyrooted Catholicism. Political conflicts between free thought and Catholic segments of the population during the 1950s caused a split in educational organization. A secular branch of schooling is controlled by the Community, the province, or the municipality, while religious, mainly Catholic branch of education, is organized by the churches. In the Netherlands, public schools are controlled by local governments. Special schools are controlled by a school board, and they are based on a particular religion as long as the pillar system is concerned. There are government financed Catholic and Protestant elementary schools, high schools, and universities; furthermore

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there are government financed Jewish and Muslim elementary schools and high schools. Each European country’s history has helped shape its present-day approach to the issue of religious education in public schools. The public incorporation of Muslims in Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands can be interpreted as a path dependent process shaped by the constitutional and legal patterns of state-church relations in each country as well as the history of country-specific arrangements that have been worked out over time between religious groups and the state (Fetzer and Soper, 2005). In other words, in each country Muslims inherit a web of church-state interactions based on constitutional principles, legal practice, cultural codes, historical precedent, and foundational conceptions of the convenient relationship between church and state. Germany: conference on Islam Religions (Catholicism, Protestantism and Judaism) recognized by the state are organized in the form of legal entities, and benefit from funding via a church tax collected and redistributed by state authorities. The state levies a Church tax (8–9 per cent of income tax), or Kirchensteuer, on members of the recognized Catholic and Evangelische churches and of Jewish congregations that provides for a majority of the churches’ budget and helps finance many of their social and cultural activities (Robbers, 1996). The relations between churches and state are governed by the legislation of the Länder. The Muslims do not have a legal personality, and therefore do not benefit from the church tax. The training of the Catholic priests and Protestant pastors is provided by their respective churches in collaboration with various universities. Since 1942, Jews have had their first ordinations of rabbis in Germany in September 2006. Three rabbis were trained at the Abraham Geiger College (Potsdam), which was constructed in 1999 as the first rabbinical college in Germany since the Holocaust. Turkish imams in Germany are mostly affiliated with the TurkishIslamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), a diaspora organization of the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), which reports directly to the Turkish prime ministry. For the moment DITIB imams are trained in Turkey. Recently, the training program of the imams also includes learning the German language and the living conditions of the Turkish communities in Germany. A German language programme is undertaken in collaboration with the Goethe Institute. Other major training institutes include the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe University in Frankfurt and the University of Münster, both of which organize a programme in Islamic studies within the theology faculty. The University of Osnabrück offers a master’s degree in Islamic religious education designed to train teachers of Islamic religion (Husson, 2007).2 Federal Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), summoned a big conference on Islam and the

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integration of Muslims, most of whom are of Turkish origin, in September 2006. A second conference was held on 2 May 2007. The aim of the conference was to set up a constructive and continuing dialogue between the Islamic community and German society. This was a governmental attempt to initiate a channel for dialogue between the majority society and the migrant origin people through religion. Germany has recently been exposed to the rise of a cultural/religious discourse in taking migrant claims into account. Christian Democrats in power seem to be inclined to reduce migrants and their children to their religious affiliation. Rather than initiating a dialogue with migrants as individuals, the Christian Democrats tend to have dialogue with Muslims. It has become the mainstream perspective in the public space. The decision of a local court in Frankfurt-am-Main is worth mentioning. A German judge refused a Moroccan woman a fast-track divorce on the grounds that domestic violence was acceptable according to verse 34 of Sura four of the Qur’an, An-Nisa (Women). The judge, Christa Datz-Winter, said the German woman of Moroccan descent would not be granted a divorce because she and her husband came from a ‘Moroccan cultural environment in which it is not uncommon for a man to exert a right of corporal punishment over his wife,’ according to a statement she wrote that was issued by a Frankfurt court. Later, the judge was removed from the case following a nationwide outcry. The decision caused a big uproar in Germany as it undervalued the secularity and universality of everyday life in the country (Connolly, 2007). Germany has opted for an informal channel of continuing dialogue with Islam without trying to impose a firm meeting structure like the French Muslim Religion Council, or the Belgian Executive of Muslims. The conference brings together representatives of the Federal government, of the Länder and of the local councils, representatives of the Islamic communities, and ten independent personalities from the Muslim world. Subjects discussed at the conference include religious extremism, the question of sermons in German, religious classes in state schools, training of imams, the role of women in Islam, the relationship between the State and the religious communities, and the economic situation of Muslims in Germany.3 In parallel to the activities of the German Ministry of Interior, the Foreign Ministry has also taken similar steps in deepening the integration of Muslims in Germany. Again in September 2007, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, German Minister of Foreign Affairs, started the Ernst Reuter Initiative – a project of intercultural dialogue – in Istanbul together with his Turkish counterpartner, Abdullah Gül. Both ministers wanted to campaign together with partners from the world of business, the media, education and academia for enhanced German-Turkish cooperation, in particular in the fields of media cooperation, youth exchange, integration and academia, and to help initiate and mentor model projects.4 What was striking though in both initiatives held by the two different political parties in power, respectively the CDU and Social Democratic Party (SPD), was their underlying assumption with regard to the migrants

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of Turkish origin. Both projects implicitly assumed that the major obstacle behind the problem of integration was the distinctiveness of Islam, which is somehow essentialized by the German government as a religion with certain codes and customs preventing migrants from integrating into German society. Both initiatives have a rather culturalist perspective in coming to terms with the issue of integration, leaving aside the structural problems of the country such as unemployment, unschooling, poverty, institutional racism and xeonophobia. The Conference on Islam came up with a proposal to set up a central Islamic body to advise the federal and state governments on all religious matters. The proposal actually came from the Muslim organizations themselves, who were in search of a massive number of clientele to represent. The quest of Muslim organizations overlapped with the plan of the German state, which was to control migrants and their children through one single representative body with Islamic disposition. The German government was in search of an official Muslim body modelled on the Central Council of Jews in Germany (Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland), which in turn was based on the example of the Christian Churches. The ‘Coordination Council of Islamic Affairs’ would be attached to a single faculty of Muslim theology common to all German-Muslims, one of whose responsibilities would be to train German imams. In April 2007, the four main Muslim associations announced that they would join their efforts in the ‘Coordination Council of Muslims in Germany’ (Koordinierungsrat der Muslime, KRM).5 This meant that Muslims met the expectation of the German government to have just one official Muslim partner as in France, or Belgium. Although Islam is not an officially recognized religion in Germany, Muslims have generated their own initiatives to train imams. The KRM was formed by four umbrella organizations that also shaped the tone at the Islam conference: the DITIB, the Association of Islamic Culture Centers (VIKZ), the Islamic Council (IR), and the Central Council of Muslims (ZMD). The strongest partner is the DITIB, a branch of the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs, once a secular representative of Ankara whose theological and moral stance has recently become rural and conservative. DITIB contains the largest number of imams, who until now have mostly possessed neither the knowledge of the German language nor familiarity with contemporary German society. The Association of Islamic Cultural Centres (Verband der Islamischen Kulturzentren, VIKZ) brings together Muslims of Turkish origin excluded by the Kemalist state. It is a product of the cultural associations founded by the first generation of ‘guest workers’ in reaction to their lack of a political and religious mandate. The Islamic Council, another organization led by Turkish Muslims, is urban, modern, and an advocate of full integration. Lastly, the Central Council of Muslims (Zentralrat der Muslime)6 is a multinational amalgam of Muslims of predominantly Arab background (Leggevie, 2007). It is a prominent opponent of the

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idea of co-education and is accused of having adopted some of the positions of the Egyptian Muslim brotherhoods. However, the Coordination Council has significant pitfalls. These main currents included neither the Alevi, a religious minority group of predominantly Turkish origin that is well represented in Germany, nor Shiites or Ahmadiyya Muslims. The umbrella organizations also have no control over extreme Islamism, which above all uses the internet as a platform for jihadist propaganda. One should not forget that doubts arose in the case of the Central Council of Jews, following Jewish immigration from Russia and Eastern Europe whether its spokespeople were indisputably representative. Similar doubts have been even more pronounced with the Muslims, who are more heterogeneous and without clerical organization. This diversity and lack of organization among Muslims cannot easily be overcome neither from above, through the agency of the German state, nor from within. Furthermore, it has the risk of essentializing Islam, which is actually a quest of the conservative Islamic associations that are willing to be recognized as the official representative of the migrants of Muslim origin. France: French Muslim council France regulates the relations between the state and the religions through a traditional system of separation with some exceptions. The law of 9 December 1905 on the separation of churches and state specifies that ‘the Republic shall not recognize or subsidise any religion’. The state does not intervene in the internal organization of churches, and also does not give them any funding. The protection of religious buildings, the funding of chaplains and the special situations of the French territories of Guiana and Alsace-Moselle can be named among the exceptions. The Catholic Church trains the priesthood candidates at the Catholic Institutes of Paris and Lille and the Faculty of Theology of Strasbourg as well as in its seminaries. Protestant pastors are trained by the Faculty of Theology of Strasbourg and by the Protestant Institutes of Theology of Montpellier and Paris. Orthodox priests are trained by the Institute Saint Serge, and rabbinical training is provided by the Séeminaire Israélite de France in Paris (Husson, 2007). Training of imams has recently become a concern of the State. France has not accepted the establishment of a Muslim representative authority. One of the reasons of the absence of such a representative entity is that the French State has a paternalistic attitude towards the Muslim population – inherited from the colonial period. The other reason might be the diversity of the Muslim structures and the lack of coordination between them. France has given up her persistence on not letting the establishment of such a representative body. The Conseil Français du Culte Musulman (French Muslim Council, CFCM) was first conceptualized by Jean-Pierre Chevènement in 2000, and concluded by Nicolas Sarkozy in February 2003.7 The CFCM is composed of a national council and regional structures. The

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creation of the CFCM was an attempt to unify all the religious and political tendencies existing in the Muslim population in France. Elaborated by JeanPierre Chevènement and concluded by Nicolas Sarkozy, the CFCM is made up of regional councils and a national council. The 4,032 representatives who elected the members of the council on 6 April 2003 were designated by the mosques, their number depending on the size of every place of worship and not on the number of prayers. Since its creation, the CFCM has faced a series of crises. The former treasurer, Kamel Kabtane, rector of the mosque of Lyon, Fouad Alaoui, head of the Union of French Islamic Organizations (UOIF) and member of the CFCM, and Dounia Bouzar, member of the executive committee of the CFCM, expressed their criticisms, regarding the lack of coordination between the regional councils and the executive committee of the CFCM (Tebbakh, 2007: 73). Although the CFCM has tried to make its place in the national political debate, it has not been successful enough to do so. However, it has managed to take an active part in sending off a delegation to Baghdad to free the journalist Florence Aubenas from the Liberation, who was taken hostage by the para-military groups in Iraq. The active involvement of the CFCM in the management of this hostage crisis served to strengthen its legitimacy in public.8 The Council made a second move during the Cartoon Crisis regarding the publication of the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed by a Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and their publication in the French press. The union of the CFCM lodged a complaint against Charlie Hebdo and France Soir, in which the Danish caricatures were published. In spite of these examples, the CFCM remains an association, which cannot really fulfil its role as an intermediary between the Muslims and the French Republic. The efforts of the French State are not limited to the launching of the CFCM. There are also some other endeavours to help the Muslims fulfil their needs. Accordingly, the Report of the Machelon Commission (named after its president Jean-Pierre Machelon) ordered by the then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy in 2006 strongly recommends that a system of training of religious personnel for the Muslim religion should be installed in the framework of a joint action with the public authorities. The same report also proposes that religious teaching of Islam should be extended to secondary school and technical institutions.9 Another proposal was made by the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë to open an Institute of Muslim Cultures in 2011, housing a university centre for training, research and documentation on Islam as well as cultural and social activities (Husson, 2007: 17). Similar to Germany, France signed an agreement with Turkey in Ankara in December 2005 offering French language courses to future religious officials.10 Muslims have also generated their own training initiatives in France. The Great Mosque of Paris, which is the major mosque out of over 1,500 mosques in France, inaugurated a training Institute in 1994; but the Institute ceased to exist in 2000 due to a lack of funding. Institut Français etudes et Sciences Islamiques (French Institute of Islamic Studies and Sciences, IFESI) regards

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itself as a university-level institution offering five-year study programmes in the fields of Doctrine and Thought, Quran and Hadith, Law and Theory of Law, History of Islam, and Arabic. Institut Européen des Sciences Humaines (European Institute of Human Sciences, IESH) launched a training institute for imams in September 2005. The training course lasts three years. Similarly, the Institut Avicenne inaugurated in Lille by the Federation of Muslims of France with the financial support of Qatar and Libya and the Shâtibi Centre in Lyon operate training courses for imams. Belgium: executive of the Muslims Belgium officially recognizes and subsidies six religions (Catholic, Protestant-Evangelical, Anglican, Orthodox, Jewish and Muslim) as well as non-religious philosophical communities such as Laïcité organisée (organized laicity). The rules governing the religious organizations and their functioning vary in accordance with the Region (Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia) in which they are located. The training of religious personnel is provided by the seminaries of each religion. Additionally, the Catholic Church also benefits from the activities of the faculties of theology of the Catholic universities (Université catholique de Louvain, UCL and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, KUL). Protestant ministers are trained by the Faculty of Protestant Theology of Brussels and, for the Evangelical churches, by the Faculty of Evangelical Theology of Heverlee, the Belgian Biblical Institute and the Biblical Seminary of Brussels. The other recognized religions do not have particular institutions providing training for their religious personnel. Between 1993 and 1996, representatives of the Muslim community went through some negotiations with the Centre for Equal Opportunities and the Ministry of Justice. The aim was to resolve the struggle between the Belgian state and Islamic associations. While the State favoured a selective representation of liberal Muslims, the Muslim associations expressed their preference for a truly representative and democratic process. Eventually, on 3 July 1996, the Government agreed to change the course of its policy of non-recognition, and gave the task to a group of representatives of the Muslim community, known as the Exécutif des Musulmans de Belgique (the Executive of the Muslims of Belgium, EMB), to prepare the setting up of a chief representative body for Islam in the country. This preparatory work led to the decision to adopt a democratic procedure, and to organize elections to this body from among the Muslim community residing in Belgium. The first elections took place on 13 December 1998. An assembly of 51 persons was elected (21 Moroccans, 12 Turks, 9 other nationalities, and 8 converts), while a further 17 persons joined the elected members through co-option. Government officially declared the Executive Office on 3 May 1999 as the chief representative body and official interlocutor of the State for the management of temporal issues linked to the Islamic faith, such as education, subsidies for mosques, and the payment of the salaries of imams. The second

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elections were held in 2005. This time, the total number of registered voters increased from 46,000 to 70,000 people, but Moroccans registered far less than the other electoral categories (Turks, converts, and the others). The result was as follows: 40 Turks, 20 Moroccans, 6 other and 2 converts. The profile of the two Assemblies indicates that Moroccans and Turks have had conflicting interests far from setting up a homogenous representative entity. Belgium does not officially provide Muslims with any training activities for their imams. However, there are some minor local initiatives. The Flemish government has expressed its intention to launch a training scheme for imams, but nothing concrete has so far happened. There are some initiatives held in the Walloon region by the UCL’s Centre interdisciplinaire d’études de l’Islam dans le monde contemporain (Interdisciplinary Centre for Studies of Islam in the Contemporary World, CISMOC) in collaboration with the Facultés Universitaires Sain-Louis and the Haute Ecole Galilée to launch a pilot project in basic university training for Islamic studies. Furthermore, Inter-University Centre for Ongoing Education (CIFoP) also organized a training course for the administrators of the mosques of Namur and Charleroi.11 Muslims have also generated their own initiatives for training imams. The non-profit association Takâfoul – Culture et Société opened its Brussels Institut of Islamic Studies, IEIB) in 2006 to propagate the Islamic culture and sciences among young Muslim university students and graduates of Belgian universities by disseminating university training in Islamic studies and Arabic language. The Institute has three departments: French-speaking department, Arabic-speaking department, and the department of Holy Quran. Arabic-speaking department is not functioning yet. The Frenchspeaking course lasts five years, three years of which is for the bachelor’s degree, and two years of which is for the master’s degree. The department of Holy Quran studies was inaugurated in 2007 with the aim of training imams and Quranic specialists through a four-year-study-period. In addition to those initiatives, the Executive of the Muslims of Belgium has presented a draft bill in November 2006 relating to the recognition of ministers of Muslim religion and their training (Husson, 2007). The Netherlands: the fifth pillar The Dutch State does not recognize religions in a direct, legislative way, but through the case-law of courts and tribunals. Thus, religious organizations are recognized in the form of private-law civil entities. However, the State does not have any financial obligation towards them since 1983. Religious communities resort to donations and gifts as well as to a fund set up by a single state endowment in 1983. Training of religious personnel is mostly provided by the institutions of public education recognized by the state. The call for proposals addressed to universities in January

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2005 resulted in financial support being given to two universities. The Vrije Univertiteit (VU) in Amsterdam is now offering a bachelor’s degree in Religion and Philosophical Convictions, Islamic orientation and a master’s degree in Islamic spiritual care since 2005.12 University of Leiden is similarly offering a one-year master’s in Islamic Studies since 2006.13 Eventually, the InHolland Higher Education College offers a bachelor’s degree divided into two sections: an Islamic specialization for social scientists, and training for imams and lay workers.14 Recently, InHolland College has performed some efforts in collaboration with the Vrije University and the University of Leiden for the holders of its bachelor’s degree to have direct access to the master’s degree programmes of the two universities (Bowlby and Van Impelen, 2007). The Dutch model considers religious and ideological associations as valuable constituents of the civil society. As these organizations are believed to personify organized citizens, the State tends to approach these associations with goodwill. Furthermore, the Dutch model attributes a central importance to the freedom of choice of individual citizens. This implies that individual citizens have several options from which to choose. For example, Dutch citizens have the chance to choose from a number of different school types to send their children, and they are not obliged to send their children to one single type of State school. However, citizens are protected by the State if they decide to step out of their religious community on the basis of the individual freedom of choice (Monsma and Soper, 1997). This model of Church and State relations has also been of key importance to the incorporation of Islam into Dutch society. The Dutch model is based on the principle of equal treatment, which applies both to individual citizens and to their religious beliefs, duties and practices, and to the different collective manifestations of religion or ideology.

Euro-Islam: politics of honour Recently, Islam is, by and large, considered and represented as a threat to the European way of life. It is frequently believed that Islamic fundamentalism is the source of current xenophobic, racist and violent attitudes directed against Muslim origin migrants and their children in the West. Conversely, this work claims that religious resurgence could also be interpreted as a symptom of the existing structural social and political problems such as unemployment, racism, xenophobia, exclusion, and sometimes, assimilation. My works on Euro-Turks reveal that migrant origin groups tend to get affiliated with the politics of identity, ethnicity and religiosity in order to tackle such structural constraints. This is actually a form of politics initiated by outsider groups as opposed to the kind of politics generated by those within as Alistair MacIntyre (1971) decoded earlier. According to MacIntyre (1971) there are two forms of politics: politics of those within and politics of

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those excluded. Those within tend to employ legitimate political institutions (parliament, political parties, the media) in pursuing their goals, and those excluded resort to honour, culture, ethnicity, religion and tradition to achieve their goals. It should be noted here that MacIntyre does not place culture in the private space; culture is rather inherently located in the public space. Therefore, the main motive behind the development of ethno-cultural and religious inclinations by migrant and minority groups can be perceived as their concern to be attached to the political-public sphere. Similarly, Robert Young (2001) also sheds light on the ways in which the discourse of culturalism has recently become salient. Referring to Mao, Fanon, Cabral, Nkrumah, Senghor and many other Tricontinentalists, he accurately explicates that culture turns out to be a political strategy for subordinated masses to resist ideological infiltrations in both colonial and postcolonial context. Thus, the quest for identity, authenticity and religiosity should not be reduced to an attempt to essentialize the so-called purity. It is rather a form of politics generated by subordinated subjects. Islam is no longer simply a religion, but also a counter hegemonic global political movement, which prompts Muslims to stand up for justice and against tyranny – whether in Palestine, Kosovo, Kashmir, Iraq, or Lebanon. In an age of insecurity, poverty, exclusion, discrimination and violence, those wretched of the earth become more engaged in the protection of their honour, which, they believe, is the only thing left. In understanding the growing significance of honour, Akbar S. Ahmed (2003) draws our attention to the collapse of what Mohammad Ibn Khaldun (1969) once called asabiyya, an Arabic word which refers to group loyalty, social cohesion or solidarity. Asabiyya binds groups together through a common language, culture and code of behaviour. Ahmed establishes a direct negative correlation between asabiyya and the revival of honour. The collapse of asabiyya on a global scale prompts Muslims to revitalize honour. Ahmed (2003: 81) claims that asabiyya is collapsing for the following reasons: Massive urbanization, dramatic demographic changes, a population explosion, large scale migrations to the West, the gap between rich and poor, the widespread corruption and mismanagement of rulers, the rampant materialism coupled with the low premium on education, the crisis of identity, and, perhaps, most significantly new and often alien ideas and images, at once seductive and repellent, and instantly communicated from the West, ideas and images which challenge traditional values and customs. The collapse of asabiyya also implies for Muslims the breakdown of adl (justice), and ihsan (compassion and balance). Global disorder characterized by the lack of asabiyya, adl, and ihsan seems to trigger the essentialization of honour by Muslims. The rise of honour crimes in the Muslim context

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illustrates the way honour becomes instrumentalized and essentialized. Recent honour crimes among Euro-Muslims have made it very common for some of the conservative political elite and academics in the West to explain it as an indispensable element of Islam. However one should note that honour crimes are not unique to the Islamic culture: they are also visible in the Judeo-Christian world. Honour crimes have rather been structurally constrained. The traumatic acts of migration, exclusion, and poverty by uneducated subaltern migrant workers without work prepare a viable ground for domestic violence, honour crimes and delinquency. Here is the way an interviewee perceived ‘honour’ among the Turks and the way he distances himself from that state of mind: There are cultural differences between the two societies in terms of the way they live. I used to have a Belgian acquaintance. He was around 65 years old. He used to come to work from 15 km outside of Brussels. One day he was complaining. I asked ‘What’s up? Is there a problem?’ and he replied ‘I have a daughter of 19 years old. She brought home a guy two months ago.’ I thought he was angry at her because she had stayed with the guy outside marriage. He said ‘I am 65 years old and working. Now there is one more plate on the table. He will exploit me too.’ Can you imagine? In our culture, we would take it as an offence to our honour, wouldn’t we? Imagine that a 19-year-old girl brought home a guy and wanted to stay together. How many fathers could accept this? The financial aspect is the last concern for a Turk. But the main concern of the Belgian father is money. Although women are not so visible in the public space, they have an essential role in the construction and protection of the community in diaspora. A woman’s honour, which has to be protected, seems to be the tacit cement that keeps the community intact. The dominant discourse of the community may be mostly based on ethnicity, religiosity and nationalism, but the discourse of protecting the honour of women cuts across all other discourses. Another remarkable strategy to keep the community intact is the attitude of fathers in preventing their daughters from marrying ‘European’ men. In coffee houses around Germany, Belgium, France and the Netherlands, one often hears comments such as ‘How could a father look into the others’ faces?’ Parents still seem to be influential in deciding who their children will marry. Although it seems to be primarily the father who decides on behalf of his daughter, women also play an active role in taking the decision to remain within the community boundaries. The way children are raised within their families puts pressure on them to be more inward looking in order not to lose the comfort provided for them by the community. Their upbringing prevents them from taking counter-hegemonic decisions, which may eventually outlaw them from within their community. A young

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woman reported her discomfort concerning marriage outside the community with a German: ‘If we get married to a German man, then we risk losing all our family and relatives.’ Women become even more isolated in their private space when they are married. A woman’s role then becomes even more determined by the community: that of being a mother and a decent woman. Women become truly ‘private women’ when they marry, a very different status from the ‘public women’ that describe European women.15 Women become active agents in replicating the community through complying with its customs, traditions and values. They do not even question why they cannot go beyond the boundaries of the community. It is just ‘not possible’. Despite all, however, the boundaries of the community are not so rigid and there is always a way out. One might describe the masculine power of man as ‘hard power’, and the power of the habitus16 as ‘soft power’. Individuals usually have the capacity to escape from the restraints of both hard power and soft power, using their ‘fugitive power’.17 Fugitive power is elusive, mobile, shifty and slippery; it is used by individuals to reposition themselves against the power of strategies and ideologies that operate at the social and communal level. Compared to men, women in the community are much more resistant, diversified and elusive in their daily life. Their successful tactics provide them with spaces in which they can occasionally detach themselves from the restrictive power of communal strategies and ideologies intertwined with the politics of honour.

The individualization of Islam among younger generations Religion and ethnicity seem to offer attractive ‘solutions’ for people entangled in intertwined problems. It is not surprising for the masses who have a gloomy outlook of the future, who cannot benefit from the society and who are cast aside by global capitalism to resort to honour, religion, ethnicity, language, and tradition, all of which they believe cannot be pried from their hands, and to define themselves in those terms. However, a detailed analysis must be made of the Islamic character as heavily underlined by young Muslim migrants in frequent acts of violence. If the analysis is not made rigorously, it will serve to affirm, and thus re-produce, the existing ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis. Therefore, it is genuinely important to underline that the Islamic identity used by the youth, who show their resistance to the system through different ways (music, graffiti, dance, looting, arson) in France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, is not necessarily essentialist or radical. The Islamic reference used in such acts of opposition is mostly expressive of the need to belong to a legitimate counter-hegemonic global discourse such as that of Islam, and to derive a symbolic power from that.18 It seems that now religion is replacing the left in the absence of a global leftist movement. Michel de Certeau (1984: 183) reminds us of the discursive

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similarities between religion and the left: religion offering a different world, and left offering a different future – both offering solidarity. Moreover, it should be remembered that the recent acts of violence, erupting in Paris and rapidly spreading to other cities and countries, are also an indication of the solidarity among the members of the newly emerging transnational Islam, who are claimed to be engaged in religious fundamentalism. One should also keep in mind that fundamentalism is not only peculiar to Muslims, it has rather become a universal ideology of the twentieth century recruiting members based on their shared ethno-religious characteristics. Fundamentalism projects itself as a religious ethic to provide an explanation for the reasons behind the crisis of modernity, or late-modernity, and to show the way out of it. Fundamentalism has existed as a phenomenon since the beginning of cultural modernization as its inherent counterforce. The term itself made its appearance for the first time when a collection of religious publications came out in the United States under the title of ‘The Fundamentals’ between 1910 and 1915 (Meyer, 2001: 22; Luidens, 2003). The Protestant Christians who had published those works founded a worldwide organization in 1919 called World’s Christian Fundamentals Association. The term ‘fundamentalism’ then came to refer to a kind of Christian piety. Four major fundamentals were laid down by the Association: (1) the literal accuracy of the Holy scriptures in their entirety; (2) the declaration that all of theology, science and religion are invalid where they contradict the Biblical text; (3) the conviction that no one who deviates from the text of the Bible could be a true Christian; and (4) the firm willingness to retract the modern separation of church and state, or religion and politics (Meyer, 2001 and Luidens, 2003). Meyer reveals very well that all kinds of religious fundamentalisms are fabricated to politicize their own cultures vis-à-vis the others: Protestant fundamentalism in the USA, Hindu fundamentalism in India, evangelical fundamentalism in Guatemala, Jewish fundamentalism in Israel, Budhist fundamentalism in Sri Lanka, Islamic fundamentalism in Iran or in Algeria, Confucian fundamentalism in East Asia, Roman Catholic fundamentalism in Europe and the USA ... Yet more than everything that separates them is the common element that links them: a style marked by an antagonist approach towards cultural differences, a strategy – oriented to gain supremacy – of politicizing their own culture against the cultures of the others, both within their own societies and outside. Cultural self-awareness becomes a lever of political enmity in the pursuit of power. (Meyer, 2001: 7–8) Islam is perceived by Westerners as a threat to the European lifestyle. Islamic fundamentalism is depicted as the source of xenophobic, racist and violent behaviour in the West. However, reversing the point of view, the rise

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in religious values may be interpreted as the result of structural problems such as poverty, unemployment, racism, xenophobia, isolation, constraints in political representation, and the threat of assimilation. In order to cope with these challenges, discourses on culture, identity, religion, ethnicity, traditions and the past have become the most significant existence strategy for minorities in general, and immigrants in particular. Reconstituting the past and resorting to culture, ethnicity and religion seem to serve a dual purpose for immigrant communities: Firstly, as a way to be contemporary without criticizing the existing status quo – ‘glorious’ past, authentic culture, ethnicity, and religion are used by diasporic subjects as a strategic instrument to resist exclusion, poverty, racism, and institutional discrimination; and subsequently, as a way to give an individual the feeling of independence from the criteria imposed by the majority society, because the past, traditions, culture, and religion symbolize values and beliefs that the diasporic subjects believe cannot be taken away from them. In this context, the opinions of Herbert Gans on symbolic ethnicity and religiosity are very revealing. According to Gans, symbolic ethnicity and religiosity are accessible resources for those who want to keep away from ethnic or religious essentialism, yet wish to experience ethnic or religious sensations from time to time (Gans, 1979: 1–2). The adoption of ethnicity and religion by Euro-Muslims as a source of identity is a non-essentialist attitude. This is an identification process that Gans defines as ‘symbolic ethnicity’, or what I call ‘symbolic religiosity’. This process shows that the essentially religious becomes ethnic, and that ‘ethnicity’ and ‘religiosity’ are the two most important components of identity politics as developed by minorities under the threat of a structural isolation imposed by global conditions. The following quotation from Gans clearly summarizes this process: As ethnic cultures and groups become less functional and identity becomes the primary means of being ethnic [and religious], ethnicity [and religiosity] gains a more symbolic than instrumental function in people’s lives, and lose its importance in the order of family life, becomes a leisure activity. Symbolic behaviour can be manifested in different ways, but frequently includes the use of symbols. Ethnic [and religious] symbols are mostly individual cultural practices that have been acquired from older ethnic cultures; they are abstracted from that culture and stripped of their original meanings. (Ibid., 6) The quotation gives us an idea of the context in which the concept of ‘Muslim atheist’ was used by young North Africans to define themselves during and before the riots in the autumn of 2005. If religiosity and atheism are two opposite concepts, the ‘Muslim’ qualifier before the ‘atheist’ concept must bear a meaning other than religiosity. The ‘Muslim’ adjective as used in this phrase is a reference to a type of ethnicity. Even here, the use

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of Islam expresses the resistance and opposition of the minority against the majority and the official. Having established that they are regarded with prejudice by the majority they live among, minority groups are inclined to emphasize such prejudicial adjectives that they believe pose a problem for the majority during their identification process; such as underlining the concepts of Islam or Muslim, which they believe pose a problem for the Christian majority, when expressing their identity. The concept of Islam, or Muslim, refers to politically or economically created boundaries between the majority and the minorities, and thus bears an ethnic character. Michael Walzer (2002) similarly addresses the significance of the politics of identity in search of respect and recognition leading to what William E. Connolly (2003) calls ‘agonistic pluralism’. Walzer also underlines the official recognition of the otherness of the other by the State: Identity politics is only sometimes aimed directly at the state – as when a subordinated group with an established territorial base demands autonomy or secession. When the groups are dispersed as in immigrant societies, the acting out of demand for respect takes place mostly in civil society ... It is more often as workers or believers or neighbours than as citizens that men and women search for ways to take pride in who they are ... the benefits [of identity politics] are associational more than political ... Identity politics in modern pluralist societies is most importantly and most problematically the politics of weak groups, whose members are poor and relatively powerless. It would seem that the best way to respect them is to address their collective weakness ... We might require, say, state-sponsored celebrations of the common history and culture of this or that group: holidays, media programs, museum exhibits, and so on ... Promoting respect is what we should aim at ... . (Walzer, 2002: 40–41) Thus, official recognition of the otherness of such groups like migrant communities may prompt them to incorporate themselves more into the majority society. One of the principal issues raised by the interviewees in different countries with regard to the integration of migrants of Muslim origin was their need to see official policies recognizing their ethnocultural and religious differences. For instance, as an officially recognized second language in some of the primary schools in Flanders, Turkish is said to give migrantorigin children the impression that their parental culture is respected. Previously there were around 100 schools giving Turkish language and culture courses in Flanders, but today there are only 16 such schools, 15 of which are in the province of Limburg. However, interviewees in Beringen (Flanders) expressed their objection to Turkish culture teachers sent by the Turkish Ministry of National Education. It was pointed out that such teachers cannot speak the Flemish language, do not know the social, political and cultural problems of Belgium and they serve for a limited period of three

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years. Quantitative research findings also reveal that Belgian-Turks have a feeling that the majority society do not respect their Turkishness (FlemishTurks 13.1 per cent, Walloon-Turks 3.4 per cent and Brussels-Turks 11.5 per cent).19 Walzer (2002: 40) also reminds us that excluded or marginalized groups tend to generate collective, but not individual, identities when they are subject to oppression. This collective condition might suggest the need for a redistributive politics aimed at providing resources and opportunities to individuals. Redistributive justice implemented by the state may liberate marginalized groups from identities or, at least, from conditions that they have not chosen. Islamic rituals among Euro-Muslim youngsters have become rather more symbolic and secularized than ever. A Durkheimian perspective draws attention to the sense of collective consciousness created by religious practices. Islam, in this regard, provides Muslim origin migrant communities with an opportunity to reproduce their collective ethnocultural and religious boundaries through religious festivities (bayrams), fasting, halal food, wedding and circumcision ceremonies (Cesari, 2003). Daily religious practices like prayers lose their efficacy, and what is religious becomes more symbolic in reproducing the boundaries between minority and majority. For instance, the following data reveal the way the Euro-Turks identify themselves with regard to their faith. The data signify that the Euro-Turks have so far generated a more symbolic kind of religiosity far from being essentialist and fundamentalist. It is reported that 7.5 per cent of German-Turks, 10 per cent of French-Turks and 6.8 per cent of Belgian-Turks define themselves as quite religious, a similar pattern to Turks in Turkey. On the other hand, 89 per cent of GermanTurks, 80 per cent of French-Turks and 84 per cent of Belgian-Turks are reported to be relatively faithful. However, 2.4 per cent of German-Turks, 10 per cent of French-Turks and 5.8 per cent of Belgian-Turks seem to be either atheist or agnostic (Figure 6.1). These figures contradict with the stereotypical perception of Islam in the West, imprisoning Muslims in their alleged fundamentalist habitats of meaning. Recently, some Islamic oriented movements, such as the Cojépiennes based in Strasbourg, or some moderate offsprings of Milli Görüs¸ movement (National Vision) based in several cities in Western Europe, have shown a determination to adapt the Western way of life with their own identities. Such modern interpretations of Islam prove that Islam does not actually pose a threat to Western values; its main concern is actually to incorporate itself into the mainstream. The findings of the Euro-Turks research (Kaya and Kentel, 2005; and 2007) indicate that several Euro-Turks identify themselves with hyphenated (multiple) identities such as French-Muslim-Turkish, German-Muslim-Turkish, or Dutch-Muslim-Turkish. What is remarkable here is that political identity is prior to religious and ethnic identities. Similarly, there is also something anew generating among the young generations of Euro-Muslims, that is individualization of religion.

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60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Germany %

France %

Belgium %

Essentially religious Someone trying to fulfill religious requirements Faithful, but not fulfilling the religious requirements Someone who doesn’t really believe in faith Someone who does not have faith Figure 6.1 faith?

How do you define yourself with the following statements regarding your

The crosstabulations made out of the quantitative data held by Kaya and Kentel (2005; and 2007) also display that there is a correlation between the birthplace and faith indicating that religiosity is still more dominant among German-Turks (Table 6.1). Religious mobility is quite understandable in a country like Germany where religion is still a strong source of identification in everyday life. Furthermore, German-Turks are primarily defined with their Islamic identity by the majority society. On the other hand, the secular and republican characteristics of French-Turks are prioritized by the French. The data also indicate that religiosity is becoming less and less important among the young generations born and raised in Belgium. However, religiosity among the Euro-Turks is not an essentialized one, but a symbolic one Symbolic religiosity is available to those who want to sporadically feel religious, without being forced to act religiously. The stress on religion is usually something adopted from parental culture as part of negotiation with the majority society. The manner in which Euro-Turks, especially German-Turks, employ religion as a source of identity is quite distant from being essentialist. Religion is an important cultural source for the formation of identity among transmigrants. However, religion no longer has an essentialist stance, but rather a symbolic meaning for the third and later generations of the Muslim diaspora. The significance of religion for youth lies in the fact that these young people are perceived in a prejudiced manner by the majority. The majority uses Islam as the main reference point when defining

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Table 6.1 How do you define yourself with the following statements regarding your faith? By birthplace? Birthplace % Quite a religious person, fulfilling all the requirements of my faith Someone trying to fulfil religious requirements Faithful, but not fulfilling the religious requirements Someone who doesn’t really believe in faith Someone who does not have faith Total

Turkey

Germany

France

Belgium

9.3

2.8

5.5

2.4

50.5

51.9

57.8

35.8

36.3

40.5

28.4

49.7

2.0

4.1

3.8

3.0

1.9

0.7

2.9

3.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

young people from Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, or Turkey. For example, young adults of North or Central African origin, who are defined as Islamic by the general French, or Belgian, public, believe that their identities are recognized, or misrecognized, with prejudice. As a reaction, they show increasing symbolic loyalty to religion. An example of this process can be seen among the Turks living in Germany. A Berlin-based Turkish-German rap group in the 1990s explained the choice of Islamic Force as its name mainly on the grounds that they wanted to protest the prejudiced attitude of the German majority towards Islam, and sought to provoke them further. Interestingly, Islamic Force was a rap group of a predominantly universal discourse, as opposed to its name (Kaya, 2001). Steven Vertovec (1995) explains this expression of identity as ‘the cultural Islamic identity’. There are significant similarities between the young Asian Muslim migrants living in the town of Keighley in Northern England defining themselves as ‘young Muslims’, and the Turkish youth in Berlin or North African youth in France defining themselves along the lines of nonessentialist Islamic codes. These examples imply that cultural identities in the diaspora emerge in the process of dialectical and dialogical relations between the majority and the minorities. This is a process of vernecularization of Islam in diaspora whereby religion becomes more individualized in line with the changing needs of individuals who are subject to collective impacts due to the ongoing structural outsiderism. Thus, Islamic space becomes a space in which post-migrants, or trans-migrants, search for recognition. Islamic allegiance by those youths could also be interpreted as a quest for emancipation from the parental culture, which imprisoned religion in their authentic culture. However, the allegiance of post-migrant

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youth into Islam is not limited to their parents’ country, but extends to the worldwide Muslim community, especially involving solidarity with and interest in struggles such as the Palestinian cause, and conflicts in Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon (Cesari, 2003). For instance, the banlieues identify with the Palestinians, Iraqis, and Afghans (Roy, 2007: 3). Hence, diasporic youth who are symbolically affiliated with Islam rather has a political stance. This is a stance, which goes beyond the separation between religion and politics. The reality in Europe today is that young Muslims are becoming politically mobilized to support causes that have less to do with faith and more to do with communal solidarity. The manifestation of global Muslim solidarity can be described as an identity based on vicarious humiliation: European Muslims develop empathy for Muslim victims elsewhere in the world and convince themselves that their own exclusion and that of their coreligionists have the same root cause: Western rejection of Islam. A recent public survey conducted by the Washington D.C. based PEW Research Centre on 6 June 2006 reveals that Muslims in Europe worry about their future, but their concern is more economic than religious or cultural. And while there are some signs of tension between Europe’s majority populations and its Muslim minorities, Muslims there do not generally believe that most Europeans are hostile towards people of their faith. Still, over a third of Muslims in France and one in two in Germany say they have had a bad experience as a result of their religion or ethnicity.20

Religion as a tool for emancipation: portable Islam There has lately been a tendency among younger generations with Muslimbackground to regard religion as an intellectual and spiritual quest in a way that distances them from the inherited cultural practices of Muslim communities. Referring particularly to young Belgian-Moroccans, Nadia Fadil (2005) reveals how youngsters of Moroccan origin undergo a process of emancipation and how they rescue their individual faith from the authority of their parental culture. The younger generations differentiate between Islam and culture. Mandaville (2001: 141) observes a similar tendency, especially among young Muslim women in diaspora: More and more women seem to be taking Islam into their own hands. They are not hesitating to question, criticize and even reject the Islam of their parents. Often this takes the from of drawing distinctions between culture, understood as the oppressive tendencies which derive from the parents’ ethno-social background, and religion, a true Islam untainted by either culture or gender discrimination. Migrant women are likely to see in Islam a progressive force emancipating them from their traditional roots, but also preventing them from

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surrendering to Western cultural forms. Jorgen Nielsen (1987: 392) claims that Muslim women in diaspora no longer refer to dress codes, arranged marriages and gender roles as symbols of Islam. The emphasis seems to be shifting towards the ethical and spiritual values of Islam. In their qualitative study on Belgian-Muslims, Sami Zemni et al. (2006) revealed that young Belgian-Muslims heavily criticize the ways in which their parents used religion as a shield for cultural practices oppressing women. Their critique is directed against those among first-generation Muslims who take forced/arranged marriage and unequal conditions for men and women to be religious prescriptions (Zemni, 2006). The youngsters see illiteracy as the main source of indifference and the mingling of religion and cultural traditions. Zemni et al. (2006: 43) also draw our attention to the fact that women, rather than men, problematize the relationship between culture and religion. Youngsters of Muslim origin residing in diaspora developed complex strategies of survival by themselves, manipulating the reference to Islam. Olivier Roy draws attention to the ways in which Western individuals harm such youngsters: By defining them as victims, we leave them no choice for their emancipation but a break with their family circle, whereas very few of them wish for that and, besides, some of the social problems of the banlieues stem more from the disintegration of families than from the burden of family structures. The debate on marriage is a sign of this misunderstanding: the press speaks constantly of the number of forced marriages, most of which are not forced but arranged; that is, the girl agrees to play along, while later possibly escaping with profit or at least with honour intact ... The discourse of women’s liberation here comes up against the reality experienced by these young women, which is far from being one of systematic enslavement ... . (Roy, 2007: 89) Roy’s intervention underlines that discourses of liberation expressed by Europeans have the risk of alienating Muslim women of Muslim background from their families. These discourses originate from the essentialist position, consisting of seeing in Islam a fixed and timeless system of thought; and they are inclined to underestimate the strong likelihood that Muslim women could also generate their own rational stance. The separation between culture and religion made by young generations of Muslims is in tandem with what Eisenstadt (2000; 2003; 2004) calls ‘multiple modernities’. The difference between culture and religion as expressed by young generations corresponds to a kind of ‘emancipation from the fetters of traditional political and cultural authority’ (Eisenstadt, 2000: 5). Similarly, Olivier Roy (2004) unravels the present form of religiosity among Muslims in Europe as a sign of their Westernization and Europeanization.

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Their religion no longer corresponds to any particular territory, ethnicity or culture. It seems that the cultural heritage of immigrants’ home countries is now being transformed into a purely religious context. This implies a significant step towards secularization, while immigrants tend to find a place for themselves and their faith in the pluralistic European space. ‘One of the most important characteristics of modernity is indeed the centrality of protest’ says Schmuel Eisenstadt (2004: 7). Symbols of protest including equality and freedom, justice and autonomy, solidarity and identity, recognition and respect which one could encounter in the margins, peripheries, new social movements, ethnic revivals, spontaneous protests, have become central components of modern project of human emancipation (ibid.). Banlieue riots in France (Cesari, 2003; Silverstein and Tetreault, 2005), Mayday riots in Kreuzberg (Kaya, 2001), ethno-cultural claims, headscarf claims, religious revival and violence constitute a basic component of the modern political process and a quest for the typical modern ideals of equality and justice. These movements are not that different from the ways in which the French Revolution was practiced in a way that brought the concerns of the periphery to the centre (Eisenstadt, 2004). The resurgence of ethno-cultural and religious motivations among the Euro-Muslims could also be interpreted as a quest for justice and fairness in a global social-political context defined with Islamophobia and the so-called culture wars. Naming the French banlieue riots as truly republican (Kaya, 2006), or defining the rise of political participation of Euro-Muslims, or migrants of Muslim origin dwelling in the West, is another way of affirming the assumption that modernity is not a singular process, but rather a plural process. ‘Multiple modernities’ thesis offered by Shmuel N. Eisenstadt reminds us that there may be several different paths leading to modernity (Eisenstadt, 2000; 2003; 2004). Political participation is a legitimate form of resistance, which highlights the political integration of Euro-Turks, or of Euro-Muslims, and their willingness to be in cooperation with the Western political system. One should interpret the ways in which migrants and Muslims generate new forms of political socialization as another form of modernity, which also tries to underline coexistence of diversity in public space. The theory of Multiple Modernities has been developed from the civilizational analysis which is employed by scholars of comparative sociology and historical sociology in their attempt to understand the modernity and, in particular, the relationship between the West and the East. According to the theory of multiple modernities, modernity first emerged out of revolutions in the Christian-European civilization, revolutions which were based on the belief in human agency’s capability of bridging the gap between the transcendental and mundane orders. Modernity first emerged in Europe and spread to elsewhere in the world, and because of the centrality of human agency in interpreting the surrounding environment, modernity thus spread and developed in different parts of the world and has crystallized in

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numerous forms. So there are a number of forms of modernity, and therefore it is necessary to explore modernities in plural, not modernity in singular (Eisenstadt, 2000, and 2001; Amason, 2006; Delanty, 2006). It should be noted that there is not one form of modernity, and migrants can not be expected to assimilate themselves into this only form, which is the Western form of Christian European modernity. Migrants of, for instance Muslim origin, may generate their own alternative modernities in dialogue with the Western form of modernity. Eisenstadt’s classification of totalizing and pluralistic conceptions of human existence, or in other words, totalizing modernity and pluralistic modernity, is also beneficial to address the differentiation between civilizational and cultural forms of incorporation of differences. Totalizing modernity is traced back to the totalizing vision of reason promulgated by Decartes, and pluralistic modernity is tracked down to Erasmus, Vico and Herder (Eisenstadt, 2005). Totalizing modernity follows the line of Jacobin understanding of politics, which is an attempt to transform society through totalistic political action. Whereas pluralistic modernity underlines the common primordial and spiritual attributes of national collectivity. Underlining the singularity of civilizing process, totalizing modernity promotes a universalistic and missionary zeal as in France and Wallonia. Pluralistic modernity, on the contrary, promotes plurality and relativity of cultures as in Germany, Flanders and the Netherlands. Migrants, and especially transmigrants, are in a position to construct their own hybrid and melange identities combining at least two traditions of receiving and sending societies. We used to learn the content of Islam from our parents. They taught us how to pray, how to fast, and how to read the Quran. We learned those things in practice without knowing the very meaning of the verses and the rituals. Our parents did not know them either. Only the imams knew what the verses meant, because they could understand Arabic, the language of the Holy Book. But now we no longer need our parents to learn the religion from. We have the internet, religious associations, and schools to inquire about everything. I don’t want anybody, or any institution like the mosque, to impose on me anything about my faith. I am always surfing the internet, and I send my writings to the relevant forums.21 These are the words of a young veiled Euro-Turkish woman, who treats Islam as a way of emancipation from the repression of both parental culture and traditional institutions. In doing so, youngsters make use of modern telecommunications provided by the contemporary processes of globalization. The media and information technologies have certainly played an important role in the emergence of a new breed of Islamist intellectual whose activities represent a form of hybridized, counter-hegemonic ‘globalization from below’ (Brecher et al., 1993).

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The global circuitry of modern telecommunications also contributes to the formation of a digitalized umma within the Muslim diaspora, which is based on the idea of a more homogeneous community of sentiments (Appadurai, 1996), shaped by a constant flow of identical signs and messages travelling across cyberspace. A digitalized umma (Muslim community) shaped by electronic capitalism tends to get engaged in various forms of ijtihad (interpretation), because each individual dwells in a different social, political or cultural context within the diaspora. Whilst the signs and messages disseminated across the diaspora are rather more homogeneous, their impact on individual lives differs greatly. The signs and messages form a more heterogeneous and individualized form of umma. This kind of ijtihad (an Arabic word, interpretation of the Quran), built up by the media, has the potential of turning recipients into a virtual alim (an Arabic word for intellectual) who can challenge the authority of traditional religious scholars (Mandaville, 2001: 160). As Arjun Appadurai (1996: 195) rightly says, ‘new forms of electronically mediated communication are beginning to create virtual neighbourhoods, no longer bounded by territory, passports, taxes, elections, and other conventional political diacritics.’ These new communities of sentiments are constructed in cyberspace, a space that is often occupied by modern diasporic subjects. For instance, the table below indicates the correlation between intensive internet access and faith of the BelgianTurks. It is revealed that there is a positive correlation between religiosity and intensive internet use among Belgian-Turks (Table 6.2). ‘It is time to recognize that the true tutors of our children are not school teachers or university professors but filmmakers, advertising executives and pop culture purveyors. Disney does more than Duke, Spielberg outweighs Stanford, MTV trumps MIT’ says Benjamin R. Barber (1998: 26). Diana Crane, wrote more than 30 years ago (1972) about the ways in which knowledge is produced through invisible colleges. Her concern was principally with (scientific) knowledge production, clearly distinguished, as in the ‘official’ discourse, from teaching. Youths not only learn through the official curricula in schools, but also through unofficial curricula (e.g., films,

Table 6.2 Has your religious faith become stronger or weaker than before? By ages of intensive internet users (209 persons in total out of 400)

Ages Become stronger Become weaker No difference No answer Total

15–19 (%)

20–29 (%)

30–39 (%)

40–49 (%)

50ⴙ (%)

Total (%)

39.4 9.1 51.5

33.0 22.7 42.0 2.3 100.0

27.0 14.3 57.1 1.6 100.0

46.7 20.0 33.3

30.0 20.0 50.0

100.0

100.0

33.0 17.7 47.8 1.4 100.0

100.0

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TV, internet, on-line journals, distance learning classes, bookstores, libraries, museums, movies, TV, music compact discs, rap albums, video games, and comic books), or through what Mahiri (2000) calls pop culture pedagogy and popular learning settings (e.g., community centres, churches, mosques, and peer groups). Pop culture pedagogy practiced by contemporary youth through invisible colleges seems to have changed the relationship between youth and formal schooling. There is a discrepancy between these ‘unschoolers’ and traditional pedagogic methods. It is evident that technological changes have transformed the new generations. This kind of transformation is the central tenet of pop culture pedagogy. One of its early material and symbolic expressions was Transformer toys that came out more than two decades ago (Mahiri, 2000: 384). The Transformers were mechanical characters that could instantly change into other forms, just like the multiple identity changes of today’s youth. The pop culture pedagogy also provides young people with electronically mediated multiple identities. For instance, German-Muslim-Turks, or Belgian-Muslim-Kurds, or DutchMuslim-Moroccans are the constructions of the modern telecommunication circuitry. One could also claim that the changes that younger generations of Muslims go through in the media are also likely to have an impact on the older generations. As Margaret Mead (1970) reminded us, we have gone from a postfigurative culture, in which the young learn from the old, to a co-figurative culture, in which children and adults learn from their peers. The culture in which the young dwell is so different that older members can give them little guidance on how to deal with it. Youngsters take satellites, war, computers, pollution, the internet, violence and the idea of population control for granted. No longer bound by the linear sequences of the printed media, they learn from television and the internet, where they see killing and other events as they happen in virtual reality. Mead claims that youngsters are likely to make few distinctions between friend and foe, peacetime and wartime, ‘my’ group and ‘their’ group. The older generation is similarly isolated and knows more about change than any other generation. Mead adds that, later, we will probably live in a pre-figurative culture in the future, in which the old learn from the young. We must, Mead says, discover pre-figurative ways of teaching and learning that will keep the future open, so that children will learn how to learn and discover the value of commitment, rather than being told what to learn or be committed to. In addition, elders will need the experiential knowledge of the young as a basis on which to make plans. The young must be allowed to participate directly and ask questions: however, there must also be enough trust between generations so that the old will be allowed to work on the answers. Hence, once cannot underestimate the way in which culture is now transmitted from the younger generations to the old. What is now happening in the Muslim diaspora is that younger generations are redefining the very meaning of faith in a rather

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individualized form that challenges older definitions making no difference between religion and culture (Mandaville, 2001: 109–151). Furthermore, Islam has become increasingly ‘scriptualized’ since the nineteenth century. The growing tendency of ‘scriptualism’ is manifested in an increasing emphasis on Quranic teaching, Islamic education, mosquebuilding (Gellner, 1992), and now on digitalized umma. In diaspora, the scriptualist tendency comes at the expense of the folk Islam of saint worship, healing, Sufism and local brotherhoods. The tendency of clericalization becomes more evident in the migration process. When Islam leaves its original setting, what travels with it are not the shrines, local rituals, folk practices and guilds, but the Quran and Quranic teachings. As Jan Nederveen Pieterse (1997) argues, the Quran becomes portable Islam. The return of scriptures, on the one hand, underlines the return to the fundamentals, and on the other, is itself a mode of modernization, because it makes cultural reproduction independent of local circumstances. Muslim communities having fundamentalist beliefs are built around what Salman Rushdie (1990) calls ‘the absolutism of the Pure’. ‘The apostles of purity’, he argues, are always moved by the fear ‘that intermingling with a different culture will inevitably weaken and ruin their own’. What they believe is that communicating with the ‘unbelievers’ does not strengthen their spiritual belief system. A 70-year-old Turkish Sunni imam (religious leader, teacher, or preacher) of the Rufai sect in the Mevlana Mosque in Kreuzberg-Berlin, hints at the rationale behind the construction of a Islamic diasporic identity: We [Muslims] prefer the company of the believers. It is not enough to be Muslim. Muslim means to surrender to the will of God, but surrendering does not prove that someone is a trustful believer who has faith in God. There are three strata in an Islamic community: ordinary people, faithful people, and most faithful people. The Holy Book, Quran, says we must stick together with the believers to strengthen our faith in God, and to progress spiritually against the material world. Thus, we tend to distance ourselves from the Avam. It gives us spiritual inspiration to be together with the trustful believers. (Personal interview, 25 January 1996) Purity seems to provide a sense of moral superiority which may compensate for class inferiority. In the meantime, the practice of migration has gained a mystical meaning for Muslims in diaspora. They have constructed a connection between their experience and that of the prophet Mohammed. The prophet migrated from Mecca to Medina in order to be able to free his Islamic community from the oppression of the non-believers. It is believed that the experience of migration (hijra) gave the believers the chance to test their faith in God. Thus, by doing so, the Muslim immigrants believe that the act of migration has strengthened their faith. Migration, for such

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believers, may be described as a traditional way of life (Pieterse, 1997: 183; and Schiffauer, 1997: 161).

The other side of the coin: institutionalization of Islam Parallel to the individualization of Islam among the young generations of Euro-Muslims, another process is taking place at the same time: the institutionalization of Islam in Europe. Modern states have always formed auxiliary institutions to observe and control religious communities that are intrinsically centrifugal vis-à-vis the political centre. Everlasting rivalry between the Western secular states and the Papacy, for instance, exemplifies very well this struggle between the temporal and spirituals centres of power. Different initiatives have been taken so far in order to institutionalize and thus to control Islam in minority: ‘CORIF’ in France (Council for Reflection on Islam in France, 1989), the superior council of Muslims in Belgium (Exécutif des Musulmans de Belgique, 1995), national organizations in the Netherlands charged with overseeing the building of mosques, the employment of imams, and the availability of halal meat (Cesari, 2003), and Angela Merkel’s attempt to bring the Muslims together through the Integration Summit held in July 2006, and the Islam Conference held in September 2006. But these attempts to organize European Islam have until now been relatively unsuccessful, because of the national, ethnic and doctrinal cleavages dividing Muslim populations. Attempts to institutionalize Islam in Europe, on the one hand, create new legal frameworks, political opportunity structures, and cultural repertoires for claims of religious recognition. On the other hand, they also strengthen established actors in the field of religious governance, and give new legitimacy to historical institutional arrangements by reframing them as the representatives of communities of migrant origin (Maussen, 2007). In other words, institutionalizing Islam in diaspora consolidates the class of Muslim functionaries who have a vested interest in the creation of religious institutions. One should also consider the ways in which the construction of the European Union could influence the form and the content of Islamic expression. The fortification of the European Borders with the neighbouring countries through the Schengen Treaty (1985) reinforced the political and cultural borders separating Europe from its southern and eastern neighbours. The rise of the ‘clash of civilisations’ discourse has also deepened the boundaries between lifeworlds of Europeans and non-Europeans. At the same time, social issues such as the controversy surrounding the Gulf War, Sudan, Afghanistan and Iran, the publication of The Satanic Verses in Britain, the killing of the provoking Dutch film director, Theo van Gogh, in the Netherlands (Buruma, 2007), the Cartoon debate in Denmark, and the provoking intervention of the Pope Benedict XVI22 regarding the brutal nature of the Prophet Mohammad have all brought European Muslims

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together in protest, provoking hostile reactions from Europeans who, for the first time, viewed Europe’s immigrant Muslims as a unified whole. Even though the visit of the Pope to Turkey (27 November–1 December 2006) was presented by the mainstream European media as an attempt to revitalize the dialogue between Christianity and Islam, it was rather implicitly aiming at easing the tension between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. In other words it was an attempt to unite Christianity in order to make the membership of Bulgaria and Romania into the EU easier on a public level. ‘The divisions among Christians are a scandal to the world,’ said the Pope after an Orthodox ceremony held in the Istanbul Phanar Patriarchy on the 30 November. All Christians, he said, should ‘renew Europe’s awareness of its Christian roots, traditions and values’.23 All these events led to both questioning of the significance of Muslims’ collective presence in Europe and radicalization of European Islamic identity. One should also note that recent debates in the EU countries reveal that the European form of secularism is not yet equipped to accommodate Islam, which has recently become very visible in the public space. Interestingly, what happened is that the Western secular Left and the Christian Right seem to have set up an alliance against Islam (Roy, 2007: xii; and Silvestri, 2007; Habermas, 2008: 8). In his study comparing Britain, France, and Germany in the period of 1973–2001, Koenig (2003) revealed that the public incorporation of Muslim immigrants follows specific patterns shaped by the legally institutionalized logic of traditional religious politics that emerged from historically specific trajectories of state-formation and nation-building. A first crucial factor is the degree of the institutionalization of the idea of the ‘individual’ in each polity, as it affects the very definition of ‘religion’. In corporatist polities, where rights are ascribed to corporate bodies, religion is regarded as a formal membership organization, which can directly be incorporated into the state’s rationalising project. In statist and liberal polities, where the individual is the primary bearer of rights, ‘religion’ is perceived as an individual orientation organized in voluntary associations. Koenig (2003) points out that it is not by accident that conflicts about Muslim claims for recognition in Germany crystallize around legal questions of organization, as demonstrated by the notorious debate about the recognition of Islamic organizations as corporations of public law, a problem which in Britain is of rather secondary relevance. In addition to the degree of the institutionalization of the idea of the ‘individual’, there is a second factor, which is the degree of ‘stateness’: In nation-states oriented towards statist or corporatist polity models, such as France, Germany and the Netherlands, the incorporation of Muslim minorities is co-ordinated by the organizational centre of the state, while in liberal polities, such as Great Britain, it rather takes the form of civil negotiations, mostly at the local level (Koenig, 2003). The third factor is the relationship of symbols of national identity to the metanarratives of ‘secularization’: As universalistic symbols of national identity are connected

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to ideologies of secularism, as in the case of French laïcité, explicitly religious claims for recognition are conceived as transgressing the symbolic boundary between the ‘religious’ and the ‘secular’. Unlikely, polities where nation-building was sustained by collective religious or confessional mobilization, as in Britain and Germany, are in principle open to religious symbols (Zolberg, 2004). Koenig’s study is also confirmed by the three separate studies conducted by Patrick R. Ireland (2000), Jan Rath et al. (2001) and Soper and Fetzer (2003). Why do migrants withdraw from ‘host-society’ political life? By which means do they politically mobilize themselves? Why do they mobilize themselves along with ethno-cultural and religious lines? Patrick Ireland (1994, 2000) has drawn attention to the legal conditions and political institutions of receiving countries in mapping out the nature of immigrant political mobilization. He argues that ‘certain immigrant communities have withdrawn voluntarily from host-society political life in the face of institutional indifference and hostility’ (1994: 8). Ireland has formulated the ‘institutional channelling theory’ as an alternative to class and race/ethnicity theories, in order to understand immigrant political strategies. While class analysis claims that immigrants’ class identity ultimately determines the nature of their political participation (Miles, 1984; Castles and Kosack, 1985), race/ethnicity theory argues that the immigrants’ ethnic identity is of fundamental importance and that ethnic politics will endure, at least for the foreseeable future (Rex and Tomlinson, 1979). However, institutional channelling theory maintains that legal and political institutions shape and limit migrants’ choice possibilities. These include institutions such as political parties, parliament, religious organizations, citizenship, judicial bodies and humanitarian institutions that can weaken or strengthen the effects of differences in resources. They have a tendency to act as institutional gatekeepers, controlling access to the venues of political participation available to immigrants or other similar marginal groups. Accordingly, Ireland claims that the reason why migrant groups organize themselves politically along ethno-cultural and/or religious lines is primarily because ‘host-society’ institutions have nurtured ethnicity, culture and religion through their policies and practices. Ireland’s theory takes migrant individuals as active reflexive subjects, who form their political participation strategies in response to the regulations of host-society institutions. Ireland also tends to explain the Islamic revival as an outcome of the ways in which host society institutions treat immigrant communities of Muslim origin: ‘just as they have been getting the Islam they deserve, so too, are they reaping what they sow in terms of their immigrants’ political mobilization’ (Ireland, 2000: 269). Similarly, Rath et al. (2001) also conclude in their study that the institutionalization of Islam is ‘to a far greater degree determined by the societies in which Muslims settle than by the Muslims themselves.’ Similarly, Christopher Soper and Joel Fetzer have revealed that the pattern of church-state relations is the

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major factor explaining differences in the accommodation of Muslim religious practices in France, Germany, and Britain (Soper and Fetzer, 2003). Institutionalization of Islam seems to contradict the process of individualization of Islam. Institutions tend to have their own life-worlds. When Islam, or any other religion, is institutionalized, it is inclined to create its own industry, which is composed of a group of ‘religious brokers’ who act as a buffer between their own religious communities and the state. As I explained elsewhere institutions need their own clientele to survive; the survival of, say, Islamic institutions, depends on the existence of faithful subjects who are ready to remain within the boundaries of the religious community without having the need to incorporate themselves in the mainstream society (Kaya, 1998). This process is what Jan Rath calls (1993) ‘reminorization of minorities’, which results in that migrants are not perceived as full members of the receiving society, and that they are likely to be tolerated but not accepted into key positions (Odmalm, 2005: 47). One should also not underestimate the fact that unlike the case of Roman Catholicism, or Orthodox Church, we cannot move systematically through the institutional levels of Islam, assessing the degree to which the structures are truly transnational in nature. Indeed as Carl L. Brown (2000: 31) put it very well, ‘Islam knows no “church” in the sense of a corporate body whose leadership is clearly defined and hierarchical ... No distinctive corporate body equivalent to the church in Christianity exists,’ at least not in Sunni Islam. The Shia tradition is more corporate, and more similar to the clergy-led communities that make up Catholicism, and Christian Orthodoxy. Neverthless, throughout all of Islam, the ulema, the learned men who lead local communities, are not formal authority figures and members of an officially sanctioned clerical caste. Contrary to the ideal of Islamic unity, Islam is territorially very plural, and it is a self-governing religious community (Byrnes, 2007: 6). In terms of organization structure, Islam is similar to Protestantism with its strong localism and weak structures, and is very different from hierarchically organized Catholicism or Orthodoxy (Pieterse, 1997: 184). Eventually there may be one Mecca, but several centres. In other words, attempts to institutionalize Islam in the European context are likely to fail. One should also look more closely into the example of the Jews in France, who were forced by Napoleon in 1808 to set up the Jewish Consistory (Consistoire Israélite) as the interlocutor of the Jews in representing their religious interests before the public authorities. Similar to Conseil Français du culte musulman (CFCM), Jewish Consistory was designed to Westernize and mainstream the Jews. The parallelism between the efforts of Westernizing and mainstreaming the Jews and the Muslims in two different centuries is striking (Roy, 2007: 15). Both CFCM and Jewish Consistory were set up to officialize Muslim and Jewish relations with the national government in a way that aims to create Musulman d’Etat and Juif d’Etat, in other words,

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French Muslims and French Jews. Napoleon Bonaparte’s decision to convene the Assembly of Jewish Notables (1806) and the Grand Sanhedrin (1807) was part of a larger effort to define the spheres of influence of church and state. Beginning with the Concordat in 1801 and the subsequent formation of the Protestant consistorial system in 1802, the emperor had firmly stated the authority of the state over religion. Napoleon’s aim with the 1806 decree establishing the Assembly of Jewish Notables was to legislatively empower the Assembly to resolve the question of the incompatibility of Judaism and civic duties once and for all (Berkovitz, 2007). Ultimately, the goal was fusion civile (integration) that is full participation in civic life. It seems that there is not a big difference between the Jewish Consistory and the CFCM with respect to their founding: CFCM, on the one hand, was created as the official interlocutor of the public authorities soliciting advice on all matters relating to the Islamic religion, such as the training of imams, the building of mosques and the maintenance of cemetery places (Safran, 2004b: 431). Jewish Consistory, on the other hand, was formed, as defined by Napoleon himself, ‘to reconcile the beliefs of the Jews with the duties of Frenchmen, and to transform them into useful citizens, in order to remedy the evil to which many of them apply themselves to the great detriment of our subjects’ (cited in Berkovitz, 2007: 13). The underlying principle of the Napoleonic Sanhedrin was to synthesize the Jewish rituals of marriage, divorce, moneylending and Jewish religious holidays with that of the Republic. Historically, the Sanhedrin was the first public organization of Jews to articulate a positive attitude towards the state and its citizens, drawing a clear line between the national and religious components of Jewish identity. Widely applauded for having set up the relationship between Judaism and the State, Berkovitz (2007: 24) states that the body also came to be a source of frustration in the following decade. Because it was believed that it heightened the distance between the theoretical potential for change and the resistance that obtained in practice. The Jews soon became concerned with the main ideological aim of the Sanhedrin: were the delegates to the Assembly representing the Jewish community and religion, or were they simply representing the expectations of the emperor and his commission? Assimilationist Napoleonic Sanhedrin, or Jewish Consistory, did not work out very well due to the rising scepticism. Today, as William Safran (2004) eloquently put it, the number of Jewish organizations is numerous, ranging from Orthodox, liberal, Yiddish organizations to Zionists of various types. The idea of establishing one single Jewish association to represent the entire French Jews did not work out not only due to the principle of equality granted by the republican rhetoric, but also due to the heterogeneity of the Jews residing in the country. Most French Jews did not feel any urgency to undertake far-reaching ritual reforms comparable to those introduced in Germany. French republican ideal seems to equip the Jews as well as the Muslims with an understanding

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that the Republic is bound to treat them equally with the other citizens and that they would not comply with repressive and discriminatory policies of government in power. Hence, republican ideal seems to be bound to maintain the continuation of ethno-religious groups with their differences. Compared to the French republican ideal underlining political equality of citizens, culturalist German model of citizenship stimulates ethnoculturally and religiously different individuals and groups to assimilate into German Leitkultur (mainstream culture).24 Berkowitz (2007: 28–29) correctly states that in Germany where the political struggle for civic equality was frustrated by repeated setbacks, liberal Jewish thinkers concluded that a religion deprived of its particularistic features would ultimately convince government authorities that the Jews were worthy of citizenship. Institutionalization of Islam in Europe is a relatively new phenomenon. European states seem to have a tendency to extend or modify existing statechurch relations in order to accommodate other religions which are likely to become more visible in public. This requires an understanding that all religions are organized in a similar way to Christian Churches with their bishops, priests, councils, Sunday prayers and various other rituals. This is what Olivier Roy (2004) calls ‘Churchification of Islam’. Many appreciate these initiatives as opportunities to have a say in political sphere, whereas several others do not welcome such attempts paving the way to the birth of self-appointed religious brokers acquiring personal power and privileges. Furthermore, Muslims in Europe are not pleased with the fact that the Interior Ministers of various EU states are building up consultative Muslim organizations. Individualization and institutionalization of Islam are antithetical processes: the former is likely to lead to the secularization of individual, and the latter is likely to bring about a clergy with a vested interest in due process. *

*

*

This chapter has discussed the ways in which Islam is recently being accommodated by the German, French, Belgian and Dutch states. I argued that secular Western countries have followed the same pattern to accommodate Islam, which they generated before when accommodating other faiths such as Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Church, or the Jews. Furthermore, it was put forward that Islamic resurgence is an epiphenomenon, which is likely to result from the weakening of Asabiyya, solidarity, but not a phenomenon, which primordially comes out. I also scrutinized a newly emerging social and political phenomenon in Europe, which has come into fore along with the visibility of Islam in the public space. I argued that two paradoxical processes go in parallel with each other: individualization of Islam vs. institutionalization of Islam. It was claimed that while the processes of globalization compel younger Muslims to emancipate themselves from

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the pressure of their patriarchal parental and community culture, Western states and ethno-cultural and religious brokers are in a position to reify, or reinforce, ethnic and religious boundaries. Hence, it turns out that the descendants of migrants are squeezed between individualization and institutionalization of Islam. Another phenomenal development with regard to the young Muslims was the way they, especially young women, expressed a difference between religion and culture. Interviews made with young women of Muslim origin have displayed that women interpret their religion as a source of emancipation rather than being a source of repression. Global flows of images, ideas, notions, interpretations, debates, questions, answers and queries in the mediascapes have made it easier for young generations of Muslims to also liberate themselves from the hegemony of imams and their parents. They no longer need such traditional mentors to learn the religion from; instead they have invisible colleges to inquire about whatever they need to learn.

Conclusion: Transnationalizing Integration

Migration has recently been framed as a source of fear and instability for the nation-states in the West. Yet not so long ago it was rather a source of contentment and happiness. Several different reasons like de-industrialization, changing technology, unemployment, poverty and neo-liberal political economy can be mentioned to explain the reasons of such a discontent. Furthermore, one should not also underestimate the enormous demographic change caused by the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc either. The period starting in 1989 signifies the beginning of a new historical epoch that ushered in the massive migration flows of ethnic Germans, ethnic Hungarians, ethnic Russians and Russian Jews from one place to another. The mobilization of millions of people has stimulated the nation-states to change their migration policies in a way that encouraged the arrival of immigrants from similar ethnic backgrounds. This period of demographic change in Western Europe went in tandem with the rise of discourses like the ‘clash of civilizations’, ‘culture wars’ and Islamophobia that presented societal heterogeneity in an unfavourable light. The intensification of Islamophobia made easier by al Qaeda type violence and the radicalization of some segments of Muslim origin immigrant communities in several countries reinforced the societal unrest resulting from immigration. The result was the introduction of restrictive migration policies and increased territorial border security vis-à-vis the nationals of third countries who originated from outside the European continent. Accordingly, some other issues have also been highlighted in the preceding chapters. The common tendency, prevalent in Western states, to categorize migration along with drug trafficking, human trafficking, international criminality and terrorism has fuelled the fear of migration and vilified the ‘others’. Securitization of migration has become a particularly pivotal issue after the 9/11 attacks in the United States, and others notably in Madrid and London. It is now evident that states rely on the discourse of securitization as a form of governmentality designed to unite a society politically by demonstrating an existential threat in the form of an internal, or an external 201

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enemy. For instance, the popularity of the claim that the EU will face a ‘flood’ of migration from Turkey when she joins the Union illustrates how such a politically and socially constructed fear can be manipulative for the ordinary citizens. Stereotypically casting migration and emphasizing its disrupting consequences, the media also play a role in the securitization process of migration. Migrants are often presented as imagined alien enemies that undermine the national culture, sap the nation’s scarce resources, steal precious jobs and bring in alien customs and religions. The recent efforts initiated by the European states to integrate the newcomers underline the need to put in place compulsory ‘integration contracts’, to make it obligatory for the immigrants to adopt ‘national and European values’, and to take compulsory language lessons as well. Thus, the tendency is to lay emphasis on cultural, attitudinal and linguistic integration rather than structural, political and social integration. It was also argued that citing statistical figures about migration, especially illegal migration, has recently become rather popular. Such exercises have certainly generated a climate of fear that seems to be serving the purposes of some political entities. Statisticalizing migrants has so far made the political elite, media and bureaucracy neglect, ignore or dismiss the social, political, cultural and economic gains that migrants contribute to receiving societies. Sustained references to the rising number of illegal immigrants is meant to underline the need to protect the national, social, ethnic and ‘racial’ body against ‘being polluted’ and ‘contaminated’ by ethno-culturally and religiously different migrants. One should keep in mind the fact that this new phase of immigrant-bashing happens at a time when net migration is almost zero, or even negative, in several countries like France, Germany, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands. This fact also makes the securitization of migration a rather cynical process. One could recall how the parochial political circles brought the ‘Polish plumber’ issue in France immediately on the eve of the European Constitutional referendum in 2005. However, there are already some timid signs indicating that the present migrantphobia is not doable anymore as there is certainly a growing need for further demographic input in Western Europe. Undoubtedly, the construction of the ‘enemy within’ seems to be a convenient way for the ruling political elite to mobilize the masses along with their own prospects in a time when the nation-states are being critically observed by their citizens for not being capable of finding firm solutions to structural problems existing since the mid 1970s. The object of the struggle has from then on shifted from social, political and economic terrains to ethno-cultural and religious terrains. The politics of culture, identity and religion has become the major resort for individuals to protect themselves against the destabilizing effects of global social and political changes. It was claimed in the earlier chapters that the rising politics of identity has also brought about a global political culture identified by ideological

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consumption of identities. It was argued that the overuse of identity discourse has the risk of reducing social, political and economic matters to cultural and religious ones, undermining the genuine universality of the notions of equality, justice and the rule of law. Accordingly, the reduction of structural problems to ethno-cultural and religious narratives has compelled marginalized minorities to abstain themselves from political space, and thus to be imprisoned in their own private space. Ascending cultural narratives deepen the boundaries between minorities and majority in a way that intensifies the narcissism of minor differences. The celebration of cultural differences has become so evident in everyday life that culture has also become the battlefield of social and political claims. Essentialization and reification of cultural differences have also encouraged the members of majority society to annihilate the other by regarding him/her as the absolute enemy. Globalism has not only equipped migrants and minorities with certain reflexivities to come to terms with the detrimental effects of the processes of globalization, it has also produced its own neo-liberal form of governmentality, which has transformed the modern state from investing in the idea of welfarism to investing in the idea of prudentialism. The idea of prudentialism requires social policy to be gradually based upon the notion of stakeholdership, and promotes the idea that individuals should be responsibilized and empowered by social policy to become a part of the club of stakeholders. Prudentialism is all about social Darwinism, which undermines the incapacity of subaltern individuals such as immigrants, who are not able to look after their certain needs due to the structural constraints creating an unequal stance for them in the spheres of education, labour market and politics. Immigrant origin individuals, mainly Euro-Muslims, respond accordingly to the demise of the welfare state policies, and thus to the rise of the workfare state. Such workers without work who have been structurally deprived of education, qualification and compassion have been the first losers subject to neo-liberal policies. Unemployment, poverty, exclusion, institutional racism, discrimination and Islamophobia have become the main reasons for the Muslim origin immigrants and their descendants to question the political and legal structure of their countries of settlement in a way that has made them hesitate to integrate into their countries of settlement. Instead they have tended to find a refuge in the comfort of certain communities of sentiments such as religious, ethnic, cultural and fellowship communities. Such communities of sentiments provide immigrants and their children with a safe haven protecting them against uncertainty, insecurity, ambiguity, poverty, unemployment and exclusion. Hence, religiosity seems to be one of the most versatile tactics to come to terms with the existing structural problems rather than being an essentialist state of mind. In the mean time, the discussions about the Euro-Muslims have been heated in a time when Turkey has been given a full-membership perspective

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to the EU. These discussions have also become imbedded in the debates on several bombing incidents by the so-called home-grown Islamist terrorists, Islamic fundamentalism, killing of anti-Islamist political leader Pim Fortuyn and film director Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands, Cartoon Crisis in Denmark, and the Pope’s unfortunate gaffe about the Prophet Mohammad. Accordingly, the stigmatization of Islam has somehow compelled many Muslims to redefine their relationship with their faith. The assaults on Islam by the Western politicians and media have made many Muslims to give a political meaning to Islam against the globalizing hegemony of the so-called material Western civilisation. Islam then has turned out to be the political weapon loaded against the insults of the materialist West. It is no longer simply a religion, but also a counter hegemonic global political movement followed by those Muslims who stand up against the tyranny of the West in Bosnia, Palestine, Kosovo, Kashmir, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Politicization of Islam by many Muslims is a function of the flows of globalization interconnecting different life worlds. Global flows have also radically changed the ways in which Islam has been perceived and practiced by many young Muslims. The fact that Islam has become more scriptualized in diaspora has challenged the state of the folk Islam brought from home by parents. The meaning of Islam has been deciphered on the internet by individual prayers without the need of having the consultation of imams, who used to have the sole authority on the Holy Book Quran. This is what I called individualization of Islam. Euro-Muslims have become more emancipated by means of global circuitry of modern communications, which are called ‘invisible colleges’ (Crane, 1972). Such Muslims no longer need the exact word of any religious authority, because they are attracted by the large networks of blogs, web pages, and religious associations. Hence, they are equipped with a critical intellectual gaze to liberate religion from their conservative parental culture. However, parallel to the individualization of Islam among young Muslim generations, there is also an antithetical process called institutionalization of Islam. Official efforts to institutionalize Islam through the establishment of some central Islamic organizations and councils to represent Muslims vis-à-vis the State have become regular in various EU countries. One should not forget the fact that unlike the Catholic or Orthodox Churches, Sunni Islam especially does not accept such hierarchical structures. Such attempts of institutionalization seem to derive from the learning experiences of the Western States vis-à-vis the management of Christian and Jewish religions, and they do not comply with Islam. They have the risk of essentializing the boundaries of Islam, which is likely to go through a different process of interaction in diaspora with other faith groups leading to hybrid and syncretic forms of identities. One should also underline that Islam is not homogeneous at all, and that such a forced form of institutionalization has the risk of alienating migrant communities from individuating themselves

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within the wider society. Forced institutionalization of Islam, on the contrary, may turn out to be a barrier before integration. It was also maintained that Germany, the Netherlands and Flanders have a particularist, multiculturalist and differentialist incorporation regime, and France and Wallonia have a universalist, republicanist and assimilationist one. However, both multiculturalist and republicanist policies have prompted Euro-Muslims to set up their own parallel communities. While the multiculturalist model has made the Euro-Muslims openly construct their own boundaries in their own private space, the assimilationist model has also made the Euro-Muslims stick together in their private space. It is also displayed that once difference-conscious multiculturalism prompts migrants and minorities to mobilize themselves not along political lines but along ethno-cultural lines, difference-blind republicanism fails in meeting identity based claims of migrants and minorities. Both perspectives seem to have strong pitfalls in prompting migrants and minorities to represent themselves in the legitimate political grounds such as parliament and political parties. This work has claimed that those varying governmental policies concerning immigrants – no matter if they are formed by republicanists or multiculturalists – have so far contributed to the othering, ethnicization and reminorisation of immigrant populations of especially Muslim origin in the European countries. The attempts of many transmigrants to reify, or to essentialise, their ethno-cultural and religious identities partly derives from their feeling of insecurity and ambiguity stimulated by structural constraints such as poverty, unemployment, uneducation, and institutional racism. Reification of culture and religion seems to be a practical tactic to be employed by migrants and their children in order to create a safe haven for themselves in diaspora. ‘Importing brides and bridegrooms’ also serves for the same purpose, to protect what is deemed to be left in the age of insecurity: culture, ethnicity, religion and past. It is believed by migrant communities that brides and bridegrooms brought from their homeland can sustain the power of their community as they are considered to have remained ‘pure’. The discourse of purity seems to be the last resort for migrants where they believe that they can defend their norms, values and families challenged by the ‘spectre of globalization’. Besides, it is also apparent that the so-called imported brides and bridegrooms pose a challenge for integration as they contribute to the continuation of the chain migration of the Muslim origin migrants. However, the study has considerable findings revealing that Euro-Muslims themselves have already started to complain about the negative externalities of such marriages, which are likely to end up with divorce, trauma, domestic violence and cultural incompetence of infants. That is why this work proposes that EU states do not need to take extra precautions in order to prevent such marriages as in the Netherlands, Germany, France and Denmark. However,

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communities have their own learning processes, when some acts are no longer viable they are destined to drop out. Learning processes can be fostered, but not morally and legally ordered. Accordingly, this work has found out that there is already a decline in the number of Muslim origin youngsters getting married from their countries of origin as the complications of such marriages have become evident. Constructing communities was presented in the work as a popular tactic for transmigrants to come to terms with the existing structural problems. The study uncovers that subaltern men with migrant background are more affiliated with a diasporic nationalism based on the celebration of the homeland country, while women seem to be more engaged in religiosity. Despite the fact that women are likely to have more religious tendencies, they also try out new tactics to transcend the patriarchal structure of the self-sustaining community. For instance, on the one hand there is a growing tendency among women who try to have access to the labour market, they are also more likely to identify themselves with the categories of ‘cosmopolitant’ and ‘Belgian, German, French and/or Dutch citizen’ compared to men. Younger generations tend to generate similar tactics in everyday life to those of women in order to transcend the boundaries of the patriarchal community. These tactics are formed within the framework of a kind of symbolic religiosity as opposed to the hegemonic homeland nationalism promoted by the developments in their country of origin. The work also reveals that the social, political, economic, cultural and linguistic integration capacity of Euro-Muslims into the majority societies is primarily related to differences in generation and social-economic status. Younger generations and groups with higher social-economic status seem to be more integrated than older generations, women and groups with lower social economic status who feel excluded from the social, political and economic spheres of everyday life. However, such groups tend to generate their own alternative strategies for integrating themselves into the majority society through ethnocultural and religious institutions. Although the younger generations have dubious thoughts about the current state of the EU as well as their countries of settlement, they are very much engaged in European and German/French/Belgian/Dutch identities. Compared to middle-class groups who complain about ambiguity and insecurity, those with higher social status, who enjoy stronger social and cultural capital, and those with lower social status, who have positive expectations about the future seem to be more closely affiliated with their countries of settlement. Although these groups are socially, economically and culturally different from each other, they both generate alternative forms of integration. Thus, the way EuroMuslims act in their countries of settlement is very much dependent on the quality of relations between their countries of origin and settlement. The findings indicate that several Euro-Muslims identify themselves with hyphenated (multiple) identities such as French-Muslim-Turkish, or

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Belgian-Muslim-Moroccan. What is remarkable here is that political identity is prior to religious and ethnic identities. Recently, some Islamic oriented movements, such as the Cojépiennes based in Strasbourg, have shown a determination to adapt to the Western way of life with their own identities. Such modern interpretations of Islam prove that Islam does not actually pose a threat against Western values; its main concern is actually to incorporate itself into the mainstream. Cojéppiennes identify themselves as FrenchMuslim-Turks, using hyphens to bridge their political, religious and ethnic identities.

Transnationalizing integration The preceding chapters underlined the current tendency of reducing integration to cultural assimilation, which corresponds to a process portrayed by the return of assimilation and homogenization. One could challenge such a tendency in at least two ways: Firstly, one could say that this is a rather outmoded definition of integration, which fails to include structural, political, civic, marital, identificational, and behavioural components of integration. Secondly, one could also argue that the integration of migrants can no longer remain a one-way process in the age of globalization. It should rather be transnationalized with the involvement of not only the receiving country but also the sending country and supranational or international organizations like the EU, Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Let me add a few more words about the concept of ‘transnationalizing integration’. It is accurate to claim that international migrants, or transmigrants, are both subjects and objects of the processes of globalization. Contemporary technological developments of transportation and communication provide them with the chance to dwell on both banks of the river at the same time, or ‘have their feet in two societies’, as Elsa Chaney (1979: 209) noted in the context of Caribbeans living in the United States: actually dwelling in the country of destination, and symbolically living in the country of origin. Thus, most of the contemporary international migrants have constructed a third space in between homeland and hostland, that is, a transnational space characterized by a constant social, political, cultural and economic interaction between at least two locations, or sometimes even more. Thus, immigration countries should not limit their efforts of integration of migrants to nationally bound policies; they should rather transnationalize integration in a way that not only involves state-run institutions and civil society organizations of the receiving countries but also relevant agents of sending countries (media, ministries, NGOs) and the migrant associations themselves as well as some international, or supranational, organizations such as the EU. Transnationalizing integration may reinforce integration for various reasons. Receiving countries should come to terms with the fact that it is actually

208 Islam, Migration and Integration

migrants’ transnational networks such as families, friends and communities, which offer them in the first place the initial aid and contacts for social and economic settlement in the country of destination. In this regard, one should bear in mind that integration starts in the country of origin where potential migrants learn about better opportunities to leave home and to live in the arrival country, through the media, information technologies, and oral communications through family and friend networks. In due course, the connections between emigrants and their homelands carry on through media, internet, and technologies of communication and transportation. In other words, migrants and their descendants go on being connected to their country of origin in the age of rapid technologies of communication removing geographical distance between the two locations. Sattelite TV channels broadcasting from the country of origin, daily newspapers coming from ‘home’, blogs connecting the diaspora to the remote villages in the country of origin, and GSMs, DVDs, VCDs and video-tapes replicating the music, colours, tastes, symbols, sounds, fantasies and imaginations of the homeland in the hostland, are all different means of communication for transmigrants. Due to the virtue of the global circuitry of communication creating a transnational space between Turkey, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia on the one hand and the EU countries on the other, it does not seem to be convenient to ask the Turkish, Moroccan, Algerian or Tunisian origin transmigrants to cut off their relations with their homelands as no-one really asks Spanish, Greek, Italian or Portugese origin migrants to do the same. Nina Schiller, Linda Basch and Christina Blanc-Szanton have defined very ably the new global condition of migration as well as the new type of migrant. Their point is worth quoting in full: Our earlier conceptions of immigrant and migrant no longer suffice. The word immigrant evokes images of permanent rupture, of the uprooted, the abandonment of old patterns and the painful learning of a new language and culture. Now a new kind of migrating population is emerging, composed of those whose networks, activities, and patterns of life encompass both their host and home societies ... We call this new conceptualization ‘transnationalism’ and describe the new type of migrants as ‘transmigrants’ ... . (Schiller, Basch and Blanc-Szanton, 2004) In the age of transnationalism, many migrants are no longer physically detached from their countries of origin due to poverty or lack of access to means of transportation and communication. Globalism makes it much easier for contemporary migrants to physically and symbolically travel back and forth between their countries of origin and destination. The idea of transnationalizing integration may also lead the decision makers not to perceive ethno-cultural and religious associations established by Euro-Muslims as a barrier for their integration, but rather as venues

Conclusion: Transnationalizing Integration 209

providing migrant origin individuals with a social capital for recognition. Furthermore, such associations could also be channelled into a pathway leading to further political and societal participation of migrant-origin groups. It is revealed that there is a positive correlation between ethnocultural associational membership of immigrant origin individuals and political participation. Membership to ethno-cultural associations equips immigrants with the trust required for political participation. In other words, ethnic associations make integration flourish. The growth of voluntary associations in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands create social trust, leading to more political trust and higher political participation. It was also uncovered that ethnic media contribute to the political activities of the communities of migrant origin in the wider society. However, republicanist and difference-blind France remains to be a problematic country in which French-Muslims are politically inactive.

Notes Introduction 1. The terms ‘Civilizationist’ and ‘Culturalist’ will be used throughout the text in parallel to the way Norbert Elias (1998: 3–41) has used before. Accordingly, I will presume that ‘Civilization’ is the defining motive of colonial countries, while ‘Kultur’ (a German word) is that of defensive nations, which have been struggling to be a part of the hegemonic political power in the world. 2. For a detailed account of growing global migration flows in the late 1980s and early 1990s leading to the securitization of migration see Brubaker (1991). 3. For a detailed account of the ways in which the ‘clash of civilisations’ paradigm was revitalized in the aftermath of 9/11, see Sussex (2004). 4. ‘President Delivers State of the Union Address’, Press Release of the Office of the Press Secretary (29 January 2002), available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/ releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html 5. For further information about governmentality, see Foucault (1979). Michel Foucault, describes the concept of governmentality as a collection of methods used by political power to maintain its power, or as an art of acquiring power. 6. For a detailed account of the ways in which the area of ‘Freedom, Security and Justice’ has been created by the European Union, see Buonfino (2004). 7. Through the Secure Border Initiative (SBI) Bush administration decided to bid in a tender to reinforce the security of the US borders. In 2006, five international companies were invited to submit proposals: Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Ericsson and Northrop Grumman (Eric Liton, ‘Bush Turns to Big Military Contractors for Border Control’, New York Times, 18 May 2006). The aerospace company Boeing was given $2 billion to develop a cyber wall, or a virtual wall, along the US border. 8. See ‘European Union Budget 2007 in figures’, EU webpage available at http:// ec.europa.eu/budget/library/publications/budget_in_fig/dep_eu_budg_2007_ en.pdf 9. For further detail see ‘EU to open job centre in Mali to promote legal migration’ (25 January 2007), available at http://www.eubusiness.com/news_live/maliimmigration.75/ (entry date 10 June 2008). 10. See paragraph 1.7.1. (14–15) of the Programme, EU Council document 16054/04, 13 December 2004. 11. See Extraordinary Council Meeting – Justice, Home Affairs and Civil Protection, Brussels, 20 September 2001 (12019/01, Presse 327). 12. Extraordinary Council Meeting – Justice and Home Affairs, Brussels, 19 March 2004 (7555/04, Presse 94). 13. The Hague Programme: Strengthening Freedom, Security and Justice in the European Union, Annex 1, Presidency Conclusions – Brussels, 5 November 2004 (1492/04). 14. For further explanation on the ideological nature of maps see Anderson (1983: 163–186). 15. For further detail on the stereotypical representation of migrant communities in Europe see Wal (2002), and Wal et al. (2005). 210

Notes 211 16. The Detention Statistics Summary of the Detention and Offshore Services Division (DIAC) of 13 April 2007, for instance, shows that there were 528 people in immigration detention, including 81 in community detention. Of these 528 people, 69 were illegal foreign fishers. Other than the illegal foreign fishers, 367 of the people in immigration detention were detained as a result of compliance action, that is, overstaying their visa or breaching the conditions of their visa, resulting in a visa cancellation. Of the 528 people in immigration detention, only 10 were unauthorised boat arrivals and 46 were unauthorised air arrivals. See the web page of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship of the Australian Government, http://www.immi.gov.au/managing-australias-borders/detention/ statistics/immigration-detentionstatistics.pdf. Statisticalizing of illegal migration has clearly been employed as a tool for the implementation of the politics of fear in Australia in order to ‘fight against the Islamic cancer in our body politic’, as stated by John Stone (2006), a former National Party senator. 17. For the scholarly works see Lamm and Imhoff (1985), Stacy and Lutton (1988), and Fortuyn (2001). 18. The figure in 2005 was 145.000. Popular countries of destination in 2006 were the following: Switzerland, 18.000 (12%), United States, 13 800 (9%) und Austria, 10.300 (7%). The age groups between 18 and 50 prefer to go to countries such as Switzerland, the United States of America and Australia, while the elderly people emigrate to the Mediterranean Riviera in Spain, or Turkey. For further detail see the official webpage of Statistisches Bundesamt, ‘Zahl der Woche Nr. 43 vom 30.10.2007’, available at http://www.destatis.de/jetspeed/portal/cms/Sites/ destatis/Internet/DE/Presse/pm/zdw/2007/PD07__043__p002.psml (entry date 5 June 2008); and ‘Pressemitteilung Nr. 220 vom 30.05.2007’, Pressrelease, available at http://www.destatis.de/jetspeed/portal/cms/Sites/destatis/Internet/DE/Presse/ pm/2007/05/PD07__220__125.psml (entry date 5 June 2008). 19. The phrase ‘Polish plumber’ (Plombier polonais in French) was first used by Philippe de Villiers, a member of the European Parliament, and opponents of the European Constitution as a symbol of cheap labour coming in from Central Europe as a result of the Directive on services in the internal market during the EU Constitution referendum in France in 2005. For further details on the debates regarding the rejection of the European Constitution in the French and Dutch referanda respectively held on 29 May and 1 June 2005 see, Samuelsen (2005). 20. Michel Foucault’s notion of ‘bio-politics’ may be illuminating here in the sense that he coined the term to address the state’s regulating role of bodies through education and science (Foucault, 1979a). 21. Brubaker’s homogenizing attempt seems to ignore the fact that German citizenship had a different disposition in the nineteenth century vis-à-vis Polish migrants. Late nineteenth century citizenship law was more flexible. Polish miners for instance working in the Ruhr area were easily granted German citizenship, and now there are several people with Polish surnames who are not considered to be non-German. Some of those Polish miners were already German citizens, and some were not.

1

Germany: from Segregation to Integration

1. The story of migration from the ‘developing’ countries to the FRG was successfully exhibited by John Berger et al. (1975) in the book, A Seventh Man. The photographs in the book taken during the journey from home to Germany partly express

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3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Notes

the difficulties which the immigrants experienced during the migration. The photos taken during the medical check-ups, for instance, prove how degrading the selection process of workers was as conducted by ‘experts’ of the recruiting country. Recruiting seasonal workers from neighbouring countries has always been a repeated governmental act in Germany since the mid nineteenth century. It was mostly the Russian-Poles who were recruited as seasonal workers. In 1894 there were 25,403 seasonal workers in Germany, then Prussia; 454,348 in 1905; and 900,780 in 1914 (Bade, 1984; and Nathans, 2004: 125). Anthropologically speaking, there are two main approaches of culture: holistic and syncretic. The main claim of the holistic approach is that ‘shared meanings and values’ are the principal constituents of each distinct culture. The focus on ‘shared meanings and values’ may sometimes make culture sound too unitary, homogeneous, and too cognitive. The disturbance of this unity and holism is considered to result in crisis, breakdown or degeneration. The themes of ‘identity crisis’, ‘in-betweenness’, ‘split identities’, ‘degeneration’, ‘culture wars’ and ‘clash of civilisations’ raised by various scholars in the study of ethnic minorities is the product of such an assumption. This assumption holds no place for syncreticism, hybridity, mixture, melange and bricolage. Syncreticism could merely be considered, in this approach, nothing but an impurity polluting the ‘authentic culture’ (Tylor, 1871; Bell, 1978; Smith, 1995). Whereas, the syncretic notion of culture claims that mixing and bricolage are the main characteristics of cultures. In this approach, culture does not develop along ethnically absolute lines but in complex, dynamic patterns of syncreticism (Gilroy, 1987: 13); and cultural identity is considered a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as ‘being’ (Hall, 1989; 1994). The word ‘gurbetçi’ comes form the word ‘gurbet’, which derives from the Arabic word garaba, to go away, to depart, to be absent, to go to a foreign country, to emigrate, to be away from one’s homeland, to live as a foreigner in another country. Thus, ‘gurbetçi’ literally means the one who lives away from home, in Diaspora. Almanyalı, or Almancı literally means German-like, which is a stereotypical definition of German-Turks in Turkey. The major Turkish stereotypical images of German-Turks are those of their being rich, eating pork, having a very comfortable life in Germany, losing their Turkishness, and becoming more and more German. What is also remarkable is that almost all the Turkish migrants who went to the European countries were named as ‘Almancı’ in Turkey. Some other scholars do not agree with such an analysis. Hailbronner (1983) and Joppke (2000) claim that Article 116(1) of the Basic Law should be conceived of as a temporary device to cope with the consequences of the war, and that it has never been the dominant constitutional opinion. According to such scholars, the Basic Law framed the Federal Republic as a provisional, incomplete nation-state closing up itself towards foreigners, because their inclusion might undermine the social impulse for unification through changing the texture of the citizenry (Joppke, 2000: 152–153). Hailbronner (1983: 2113) assumes that ‘conceiving of the Federal Republic as a country of immigration with several national minorities would conflict with the Basic Law’s conception of a incomplete state set up for the purpose of recovering national unity’. It was common for Turkish applicants to re-apply immediately after their German naturalization for their temporarily-lost-Turkish citizenship. Turkey allows dual citizenship once the military service of the applicant has been resolved. Denizen literally refers to those who reside in a certain location. The term is introduced by Thomas Hammar (1990) in the migrancy context.

Notes 213 9. For a detailed account of the contemporary German Nationality Law see the German Interior Ministry, http://www.bmi.bund.de/Internet/Content/Common/ Anlagen/Gesetze/Staatsangehoerigkeitsgesetz _ _englisch,templateId=raw, property=publicationFile.pdf/Staatsangehoerigkeitsgesetz_englisch.pdf 10. The main reason for the higher naturalization rate of Turks in 1999 compared to the previous years is the shortening by law of the required duration of residence from 15 to 8 years. 11. For a more detailed account of the party competition about the immigration and citizenship issue in Germany see Gerdes, Faist and Rieple (2007), Nathans (2004: 248–265) and Thränhardt (2000). 12. For a detailed account of the discussions of citizenship law in Germany see Kaya (2005). The Justice and Development Party (AKP) in governments is now planning to pass a law in the Turkish Parliament to let Turkish immigrants and their descendants with Turkish nationality vote in parliamentary elections, nationwide referendums as well as to the newly introduced direct election of the president. For further information see Dörte Hüneke, ‘Government Plans for Turkish Diaspora Vote’, Turkish Daily News (15 January 2008), available at http://www. turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=93638, entry date 24 February 2008. 13. Independent Commission on Migration to Germany was chaired by Rita Süssmuth, MP; and the report prepared by the Commission was submitted to the Federal Minister of the Interior on the 4 July 2001. The Commission’s Report, ‘Organizing Immigration: Fostering Immigration’, recommended that Germany admit 50,000 more foreigners than currently arrive via family reunification and as recognized asylum seekers. Out of 50,000, 20,000 foreign professionals would be admitted in accordance with the points system, 20,000 admitted temporarily with five-year permits, and 10,000 trainees and foreign graduates of German universities with two-year work permits. See the report online, http://www.bmi. bund.de/dokumente/Artikel/ix46876.htm 14. For a detailed analysis of the economic potential of Turkish immigrant entrepreneurs in Germany, see ‘The Economic Potential of Turks: Migrant Entrepreneurs in Germany’ (2003), http://www.zft-online.de/english.phd ‘(access date 2 February 2007) 15. For further detail on this issue see Petzen (2004). 16. AMGT was considered to be an illegal political organization by the Bundesverfassungsschutz (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, BfV) until 2006. For the latest Report of the Bundesverfassungsschutz in which the AMGT was still considered illegal see, (entry date 12 May 2008). 17. For the origins of the Welfare Party, see Çakir (1990), and Gülalp (2001). 18. For further detail about the Alevi transnational networks see Erman and Erdemir (2005). 19. For an elaborate analysis of the reproduction of ethno-religious borders between Alevi and Sunni female students in Germany see, Karakus¸ oglu-Aydın (2001). 20. Stereotypically Alevis have been portrayed by some Sunnis as infidel, engaged in incests, and having easy-going women. It was argued that the director of Tatort, Angelina Maccarone, reproduced the stereotype. Alevis also believed that she went even further and veiled the Alevi character. This was an even more unfortunate mistake to be made for Alevis as they have always been proud of a laic and secular orientation distancing them from fanatic Sunnis. Major Alevi

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23.

24. 25. 26.

2

Notes associations such as Pir Sultan Abdal Association and Haci Bektas¸ Veli Cultural Association also expressed their complaints to the German Embassy in Turkey. A similar incidence happened when a popular showman, Güner Ümit, vocalized the same stereotype with reference to the Alevis during a live Interstar TV show on 11 January 1995. Güner Ümit encountered an immense protest from the public, and he had to cease his TV career. For further information see Greve (2006), and Köhne and Kepenek (1997). For an extensive account of Turkish media in Europe see Tapia (2005). Stéphane de Tapia also very successfully delineates a historical profile of the TV and radio channels broadcasting through the Turkish diaspora between 1994 and 2004, and their financial sources (Tapia, 2005: 251–270). Su TV, Düzgün TV, and Yol TV are the major TV channels broadcasting for the Alevis both in diaspora and homeland. These channels were installed in Germany by individual entrepreneurs, who have successfully created a self-sustaining Alevi economy. Reaching out to a large number of Alevi population all around the world, this sector has become very attractive for other mainstream entrepreneurs. For further discussion on the Alevi broadcasting see Kosnick (2007). The Turkish film industry produced a vast amount of film until the early eighties prior to the hegemony of the American film industry over the world market. Julia Knight (1986) stated that 80 per cent of German-Turks used to watch Turkish videos daily. For a detailed account of the local TV channels run by the German-Turks, see Kosnick (2004; and 2007).

France: from Integration to Segregation

1. Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa. They mostly live in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Many Berbers call themselves some variant of the word Imazighen (singular Amazigh), meaning ‘free men’. This is common in Morocco. In Algeria another particular term, Kabyle, is to refer to the Berbers. For further information on the migration of the Berbers across the Mediterranean see de Haas (2005: 12–15). 2. ‘Blackfeet’ – the name given to white Europeans living in Algeria before its independence. 3. The word ‘Harki’ derives from the Arabic word harka, or haraka, which refers to ‘war party’ or ‘movement’, that is a group of volunteers, especially soldiers. The word ‘Harkis’ is used for those Muslim Algerians serving as auxiliaries with the French Army, during the Algerian War from 1954 to 1962. 4. A recent PhD dissertation reveals that the invisibility of Portuguese origin migrants does not result simply from their successful assimilation into a French and Christian lifestyle, but rather from their explicit effort to conceal their Portuguese identities inside the community associations. The invisibility of Portuguese everyday life in France implies that it protected them from the antiimmigrant sentiment that dominated French society in 1970s (Jelen, 2007). Also see Belmessous et al. (2006: 19–43). 5. For further information see EuropeanVoice.com, available at http://www. europeanvoice. com/archive/article.asp?id=16008 6. For further information see Elita Vucheva (2008), ‘France Pushes for HardNosed EU Migration Pact’ Euobserver (2 June), available athttp://euobserver. com/9/26235/?rk=1 (entry date 2 June 2008).

Notes 215 7. Sarkozy’s new wishes to the Press, 12 January 2006. See Alasdair Sandford (12 January 2006), ‘Sarkozy alters tack on immigration’, BBC News online: http:// news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4608108.stm, entry date 22 March 2008. 8. In French, the word ‘laïcité’ is used to refer to the secular state, which is expected to give no room to both religious interference in government affairs, and government interference in religious affairs. 9. FAS, le Fonds d’Action Sociale, was created in 1958, and designed to promote social action in favour of immigrant workers and their families. 10. ‘en refusant le communautarisme, il ne s’agit naturellement pas d’ignorer l’existence des communautés,’ Jacques Chirac’s Speech, Troyes, Aube (14 October 2002). 11. Bas-Lauriol Law (1975) mandated the use of French in public documents and in commerce; and the Toubon law (1994) made the use of French compulsory in all public agencies. 12. Constitutional Council was established during the Fifth Republic, and it has played an important role in the expansion of civil liberties, especially in the realm of speech and press (Stevens, 2003: 3–4). 13. For a more detailed account of the demise of French universalism see Schor (2001). 14. The Encyclopedia of Islam (1986: 745–746) identifies over a hundred terms for dress parts, many of which are used for veiling. Some of these mostly Arabic words are as follows: burqa, abayah, tarhah, burnus, jilbab, jellabah, hayik, gargush, gina, lithma, izar, khimar, sitara, immah and yashmik. Fadwa el Guindi (1999) successfully uncovers the meaning of veiling in different contexts as a form of resistance, privacy, modesty, secrecy, identity and emancipation. 15. Chenière was later elected to the National Parliament as a deputy for the centreRight RPR (Rassemblement pour la République). 16. Jospin originally announced this position in an interview to Le Nouvel Observateur and then presented it again later the same day in a National Assembly meeting. See, Thomas (2000). 17. On the other hand, there is no federal ban against the wearing of the veil in Germany, but specific provinces like Berlin, Bavaria, Lower Saxony, BadenWürttemberg and Saarland have acted to prohibit civil servants from wearing the hijab. The conservative government of Baden-Württemberg was the first to ban female teachers from wearing the headscarf. 18. Dreux is a small industrial city of around 30,000 inhabitants in total and with a relatively large Muslim population in the northwest of France, in the Eure-etLoir département, where the Front National had its first victory in 1983. 19. For a further analysis of the ways in which Muslim women express their motives for wearing headscarves see Gaspard (1995). 20. The term Racaille has recently acquired a widespread circulation in France. It is even now converted by the banlieau youth to caillera in accordance with the vernacular linguistic practices of syllabic inversion (verlan). The term verlan (derives from vers−l’en, where the syllables of the word l’envers − reverse/opposite − are themselves reversed. The speakers of verlan reverse the syllables of words to disguise the meaning of what they are saying from outsiders. In every other respect the conversation is perfectly normal. In its eagerness to deceive, verlan often suppresses vowels that would appear in black and white −a and i disappear, o becomes e or rather eu. So the word arabe becomes rebeu, femme becomes meuf and juif becomes feuj. But the word cité retains its colour and is pronounced as

216

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29. 30.

Notes téci, while the chinois are noiches. For further information on verlan see Hatzfeld (2007). Immediately after the riots, French Police Department made an inquiry about the claims, and concluded that there was no connection between international terrorist organizations and the riots. There are no official figures in France indicating the numbers of ethnic and religious populations because census data do not include any information on religion. This hypothesis was significantly substantiated by a recent field work conducted in Paris in the Summer of 2006. Although it seems that this discursive shift is rather an intellectual construct, what is important is that it has gained a very fast publicity. One could find several blogs and interventions on the internet concerning the circulation of this expanding radical discourse. A similar debate is also made by Nacira Guénif-Souilamas (2006). She is using the notion of Le musulman laic (secular Muslim) when she is revealing the ways in which young men (Beurs) and women (Beurette) of North African origin melt into the French way of life. The data collected by the work of Kaya and Kentel (2005) affirm Tribalat’s findings concerning the discrimination faced by immigrant populations and those of foreign origin. French-Turks, when asked, address mostly the problem of discrimination in France (17 per cent). For further information on the French schooling system and ethnic segregation in schools see Felouzis (2006). In order to cope with institutional racism in the labour market as well as in other spheres of life, migrant origin people tend to give traditional French first names to newborn children. Gérard Noiriel indicates that this practice is rather an old practice among migrants: in a Polish community in northern France, 44 per cent in 1935, 73 per cent in 1945, 82 per cent in 1955, and 98 per cent in 1960 (Noiriel, 1998: 233). Insight into the process of migrant youth integration can be gleaned from a study comparing second-generation migrant populations in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden (Crul and Vermeulen, 2003). The study, for instance, found out that Muslim-background youth in Germany suffered far less unemployment than Muslim-background youth in France, Belgium and, to a lesser extent, the Netherlands. This is because of the apprentice system linked to vocational school education in Germany. In Belgium, France and the Netherlands, a significant number of Muslim-background youth held professional or white-collar jobs, but many highly qualified and unqualified secondgeneration Turkish members of the labour force were unemployed owing to the difficult transition from school to employment. The PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) study, being conducted annually among OECD nations since 2001, shows that the quality and opportunity of education is significantly low in schools in neighbourhoods mostly populated by minorities, that violence is an important problem in these schools, and that the schools receive inadequate technological investment. See, INSEE, available online at http://www.insee.fr/en/indicateur/indic_conj/ chomage_emploi.htm Most of these neighbourhoods we have observed during our qualitative research share the common attribute of being ethnically Turkish enclaves. They are only a few of such ethnic enclaves. See Kaya and Kentel (2005). La Courneuve, St. Dennis and Crétil were included to the list after my field work in the banlieues of Paris in the summer of 2006.

Notes 217 31. Loïc Wacquant (2006) successfully compares the ghettos of Chicago with the banlieues of Paris, and he reveals the ways in which ghettos and banlieues became so isolated due to the concentration, marginalization, stigmatization, polarization and securitization of the poor. For further information on the ways in which the processes of deindustrialization and deproletarization deepened the crisis of the ghettos in Chicago, see Wilson (1997). 32. The French Parliament needs to be placed under scrutiny due to her peculiarities in comparison to the national parliaments of the other EU member states with regard to the average age and gender distribution of the parliamentarians (average age in the French National Assembly is 57, while it is 50 in the British House of Commons, 49 in the German Bundestag, and 48 in the Swedish Parliament as of 2005). However, one should not forget the fact that the issue of ethno-cultural and religious difference became a subject of debate during the initial era of Socialist rule (1981–1986) under the Mitterand presidency, when the government was affiliated with a policy of cultural pluralism, and when the ‘right to be different’ was considered to be an expression of equality, liberty and diversity. But, from the end of 1980s, economic difficulties and the pressing need for ‘national integration’ led to the underemphasis of such a right (Safran, 2003: 77).

3

Belgium: a Culturally Divided Land

1. For a comprehensive analysis of the Belgian Federal system as a model for the European Union see Swenden (2003). 2. In 1890, Flemings represented 50 per cent of the Belgian population, Walloons 42 per cent and Bruxellois 8 per cent. In 1970, the figures were 65 per cent, 33 per cent and 11 per cent respectively. 3. For a more detailed account of the Vlaams Blok, see Hossay (1996), De Winter (2005) and Mielants (2006). 4. In 2002, the Vlaams Blok Party was brought to court by the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism and the Liga voor Mensenrechten (League for Human Rights) for ‘incitement to hate and discrimination.’ The organizations were condemned by the Court of Appeal of Ghent in April 2004 for ‘repeated incitement to discrimination.’ An appeal by the party was thrown out by the High Court in November 2004. Following this conviction, the Vlaams Blok disbanded and its successor, the Vlaams Belang party was established in 2004 (Mielants, 2006). 5. CCI was later named as Consultative Council of Populations of Foreign Origin and concluded its mission in 1991. 6. The involvement of the Saudi-based Muslim World League (MWL), also known as Rabita, in financial support of the Muslim organizations in Belgium, Germany, France and the Netherlands in the late 1970s and early 1980s, caused a great uproar in Turkey in the second half of the 1980s. Popular journalist Ug ˘ ur Mumcu (1987) revealed that the Turkish state authorities, including President Kenan Evren’s office, approved the fact that the MWL was paying the salaries of Turkish imams serving in European countries. This secretive link caused political turmoil in Turkey, characterized by its laic structure. The MWL group was founded in 1962 in Saudi Arabia and is the most important and influential Wahhabi organization in the world, effectively serving as the ideological headquarters for Islamic extremists worldwide. MWL conducts its work through branch offices and affiliate organizations established in countries all over the world.

218 Notes 7. For a more detailed account of the critique of multiculturalism see Rosaldo (1989), Radtke (1994), Russon (1995) and Kaya (2001). 8. For a detailed analysis of the institutionalization of Islam in Belgium see Zemni (2006). 9. In the Netherlands, immigrants have been allowed to vote in local elections since 1994. Currently, no other European country apart from Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland and the Scandinavian countries, has yet granted migrants the right to vote. 10. The number of naturalized Belgian-Turks is as follows: 17,282 in 2000; 14,401 in 2001; 7,805 in 2002 and 5,186 in 2003. Source: National Institute of Statistics, 2004. 11. The term allochtone is a Dutch word originating from the combination of two Greek words: ‘allo’ (other) and ‘khthon’ (earth/land). The term literally refers to someone originating from another country. In common usage, the term corresponds to those strangers who have non-western origins. The popularity of the term in the Flemish context also reveals the fact that non-Europeans are strictly defined as a distinct category of people who cannot become truly Flemish. 12. Radio Pasha, Radio Ezgi, Panik FM and Suryanilerin Sesi Radyosu (Voice of Assyrians Radio) are three of the local Belgian-Turkish radio stations broadcasting in Belgium. Satellite TV channels can also receive several Turkish TV and radio channels broadcasting from Turkey. Furthermore, Belgian-Turks have access to a wide variety of Turkish language newspapers from Turkey. Belgian-Turks also have a monthly Turkish language journal, Binfikir, printed in Brussels (www.binfikir. be). Recently there have been several internet sites contributing to the construction of a ‘community of sentiments’ among the Belgian-Turks, some of which are http://www.anadolu.be/; http://www.belturk.be; http://www.abhaber.com; http://www.eglence.be/ http://www.turkhavadis.com; http://avrasyailetisim. sitemynet.com/; http://www.anafilya.org/go.php; www.lactuel.be/; http://www. belcikaturk.com/; http://www.funremix.net/; www.turksestudent.be; http:// belcikasecimleri.be/; http://walter-yavuz.skynetblogs.be/; www.gundem.be; www.belcikahaber.be; www.hadeka.be; http://www.turk-konsolos.com/go.php; www.uetd.be; http://www.bteu.de/index.php?newlang=tur; www.ilhanfoods. com/tr/website.htm; www.turksport.be/go.php; www.rehber.be/contact.php; and so on. These portals are mostly engaged in tourism, entertainment, news, business, trade, banking, transportation, catering, and sports. http://www. turkseunie.be/ 13. Hrant Dink was first found guilty by a Turkish court in May 2006 ‘insulting Turkishness’ under the Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. Article 301 (1 June 2005) of the Turkish Penal Code says: ‘A person who publicly denigrates Turkishness, the Republic or the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and three years; A person who publicly denigrates the Government of the Republic of Turkey, the judicial institutions of the State, the military or security organizations shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and two years; In cases where denigration of Turkishness is committed by a Turkish citizen in another country the punishment shall be increased by one third; and expressions of thought intended to criticize shall not constitute a crime.’ Charges have so far been brought against various intellectuals, including popular figures like Orhan Pamuk, the 2006 Literature Nobel Prize Winner, and Hrant Dink.

Notes 219 14. A street fight started between Kurds and Turks on the 1 April after a fire the night before on the 31 March 2007, which Kurds blamed on Turkish immigrants. Police used water cannon on Sunday (1 April) to disperse the crowd, which in turn threw stones and bottles at police vehicles. See, http://www.setimes.com/ cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/newsbriefs/setimes/newsbriefs/2007/04/02/nb-07 15. Internet sites such as www.kistik.com, www.molebutton.com, www.nurhak. com illustrate the ways in which young generations rediscover their roots in a way that connects them to the villages of their parents, which they have probably never seen before. Old wines in new bottles! For a further discussion on the reproduction of Alevi solidarity networks across the diaspora see, Erman (2007). 16. See King Baudouin Foundation (2006). ‘Pathways to Success in Education for Young Migrants: Identification of Factors Critical to Success within a European Context’, Report on the Seminar Held in Brussels on Wednesday 6 December 2006: 11–12. Available at http://www.kbs-frb.be/files/db/EN/PUB_1670_E&JA_ ReportEN_06122006.pdf 17. Co-ordinated by the OECD, PISA (the Programme for International Student Assessment, 2003) is a collaborative effort among the governments of 28 OECD and four non-member countries. The first results, published in December 2001, provide an indicator of the outcome of initial education that is officially recognized across the developed world. The survey is repeated every three years, allowing countries to monitor progress regularly. Results are available at http:// www.oecd.org/dataoecd/1/63/34002454.pdf

4

The Netherlands: from Multiculturalism to Assimilation

1. AEL was founded and is led by Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Lebanese-born Shi’a Muslim living in Belgium. 2. At the same time in recent years, there appears also a small movement towards recognition for the first time of the role of the slave trade and slavery in Dutch history. This movement resulted in the erection of a national monument in Oosterpark, Amsterdam, on 1 July 2002, in the presence of Queen Beatrix and the prime minister. Over the last few years, the Surinamese are no longer mentioned as belonging to the category of ‘allochtonous’. It is not that they are explicitly accepted as belonging to the Dutch society, but more that they are absent from the problematic category. They have managed to climb up the social ladder. On the other hand, the Antillean, Caribbean group continues to be seen as problematic, especially the young men. 3. A Boeing 747 cargo airplane heading to Tel Aviv, suffered from technical problems immediately after taking off from Schiphol and crashed into an apartment building in the Bijlmer neighbourhood of Amsterdam while attempting to return to the Schipol airport. A total of 47 people were killed, including the plane’s crew of three. Many more were injured in the accident. 4. For further detail on the Integration of Newcomers Act see Siedenburg (2004), available at http://www.ces.boun.edu.tr/papers/feb/anton_ sdenburg.pdf 5. Martin Sommer, ‘Makelaars in minderheden’, Volkskrant 28 December 2002 [www. volkskrant.nl.binnenland/1063948751109.html], accessed October 2007. 6. Similar to Paul Scheffer, Republican American scholars such as Arthur M. Schlessinger (1991) and Robert Hughes (1993) also brought similar arguments to

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9.

10. 11.

Notes criticize the policies of multiculturalism in the United States, and claimed that American multiculturalism will result in the dissolution of the United States. For further detail about the Act see the webpage of the Dutch Ministry of Justice available at