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Stuart Hall's concept of "new ethnicities" theorizes (post)migrant belonging by centering not on the power of othering, but rather on the agentive force of diasporic groups to contend with their essentialization and marginalization. While rooted in Black transatlantic experiences of colonialism and slavery, "new ethnicities" provides a conceptual platform from which those more broadly marginalized in the diasporic context of Europe may speak and act. In this paper, Becker argues that Hall's theory of "new ethnicities" provides a productive lens through which to rethink the knot of religious-racialized-ethnic othering that has served to set both Muslims and Jews apart from the European mainstream. She does so by tracing the historical differentiation of Muslims and Jews, both together and apart, as well as the contemporary politics of difference enacted by Muslim and Jewish Berliners who contest essentialized understandings of their identities and marginalized sociocultural locations in Europe, today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During his presidential campaign, the new elected President of U.S., Donald Trump, called for a complete ban on Muslims from entering the United States. Although numerous European observers have been shocked by this proposal, using the most recent European Social Survey immigration module, this paper found that a sizeable proportion of Europeans support a similar ban in their own countries, e.g. Czech Republic (54 per cent), Hungary (51 per cent), Estonia (42 per cent), Poland (33 per cent), and Portugal (33 per cent). The paper also provides evidence that racism and immigration phobia play a key role in shaping Europeans' support of a ban on Muslims' immigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovative approaches to citizenship emerged in the 1990s. Post-national theory suggested that European minorities no longer needed national citizenship because supra-national political structures such as the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) offered them protections. Denationalized citizenship held that universal human rights were now available at the national level too as the Council of Europe's member countries had to incorporate human rights principles within their own jurisdictions. New forms of claims-making among European Muslims were cited as evidence of this trend as religious claims, especially relating to the hijab, began to be made through human rights litigation. This paper demonstrates the limits of post-nationalism through a discussion of the outcomes of such claims. While European Muslims are indeed mobilizing around human rights, there is no evidence – at the level of litigation – that this has helped them to win recognition of their religious or cultural rights. This paper explores the reasons for this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a significant, well-established if somewhat invisible Muslim population in Ireland since the 1950s. An increase in immigration during the Celtic tiger years along with the hysteria of 9/11 caused a rapid visibilization of this population. Muslims became synonymous with extremism and terrorism, but also fell victim to racist constructions emerging from the economic decline. The experience of Muslim youth since 9/11 has been well researched in the UK and Europe, however there has been little empirical work conducted with Ireland’s Muslim communities. In the literature, it is assumed that the British experience is replicated for Muslim youth in Ireland – this is not the case. This paper examines the lived experience of Irish Muslim youth given the visibilization of Islam after 9/11 and their ensuing experiences of Irishness. An analysis of ethnographic data reveals the idiosyncratic experiences of these youth growing up in the shadow of a discriminatory and Islamophobic narrative on extremism and terrorism and an evolving immigrant landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Negative attitudes and explicit racism against Muslims are increasingly visible in public discourse throughout Europe. Right-wing populist parties have strengthened their positions by focusing on the ‘Islamic threat’ to the West. Concurrently, the Internet has facilitated a space where racist attitudes towards Muslims are easily disseminated into the public debate, fuelling animosity against European Muslims. This paper explores part of the online Islamophobic network and scrutinizes the discursive strategies deployed by three ‘prominent’ online actors. By combining social network analysis and critical discourse analysis, the study shows that Islamophobic web pages constitute a dynamic network with ties to different political and geographical milieus. They create a seemingly mainstream political position by framing racist standpoints as a defence of Western values and freedom of speech. The study also shows that Islamophobic discourse is strengthened by xenophobic currents within mass media, and by the legitimization of intellectuals and political actors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An emerging consensus among scholars of Muslim political and social identity suggests that Western Muslims live out an anti-essentialist critique of identity construction. Considering this view, this paper examines a cross-national comparison of British Bangladeshis in London and Spanish Moroccans in Madrid that solicits the perceptions of working-class Muslim men. While the results indeed reaffirm respondents' concomitant relationships to a variety of identity paradigms, interview content demonstrates that subjects' multiplicity is complicated by their desire to meet – not reject – the essentialist standards of belonging to the identity paradigms discursively available to them. Rather than defiantly cherry-picking preferred characteristics of religion, ethnicity and nationality, individuals' responses suggest that they are trying to fulfil perceived standards of authenticity. Such a contention helps explain the prevalence of Western Muslims' expressed and well-documented ‘identity crisis’, suggests the enduring relevance of identity essentialisms, and more broadly, complicates post-modern conceptions of identity formation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research on Muslim minorities in Europe has focused on Muslim organizations. This is understandable as most organizations are uncomplicated objects of study: they provide members for interviews and locations for participant observation. But many Muslims are not engaged in Muslim organizations. How do we research them? Drawing on the experiences from a study on highly practising, but non-organized Muslims in Aarhus, Denmark, this paper will discuss the usefulness of focus group interviews in studying the world views of non-organized Muslims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an introduction to the issue, highlighting its central focus on the social conditions of Muslim minorities in Western Europe and commenting on featured papers by Peter Bevelander, Peter Gundelach, and Mieke Maliepaard.