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This study critiques the use of 'Muslim' as an analytic category and overfocus on religiosity as an explanatory variable in studies on conflicts between Muslims and national majorities over 'liberal democratic values'. We call this tendency the Muslimification of Muslims. We demonstrate how this research reproduces and reinforces stereotypes drawn from dominant resonant public debates. To challenge these assumptions, we turn the research inquiry around so that 'Muslim' and religiosity become objects not tools for analysis. Revisiting the EurIslam survey data-set, explicitly designed for studying socio-cultural distances between Muslims and majorities, we examine boundary construction over 'liberal democratic values'. For Muslims, first, we test for differences between four ethnonational family origin groups – Ex-Yugoslavians, Moroccans, Turks, Pakistanis- and second, for the explanatory power of religiosity compared to non-religious cultural variables. Findings are clear-cut: family ethnonational origin matters and there are different group trajectories of acculturation; religiosity has a very modest impact and much less than self-identification with settlement-country which pushes in the opposite acculturative direction. Simply put, regarding the construction of differences over 'liberal democratic values', not all Muslims are the same, and it is not all about practicing Islam. It is time for a re-think and a de-Muslimification of academic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his provocative book, Adrian Favell advocates a grand normative theory for migration scholarship. He aims to debunk research focussing on "integration" and the liberal nation-state. He constructs a lumpen "mainstream" straw man of scholarship that remains wedded to an outdated container model of the nation-state – a feature he argues is effectively apologist for colonialism and empire. Against this, he advocates a theory of society based on postnational borderless, human rights and free movement, that draws its conviction from decolonizing, critical race perspectives on the liberal nation-state and global (racial) inequalities. In my view, the historical evolution of knowledge production on "integration" perspectives is more engaged, diverse, critical, imaginative and socially relevant than this binary master-narrative critique could present. Ultimately, I remain to be convinced whether his prognosis offers a viable way forward, as a scholarly statement, or for migrants in the social world. Readers should decide for themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies life-trajectories of a specific generation of Kathoey and gay men, born into rural poverty in Northeastern Isaan 30–50 years ago, based on biographical accounts. Subjects are male-to-female transgender Kathoey and cisgendered (masculine-identified or gender-normative) gay men. A 'sustainable nonheteronormative life' is one providing sufficient resources of recognition for validating gender identity (Kathoey) or sexuality (gay men), and wealth to be economically viable. How did they strive to make spaces for nonheteronormative living when confronted by 'blocked' social opportunities of double discrimination based on transphobia (Kathoey) and homophobia (gay men), and class/status? The research unpacks which strong barriers of discrimination confronted them at distinct life-stages, and their agency and strategies to challenge these. Family, work and place are investigated as core social factors influentially defining a person's positioning and life-chances, while shaping their pathway through social space over time. The empirical study reconstructs subjects' lived experiences in distinct life-stages: village childhood; early postmigration city experiences; building lives in tourist-zone scenes; and reaching back 'home'. The main finding is that tourist-zone scenes present new social opportunities that enable a few to transform their social and geographical displacement away from mainstream heteronormative society into an asset and achieve 'success'. Tourist-zones transgress dominant (hetero)norms and values, but provide social infrastructures, communities and countercultural norms that support specific forms of nonheteronormative living, albeit dependent on foreign men. By migrating to tourist-zones, subjects stepped out of mainstream society, but over time drew on resources to build new social pathways towards living nonheteronormatively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Derives and tests hypotheses from three perspectives on citizenship (postnational, multicultural, and national) with data on the claims making of migrants and ethnic minorities in Britain and Germany from 1990-95. Shows that migrant claims making is forged in the image of a particular nation-state. (CMK)

A study examining the role of the 'organized public', collective action by interest groups and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), in British immigration politics is illustrated. Immigration is an elite-led highly institutionalized field with a relatively weak level of civil society engagement and elites dominate the field and hold a decisively restrictionist stance.