A Muslim Diaspora Inside Europe?

This paper explores Western European hegemony and power. The focus, however, is not European hegemony over other parts of the world but over non-European immigrants INSIDE of contemporary Europe itself. The paper is a case study of recent Danish legal, educational, and political attempts to better the integration of particularly Muslim immigrants in Denmark. My focus is on how Europe is constructed through these discourses on Muslim immigrants - and how the immigrants in turn are often constructed as alien to European values and norms. By denaturalizing the concepts which these discursive representations rely on (the citizen, the European, the immigrant, etc.), I tease out the silencing or forgetfulness of these representations (for example that Europe is complicit in creating a world of inequality). And based on a close textual reading of the law, the political initiatives, the mandatory civic courses for immigrants, etc., I argue that non-European immigrants in Denmark are kept in a state of eternal Diaspora inside of Europe - despite an official rhetoric of integration. The ambition is to unpack and politicize the Euro-centrism which informs discourses on Europe and which naturalizes the idea of Europe as a moral, acting subject under extreme pressure from Muslim immigrants. Finally, I discuss the theoretical implications of my study which transgresses the national (Danish) and speaks to the construction of regional or international identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]