This article looks at the emergence of Muslims as a category of knowledge in surveys and opinion polls that have been conducted as a reaction to the rising demand for data about Muslim populations in Western Europe within the last ten years. The most prevalent feature of the conceptualization of Muslims is that they are inherently immigrants, or of immigrant descent, who are living within a certain nation state. This creates a continuous statistical invisibility of certain Muslims, for instance those without immigration backgrounds, as well as Muslims with national backgrounds other than Muslim majority countries. Further, this identification of the Muslim as immigrant, even if unintended, contributes to upholding a subtle exclusion of Muslims from the national community as always foreign and always potentially in need of integration.
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Cohen, I. Bernard, The Triumph of Numbers. How Counting Shaped Modern Life (New York: Norton, 2005), p. 58, pp. 124-146.
See also Hacking, Ian, “World making by kind making: child abuse for example” in How Classification Works: Nelson Goodman among The Social Sciences, Mary Douglas and David Hull (eds.) (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992).
Hacking, Ian, “How Should We Do the History of Statistics?” in The Foucault Effect. Studies in Governmentality, Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Elden, Stuart “Governmentality, calculation, territory”, Environment and Planning: Society and Space, 25 (2007), 562-580.
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Fekete, Liz, “Islamophobia, academic research and scare scenarios”, European Race Bulletin, 1(67) (2009), pp. 2-6.
Asad, Talal, Formations of the secular. Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003); See also Fitzgerald, Timothy (ed.), Religion and the Secular: historical and colonial formations (Sheffield: Equinox Publishing, 2007).
Capacent Research, Muslimer i Danmark [Muslims in Denmark], (Copenhagen: Capacent, 2009).
Nyiri, Zsolt, Muslims in Berlin, London, and Paris: Bridges and Gaps in Public Opinion, Gallup World Poll (Princeton: Gallup, 2007) and Nyiri, Zsolt, Muslims in Europe: Basis for Greater Understanding Already Exists, Gallup World Poll (Princeton: Gallup, 2007).
Crul, Maurice and Jens Schneider, The Second Generation in Europe. Education and the Transition to the Labour Market (Amsterdam: Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies, 2009).
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Favell, Adrian, “Integration Nations: The Nation-State and Research on Immigrants in Western Europe” in International Migration Research. Constructions, Omissions, and the Promises of Interdisciplinarity, Michael Bommes and Ewa Morawska (eds.) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 41-67.
Cf. Baumann, Gerd, “Collective identity as a Dual Discursive Construction. Dominant v. Demotic of Culture and the Negotiation of Historical Memory” in Identities: Time, Difference and Boundaries, Heidrun Friese (ed.), (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2002), pp. 189-200.
Peter, Frank, “Welcoming Muslims into the Nation. Tolerance Politics and Integration in Germany” in Muslims in Europe and the United States Since 9/11, Jocelyne Cesari (ed.) (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 119-144. Mandaville, Peter, “On the Governance of Muslims: The Politics of Knowledge Production in a Contested Field”, unpublished paper presented at the workshop ‘Quantifying the Muslim. Methodological challenges of polling specific populations’ (University of Copenhagen, 2011).
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Choudhury, Tufyal and Helen Fenwick, The impact of counter-terrorism measures on Muslim communities (Manchester: Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2011).
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This article looks at the emergence of Muslims as a category of knowledge in surveys and opinion polls that have been conducted as a reaction to the rising demand for data about Muslim populations in Western Europe within the last ten years. The most prevalent feature of the conceptualization of Muslims is that they are inherently immigrants, or of immigrant descent, who are living within a certain nation state. This creates a continuous statistical invisibility of certain Muslims, for instance those without immigration backgrounds, as well as Muslims with national backgrounds other than Muslim majority countries. Further, this identification of the Muslim as immigrant, even if unintended, contributes to upholding a subtle exclusion of Muslims from the national community as always foreign and always potentially in need of integration.
All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 715 | 104 | 12 |
Full Text Views | 344 | 10 | 2 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 148 | 8 | 3 |