Backlash of multiculturalist and republicanist policies of integration in the age of securitization

Failure of multicultural and republican models of integration

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. What has happened since the 1960s? Why has there been this shift in the framing of migration? The answer to such questions obviously lies at the very heart of the changing global social-political context. Undoubtedly, several different reasons such as deindustrialization, 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 terminology, can be enumerated to answer such critical questions. ¹ After the relative prominence of multiculturalism debates both in political and scholarly venues, we witness today a change in the direction of debates and policies about how to accommodate cultural diversity.

As Will Kymlicka rightfully asserts, where states feel insecure in geo-political terms, fearful of neighboring enemies, they are unlikely to treat fairly their own minorities. ² More specifically, states are unlikely to accord powers and resources to minorities that they view as potential collaborators with neighboring enemies. Today, this is not an issue throughout the established western democracies with respect to autochthonous national minorities anymore, although it remains an issue with respect to certain immigrant origin groups, particularly Muslim origin groups after 11 September. Ethno-cultural and religious relations become securitized under these conditions. Relations between states and minorities are seen not as a matter of normal democratic debate and negotiation but as a matter of state security, in which the state has to limit the democratic processes of political participation, negotiation and compromise to protect itself. The state of securitization of minorities is likely to lead to the rejection of minority political mobilization by the larger society and the state. Hence, the securitization of ethno-cultural relations erodes both the democratic space to voice minority demands, and the likelihood that those demands will be accepted.

The situation with respect to immigrant groups is more complex. In the European context, the same factors that push for multiculturalism in relation to historic minorities have also generated a willingness to contemplate multiculturalism for immigrant groups. ³ However, immigrant multiculturalism has run into difficulties where it is perceived as carrying high risks with regard to the national, societal and cultural security of the majority society. Where immigrants are coupled with violence, honor crimes, drug use, drug trafficking and human trafficking, and are seen as predominantly illegal, as potential carriers of illiberal practices or movements, and as net burdens on the welfare state, then multiculturalism also poses perceived risks to the shared moral principles of the nation, and this perception can reverse the forces that support multiculturalism. Accordingly, multiculturalism bashing is also inclined to become a popular sport often revisited in times of social, political and economic turmoil. In moments of societal crisis, the critique of multiculturalism turns out to be a form of governmentality employed mostly by Christian Democratic parties and public intellectuals to mobilize those segments of the society who have an inclination towards right-wing extremism due to the growing feelings of anomy, insecurity and ambiguity. ⁴

Europe and other parts of the world, including the USA, have experienced increasing tensions between national majorities and ethno-religious minorities, more particularly with marginalized Muslim communities. Already in the 1990s, Arthur M. Schlesinger and Robert Hughes became very vocal in criticizing the policies of multiculturalism in the USA and claimed that US multiculturalism will result in the dissolution of the United States as long as minorities such as the Hispanics and Afro-Americans are granted the right to celebrate their ethno-cultural distinctiveness. ⁵ On the other side of the Atlantic, Dutch society was struggling with what Paul Scheffer, a social democratic figure in the Netherlands, called ‘multicultural drama’, which was allegedly leading to the dissolution of Dutch society. ⁶

This debate has been alive in Europe for a long time. For instance, back in the 1990s, following the Huntingtonian paradigm of the ‘clash of civilizations’, ⁷ Wilhelm Heitmeyer et al. argued that it was the Turks who were not tempted to integrate and incorporate themselves into the German society. ⁸ Their main criterion in declaring the self-isolationist tendency of Turkish-origin youths was their perceived contentment to live with Islam and Turkishness. This polemical debate around the work of Heitmeyer and others is very parallel to the debate revolving around Thilo Sarrazin’s book, engaging the high level politicians including the Chancellor and the President of Germany. ⁹ A similar debate took place in England immediately after the 7/7 London bombings in 2005. ‘Multiculturalism is dead’ was a headline in Britain’s Daily Mail on 7 July 2006 – the first anniversary of the London bombings. ¹⁰

Thilo Sarrazin, a politician from the Social Democratic Party who sat on the Bundesbank board and is former Finance Senator for Berlin, has argued in his bestselling book that Germany is becoming ‘naturally more stupid on average’ as a result of immigration from Muslim countries. ¹¹ In his critique of Thilo Sarrazin’s highly polemical book Germany Does Away with Itself (Deutschland schafft sich ab, 2010), Jürgen Habermas states that German Leitkultur (leading culture) is recently being defined not by ‘German culture’ but by religion: ‘With an arrogant appropriation of Judaism – and an incredible disregard for the fate the Jews suffered in Germany – the apologists of the Leitkultur now appeal to the “Judeo-Christian tradition,” which distinguishes “us” from foreigners’. ¹²

It seems that the declaration of the ‘failure of multiculturalism’ has become a catchphrase of not only extreme right-wing political parties but also of centrist political parties all across the continent, although it is not clear that each attributes the same meaning to the term. ¹³ Angela Merkel for the first time publicly dismissed the policy of multiculturalism as having ‘failed, failed utterly’ in October 2010, and this was followed swiftly by David Cameron’s call for a ‘more active, more muscular liberalism’ ¹⁴ and Nicolas Sarkozy’s statement that multiculturalism is a ‘failed concept’. Geert Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party in the Netherlands, has made no apologies for arguing that Christians ‘should be proud that our culture is better than Islamic culture’, for example. ¹⁵

The debate is not only restricted to the critique of multiculturalism. Difference-blind republicanism, which is the other model of managing ethno-cultural and religious diversity, has also failed. The republican French experience has been going through a tremendous failure in the last decade. Although France set out to create politically equal citizens with no regard to religion, language, race, ethnicity and gender, it no longer recognizes the politics of recognition generated especially by migrants of Muslim background, ignores the cultural, religious and ethnic differences emphasized by minorities and adopts an assimilation policy, all of which serve to show that the republican project and its values are under threat. ¹⁶ 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. ¹⁷

Let alone providing migrants and their children with equal access opportunity to political space and the labour market, France cannot also provide them 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 Muslim origin migrant families at business and economic levels. Moreover, Tribalat asserts that illiteracy is higher among Moroccans and Algerians. As Michéle Tribalat put it very eloquently, what is the point in working hard for success at school if you are going to be discriminated against? ¹⁸ 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 the unemployment rate among the university graduates of French ethnic origin is 5 percent, while it is 27 percent among the North African origin university graduates. ¹⁹ This ratio is much higher than it is in Germany (4 percent and 12 percent), Belgium (5 percent and 15 percent), or the Netherlands (3 percent and 12 percent). ²⁰

Securitization and stigmatization of migration by the states: A form of governmentality

There have been several events in modern times which have radically changed the ways in which migrants with a Muslim background in the West have been perceived by the autochthonous societies: the Arab-Israeli war leading to the global oil crisis (1973), the Iranian Revolution (1979), the Palestinian intifada (1987–90), the Rushdie affair (1989), the affaire des foulard (headscarf affair) in France (1989), the Gulf War (1991), the Bosnian War (1992), the first World Trade Center bombing in the USA (1993), the second Palestinian intifada (2000), Paul Scheffer’s polemical book Multicultural Drama in the Netherlands (2000), 11 September (2001), the Afghanistan War (2001), the violence in northern England between native British and Asian Muslim youth (2001), the rise and death of Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands (2001–2), the Second Gulf War (2003), the murder of Theo Van Gogh (2004), the Madrid bombing (2004), the 7/7 London terrorist bombing (2005), the banlieue riots in Paris (2005), the Cartoon Crisis in Denmark (2006), the provoking intervention of Pope Benedict XVI ²¹ regarding the ‘brutal nature’ of the Prophet Mohammad (2006), British Cabinet Minister Jack Straw’s speech about his wish to see women not covering their face (2006), the Swiss minaret debate (2009), the nuclear debate with Iran (2010), Thilo Sarrazin’s polemical book (2010), an imam beating up students in a class in Birmingham in the UK (2011), the burning of the Quran by an American pastor in Florida (2011), and the official ban of the burqa in France (2011).

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. In what follows, firstly, I will be scrutinizing the ways in which migration and Islam have been securitized and stigmatized in the West. Subsequently, I will discuss how Islamophobia has been generated by the neo-liberal political elite and public intellectuals as a form of ideology to control the masses at the expense of creating further hostilities between majorities and minorities with a Muslim background. ²²

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 political/military terms as the protection of a state’s boundaries, its integrity and its values against the dangers of a hostile international arena. ²³ 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, Christianity, etc.) and identity claims. 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 (Huysmans, 2006). This tendency is reinforced by the use of racist and xenophobic terminology that dehumanizes 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 ‘securitization’. As the main rationale of the security discourse seems to have shifted from protecting the state to protecting society, culture and sometimes ‘race’, so protection of societal, cultural, ethnic and religious order against any kind of ‘evil’ has become the pillar of the security discourse in a way that has popularized the term security in all spheres of life. Securitization of migration, or in other words stigmatization of migrants, became a vital issue after the 11 September 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. ²⁴ The categorization of those responsible as migrants seems to be a systematic attempt to externalize the structural failures produced by the social-political order.

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 social-political 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. ²⁵

Immigration resulting from poverty and anti-democratic regimes in the countries of origin has become one of the principal worries of western countries. The constructed fear of migration and Islam brings about what Campbell calls ‘discourses of danger’ producing a ‘we’ versus the ‘others’. ²⁶ The key principle of societal and cultural security is identity, and societal and cultural 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. ²⁷ 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 neo-liberal states as a challenge to societal, political, cultural, economic and religious security, a challenge that must immediately be restrained.

There are evidential data indicating that negative attitudes of the western public partly spring from the ways in which so-called illegal migrants are perceived and framed by the western states. Recent research on the securitization of migration draws our attention to the fact that, at 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. ²⁸ 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 eloquently reveals that nowhere in the official programmes of anti-illegal immigration appears 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’. ²⁹ 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. In this regard, 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. ³⁰ Didier Bigo eloquently explains the ways in which the act of governmentality operates in relation to 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. ³¹

Roxanne Doty rightfully argues that the immigrant, the stranger, the excluded, the one who does not belong to the prescribed national unity are ideologically portrayed by the conventional and culturalist elite as the ‘enemies within’. ³² 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’. ³³

Exclusion of culturally and religiously different migrants and their descendants from within the prescribed nation is also visible in the ways in which the EU is recently managing migration. The architects of the EU policies regarding justice and home affairs described first in the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 and then in the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997 have indeed contributed to a ‘discourse of othering’. As is known, the European Union 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. ³⁴ Referring to Jacques Rancière and Slavoj Zizek, Walters states that the leaders of the European Union countries engage in a kind of ‘ultra-politics’, which frames anti-illegal immigration activities as a battle between ‘us and them’, with sometimes a struggle to the death. ³⁵ Framing the issue as such puts it outside the space of dialogue and forecloses the possibility of politics and citizenship. ³⁶

Islamophobia as a form of ideology

Securitization and stigmatization of migration and Islam in the West occurred in parallel with the rise of heterophobic discourses such as the ‘clash of civilizations’, ‘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 West. Richard W. Bulliet eloquently criticizes what ‘the clash of civilizations’ 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 civilizational inclusion of those religious traditions as a whole. Christianity and Judaism pass by definition the civilizational litmus tests proposed for Islam even though some of their practitioners dictate women’s dress codes, prohibit alcoholic beverages, demand prayer in public schools, and 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. ³⁷

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 prejudiced perceptions about Islam have been reinforced by the impact of the previously stated events ranging from the Iranian Revolution to the official ban on the burqa in France in 2011. Recently, it has seemed inevitable for some people in the West to have the urge to defend western civilization against this ‘enemy within’ that is culturally and religiously dissimilar with the ‘civilized’ western subject. ³⁸ Silvio Berlusconi, the former 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. ³⁹

American President George Bush’s speech regarding the ‘axis of evil’ (29 January 2002) was also perceived by the American public in particular as an attempt to demonize ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ and the ‘enemies of freedom’. ⁴⁰ Although Bush, as well as some European leaders like Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac, repeatedly stated that the war did not represent a fight against Islam, the US 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 centres of large cities. … First, we will shut down terrorist camps, disrupt terrorist plans, and bring terrorists to justice … 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 … 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 toward 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. ⁴¹

Similarly, Italian journalist and novelist Oriana Fallaci is another figure who generated a very contested discourse in the aftermath of 11 September 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 the conquest of our territories, perhaps, but certainly 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. ⁴²

This right-wing stream of reactions also found their echo in other parts of the western world. Dutch media presenter and politician Pim Fortuyn published a book entitled Against the Islamization of Our Culture, in which he claimed Islam was a threat to western civilization in a way that contributes to the othering of migrant origin individuals residing in the West. ⁴³ Islam-bashing has become a popular sport by ministers, politicians, media specialists and even Prime Ministers in the European Union as well as in other parts of the world. Today, hostile language, offensive language, racist 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.

As Chris Allen very eloquently revealed, Islamophobia is not really a ‘phobia’; rather it is a form of governmentality, or an ideology, ‘similar in theory, function and purpose to racism and other similar phenomena, that sustains and perpetuates negatively evaluated meaning about Muslims and Islam in the contemporary setting in similar ways … that inform and construct thinking about Muslims and Islam as Other’. ⁴⁴ The aim of Islamophobia as a form of governmentality is to make the majorities believe that Muslims and Islam pose an ‘enemy within’ in the European context, and an ‘outside enemy’ in the American context so that the unity of the nation can be protected against the national, societal, and cultural security challenges coming from inside, or outside. ⁴⁵

Conclusion

To reiterate, 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 instead a source of contentment and happiness. Several different reasons such as de-industrialization, changing technology, unemployment, and poverty and neo-liberal political economy can be mentioned to explicate the reasons of such a discontent. Migrants have become a source of fear not only because of these structural problems leading to the supremacy of neo-liberal forms of governmentality, but also because of the ways in which migration has become stigmatized and securitized by ethno-culturalist and right-wing political elites and public intellectuals. The process of securitization of migration in the West 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 countries who originated from outside the European continent. However, keeping in mind that demographic deficit and emigration in the European countries are now becoming the realities of everyday life, one could conclude that such a migrant-phobic and Islamophobic political climate is not sustainable, and that soon a commonsensical approach will have to become the mainstream.

Securitization and stigmatization of migration and Islam has mainly brought about a backlash of multiculturalism in the West since the mid 1990s. The rise, ubiquity, simultaneity and convergence of arguments condemning multiculturalism have been striking accross the western world including the European Union countries, specifically Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, Denmark, France and Italy. The anxieties associated with ‘parallel lives’ and Muslim ‘self-segregation’ have become very visible in these countries, accusing the Muslims and migrant communities of not integrating into the western way of life. These arguements have become so popular in the West that a spectre has begun to roam the 21st century: a backlash of multiculturalism. This backlash has immediately triggered the rise of right-wing extremism, promoting the homogeneity of the nation space free of the others who are ethno-culturally and religiously different. The spectre has not only targeted the Muslims but also the proponents of multiculturalism coming from the prescribed nation. Obviously, the latest mass murder in Norway on 22 July 2011 targeting the multiculturalists has given significant messages to the mainstream populist political parties competing for the electorates who seem to be leaning towards right-wing extremism.

Discourse of security should be rephrased in a way that will free migrants and their descendants from the patronizing gaze of receiving societies. In other words, migration issues should be desecuritized. Shaping the public opinion in an accurate way primarily depends on the existence of a strong political will, which may convince the public that ethnic/religious/cultural revival among migrants might also be translated as a quest for justice and fairness, but not as a security challenge. In this regard, symptoms and reasons should not be confused. States should not reduce integration into the cultural sphere. Integration rather means more than that, and it has political, economic and civic elements, too. Political integration of migrants should be prioritized in order to let them express their claims regarding their state of poverty, exclusion, and self-isolation through legitimate political channels such as the local and national parliaments and the mainstream media.