Desired Muslims: Neoliberalism,halal food production and the assemblage of Muslim expertise,service providers and labour in New Zealand and Brazil

Abstract

Critical scholarship has shown that neoliberalism has reinforced Islamophobia, anti-Muslim racism and projections of Muslims as undesirable in many contexts, particularly in ‘the West’. Little is said about other impacts neoliberal ideology has had on the ways Muslim (immigrant) communities are viewed and (dis)integrated into Muslim-minority contexts. Against this backdrop, this paper argues that Muslims can also be desired and systematically mobilized in predominantly non-Muslim countries where neoliberalized economies capitalize on their identities. The argument is illustrated through case studies in contexts of halal food production and trade in New Zealand and Brazil. Drawing on conceptualizations of neoliberal utility/necessity perspectives on immigrants as well as on assemblage thinking, this paper shows, first, that neoliberal restructuring has played a major role in the development of trade relations with the Islamic world and thus in the emergence of demands for Muslim expertise, service providers and workers in both countries. It demonstrates, second, how Muslim identities have been systematically assembled to meet these demands, and third, that the assemblages are at the same time limited by largely (though not exclusively) neoliberal logics. Finally, the paper shows that many of the assembling practices and logics are similar in both contexts and likely to be found elsewhere. Their effects, however, diverge due to different local conditions. The findings imply that relations between neoliberal ideology and the ways Muslims are viewed and (dis)integrated in Muslim-minority contexts are complex and unfold differently across space, and that this complexity deserves greater academic scrutiny.

Keywords

Neoliberalism assemblage Muslims migration halal market halal food production New Zealand Brazil Islamic world

Introduction

We cannot teach people to be Muslim, you know […] The preference is to try and get Muslim New Zealand residents first, and the other [practice] is to bring them in from overseas. (Representative of the New Zealand Meat Industry Association, 18 December 2018)

Scholars have shown that relations between neoliberalism, race and racism are complex and vary according to their interplay with other ideologies and societal structures in different contexts. Neoliberalism can silence racism on the discursive surface but reinforce it at the same time. It can profoundly reconfigure racism but also be reconfigured by it (e.g. Goldberg, 2011; Lentin and Titley, 2011; Roberts and Mahtani, 2010). ‘Blackness’, as Paul Gilroy has argued, ‘can now signify vital prestige rather than abjection in a global info-tainment telesector’ shaped by the ‘planetarization of profit and the cultivation of new markets’ (Gilroy, 1998: 844). This paper is based on the hypothesis that the relations between neoliberal ideology and the ways Muslims are seen and (dis)integrated in predominantly non-Muslim societies are similarly complex, evincing different characteristics in different contexts. A range of recent studies has demonstrated that neoliberalism has reinforced Islamophobia, anti-Muslim racism and projections of Muslims as undesirable, particularly in ‘the West’ (e.g. Carr, 2016; Waikar, 2018; see next section). Other impacts have received scant attention so far. However, voices advocating for ‘bringing Muslims in’, as reflected in the above quotation, also exist and may be driven by neoliberal ideology as much as by President Trump’s call for ‘keeping Muslim migrants out’ (Waikar, 2018).

Against this backdrop, this paper addresses neoliberal demands for Muslim identities in predominantly non-Muslim countries and the policies and practices through which they have been met. During the past decades, these demands have emerged along with the rise of Islamic culture industries and markets almost worldwide, including (but not limited to) halal agri-food, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, clothing, banking and tourism industries (Bergeaud-Blackler, 2016a; Gökarıksel and McLarney, 2010). The paper argues that Muslims can be considered ‘useful’ or ‘necessary’ and thus can be systematically assembled in Muslim-minority contexts where neoliberalized economies are able to capitalize on their identities. Such assemblages are at the same time structured and limited largely by neoliberal logics themselves and other logics that co-constitute the specific contexts. Thus, ‘bringing Muslims in’ does not translate into their permanent residency and access to work and life with dignity.

The argument is illustrated through case studies in contexts of halal food production and trade in New Zealand and Brazil. The Arabic term ‘halal’ (permissible, lawful) refers to any object or action that is permissible for Muslims. ‘Halal foods’ are generally defined as foods that are ‘free from any component Muslims are prohibited from consuming’ (Riaz and Chaudry, 2004: 2), such as alcohol, pork and porcine derivatives. With respect to meat, the concept of halal requires that animals be slaughtered according to Islamic law. Although halal food is commonly associated with the Islamic world, it is deeply interconnected with many different countries, regions and places across the globe, mainly through agricultural industrialization, global trade and migration. The past four decades have given rise to procedures for industrial halal slaughter; specific rules and regulations for halal food production, halal certifiers and auditors; halal standards and certificates; centres for halal research and so-called halal hubs in Islamic countries (e.g. Kuala Lumpur, Dubai) and beyond (e.g. London), which constitute key elements and assemblages of a global halal food market in the making (Bergeaud-Blackler et al., 2016; Fischer, 2016; Nestorović, 2016).

New Zealand’s and Brazil’s economies are largely based on agricultural exports, including meat and poultry. In the context of economic crises and neoliberal restructuring from the 1970s onwards, these countries sought new markets beyond their traditional export destinations. In order to access the Islamic world, the New Zealand and Brazilian food industries adapted their production to the religious requirements of Islamic importer countries and started producing halal. This, in turn, required Muslim expertise, services and labour. Today, both countries are among the world’s largest halal food exporters (see section ‘Neoliberal restructuring and the globalizing halal market’). Drawing on conceptualizations of neoliberalism and notions of neoliberal perspectives on immigrants’ utility/necessity, as well as on assemblage thinking, this paper first examines how demands for Muslim expertise, service providers and workers emerged in New Zealand and Brazil. It then analyses, second, how Muslim identities have been assembled in order to meet these demands, and third, how these assemblages have been structured and limited. The analysis is mainly based on empirical fieldwork in both countries. Before presenting and discussing the results of this study, I elaborate its theoretical framework, methods and limitations.

Theoretical framework and methods

Neoliberalism is here understood as an ideology proposing that ‘human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade’ (Harvey, 2007: 2). Since the 1970s it has spread across the globe, shaping economics, politics and cultural relations to similar extents while evincing different characteristics and effects across time and space (e.g. Harvey, 2007; Peck and Tickell, 2002). Scholarship has largely recognized its significant impact on racism, cultural othering and the ways immigrants are viewed and (dis)integrated in receiving countries.

Regarding Muslim identities in predominantly non-Muslim societies, a range of studies demonstrate that neoliberalism has reinforced anti-Muslim othering and racism, especially in Europe and the USA. In his book on experiences of Islamophobia, Carr (2016), for instance, has shown that, under neoliberalism, the Irish state became ‘blind to racism’. Such blindness, the author suggests, not only fails to recognize anti-Muslim racism as a problem within Irish society but also relieves the state of having to act to contain it. Other studies reveal explicit reinforcements, particularly representations of Muslim agency as incompatible with neoliberal values, be it in the context of security policies (O’Donnell, 2018; Perra, 2018) or education and schooling (Mac an Ghaill and Haywood, 2017). In a similar vein, Kumar (2012) and Waikar (2018) contend that US-American neoliberal geopolitics under presidents Bush and Trump have also helped to construct Muslims as an antagonistic other in order to justify interventions in the Islamic world (Kumar, 2012) and the ‘neoliberalization of Islam and Muslims’ (Waikar, 2018). Based upon a discourse analysis of Trump’s speeches, Waikar identifies ‘neoliberal Islamophobia’ and suggests seeing it as ‘the conceptualization of Islam and Muslims as antithetical to neoliberal values’ (Waikar, 2018).

Such research has been extremely valuable for understanding today’s Islamophobia. However, the relations between neoliberalism and the ways Muslims are viewed and (dis)integrated in contexts where they represent a minority can be complex and differ across time and space (see also Foroutan, 2008, 2011). Shedding further light on this so far overlooked complexity, this paper addresses neoliberal demands for Muslim identities in Muslim-minority contexts and the ways in which they have been met. Crucial to this study are the debates on what Bauder (2008) has called the ‘economic utility perspective’ on immigrants (see also Roberts and Mahtani, 2010). Considering increased competition through neoliberal restructuring and globalization, demand for skilled, cheap, flexible labour grew rapidly in many countries and regions across the world. Political and economic elites started to envision migration as a solution to these demands and followed through by applying economic utility perspectives to specific (im)migrants (e.g. Bauder, 2008). Meanwhile, such perspectives have been challenged by economic liability narratives (e.g. construing immigrants as a burden on the welfare system) and representations of immigrants as ‘not belonging culturally’ and/or ‘a cultural threat’. The latter characterization has been particularly prevalent since 9/11, especially with respect to Arab and Muslim immigrant identities in ‘the West’ (Ciftci, 2012; Moosavi, 2015).

Whereas Bauder (2008) reveals a discursive opposition between economic utility and culturalist/ethnocentric perspectives on immigrants, Karam (2007) has shown that economic utility perspectives emerging in contexts of neoliberalization may also refer to immigrants’ cultural and ethnic backgrounds. He illustrates this view in his work on Arab ethnicity and neoliberalism in Brazil: though denigrated until the 1960s, Arab immigrant communities gained greater visibility and respect as Brazil embraced its globalizing economy in the context of neoliberal restructuring. The search for new export markets suddenly rendered Arab immigrants ‘useful’ due to their cultural knowledge and connections to the Middle East. In consequence, many of them became crucial actors in the development of trade relations (Karam, 2007).

This paper shows that Muslim identity is also considered useful or, even more so, necessary (see also Husseini de Araújo, 2020). Hence, the following refers to an economic utility/necessity perspective on Muslim (immigrant) identities. To examine such perspectives – the ways that emerging demands for Muslim (immigrant) identities have been addressed through specific policies and practices, as well as the limitations in specific geographical contexts – I draw, finally, on assemblage thinking, particularly the concepts of assemblage, desire, practices and context. The assemblage approach can illuminate the spatio-temporal dynamics, complexity, contradictions and nuances of phenomena and is therefore useful for analyses in the fields of ethnicity and migration (e.g. Collins, 2018; Düvell, 2019; Wiertz, 2020) and the context of the international halal business (e.g. Bergeaud-Blackler et al., 2016), which are all structured by diverse and somewhat contradictory logics. In short, assemblages can be understood as open, provisional compositions of heterogeneous elements and logics functioning together for certain periods of time and in specific contexts, such as networks of halal production and trade. Each element of an assemblage is an agent that transmits agency and power through its interactions. Assemblages are therefore dynamic; they emerge, change, endure or fall apart as elements and their relations change (Deleuze and Guattari, 2007).

The elements are held together by desire that ‘couples continuous flows and partial objects that are by nature fragmentary and fragmented’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004: 6). Viewed through this lens, halal food production and trade assemblages are desired; that is, desire is what draws these assemblages together despite their heterogeneity and the contradictory relations between some of their elements, including logics of neoliberalism, nationalism and citizenship (see the following sections). Desire, like agency and power, is also distributed and transmitted through the assemblages. In ethnic and migration studies, Collins (2018) has shown that desire is a fruitful concept for shedding light on ‘migration as an ongoing process of spatio-temporal differentiation’ and on ‘the concomitant process of becoming for migrants themselves, a transformation in subjectivity that also involves transformations of the places they move through and people they meet with’ (Collins, 2018: 964). The nexus between desire and the subject formation of Muslim migrants is also worth analysing in the context of the halal business (see Conclusion); however, this paper focuses on desire as the driving force of the assembling practices of halal industries in need of Muslim expertise, service providers and labour.

In other words, the desire for Muslim identities is manifested in assembling practices. Tracing these practices helps to show how assemblages are (re)formed (Murray Li, 2007). The assembling practices are enacted, shaped and/or limited by their context, which in turn is itself assembled and structured by various logics (Anderson et al., 2012; McFarlane, 2009). This means that Muslim identities are assembled differently in different contexts. However, similarities in assembling practices can be seen when the different contexts are structured by the same or similar logics (e.g. neoliberal logics) or larger-scale assemblages (e.g. globalized halal food production networks and trade). Based upon these conceptions of context, practices, desire and assemblage as well as the notion of utility/necessity perspectives on Muslims, the research question presented in the introduction is specified as follows:

What utility/necessity perspectives on Muslim identities have emerged in the contexts of halal production and trade in New Zealand and Brazil, and how?

What desires emerged from these perspectives? What specific Muslim identities have been demanded, and how have they been assembled?

What limits the demand for Muslim identities and their assemblage in the analysed contexts?

What are different or similar practices and logics structuring the assemblages in different geographical contexts?

To respond to the research questions, I draw on fieldwork carried out in New Zealand and Brazil from 2015 to 2019. These countries were selected based on two criteria: first, both rank among the largest halal food producers in the world (State of the Global Islamic Economy Report 2020/21, 2020), and second, both have relatively small Muslim populations (see next sections). Thus, the desire for the Muslim identities needed to access and conquer the halal market in the making has been particularly evident in both countries. The study is not designed to be a comparative case study in a strict sense. Its aim is rather to show that assemblage of Muslim identities in contexts where Muslims represent a minority occurs in a similar manner in different countries. The fieldwork was carried out in Wellington and Palmerston North (New Zealand), and in São Paulo, Barretos, and the Federal District (Brazil). The research comprises, in total, 32 in-depth interviews with representatives of associations of the meat and poultry industries, halal certification bodies, Islamic cultural centres and mosques, as well as with (former) supervisors and slaughtermen, religious authorities and representatives of NGOs active in the fields of migration and asylum. I also draw on about 25 informal conversations with individuals or small groups of people at sites I visited, such as halal meat and poultry processing plants, mosques, Islamic cultural centres and NGOs. The fieldwork is complemented by an analysis of documents and magazines published by the meat and poultry industry associations in New Zealand and Brazil, documents on governmental policies related to the halal industries, and local newspaper articles on the halal business. It is noteworthy that official data on the halal industries – their exports, sizes of Muslim communities, and numbers of Muslim workers in the halal food industries – are extremely limited. Numbers provided here are often interviewees’ estimates or press reports that could not be verified and thus must be interpreted with caution. In this paper, all quotes from sources in Portuguese have been translated into English by the author. All names of interviewees, firms and other organizations are anonymized through coding.

The context: Neoliberal restructuring and the globalizing halal market

Since the 1970s, utility/necessity perspectives on Muslim (immigrant) identities in New Zealand and Brazil have developed in a context of economic crises and neoliberal restructuring. Before the 1970s, New Zealand agriculture was characterized by productivism and a growing export industry. Trade arrangements between Britain and the Commonwealth guaranteed access to the UK market and sales of New Zealand products on it. However, when the UK entered the European Common Market, New Zealand suddenly lost its privileged access to the UK market. This loss, together with the oil crisis, pushed New Zealand’s agricultural export industry into an economic downturn. Interventions such as ‘experiments with subsidization, and new land development schemes … failed to achieve the aim of restabilizing New Zealand farming’ (Haggerty et al., 2009: 770). In the 1980s, these failures led to radical neoliberal reforms, including the elimination of subsidies, restructuring of the taxation system and downsizing of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and its support of farmers (Haggerty et al., 2009). The agricultural export industry responded by diversifying its products and seeking out new export destinations (NZ1; see Kelsey (1995) for details on the history of neoliberalism in New Zealand).

As neoliberal projects, practices and policies gained prominence from the 1980s onwards, Brazil underwent similar neoliberal restructuring. In response to its debt crisis, Brazil abandoned import substitution industrialization and began promoting the open market model, privatizing public enterprises, slashing import tariffs and prescribing austerity in order to gain control over public debt (Saad-Filho and Morais, 2018). Alongside trade liberalization, public policy reforms, novel forms of public-private association, technological innovation, land concentration and the neoliberalization of Brazil’s agricultural sector involved the outright embrace of export orientation (e.g. Ioris, 2018). In this context, the food industries in both Brazil and New Zealand began seeking out new markets beyond the traditional export destinations.

The growth of Asian countries and the oil-rich countries in the Middle East at that time motivated New Zealand and Brazil to develop trade relations with these regions. New Zealand’s meat industry produced mainly lamb, hogget, mutton and, later, beef, while the Brazilian meat industry exported mainly poultry and beef. When exportation of these commodities to Islamic countries began, religion still played a subordinate, unclear role in production and trade relations. Scholars have observed that before the 1980s, there was no ‘great public demand from Muslim consumers at the time to ensure meat imports were Halal’ (Drury, 2017). As Bergeaud-Blackler suggests, ‘[b]efore the globalization of halal trade, so-called halal foods were unknown in Muslim countries. Organizations and food supply chains excluded what was considered illicit food de facto’ (Bergeaud-Blackler, 2016a: 91). Consequently, products that Islamic countries imported from ‘the West’ were mostly and pragmatically considered compatible with Islam, and each importing country ensured that products were in line with its own requirements (Bergeaud-Blackler, 2016b). This changed with the rise of the so-called Islamic revival in several Islamic countries, such as Egypt, Iran or Pakistan.

As of the early 1980s, a rapidly increasing number of importing countries started to require halal production. Halal, however, is subject to interpretation, and its translation into industrialized food production has occasioned much critical debate. Major controversies concern the slaughter of animals and include (but are not limited to) debates on stunning and stunning methods, automated slaughter and slaughter performed by Jews and Christians (so called kitabi slaughter). Many Muslim authorities, organizations and importing countries have regarded these practices as halal, whereas others have considered them doubtful or haram (Riaz and Chaudry, 2004). Such debates, together with political instrumentalizations of religion, have given rise to a vast range of diverse, contested, increasingly sophisticated and complex halal regulations, third-party certification and auditing systems. There is no universal halal standard (Fischer, 2016). The New Zealand and Brazilian agricultural industries have taken these diverse and changing regulations on board in order to access and explore the global halal market in the making. Measures include conversion of meat processing plants, implementing halal logistics, changing slaughter techniques and integrating religious rites into the production process (Husseini de Araújo, 2019). To accomplish this, the industries, together with governments, importing countries and religious authorities from abroad, have assembled Muslim identities at the site of production, in particular Muslim experts, service providers and workers. The following sections elaborate these processes.

Demands for Muslim identities in New Zealand

In the 1960s, when the demand to produce halal first emerged in New Zealand, agricultural industries turned immediately to the local Muslim communities in New Zealand (NZ4). This moment may be seen as the crystallization of the economic utility perspective on Muslim (immigrant) identities. At the time, New Zealand’s immigration policies were still characterized by preference for white people – particularly from the UK, due to the country’s strong identification with the British Empire (OECD, 2014) – and restrictions on non-whites. New Zealand’s Muslim community, largely constituted by immigrants from South Asia and the Pacific islands, was therefore relatively small. However, neoliberal restructuring in the second half of the 20th century also shaped immigration policies by aligning them with New Zealand’s economic and labour demands. The 1987 Immigration Act represented a formal end to racial and ethnic selection and paved the way for merit-based immigration schemes (OECD, 2014). In this context, Muslim immigration increased, bringing with it a greater diversity of national backgrounds. Today, New Zealand’s Muslim community numbers 57,276 people (1.3% of the population), according to census data from 2018 (see Shepard, 2002, 2006, for an overview over history and organizations of Muslim communities in New Zealand; see Foroutan, 2017, on demographic and socio-economic characteristics of New Zealand’s Muslim communities).

Assembling Muslim expertise and service providers

They were looking for someone to do halal meat for overseas. My brother used to work at that time in a governmental department, so they asked him: ‘Do you know someone?’ Nobody knew what halal was, nobody knew how to do it. This was in 1961. So, my brother wrote to my father: ‘How do you do it?’ In Fiji, we slaughter animals for our own use. So, they brought my father here. (NZ4)

Utility/necessity perspectives on the local Muslim community as well as the assemblage of Muslim expertise and service providers developed slowly and involved a variety of agents. Major agents included New Zealand’s agricultural and meat industries, importing countries, local Muslim communities, the New Zealand government and Muslim authorities from abroad. Crucial stages of the assemblage included the alignment of desires and interests, the local Muslim community’s integration into the export economy, the authorization of Muslim expertise and trading organizations, and the division of labour. Several interviewees described the initial phase of these processes as clumsy and infelicitous (e.g. NZ4; NZ5; NZ6; see also Drury, 2017).

In fact, halal meat was sporadically produced for export before the 1970s, when New Zealand’s meat industries still had privileged access to the UK market. In these cases, meat industry representatives approached Muslims from the local community to get advice and contact people who had religious expertise authorized by muftis from abroad. The father of the interviewee quoted above, for example, underwent a sort of training by the Mufti of Jahore after he was called to New Zealand. Drury (2017) reports on similar cases in an essay on the origins of halal certification in New Zealand.

In the decade following the loss of New Zealand’s privileged access to the UK market, the agricultural and meat industries started to develop stronger trade relations with the Islamic world (Drury, 2017: 8). In this context meat exports increased, especially to Iran. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran began to define industrial halal production in New Zealand, augmenting it with its own delegations to production sites, including supervision and teams of slaughtermen. A representative of the meat industry described this as the beginning of large-scale halal production for export. ‘We learned how to do that through the trade with Iran. They came down here and showed us how to do it’ (NZ1).

At the same time, demands for halal meat from other Islamic countries entered the picture, as did a range of Muslim individuals and small companies offering halal certification in New Zealand. Through them, industrial halal production was rendered technical, though in many different ways. Literature on the history of halal production furthermore points to various problems, such as fraud and the meat industry’s desire to work with professional entrepreneurs and write off Wellington’s local Muslim community organization as unprofessional (Drury, 2017; Foo-Yuen, 1987). Some halal companies, in turn, were regarded as untrustworthy by several importers. From the 1980s onwards, some importing countries started to explicitly demand halal supervision and certification by local Muslim community organizations:

In Kuwait, then [in 1983], there was a new generation, and they asked […] us to certify. But the [New Zealand] government won’t let us [and, regardless, the meat was shipped from New Zealand to Kuwait]. So, they [the Kuwaiti authorities] stopped their meat on the water [and the ships were not allowed to enter Kuwait’s harbour]. So, the [New Zealand] meat industry came to us: ‘Can you help us? We have got three ships.’ And we said: ‘We didn’t certify, so we won’t say it is halal. We are a religious organization. That’s it. […] But what we can do, is, we can ask them for you, we can go and ask them: Listen brother, yoúve been taking it [meat from New Zealand] for so long, please take another three ships and after that, we will do something’. So, that’s what happened. (NZ4)

After this and other, similar events, the Muslim community organization in Wellington came to be seen as a necessary partner in continued exploration of the globalizing halal market (NZ6). Driven by this perspective, relations were reassembled over time, and in the process, just as international Islamic organizations and muftis from abroad played a crucial role, so also did New Zealand’s government. In 2010, it set up a regulatory framework for halal production, including a set of regulations for halal service providers. If they complied with these rules, they became officially authorized by the government. The objective of this governmental intervention was to ensure both professionalism and integrity in the halal supply chain, thereby creating trust among Islamic importing countries (NZ1; NZ3; see also Shatnawi and Al-Essa, 2017). The number of the so-called AHOs (authorized halal organizations) changed over time. In the period when the fieldwork was carried out there were basically two, namely the earlier-mentioned Muslim community organization. which still defines itself as a charitable organization (NZ3; NZ4), and a company run by two Muslim entrepreneurs (NZ9; NZ10). In this process, the AHOs came to be responsible for halal certification, monitoring and supervision of the production process, assessment and training of halal slaughtermen, as well as advisory and consulting services (NZ3; NZ9). At the end of 2019, a state-owned food certifier acquired an 80% stake in the halal company.

Assembling Muslim supervisors and labour

It is [only] about 1% of the workforce [of the meat industry], the halal slaughtermen, and yet, they contribute such a huge amount to the overall welfare of New Zealand’s meat industry. (NZ1)

In order to succeed in the halal market in the making, food industries have, over time, had to take the emerging halal standards and regulations on board. Some of them, including New Zealand’s own halal standard, require that slaughter be carried out by Muslims only. This has led to high demand for Muslim slaughtermen and the emergence of utility/necessity perspectives on Muslim working-class and/or migrant identities. According to interviewees’ estimates, there are currently about 250 Muslim slaughtermen in New Zealand. Half of them are New Zealand residents; the other half were mobilized from abroad (NZ1; NZ9). This number is not particularly high, but the fluctuation of the workers is due to seasonal work, limited work permits and/or short-term contracts, the difficult work itself and difficult working and living conditions (NZ1; NZ3; NZ9).

Assembly of these slaughtermen includes their recruitment, assessment of their religious suitability, training and finally, employment. The main agents recruiting Muslim slaughtermen are meat-producing companies and their associations in New Zealand. These, in turn, activate other agents through an alignment of interests among local mosques as well as international and national NGOs that work with migrants and refugees, endeavouring to help migrants and Muslims integrate into society and find jobs (NZ1). One interviewee stated that the industry also works with labour recruitment agencies in Indonesia (NZ9). Finally, Muslims working in the halal business are also encouraged to mobilize their family members and friends. ‘So, it’s my cousins, brothers, sons, for example, coming over’ (NZ4). Potential Muslim slaughterers enter the country either as asylum seekers – who, if recognized as refugees, are allowed to work in the country – or migrants, who receive a temporary work permit for the slaughter seasons.

After the recruitment of potential halal slaughtermen, the AHOs assess their religious suitability. This assembling practice is essential to aligning interests between the industries and clients, creating trust among the latter and rendering compliance with the technical requirements for Muslim supervisors and slaughtermen. Assessing religious suitability is, in turn, rendered technical, initially by way of interviews with candidates. First the AHOs check their religious knowledge, asking them about their routines, the mosques they typically visit and imams who know them. They are usually also prompted to recite a couple of short suras from the Quran. ‘If he [the candidate] is in lack of the knowledge, we tell him: “brother, you should go and upgrade your knowledge, and you can come back another time”’ (NZ3). Second, halal slaughtermen are also expected to participate in ritual prayers carried out collectively in prayer rooms at the meat processing plants. Third, they face consequences for ‘religious misbehaviour’, such as drinking alcohol or frequently skipping prayers:

Sometimes, when we find out that one is not a practising Muslim […] we go and talk to him. We give him an opportunity […] And if he does not change [his] style, […] we will ask him to come to the office, and he will have a second chance. […] And if he still continues, we write to the company and tell them: ‘We are very sorry, we find him to be a non-practicing Muslim, and you should take him out of slaughter’. (NZ3)

Having passed the religious suitability assessment, potential halal slaughtermen undergo halal slaughter training provided by the AHOs and the industries. This training includes, for example, units dedicated to the relevant standards and regulations of halal meat production, the religious foundations of these regulations in the Quran and Sunna, halal slaughter techniques and religious rites to be performed, and, for supervisors, special units on auditing the production of halal food. Candidates who successfully complete assessment and training are hired by the meat producing firms (NZ1; NZ3; NZ9).

Demands for Muslim identities in Brazil

As in New Zealand, immigration policies in Brazil during the first half of the 20th century were characterized by a preference for white people, especially European agricultural families willing to colonize Brazilian territory (Seyfert, 2002). Arab and Muslim immigrants were thus considered ‘less desirable’ (Karam, 2007; Seyfert, 2002). Karam has shown how this changed in the context of neoliberal restructuring and Brazil’s embrace of its export economy: Arab ethnicity came to be valued and seen as economically useful for developing trade relations. In the following sections, I show the extent to which this utility perspective also applies to Muslim identities in Brazil. Over the past 130 years, immigration processes have paved the way for the establishment of contemporary communities of Muslims, particularly from the Middle East (Pinto, 2010). Brazil’s economic upswing at the beginning of the 21st century led to increased migration from other Asian and African countries. Meanwhile, a considerable number of Brazilians converted to Islam (Pinto, 2010). Still, the Muslim community is relatively small: according to census data from 2010, it numbers 35,167 people (0.02% of the population). Muslim organizations estimate this number at about 1 million (B1).

Assembling Muslim expertise and service providers

Government personnel [from potential importing countries] hired their local religious authorities and said: ‘Look, we have this project, we want to start importing from Brazil, and we want you to go there and visit [the meat processing plants] to see if there is really a possibility of producing halal in these plants, in these industries’. They came here, checked, set the standards, you know… And the [local] Muslim organizations [in Brazil] were hired to do the work. (B5)

Brazil’s assemblage of Muslim expertise and trading partners has been similar to New Zealand’s in relation to the main agents (agricultural and meat industries, including the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (CCAB), importing countries, local Muslim communities and organizations and the Brazilian government, as well as Muslim religious authorities from abroad) and assembling practices (alignment of interests, the local Muslim community’s integration into the export economy, authorization of Muslim expertise and trading organizations, division of labour). Interviewees described this process as relatively smooth, not least because structures supporting trade with the Arab world and agencies such as the CCAB already existed at the time. However, there have also been reports of inconsistencies and fraud in Brazil (B1; B20).

All representatives of the certification companies stated that halal food production for export began when demands for halal meat and poultry emerged in Islamic countries (in the case of Brazil, they were all Arab countries). According to them, governmental delegations (including religious authorities) contacted local Arab Muslim communities in Brazil in order to arrange meetings and visits to meat processing plants (B2; B3; B4; B5). As in the case of the Brazilian halal industry, utility perspectives on local Muslim immigrant communities emerged not only via the national industries but also through interaction with potential importing countries. In the late 1970s, delegations from Arab countries (later also from Iran and other Islamic countries) came to Brazil, whereupon halal production, through them, was rendered technical. The knowledge and expertise of the Muslim organizations was likewise authorized through such delegations, just as it had been through the meat and poultry industries, the CCAB and the Brazilian government (B4; B5). The organizations themselves underpinned their expertise and practices with fatwas issued by well-known and favorable muftis, recognition by international Islamic organizations, and later, once they become companies, delegations of their own staff sent to participate in halal courses abroad, e.g. at halal research centres in Thailand or Malaysia (B6).

Unlike in New Zealand, the Brazilian government did not develop its own regulatory framework for halal production, supervision and certification. Muslim organizations set up firms relatively rapidly, and these then established their own halal concepts based on fatwas and international Islamic organizations. Such concepts are flexible in terms of Muslim/kitabi slaughter, automatic/manual slaughter and stunning/no-stunning, which allows them to accommodate buyers’ various rigid demands (slaughter without stunning, for example, is not possible in New Zealand). Today, Brazil has two major halal supervision and certification firms, as well as a couple of smaller ones. One of the main firms started out specializing in halal beef production; the other one dealt mainly in poultry. The division of labour in the halal export economy is somewhat similar to that in New Zealand: in Brazil too, companies set up by local Muslim organisations became the bodies responsible for halal certification, monitoring and supervision of the production process and assessment and training of halal slaughtermen, besides providing advisory and consulting services. In Brazil, however, they also recruit and employ the Muslim slaughtermen.

Assembling Muslim supervisors and labour

Today, meat and poultry processing plants [in Brazil] are always in need of Muslim slaughtermen. (B3)

Brazil’s demand for halal slaughtermen is higher than New Zealand’s due to the former’s poultry industry, which largely relies on labour-intensive manual slaughter in order to meet halal requirements. At the same time, the Muslim population in Brazil is small and, on average, has attained higher levels of education and income than the Brazilian average (Jacob et al., 2003). Therefore, most Muslim slaughtermen have been mobilized from abroad (with some exceptions, including Brazilian converts to Islam). Some of the supervisors are Brazilian Muslims. Most slaughtermen are young male adults who identify with Islam and come from poor and/or conflict-ridden countries in Africa or Asia. According to estimates by interviewees (B2; B5) and information provided by the Ministry of Labour, the number of halal slaughtermen ranges between 500 and 850 slaughterers, depending on demand. As in New Zealand, fluctuations are very common, mainly because contracts are short-term and working and living conditions are difficult (e.g. B3; B20).

Assemblage of halal slaughtermen involves their recruitment, assessment, training and employment. Unlike in New Zealand, however, it is the halal service providers who recruit and employ workers in Brazil. Recruitment practices are similar in the two countries; they include advertising at local mosques and collaborating with NGOs working on migration and refugees. Migrant workers are also encouraged to mobilize (Muslim) family members and friends from their countries of origin. Several halal slaughtermen reported that they came to Brazil via friends and family networks. As an interviewee from Ghana stated: ‘My brother [working in the halal industry] said that he would bring me [to Brazil]. He asked the company if they could invite me and how I could get a visa’ (B10). In addition, interviewees also reported that, over the past decades, there have emerged new trafficking networks through which pseudo-agencies for labor recruitment operating outside the country mobilized workers by promising them well-paid jobs in the halal industry (B18) (for details see Husseini de Araújo, 2019).

According to interviewees, until 2012 immigration law was the main difficulty in the recruitment process. When halal food production for export began, the 1980 ‘Statute on Foreigners’ (Estatuto do Estrangeiro) had just been enacted (it was replaced by a new migration law in 2017). At the time, Brazil was still under a military dictatorship that prioritized national security and border protection. Highly qualified migrants and, with limitations, refugees were able to receive visas (Reis, 2011). It was harder for other migrants to get work permits. During the first decade of the 2000s, the halal industry grew especially rapidly, and so did demand for Muslim labour from abroad. To facilitate recruitment and employment, the meat and poultry industry started to pressure the respective governmental institutions to find a solution:

This has been studied a lot, debated a lot, reflected a lot […]. All the meetings that were held, with companies, with certifiers, with the [immigration] council, and so on, [were about the fact] that these workers [from abroad] were needed in order to access this [halal] market, that there was no way to fill these job vacancies [for Muslim slaughtermen] with Brazilian workers only, and that they [the industries] needed a legal way to employ these workers from abroad. (B18)

Ultimately, the solution to this problem was an amendment to the Statute on Foreigners (see article 3 of resolution no 99 from 12 December 2012) that enabled legal employment of Muslim migrants (B18). Other halal slaughterman assembling practices resemble those in New Zealand: the assessment of religious suitability, rendered technical through interviews before employment; the integration of the Muslim workers into the collective practice of religious rites at their workplace; the observation of ‘religious misbehaviours’. Furthermore, workers receive training from the halal certifiers and, unlike in New Zealand, are also employed by them.

Neoliberal and other limits to the assemblages of Muslims identities

There is no special right here. The government in New Zealand does not classify halal slaughter as a special skill to give them [Muslim slaughtermen from abroad] citizenship or to give them permanent residency. No. (NZ3)

They live here [in Brazil] in very precarious conditions to be able to support their families [abroad], sometimes they sleep badly, because they are sleeping in precarious conditions, sometimes they eat poorly. (B18)

The assemblages of Muslims for Brazil’s and New Zealand’s halal industries are limited in several ways, largely (but not exclusively) through neoliberal logics themselves. They are, firstly, shaped by market needs. These include a small number of Muslim entrepreneurs providing halal services, a small number of Muslim supervisors and a larger number of Muslim halal slaughterers. The latter must be relatively fit and strong, as the work requires physical force. Thus, mostly men are mobilized for this job. The meat industries’ limited profit margins (due to increased competition in times of neoliberal globalization) and the need for rapid response to changes in demand go hand in hand with labour relations largely characterized by flexibility (i.e. temporary contracts) and low pay (i.e. minimum wage or a bit more). Consequently, the assembled Muslim halal slaughtermen who accept the conditions set by the halal industries have working-class and/or migrant identities. The number of assembled Muslim supervisors and slaughterman is largely driven and limited by the actual demand for halal products. In Brazil as well as in New Zealand, most of the halal slaughtermen receive temporary contracts only. Drops in demand for halal meat from these countries in times of crisis result in fewer slaughterers mobilized and employed and/or fewer contract renewals (N4; B18).

Neoliberal labor regimes in both countries, however, have had different impacts on assemblages of halal slaughtermen in New Zealand and Brazil, as they interact with different socioeconomic relations, national labour market regulations and immigration policies as well as different ways that economies are integrated in the world economy. Minimum wage, for example, translates into extremely precarious living conditions, particularly for migrant workers in Brazil. Whereas the minimum wage in New Zealand was NZ$17.70 per hour in 2019 (US$11.38 per hour, according to an exchange rate of NZ$1.55 on 1 December 2019), the Brazilian minimum wage was R$4.54 per hour in 2019 (US$1.08 per hour according to an exchange rate of R$4.21 on 1 December 2019). Economic crises over the past decade have exacerbated the problem of low pay in Brazil, especially for migrant workers who have to support their families abroad. The currency has fallen dramatically, shrinking remittances. This forces migrant workers to live in extremely precarious conditions in order to be able to send at least a little money to their families (B11; B18). Clearly, economic desirability is no indicator of dignified working and living conditions.

Limiting factors besides neoliberal labour regimes include citizenship and national ideologies. In New Zealand, almost all interviewees stated that the rule is ‘New Zealand residents first’ in order to protect national workers (NZ1; NZ3; and others). In Brazil, representatives of halal service providers said that they would prefer to employ residents from Brazil, due to increased bureaucracy regarding employment of migrants (B20). However, the demand for Muslim slaughterers has been so high that halal industries have little choice (B3; B20). The ways in which labour shortages are solved through migration are, again, structured by neoliberal ideologies (among others, such as nationalist or humanitarian ideologies). Especially New Zealand’s immigration policies have been characterized as neoliberal (Simon-Kumar, 2015), as they are merit-based and offer highly qualified and skilled immigrants the prospect of permanent residency (based on the idea that they contribute to the country’s competitiveness), while low-skilled workers (if not recognized as refugees) usually receive temporary work permits only (and so are easily disassembled).

Muslim migrant workers who are not recognized as refugees can enter New Zealand through its Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme (RSE). It allows workers to come to New Zealand for several months during one year to work with an approved employer. The employer, in turn, has to prove the impossibility of hiring New Zealand residents for this job. Although basically in line with neoliberal restructuring and intended to serve the economic needs of the country, some representatives of the meat industry see immigration policies as complicating and contradicting the governmental halal regulations:

You have to demonstrate that you have gone through a process, employed everyone that is suitable and available, and that there is a shortfall, and only then [do] they allow you to recruit from elsewhere […]. But I think we should be treated separately […]. The regulatory framework that is administered by the government requires the slaughterman to be a Muslim. So, we cannot teach people to be a Muslim, you know. (NZ1)

Adding to the critique of representatives of the meat industry, Muslim workers themselves would prefer a different migration scheme. The New Zealand Halal Slaughtermen Union has long fought for this, ‘hopelessly’ (NZ3; NZ4; NZ10). Although economic utility perspectives on migrants are also manifested in Brazil’s migration law of 2017 and highly skilled migrants are privileged over others, Brazilian circumstances offer more room for manoeuvre to employers as well as to low-skilled immigrants (e.g. work permits may be extended through employment, and exceptional regulations for specific groups are possible). Still, low-skilled immigrants with temporary work permits remain dependent on their employers and are thus more vulnerable to exploitation (Husseini de Araújo, 2019).

Besides neoliberal logics or citizenship, other limiting aspects are always at work. It goes without saying that economic demand does not protect against Islamophobia, racism or xenophobia. Most of the interviewed Muslim migrants stated that, compared with other countries, Islamophobia is relatively less common in both New Zealand (e.g. NZ1; NZ2; NZ3) and Brazil (e.g. B10; B11; B12). However, some interviewees in Brazil confirmed that they ‘have experienced all of this’ (B10) at the sites where they work and live. The 2019 attacks on the mosques in Christchurch and the media debates about a meat industry that ‘only cater[s] to the Muslim religion’ (New Zealand Herald, 2 September 2016) also show that the assemblage of Muslim identities is hardly free of tensions in New Zealand (see also Clarke, 2006).

Finally, COVID-19 has also had an impact on the assemblage of Muslim identities. Since early 2020, the virus has dramatically challenged the halal sector (as well as others) in both countries. Its impacts have fallen on supply chains (e.g. due to congestion at ports and disruptions to air and sea freight as well as distribution networks), labour and processing capacity (due to COVID-19 safety measures), and people’s mobility. Closures of food service industries (Beef and Lamb New Zealand, 2020) have also altered demand. The virus has hit Brazil particularly hard. At the time of writing of this article, the government has not been able to control its spread. Several meat and poultry processing plants have experienced severe outbreaks (due not least to insufficient safety measures) and have had to be closed down for a certain period of time (Vilarino, 2020). The medium- and long-term impacts of COVID-19 on New Zealand’s and Brazil’s halal sector are still unclear. What is clear, however, is that they will also affect the demand for, and assemblage of, Muslim identities in both countries.

Conclusion

Current studies have largely shown that neoliberal ideology has reinforced Islamophobia, particularly in the ‘West’. However, this paper has argued that Muslim identities can also be desired and systematically assembled in predominantly non-Muslim countries, as is the case when neoliberalized economies capitalize on Muslims and Islam. At the same time, these assemblages are also limited, largely by neoliberal logics themselves but also by other logics and structures co-constituting the specific contexts.

To sustain this argument, I conducted case studies in contexts of halal food production and trade in New Zealand and Brazil. The findings show that in both countries, neoliberal restructuring has led economies to embrace agricultural export industries and the development of trade relations with the Islamic countries. Both countries have come to need Muslim expertise, service providers and labour in order to access and conquer the globalizing market for halal food. This demand has activated necessity/utility perspectives on both local Muslim immigrant communities and Muslim migrant workers from abroad. These Muslim identities have been desired and systematically assembled on the basis of such perspectives. At the same time, these assemblages have also been limited by market needs and actual demand, neoliberal labour regimes, immigration policies and other logics, structures and events (e.g. national ideologies, citizenship or the COVID-19 outbreak).

The assembling processes in New Zealand and Brazil differ, first, in the regulation and authorization of halal service providers and expertise: New Zealand set up its own regulatory framework; Brazil did not. Second, there are minor differences in the division of labour: in New Zealand, halal slaughtermen are recruited and employed by the meat industries, while recruitment and employment in Brazil are carried out by the halal service providers. Third, the demand for and assemblage of halal slaughterers has been much greater in Brazil than in New Zealand due to Brazil’s huge poultry industries, which tend to require extensive manual (and therefore labour-intensive) slaughter. Finally, the effects of the neoliberal logics that structure and limit the assemblage of Muslim identities have differed between New Zealand and Brazil, given their interplay with various socioeconomic relations, national labour market regulations and immigration policies, as well as different ways of integrating economies into the world economy.

Despite these differences, both the emergence of utility/necessity perspectives on Muslim identities and the economic demand for Muslim identities and assembling processes have been quite similar, showing that the assemblage of Muslim identities, driven by neoliberal ideology, is not a single case but something that happens in different contexts across the predominantly non-Muslim world. It is possible that similar assembling processes occur also in countries besides New Zealand and Brazil, such as Argentina and Chile, which also are halal meat exporters despite having only a small Muslim population. Other predominantly non-Muslim countries and regions, including the USA and Europe, are similarly integrated into the globalizing markets for halal food or other Islamic/Islamized commodities and services (Muslim-friendly tourism, Islamic banking and finance, Muslim-friendly and/or sharia-compliant health and elder care, etc.). Basically, all these industries involve Muslim expertise and services (such as certification and consulting) in order to address and access Muslim consumers (whether in Muslim-minority or Muslim-majority contexts). Thus, it is likely that economic desires for Muslim identities have emerged in a range of sites and places across the predominantly non-Muslim world. Against this backdrop, this paper invites further exploration of the potential complexity of relations between neoliberalism, consumer capitalism and the ways Muslim identities are seen and (dis)integrated into predominantly non-Muslim societies. A second avenue for further research is to investigate the subject formation of desired Muslim identities. While this paper has focused on how the desire for Muslim expertise, service providers and labour has led to the assemblage of Muslim identity at sites of halal food production and trade, future studies may explore how the desire for Muslims operates in, and through, the assembled Muslims themselves and contributes to their identity formation.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all the interviewees who contributed to this study. I am furthermore grateful to the anonymous reviewers, the editors and André de Melo Araújo for their comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of the article, which helped me to greatly improve it. Many thanks also to Miriam Husseini and Christian Kahnt, who received me in New Zealand and provided me with infrastructure in order to carry out the fieldwork. Finally, I also thank the Brazilian Federal District Research Foundation FAPDF (Fundação de Apoio à Pesquisa do Distrito Federal) for its support of the research for this article. All errors are, of course, mine.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The author received funding from the Fundação de Apoio à Pesquisa do Distrito Federal (FAPDF), Grant Number 0193.001271/2016.

ORCID iD

Shadia Husseini de Araújo

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