What’s ethnicity got to do with it? Religious and racial politics in Europe

ABSTRACT

Drawing on sociology, anthropology, constitutional law, and political philosophy, this issue explores how the concept of ethnicity functions as a salient category for understanding the experiences of minorities in Europe today. It considers ethnicity as a powerful means of self-identification and the assertion of differences between as well as within ethnic groups. This issue engages the tension between group-based stigmatization on the one hand, and the reality of increasingly fragmented forms of identification under the influences of de-institutionalization and individualization. It also hones in on the ethnicization and racialization of nationhood under the influence of right-wing identity politics, and the exploitation of ethnic differences for political and electoral purposes. In its engagement with socio-legal studies, this issue considers a number of strategies for alleviating the pressure on ethnic minorities, for example through the use of private sector duties as well as potential innovations of anti-discrimination infrastructures.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethnicity
• religion
• race
• discrimination
• self-identification
• classification

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank each of the contributors to this issue for their participation in a series of workshops hosted at the Universities of Oxford and Heidelberg, as well as to Jonathan Wolff and Philip Gorski for their support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Alfred Landecker Programme at the Blavatnik School of Government (University of Oxford), supported by the Alfred Landecker Foundation; Freigeist Project, “Invisible Architects: Jews, Muslims and the Making of Europe” (University of Heidelberg), supported by the Volkswagen Foundation.