Racism, Muslims and the National Imagination

Abstract

This qualitative study investigates the relationship between racism and nationalism in two multi-ethnic British neighbourhoods, focusing specifically on the construction of ‘the Muslim’ as a racialised role sign. Through in-depth interviews with 102 ‘white’ and ‘non-white’ participants in Glasgow (Scotland) and Bristol (England) we investigate the extent to which ‘the Muslim’ is being demonised as an oppositional identity in the construction of English and Scottish codes of cultural belonging. We find that whilst Scottishness and Englishness draw on historically founded racialised (e.g. biological, phenotypical) referents of ‘whiteness’ at the level of the ‘multi-ethnic’ neighbourhood, such racialised codes of belonging are undermined in everyday life by hybridised codes: signifiers such as accent, dress, mannerisms and behaviours which destabilise phenotype as a concrete signifier of national belonging. However, those signifiers that contest the racialised referent are themselves reconfigured, such that contemporary signifiers of cultural values (e.g. terrorist, extremist) reinforce, but not completely, the original racialised referent. We conclude that a negative view of ‘the Muslim’ as antithetical to imagined racialised conceptions of nationhood cannot easily be sustained in the Scottish and English ‘multi-ethnic’ neighbourhood. The sign ‘Muslim’ is split such that contemporary significations perpetuate the exclusion of the ‘unhybridised foreign Muslim’.

Keywords:

• Racism
• Nationalism
• Muslims
• Ethnic Identity
• Fundamentalism

Acknowledgements

Thanks go especially to those who agreed to be interviewed, without whom this paper would not have been written, and to the JEMS editors and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments. This study was funded by the ESRC (Award No. RES-000-23-0556).

Notes

1. ‘Racialised nationalism’, as conceptualised in this study, is premised on an anti-universalist ethnic foundation. This foundation in turn underpins the perception of ethnic fixity. ‘Fixity’ provides the bridge between ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ when the latter is used to signal the perceived impossibility of identity change through choice. The critique offered in this paper stands in direct contrast to Foucauldian conceptions of racism (see Goldberg 2002) which implicate the expression of free will in ‘modernity's racism’.

2. These cities were chosen because they contain neighbourhoods with relatively high concentrations of ‘minority’—especially Asian Muslim—settlement, including Pollockshields in Glasgow and Easton in Bristol. We aimed to sample from among those residents whose parental national origin was Pakistani. In doing so the possibility of interviewing residents who have been both racialised as ‘non-white’ and who are also Muslim in faith was maximised. It is important to note that this research pairs phenotype and culture in its methodology, not because we begin from the belief that phenotype determines culture, but because we want to explore the extent to which phenotype and culture are homologised via inclusionary and exclusionary discourses pertaining to neighbourhood and nation. We therefore compare the responses of ‘non-whites’ and ‘whites’, not because we begin from the assumption that they constitute culturally closed objective groups, but because we begin from the assumption that racism in contemporary postwar Britain has operated along lines of phenotype, such that skin colour has been associated with ‘racial belonging’. Additionally, the ‘non-white’ sample is narrowed specifically to ‘Pakistani’, not because we begin from the assumption that peoples signified as ‘Asian’ believe themselves to be, or are, Pakistani, but because we want to ascertain the extent to which the demarcation ‘Pakistani’ is experienced as exclusionary at the neighbourhood and national levels. This approach entails an understanding that peoples signified as hailing from the New Commonwealth have been historically stereotyped as culturally antithetical to Britishness, and further that the boundary demarcation ‘Pakistani’ has expanded to include an association with Islam. The latter criterion additionally enables us to explore the extent to which the association is experienced as inclusionary or exclusionary.

3. In Glasgow, two gatekeepers acted as the catalyst for this snowballing approach: a journalist on a local community newspaper and an individual working for the West of Scotland Racial Equality Council. The solicitation of ‘whites’ was undertaken more randomly in an area known locally as ‘the southside’, where Asian Muslims were located, including impromptu solicitation with a ‘white’ taxi driver which generated further respondents. In Bristol, contacts were initiated through an individual at Bristol City Library, and two gatekeepers at an Adult Education Centre known as the Beacon Centre, located in Easton.

4. Gender quotas were incorporated into the sample in recognition of the relevance of sexism to the politicisation of ethnic identities in Britain. In critiquing monolithic views of ‘minority culture’, Asian women face dilemmas of identification if gender and ethnic identities make incompatible demands on them (Brah 1996; Sahgal and Yuval-Davis 1992). However, our preliminary analysis has indicated that the interplay between gender, Islam, ‘race’ and nation requires a full discussion in and of itself. Consequently, whilst we introduce aspects of a gender interpretation in this paper we do not offer a comprehensive analysis.

5. To minimise the possibility of the research structuring responses along racialised lines, only the gatekeepers were made aware of the aims of the study. Interviewees were informed that the study was about ‘identity and the neighbourhood’ and therefore we avoided the danger of pre-empting answers by identifying the focus of the study as that of ‘race and nation’. In accordance with the British Sociological Association's (BSA) Code of Practice, anonymity was guaranteed and the informed consent of respondents was obtained; however, this was after the interview was completed. Respondents were also told in advance that they did not have to answer any question which they felt made them uncomfortable. All Glasgow interviews were conducted between February and April 2005; Bristol interviews were conducted between January and March 2006. All interviews were recorded and analysed with the aid of the NVIVO computer-assisted qualitative programme.

6. It could be argued that ‘whites’ would not necessarily have any experience of being identified by appearance, so an extra question was added for the ‘white’ group as follows: ‘Imagine that it is you who is doing the picking. Could you pick the Scots/English from the room?’

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christopher Kyriakides

Christopher Kyriakides is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the European University, Cyprus

Satnam Virdee

Satnam Virdee is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow

Tariq Modood

Tariq Modood is Professor of Sociology at the University of Bristol