Migration studies have focused attention on ethnic institutions in global and gateway cities. This ethnic lens distorts migration scholarship, reinforces methodological nationalism, and disregards the role of city scale in shaping migrant pathways of settlement and transnational connection. The scale of cities reflects their positioning within neoliberal processes of local, national, regional, and global rescaling. To encourage further explorations of nonethnic pathways that may be salient in small-scale cities, we examine born-again Christianity as a means of migrant incorporation locally and transnationally in two small-scale cities, one in the United States and the other in Germany.

Beyond the ethnic lens: Locality, globality, and born-again incorporation

This article reflects critically on the study of Muslims in European countries of immigration. ‘Muslim’ is both a category of analysis and an increasingly salient – and contested – category of social, political and religious practice. The traffic between categories of analysis and categories of practice makes it important for scholars to adopt a critical and self-reflexive stance towards the categories we use. The article sketches some ways in which the use of ‘Muslim’ as a category of practice – a category of self- and other-identification – has changed in recent decades, and it concludes with some cautionary remarks about the use of ‘Muslim’ as a category of analysis.

Categories of analysis and categories of practice: a note on the study of Muslims in European countries of immigration

Transnational Studies have allowed scholars to move beyond a methodological nationalism that conflates society and the nation-state. Yet rather than addressing globe-spanning systems of power, Transnational Studies that focus on transnational communities or diasporas obscure important relations of power. More recently there has been a spate of publishing on the ‘new’ imperialism that offers global theories of power. However, much of the emerging scholarship on imperialism fails to examine the processes that legitimate and assist imperial control. By theorizing transnational social fields, transnational migration studies offer insights into the social and cultural processes of imperialist intervention. Drawing from ethnographic research with fundamentalist Christians and Haitian long-distance nationalists, the article argues that our scholarship must examine the relationship between the transnational social fields and imperialist power.

Transnational social fields and imperialism: Bringing a theory of power to Transnational Studies

Research on attitudes towards immigrants devotes much attention to the relative effects of economic and social-psychological factors for understanding sentiment towards immigrants, conceived in gen...

Different groups, different threats: public attitudes towards immigrants‡

This article analyses the role played by immigrants’ associations in local policy networks in Italy. The aim is to find out if differences in the political opportunity structure have an impact on the development of immigrant organisations and on their influence in the policy-making process. In the first part of the article I describe the evolution of immigrants’ associations in Italy by focusing on the institutional opportunity structure, defined here as the resources granted by national legislation to support immigrants’ associations. In the second part I focus on three cases that represent different areas of the country: Milan, Bologna and Naples. These cities have been governed by different political majorities since the mid-1980s, and are thus characterised by differences in the political opportunity structure. The question I ask is: do different configurations of power, right-wing or left-wing, provide different institutional opportunities for immigrants’ associations? And how do these different oppo...

Policy Networks and Immigrants’ Associations in Italy: The Cases of Milan, Bologna and Naples

The topic of this collection of articles is the increasingly transnational nature of Islam in Europe as well as the mechanisms by which the transnationalism is activated, especially the media. The papers integrate specific case studies with more general and thematic considerations, including the impact of the continuing migration processes and the adaptation of networks and intellectual and religious links by the 'European' generations of Muslims. This involves both the preservation and mobilisation of family and ethnic networks as well as the establishment of new personal and intellectual ('imagined') networks of shared interest which cross over the lines of the traditional or break out of them. These studies also show how European Muslims are increasingly locating themselves within global Islam.

Muslim networks and transnational communities in and across Europe

This volume describes the main characteristics of contemporary European Islam. Following an outline of the historical background and some statistics related to the presence of Islam in Europe, the process of growth/ the development of Islam is analysed through religious instruction in educational systems, organisational structures and the forms of political participation by Muslims. In addition to a description of the relationship between European states and Islam in judicial terms, the different types of the inclusion/integration of Islam in European society is studied by looking at the … read moremedia, the relations between religions, economic and international dimensions, and the manner in which views have changed following the events of September 11. Based on extensive bibliographal research, field studies and specific contributions of scholars, this book provides a rare and useful overall review for a wide public as it is the first thematic overview covering all European countries.

Muslims in the Enlarged Europe : Religion and Society

Parmi les figures de l’alterite que la sociologie a conceptualisees, on a pu voir le passage de la minorite interne a l’etranger, puis a l’immigre, qui a ete longtemps l’ideal-type de « l’Autre ». Ces dernieres annees il semble remplace par le musulman. De nombreuses raisons expliquent ce passage. Les unes sont liees a la conjoncture, qu’il s’agisse des transformations de l’immigration en Europe ou de l’emergence de l’Islam comme acteur global. D’autres renvoient a des evolutions a long terme comme l’utilisation croissante des categories interpretatives fondees sur la religion dans le debat public europeen, l’Islam representant le cas extreme de cette utilisation. Cette position de l’Islam semble fondee d’une part sur la meconnaissance de ses specificites religieuses, et de l’autre sur l’utilisation de la religion comme une explication evidente, meme lorsque des raisons non religieuses sont a l’origine de certains phenomenes. La recherche, tout comme le debat politique, religieux, et surtout mediatique sur l’Islam semble donc osciller entre l’essentialisme et le reductionnisme. Le paradoxe de cette situation, est qu’alors que le processus d’integration des musulmans dans la societe europeenne est en cours, la perception des musulmans comme de l’Islam devient de plus en plus conflictuelle. En temoignent les oppositions a la presence des symboles islamiques en Europe (hijab, mosquees, etc.) et les debats intellectuels et mediatiques autour d’ouvrages comme celui d’Oriana Fallaci.

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Stefano Allievi

Papers

Muslim networks and transnational communities in and across Europe

Muslims in the Enlarged Europe : Religion and Society

How the Immigrant has Become Muslim. Public Debates on Islam in Europe

Les convertis à l'Islam : les nouveaux musulmans d'Europe

How the Immigrant has Become Muslim