Denmark between liberalism and nationalism

Abstract

What explains the restrictive turn towards immigrants in European countries like Denmark? Are countries returning to nationalism, or are they following a general European trend towards a perfectionist, even ‘repressive’ liberalism that seeks to create ‘liberal people’ out of immigrants? Recent developments in Danish policies of integration and citizenship, education and anti-discrimination suggest a combination of these two diagnoses. The current Danish ‘integration philosophy’ leaves behind a previous concern with private choice and equal rights and opportunities to emphasize other historical elements, especially the duty to participate in upholding democracy and the egalitarian welfare community, and to promote autonomous and secular ways of life. However, the virtues of this ‘egalitarian republicanism’ are seen by right-of-centre intellectuals and politicians as rooted in a wider Christian national culture that immigrants must acquire in order to become full citizens.     

Opposing the veil in the name of liberalism: popular attitudes to liberalism and Muslim veiling in the Netherlands

Is popular antagonism towards Muslim veils in Europe rooted in an exclusionary ‘enlightenment liberalism’? By examining different conceptions of liberalism and readings of veiling in a Dutch survey from 2014, we present the first study that investigates this question empirically. We thus bring together two hitherto largely unconnected literatures. The first is the work on immigration and ethnicity, which has shown the centrality of enlightenment liberalism in anti-Muslim media and policy discourses. The second is the literature on anti-Muslim attitudes in public opinion, which explains support for veil bans as the result of perceiving veils as threatening the respondent's own, supposedly liberal, values – but has failed to distinguish between different conceptions of liberalism and thus reached inconclusive results. This, we show, can be remedied by distinguishing between ‘enlightenment liberals’, who hold negative attitudes, and ‘reformation liberals’, who hold positive attitudes towards Muslim veils.     

The whiteness of race knowledge: Charles Mills throws down the gauntlet

With assiduous logic and political acumen, Charles Mills challenges the whiteness of race knowledge, with particular reference to philosophy and sociology. In different ways and against their professed intentions, generations of philosophers and sociologists have practised an “epistemology of ignorance” that obscures and elides white supremacy or actually confers it with legitimacy. Mills challenges scholars to cast off these obsolete and discredited epistemologies. Furthermore, he advances a conception of “black radical liberalism” that combines progressive strands of the Western thought into a powerful amalgam that could provide a promising emancipatory framework for political thought and action.     

Articulations of Islamophobia: from the extreme to the mainstream?

This article will examine the construction and functions of, as well as relationship between, the diverse and changing articulations of Islamophobia. The aim is to contribute to debates about the definition of Islamophobia, which have tended to be contextually specific, fixed and/or polarized between racism and religious prejudice, between extreme and mainstream, state and non-state versions or undifferentiated, and offer a more nuanced framework to: (a) delineate articulations of Islamophobia as opposed to precise types and categories; (b) highlight the porosity in the discourse between extreme articulations widely condemned in the mainstream, and normalized and insidious ones, which the former tend to render more acceptable in comparison; (c) map where these intersect in response to events, historical and political conditions and new ideological forces and imperatives and (d) compare these articulations of Islamophobia in two contexts, France and the US.     

Immigration and the election of Donald Trump: why the sociology of migration left us unprepared … and why we should not have been surprised

Donald Trump began his campaign for the US Presidency by emphasizing the supposed dangers of immigration, a theme that he then rode to victory in November 2016 won the 2016 US Presidential election. This paper asks whether the sociology of migration can illuminate the sources of Trump’s success and after quickly reviewing the key contributions concludes not. Insight, rather, is to be found by understanding the ways in which population movements across state boundaries are a source of both international integration and national dis-integration, producing conflicts over the number, characteristics, and rights of immigrants from which liberal societies can find no escape.     

Identities in conflict: The Aboriginal question and the politics of recognition in Quebec

The will to have one's own particular identity universally acknowledged and respected is now one of the most significant determinants of the sociopolitical dynamic of contemporary modern societies. However, the actual recognition of difference is more often than not an unsatisfactory and disappointing experience for many of the groups and communities striving for that recognition. The recent experience of Canadian Aboriginal peoples is a case in point. This article looks at the struggle of Aboriginal nations for recognition in one particular region of Canada, the province of Quebec. Indeed, Quebec offers a revealing case‐study of the peculiarities of the politics of recognition. For over three decades now, the French‐speaking majority of Quebec has striven to assert its ethnocultural distinctiveness and laid claims to a special status within the Canadian political and constitutional framework. Today, both Quebecers and Aboriginals are recognition seekers within the Canadian polity. As a result, their relationship is inevitably marked by their respective but competing attempt to draw the attention of the Canadian state to their particular identity claims. In recent years, this has led to a highly conflictual dynamic which considerably strains any hope of social and cultural coexistence. The article examines the particularities of the politics of recognition in the Quebec context. Its objective is twofold. First, it should serve to shed some light on the manifestations of Aboriginal ethnonationalism in Canada. Secondly, it seeks to illustrate the limitations and paradoxical nature of the politics of recognition within a liberal framework.     

Between nationalism and civilizationism: the European populist moment in comparative perspective

This paper argues that the national populisms of Northern and Western Europe form a distinctive cluster within the wider north Atlantic and pan-European populist conjuncture. They are distinctive in construing the opposition between self and other not in narrowly national but in broader civilizational terms. This partial shift from nationalism to “civilizationism” has been driven by the notion of a civilizational threat from Islam. This has given rise to an identitarian “Christianism”, a secularist posture, a philosemitic stance, and an ostensibly liberal defence of gender equality, gay rights, and freedom of speech. The paper highlights the distinctiveness of this configuration by briefly comparing the national populisms of Northern and Western Europe to the Trump campaign and to the national populisms of East Central Europe. It concludes by specifying two ways in which the joining of identitarian Christianism with secularist and liberal rhetoric challenges prevailing understandings of European national populism.     

Racism and liberalism: the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion

This essay explores the argument that David Scott FitzGerald and David Cook-Martín make in their book Culling the Masses about the relationship between liberalism and racism, in terms of a balance between inclusion and exclusion. I challenge their dismissal of approaches that see an integral connection between the two and of approaches that see liberalism as inherently opposed to racism. I also discuss their characterization of Latin American ‘racist anti-racism’ and finish by questioning the way that they separate racism from economics.     

“The Simulacra of Morality”: Islamic Veiling, Religious Politics and the Limits of Liberalism

On December 17, 2003, French President Jaques Chirac went on television to explain the immediate necessity of passing a law recently proposed by the Stasi commission. This commission had been empowered to explore the failures of the last thirty years of French immigration policy in terms of integration. It had also been specifically instructed to investigate threats to the concept of laicite, the rigorous French version of secularism and the separation of the Church and the State. Chirac explained that, following the commission’s advice as well as that of numerous experts, he had centered on a policy to deal with these issues: We shall do so by bringing to life the principle of secularism, which is a pillar of our constitution. It expresses our wish to live together in respect, dialogue and tolerance. Secularism guarantees freedom of conscience. It protects the freedom to believe or not to believe. He then expanded upon what this freedom requires: It is the neutrality of the public sphere which enables the harmonious existence side by side of different religions. Like all freedoms, the freedom to express one’s faith can only have limits in the freedom of others, and in the compliance with rules of life in society. Religious freedom, which our country respects and protects, must not be abused, it must not call general rules into question, and it must not infringe the freedom of belief of others. Finally, Chirac, building to a rhetorical climax, came to the essence of the new law which had provoked so much commentary around the world: In all conscience, it is my view that the wearing of clothes or of symbols which conspicuously demonstrate religious affiliations must be banned in state schools. The hypothesis which I wish to advance is that in the actual world in which we inhabit the language of morality is in the same state of grave disorder as the language of natural science is in the imaginary world which I described. What we possess are the fragments of a conceptual scheme... we posses indeed simulacra of morality... but we have lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.     

Debunking American exceptionalism and rescuing liberalism

Culling the Masses seeks to explain the shift in American immigration policy from one based on racial and ethnic selection to a more equitable and colorblind approach. The authors argue that international and foreign policy considerations led to a radical shift in policy after World War II. They succeed in debunking American exceptionalism, but in this critique I argue that more attention should be given to the interaction of international and domestic politics, using a ‘two-level game’ framework. Moreover it is important to highlight the contradictions that are inherent in liberalism as a governing philosophy.