Aleksandra Lewicki
The accommodation of Islam in European societies has received a great deal of negative publicity, especially since Al-Qaeda terrorism became increasingly perceived as a ’home grown’ issue in Europe. In addition to heightened surveillance and policing, European governments implemented novel ’integration measures’ focusing on Muslim communities. This book is concerned with the discursive framing of these integration policies in two European countries, Germany and Great Britain. Investigating formalised consultations with German and British Muslim community representatives and the introduction of new legislation protecting against religious discrimination, the study examines how salient discourses of citizenship conceive of social problems and their potential solutions and thereby frame the ’Muslim question’ in Europe. Lewicki argues that citizenship studies need to move away from defining citizenship as a single, monolithic regime and account for its contested nature that is reproduced through competing discourses that can facilitate or inhibit the reduction of structural inequalities.
