Racism and Anti-Racism

Description

What is in the Scandinavian Nexus of “Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, and Muslim-Western Relations”? Studies of European political party programs, social movements, news media coverage, scores of books, and social media networks have embraced a negative dialogue towards migrants, whose identities are increasingly seen as incompatible with “Western” values and presenting a major challenge to the democracy. Sponsors of these public discourse support anti-migration and oppositionary stances to “migrant sympathizers”, who are often represented as traitors or cowards. They also fuel a process where xenophobia, islamophobia and zero-tolerance have become naturalized and morally accepted ways to respond to the non-Western migrants. But how do people reason on these issues in everyday interaction and during interviews? The aim of this paper is to discuss how racist negativity against migrants in Scandinavia (mostly Denmark) is related to negative beliefs towards “multiculturalism”, “feminism”, and “liberals” (left-wingers) in Scandinavian popular reasoning about difference. We approach this coexistence of negativities as a “nexus of exclusionary beliefs” with its blurred relations, inherent contradictions, and taken for granted assumptions and apply it to an ever-growing material of in-depth interviews, participant observation, discussions on political blogs and commentaries to web-news.

Period	6 Sept 2014
Event title	Racism and Anti-Racism: From the Labour Movement to the Far-Right
Event type	Conference
Location	Glasgow, United KingdomShow on map