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Fostering unity in diversity while ensuring spaces for disagreement is a key challenge for all liberal democracies with ethnic and religious diversity. Increasing polarization, not least due to the threat of terror attacks, exacerbates this challenge. Drawing on the case of Norway in the aftermath of the 2011 terror attacks motivated by 'Eurabia' sentiments, we find that both consensus and contestation are necessary to counter conflictual polarization. Consensus establishes a necessary common ground for interaction, while contestation permits diverging interpretations to emerge. Working with 21 semi-structured interviews with people in influential roles in Norway, we propose an analytical framework that draws on both political theory and empirically based analyses of interaction in diverse societies. We find that consensus-oriented approaches immediately following terror attacks can build unity and bridge divides across existing ethnic, religious, and political diversity. Over time, however, they may contribute to conflict, as they are perceived to conceal underlying disagreements. Perspectives founded on dualistic contestation can also cultivate conflict if opponents increasingly perceive each other as enemies in a hostile environment. A plurality of contestations, by contrast, can de-escalate conflict and thereby ease renewed cooperation. Thus, our findings point to the need for a perspective that transcends the dualism of ''us'' and ''them'', and acknowledges the plurality of human beings in order to de-escalate the spiral of polarization.

In the immediate aftermath of terrorism, references to ‘our values’ as a source of unity became a substantial part of public discourse. Leaders, the media, and the public emphasize ‘values’ to express that ‘we’ are united across ethnic, religious, and political differences. This article comparatively examines formulations of ‘we’, ‘us’, and ‘them’ with reference to ‘values’ (i.e. value-talk) after terror attacks in France (November 2015) and Norway (July 2011). To access speech, events, and symbols as they were unfolding, the analysis draws on the first week of national television news following these attacks. Whereas the terrorists in France were self-proclaimers of an Islamic State, the terrorist in Norway was a self-proclaimed defender of the Christian civilization. The central place of a value-based unity—regardless of the terrorists’ ethnicity and motivations—contrasts with the otherwise common idea expressed in public debate that ‘values’ embody a fundamental divide between ‘natives’ and immigrant populations. This article argues that scholarship on values, in migration studies and beyond, reifies the much-repeated assumption in public debate that there is a value-based divide between groups of people. By examining expressions of unity in contexts of conflict, the analysis untangles the dynamic and flexible ‘groupness’ articulated through value-talk. Analytical attention to this variability, I argue, better reflects the widespread attention to cultural complexities in migration studies. Through the study of value-talk in the immediate aftermath of terrorism, the article explores some of the dimensions of how and when unity is mobilized in societies marked by migration-related diversity.