Diaspora unbound: Muslim identity and the erratic regulation of Islam in France

Abstract

Despite the apparent innocuity of the diaspora concept, it has not escaped critical reflection and sustained debate. Some have bemoaned its obscurantist fetishism, and in particular its reliance on ‘ethnic essentialism’, while others defend it as a useful metaphor for explaining at least some types of migrant communities. In terms of the latter, Sayyid (2000) argued for a Muslim umma – a shared identity that may be considered ‘diasporic’. While he certainly had reservations about its use, he argued that reference to a diasporic umma need not imply unanimity among those supposedly divided by seemingly more ontologically grounded social categories such as class and gender. In this paper, then, I tread a path between the critique of diaspora as an essentialist concept, and how we might employ Sayyid's conceptualisation in the context of Maghrebin (North African) migrants in France during the 1980s and 1990s. In particular, I seek to demonstrate how the state in both Algeria and France shaped the relationship between Islam and identity among Muslims of Maghrebin origin in France. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Diaspora as Process: (De)Constructing Boundaries

“…Rather, it adds to them by arguing that an honest and in‐depth discussion of such issues requires geographical grounding. In addition, as Samers (2003, 361), in his discussion of Muslim identity in France also notes, it is dangerous to allow diaspora to ‘cast its powerful shadow over other social relations, such as gender, class, generational conflict, and indeed the state (in countries of both origin and destination).’…”

“…The concern of this article is to critically examine and advance a geographical approach to the notion of diaspora (see Ní Laoire 2003). For Samers (2003, 353), such an approach stresses the need to explore the processes that ‘produce diasporic practices, rather than assume its condition exists a priori ’. For Carter (2005, 62), it is the ‘geopolitics of diaspora’, which utilises ‘specific histories, maps, interventions and trajectories of diaspora’, that needs to be explored.…”

The Place of Islam in the Geography of Religion: Trends and Intersections

“…On a more theoretical footing, it will be important for further research in this area to consider the variety of spatial forms taken by the Muslim umma and whether one would have expected it to register in observable residential patterns. Examples of research covering this ground have recently begun to appear in the geographical literature and are discussed in the final section of this review (Saint‐Blancat 2002; Samers 2003; see also Kepel 1987).…”

“…Perhaps inevitably, this approach has involved engagement with existing concepts, such as ‘diaspora’ and ‘transnationalism’, which have sought to characterise the ways in which simultaneously global and local attachments have been maintained by different social groups, and extended these to the Muslim umma . Notable examples include articles by Saint‐Blancat (2002) and Samers (2003).…”

“…However, of arguably greater importance were national events, such as the ‘Headscarf Issue’ ( affaire des foulards ) in which the state played an active role. The key issue here is that a shared experience of faith‐based exclusion, and one which was actively promoted by the state, provided an important precondition for the mobilisation of an explicitly Islamic identity, involving the forging of connections between people of different Maghrebin heritage (Samers 2003, 360). Patricia Ehrkamp and Helga Leitner have undertaken related geographical work on how social and political conditions in countries of settlement necessitate specific forms of negotiation as a means to enact both national citizenship rights and forms of transnational identification, focusing inter alia on the experiences of Turkish migrants in Germany (Ehrkamp 2005; Ehrkamp and Leitner 2003; Leitner and Ehrkamp 2006).…”