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Largely due to immigration, European societies have grown increasingly diverse. The current study seeks to determine how citizens characterize their experiences with this diversity and whether various types of intergroup exposure can influence immigration attitudes. This analysis takes a unique approach by comparing positive, negative, and neutral intergroup exposure characterizations, along with those reporting no exposure at all. Using internationally representative data from the 2014 European Social Survey, this paper demonstrates how these different characterizations predict citizens' immigration attitudes. Results indicate that positive and negative experiences have opposing effects that are roughly symmetrical in magnitude and both are more intense when experienced in high frequency. Neutral exposure is actually much more common than negative experiences and represents a net benefit compared to those with no exposure at all. The results present important implications for future research and highlight several encouraging patterns for diversity across Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the Special Issue "Rethinking Islam and Space in Europe" advocates for an analytical turn in the study of Islam in Europe by using space as a central conceptual lens. While spatial approaches are gaining traction in the study of religion, migration, ethnicity, and race, we argue that the critical potential of spatial approaches remains largely unexplored. This paper offers a threefold contribution. First, we show how combining spatial perspectives with local histories contributes to de-exceptionalising the contemporary study of Islam in urban contexts. Second, by "localising secularism" we can uncover concrete formations of exclusion and erasure, while also providing a more refined picture of the ways in which the agency of Muslims is negotiated. Third, we demonstrate how scrutinizing the nexus of time, race and Europe reveals colonial pasts and continuities that are disrupted and transformed by the movement of bodies through public spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to study the patterns of mobility from Spain to other European countries that have emerged since the economic crisis of 2008. To do this, we have carried out an in-depth analysis of the main statistical sources on migration flows from Spain's National Statistics Institute. Based on this analysis we have developed a typology of the "new emigrants", including returnees, re-emigrants and Spanish-born migrants. However, the article shows that these mobilities do not only result from a new phenomenon, since there is a continuity with earlier Spanish migration cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the introduction to this special issue, we briefly introduce everyday bordering as the theoretical framing for the papers and explore its relationship to the process of racialization. We introduce our situated intersectional approach to the study of everyday bordering, illustrating the importance of capturing the differentially situated gazes of a range of social actors. We then go on to contextualize the importance of this framing and approach in a wider discussion of Roma in Europe before concluding with a summary of the particular contributions of each of the papers in this special issue to these debates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper argues that the well-known triadic relationship between kin state, resident state and national minority needs to take into account a fourth dimension: that of European institutions. This is illustrated through a study of relational identities on the EU’s Eastern border where the reconfiguration of ethnic relations followed the end of the iron curtain and EU accession. It considers two neighbouring ethnic minorities. One minority is part of the EU – the Belarusians in Poland – and the other is not part of the EU – the Poles in Belarus. The paper argues that the intersection of these four relational dimensions result in contrasting kinds of ethnic identification for the two minority groups leading to either fluidification or solidification under different circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite recent advances, critical areas in the analysis of European migration remain underdeveloped. We have only a limited understanding of the consequences of migration for migrants and their descendants, relative to staying behind; and our insights of intergenerational transmission is limited to two generations of those living in the destination countries. These limitations stem from a paucity of studies that incorporate comparison with nonmigrants -- and return migrants -- in countries of origin and which trace processes of intergenerational transmission over multiple generations. This paper outlines the theoretical and methodological discussions in the field, design and data of the 2,000 Families study. The study comprises almost 50,000 members of migrant and non-migrant Turkish families across three family generations, living in Turkey and eight European countries. We provide indicative findings from the study, framed within a theoretical perspective of "dissimilation" from origins, and reflect on its potential for future migration research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovative approaches to citizenship emerged in the 1990s. Post-national theory suggested that European minorities no longer needed national citizenship because supra-national political structures such as the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) offered them protections. Denationalized citizenship held that universal human rights were now available at the national level too as the Council of Europe's member countries had to incorporate human rights principles within their own jurisdictions. New forms of claims-making among European Muslims were cited as evidence of this trend as religious claims, especially relating to the hijab, began to be made through human rights litigation. This paper demonstrates the limits of post-nationalism through a discussion of the outcomes of such claims. While European Muslims are indeed mobilizing around human rights, there is no evidence – at the level of litigation – that this has helped them to win recognition of their religious or cultural rights. This paper explores the reasons for this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An emerging consensus among scholars of Muslim political and social identity suggests that Western Muslims live out an anti-essentialist critique of identity construction. Considering this view, this paper examines a cross-national comparison of British Bangladeshis in London and Spanish Moroccans in Madrid that solicits the perceptions of working-class Muslim men. While the results indeed reaffirm respondents' concomitant relationships to a variety of identity paradigms, interview content demonstrates that subjects' multiplicity is complicated by their desire to meet – not reject – the essentialist standards of belonging to the identity paradigms discursively available to them. Rather than defiantly cherry-picking preferred characteristics of religion, ethnicity and nationality, individuals' responses suggest that they are trying to fulfil perceived standards of authenticity. Such a contention helps explain the prevalence of Western Muslims' expressed and well-documented ‘identity crisis’, suggests the enduring relevance of identity essentialisms, and more broadly, complicates post-modern conceptions of identity formation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the formulation of policy frames towards new minorities in France by analysing Lyon's membership of the European Commission's and Council of Europe's Intercultural Cities programme (ICP). Here, with culture accounting for 20% of Lyon's budget, emphasis is placed on the adoption of the Charte de Coopération Culturelle to use cultural institutions to implement difference-orientated policies. Critically, important issues emerge with this strategy. The effort to engage new minorities is hampered by significant apathy from cultural institutions in Lyon, and the limited geographical area of Lyon included in the ICP. Finally, institutions who engage with promoting interculturality co-opt existing organizations, with negative implications for the treatment of diversity in the city. This illustrates the problems with a European framework fostering a policy frame based on recognition for minorities in a context that has yet to fully embrace such policies at the national level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diverse schools have become the norm throughout much of what is considered the West. Many urban classrooms feature few white European children but are located in nations dominated by Eurocentric epistemologies and discourses that oppress minority students by devaluing their cultures. Most European scholarship fails to analyse cultures of whiteness in educational settings. This paper addresses this gap by documenting cultural discourses of whiteness infusing a diverse primary school classroom in Amsterdam. Discourses reflecting white cultural norms of order, time, cleanliness, and Western and Christian superiority dominated a classroom containing only one white Dutch child. These discourses contribute to diverse students' explicit racialization while promoting the supremacy of white Dutch culture. They are both assimilationist and exclusionary, suggesting that many students, because of their backgrounds, will never be considered fully Dutch. Findings are of relevance to all nations dominated by white cultures with large populations of students of colour. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper contends that exclusionary views towards out-group populations are formed along two dimensions: exclusion from the country and exclusion from equal rights. Data obtained from the European Social Survey (for twenty-one countries) reveal that objection to the admission of foreigners to the country is more pronounced than objection to the allocation of 'equal rights'. The data further suggest that objection to admission can be directed either at all non-nationals or only at ethnic and racial minorities. 'Total exclusionists' (i.e. support exclusion of all non-nationals) are more likely to support the denial of foreigners from equal rights than 'racial exclusionists' (i.e. support only exclusion of ethnic minorities). Multi-level analyses show that support for exclusion is also influenced by socio-economic characteristics of individuals (e.g. education, political orientation) and characteristics of their countries (e.g. size of the non-European population). The findings are discussed in light of sociological theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that immigrant civic activism, which may at first glance seem to focus on diasporic ties and ethnic community building, becomes often a lever for transcultural capital and transcultural community building. The study is explorative of new repertoires and forms of transnationalism among sub-Saharan African immigrant activists in Europe. The findings suggest that immigrant civic activism, even if limited in size, proposes new types of transcultural societal networks and new forms of transcultural expression. In the first part of the study I discuss the theoretical background of transnationalism in migration studies and propose the notions of transcultural capital and transcultural community as working concepts. The second part of the study concentrates on the qualitative analysis of life story interviews with sixteen sub-Saharan African immigrants in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]