Robert Gould

Roma rights and Roma expulsions in France: Official discourse and EU responses

McGarry (2012) in CSP presented significant aspects and dilemmas of European Union (EU) policy towards Roma. Developing points raised there, this article analyses French government statements and practices concerning Roma in the period from summer 2010 to late 2013 as a case study. It puts into relief the contrasts between EU emphasis on Roma as citizens with rights, and official French attitudes which are largely discriminatory. The frequency at the highest levels of the French state of widely-used anti-Roma clichés: ‘alien values’; ‘cultural difference’; threat to property, safety, and health; crime, etc. is highly problematic for the development of citizen rights in the face of both the principle and reality of free mobility within the EU. The change in government in France in 2012 did not end either the discriminatory discourse or the expulsions, which commentators think is due to French and European Parliamentary elections in 2014.

’Integration’, ’Solidarität ’ and the Discourses of National Identity in the 1998 Bundestag Election Manifestos

This paper examines the discourses of German identity in the manifestos of the parties elected to the Bundestag in September 1998, and analyses particularly the functions of the terms ‘Integration’ and ‘Solidaritat’ as they apply (or not) to non-German residents, German citizens, ethnic Germans and European integration. It also examines in a coda the uses of ‘Integration’ in the commentary accompanying the March 1999 bill to change the German citizenship laws. It concludes that within the two discourses of identity (the nation as an open community of rights or a closed community of ethnicity and custom) ‘Integration’ is a semantically empty verbal marker, used by all parties, around which to express attitudes of acceptance or covert rejection of non-German groups in the central process of (re-)defining ‘Deutsche/r’. ‘Solidaritat’, on the other hand, is reserved by some parties for use in connection only with Germans. It is subjected to explicit re-definition by one party in an attempt to claim the word for its particular ideology. Consequently the paper proposes that the concept of ‘Begriffe besetzen’ can be applied to ‘Solidaritat’ but not to ‘Integration’, and situates these phenomena in relation to recent writing on political language.

‘Alien Religiosity’ in Three Liberal European States

Starting from an indication of the problematic nature of the relationship between religion and the state, this paper examines political debates on the headscarf and face veil in three liberal states – Germany, France, and Belgium – between 2003 and 2011. It shows the significant commonalities – despite both the different arrangements between religion and the state and also despite the radically different political, social, and linguistic situations in these countries. The political debates are hostile and assert that fundamental values closely related to national identity, societal values, and human rights are threatened by what the headscarf or face veil represents. The similarity of argumentation shows that, whether the country has a doctrine of laïcité or is more overt about the links between religion and the state, the liberalism of each has reached the limits of the ‘alien religiosity’ which politicians say their country can bear.

Managing Ambivalence and Identity: Immigration Discourses and (trans)national Identities in the European Union

As the literature on the topic and contributions to this volume show, transnationalism is a useful, but not altogether unproblematic, concept. Debate exists concerning its exact scope, while other discussions turn on its applicability to various realms of human (including political) activity. This chapter concentrates on political activity, particularly in relation to public statements on questions of national identity, made by significant political actors at the European Union (EU) or national level, as they apply to resident transnational populations. The statements represent the EU and the larger nation-states in a complex process of consultation and interaction; both the EU and many of its member states are adapting their immigration policies and practices with regard to third-country immigration and the resulting transnational populations and phenomena arising from such movements. As the difficult passage of the new German Citizenship Act in 1999 and the German Immigration Act in 2004 showed, national responses to such transnational processes and situations are unlikely to be straightforward. This chapter examines one aspect of this phenomenon: the intersection of public statements by national and EU actors and notions of national and European identities. This intersection is particularly problematic and sensitive as it is likely to deal with the rejection of certain values and practices of transnational populations, or, conversely, with the acceptance of transnational practices of immigrants, which, however, are likely to be rejected by significant numbers of the autochthonous population.

The European Paradox: Swiss Discourses of Identity Between Dependence and Xenophobia

The goal of this chapter is to demonstrate how the discourses of globalization and security have invaded that of identity and immigration, how foreigners are presented and operationalized within this mingling of discourses, and finally to comment on some of the implications of the overlapping of these different discursive practices.

Moors and Christians: Fear of Islam in Spanish Political Debates

This chapter examines the 2010 Spanish Senate debate on a motion urging legislation to ban Islamic women’s face-veils. It examines committee and plenary debates in the Catalan Parliament 2011–2013 in connection with motions and bills to the same end. The political discourse is characterised by arguments referring to various rights, including that of personal and collective safety, posited as central in the ongoing construction of national or Catalan identity and which are, it is argued, being contravened and even threatened by the presence of the burqa in Spain. This chapter also discusses the contrasting judgement of Spain’s highest appeal court, which in 2013 quashed a by-law passed by the City of Lleida in Catalonia banning in all public places any garment covering the face. The decision gave constitutional protection to Muslim women wearing the face-veil in the whole of Spain, however, even after the decision, politicians at both the national and Catalan levels continued, and continue still, to seek ways to achieve their end of prohibiting this symbolic garment.

Islam Returns to Spain: Religious Diversity, Political Discourse and Women's Rights

On February 14, 2013, the Tribunal Supremo of Spain handed down a judgement which gave constitutional protection to the burka and which also contained important statements concerning contemporary Spanish society, its religious and cultural diversity and the convivencia of cultures and religions. Contrary to the position of the Tribunal Supremo, and showing very little variation, the political discourse is in favour of a ban, basing its arguments principally on womens rights, but with a perceptible shift towards public safety. This article will examine this bifurcated reaction to this manifestation of renewed religious diversity in Spain: the politicians’ arguments in favour of prohibition reflect the protectionist view of the French and Belgian parliamentary debates prohibiting the burka, but place them in the framework of the post-Franco rights-based society. On the other hand, the Tribunal Supremo anchors its judgement in a narrative of a free and democratic Spanish state and society in which a womans individual freedom of choice takes precedence over all other considerations, including social norms.