A common 'outlawness' : criminalisation of Muslim minorities in the UK and Australia

Waqas Tufail, Scott Poynting

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

27 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Since mass immigration recruitments of the post-war period, othered immigrants to both the UK and Australia have faced mainstream cultural expectations to assimilate, and various forms of state management of their integration. Perceived failure or refusal to integrate has historically been constructed as deviant, though in certain policy phases this tendency has been mitigated by cultural pluralism and official multiculturalism. At critical times, hegemonic racialisation of immigrant minorities has entailed their criminalisation, especially that of their young men. In the UK following the Rushdie Affair of 1989, and in both Britain and Australia following these states involvement in the 1990-91 Gulf War, the Muslim Other was increasingly targeted in cycles of racialised moral panic. This has intensified dramatically since the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the ensuing War on Terror. The young men of Muslim immigrant communities in both these nations have, over the subsequent period, been the subject of heightened popular and state Islamophobia in relation to: perceived ethnic gangs; alleged deviant, predatory masculinity including so-called ethnic gang rape; and paranoia about Islamist radicalisation and its supposed bolstering of terrorism. In this context, the earlier, more genuinely social-democratic and egalitarian, aspects of state approaches to integration have been supplanted, briefly glossed by a rhetoric of social inclusion, by reversion to increasingly oppressive assimilationist and socially controlling forms of integrationism. This article presents some preliminary findings from fieldwork in Greater Manchester over 2012, showing how mainly British-born Muslims of immigrant background have experienced these processes.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)43-54
Number of pages12
JournalInternational Journal for Crime , Justice and Social Democracy
Volume12
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2013

Keywords

  • Australia
  • Great Britain
  • Islamophobia
  • Muslims

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