From February 1st till July 1st, I’ll be working as Research Fellow at the Paris Institute for Advanced Studies / L’Institut d’études avancées de Paris (IEA Paris). The research project is titled ‘The Rise of Nativism: New Axes of Social Exclusion in Western Europe?’
My claim is that something fundamental is changing in the positioning of various groups in Western European societies. If we want to understand these shifts, framing them as we did previously – e.g. “racism” – may inadvertently obscure much of what is going on today. The terms in which exclusion is legitimized today seem to be less related to phenotype and more to (assumed) cultural differences, often mapped onto territorial divides. In my research project, I want to better understand how across Western Europe, particularly in France and the Netherlands, “nativist” discourses exist. Whereas in the Netherlands we have empirical evidence that “nativism” is partly replacing “racism” (in political discourse as well as in the experiences of various minority groups themselves), the picture is less clear in France. It is my main objective to describe and analyze this anti-Muslim, nativist discourse and its precise impact on “traditional”, skin-color coded racism in France and the Netherlands.