How Are Muslim Refugees Changing European Culture?

Abstruse

The recent migration of refugees from Muslim majority countries to Central Europe has prompted an almost unprecedented dynamic in the British and German language public sphere and political culture. Notwithstanding, there exists a lack of understanding how the "refugee crisis" and Islam are linked to each other in public discourse. This newspaper addresses this lacuna by seeking to reply the question how the electric current refugee situation has been interpreted with regards to Islam in British and German newspapers. A disquisitional analysis allows to identify iii major discursive patterns that contribute to the securitisation of the refugee situation. Moreover, the study reveals the construction of Muslim refugees as the culturally inferior "other" to an exclusive "European Christian Culture".

Zusammenfassung

Die derzeitige Migration von Flüchtlingen aus mehrheitlich muslimischen Ländern nach Mitteleuropa hat eine nahezu einzigartige Dynamik in der britischen und deutschen Öffentlichkeit und politischen Kultur in Gang gebracht. Allerdings ist bislang unzureichend erforscht, wie im öffentlichen Diskurs „Flüchtlingskrise" und Islam miteinander in Verbindung gebracht werden. Diese Forschungslücke wird bearbeitet, indem der Frage nachgegangen wird, wie die aktuelle Flüchtlingssituation in Bezug auf den Islam von britischen und deutschen Tageszeitungen interpretiert wird. In einer kritischen Analyse werden drei diskursive Design aufgezeigt, welche zur Versicherheitlichung der Flüchtlingssituation beitragen. Darüber hinaus zeigt die vorliegende Studie auf, wie muslimische Flüchtlinge als kulturell minderwertige „Andere" gegenüber einer exklusiven „europäischen christlichen Kultur" konstruiert werden.

Introduction

The contempo migration of refugees from Muslim majority countries to Western and Primal Europe has prompted an almost unprecedented dynamic in the British and German public sphere and political culture. Gimmicky phenomena such every bit the ascent of right-wing and anti-Islamic movements, struggles about national identities, terrorist attacks, attacks on refugee shelters, and changing asylum laws are linked to significant developments of political culture in Europe. Especially the role of Islam has been at the centre of political debates and ballot campaigns in both countries. However, scholarly understanding of how the current refugee situation and Islam are linked to each other in public discourse is insufficient. In that location exists a famine of studies that analyse how politicians and the media interpret the current refugee state of affairs with regards to the interdependence of migration, Islam, and security.

This paper addresses this lacuna by analysing British and German newspaper coverage on how the topics of "refugees" and "Islam" are connected. Thereby, it seeks to answer the post-obit inquiry question: How has the current refugee situation been interpreted with regards to Islam in British and German language media?

In guild to depict representative inferences well-nigh changes in political cultures caused by the contempo events, scholars need to conduct large-n attitudinal studies (Pickel and Pickel 2006, p. 24). Nevertheless, there withal exists a famine in data sets that can be used to exam theoretical models on attitudes towards Islam and refugees (Pickel and Yendell 2016, p. 277). Attitudes towards component parts of the political system such as structures, roles, incumbents of these roles and policies are but in a few cases shaped by direct personal experiences. More than often, changes in attitudes towards sure events are influenced past opinions expressed in mediated class. In particular media discourses play a crucial part in shaping people's attitudes toward political actors and structures in relation to refugees and Islam (Baker et al. 2013; Mythen 2012). Therefore, this paper seeks to investigate dominant discursive patterns in the media linking the recent refugee situation to Islam. Thus, this newspaper engages with the comparative literature on depictions of Muslims in the public sphere. Scholars have argued that Muslims have been constructed as "doubtable communities" in the U.k., parallel to Irish communities from the 1970s throughout the 1990s (Nickels et al. 2012; Pantazis and Pemberton 2009; confronting this Greer 2010, p. 1186).

Since the 1997 Runnymede Report, inquiry on Islamophobia has sought to explain negative attitudes towards Muslims and Islam by testing intergroup contact theory, socialization theory, social identity theory, and integrated threat theory, amongst others (Dekker and van der Noll 2012, p. 113). From the perspective of parasocial contact theory, information technology is of pivotal importance to report "indirect" contacts to Muslims such as those established through the consumption of mass media. According to Pickel and Yendell, mediated parasocial contacts take contributed to an increased threat perception related to Islam (2016, p. 299). They merits that micro-level mechanisms, such as media representations that connect Islam with conflict, violence and anti-modernism, can accept macro effects on political civilization. At the same time, they bespeak out the lack of inquiry scrutinizing the relation between culturally and historically configured identities and contemporary socio-psychological processes of labelling foreign groups (cf. Bleich and Maxwell 2012, p. 44). Helbling highlights the demand of qualitative research to investigate how and to what extend negative attitudes towards Muslims, Arabs, and refugees are linked (2012, p. viii). This paper addresses this lacuna by conducting a qualitative comparative analysis on how media representations portray the connexion betwixt Islam and refugees. The paper will outline micro-level mechanisms that are related mainly to three major discursive patterns. Through them, Muslim refugees are pitted against a Christian European identity (3.1.), depicted as culturally radically different, self-responsible victims that pose a security threat (3.2.) and that are responsible for the rise of far-right parties (3.iii.).

Research design

This paper conducts a disquisitional analysis of mainstream paper articles in order to sympathise how refugees in relation to Islam are being depicted. A lot of recent scholarship has focused on the effects of social media use on political culture and behaviour. Notwithstanding, newspapers equally i of the oldest forms of political communication have retained potent influence in the political life of contemporary democracies. Many newspapers manage to establish strong relationships of identity betwixt newspaper and reader that are reinforced "through various interpellations of the reading customs ("our readers") and opportunities for feedback and annotate" (Richardson et al. 2013, p. 46). In particular, online publications of the same or like content that appear under the same make aggrandize the accessibility of news material to a broader audience, including international readers. Scholars accept argued for the persistence of the influence of newspapers on political attitudes and voting patterns: "even short exposure to a daily newspaper appears to influence voting behavior and may affect turnout" (Gerber et al. 2009, p. 47). This suggests that despite the rise influence of digital media, the analysis of newspapers promises insights into a medium that is primal in shaping political orientations (Baker et al. 2013, p. 254).

The term "political civilisation" refers to the "specifically political orientations-attitudes towards the political system and its diverse parts" (Almond and Verba 1989, p. 12). The component parts of the political system are identified by Almond and Verba as roles and structures (e. one thousand. legislative structures, executives), incumbents of such roles, and public policies, decisions and enforcements (Almond and Verba 1989, p. 14). The types of political orientation towards these elements of the political system are cognitive, comprising the knowledge of and belief about the political arrangement, affective, meaning the personal feelings about the political system and its roles, and evaluational, implying the judgements and opinions well-nigh political objects (Almond and Verba 1989, p. xiv). This newspaper uses the three dimensions of cognitive, affective and evaluational political orientation derived from the concept of political culture every bit analytical dimensions for the analysis of the primary data.

The present hermeneutical approach seeks to understand how texts are indicative of certain discursive sociocultural practices (cf. Fairclough 1995, p. seven). In a double movement, "the discursive event is shaped by situations, institutions and social structures, but it as well shapes them" (Fairclough and Wodak 1997, p. 258). In the present assay of political civilisation, texts and their inherent interpretations of the situation are analysed in terms of the arguments aiming to legitimise or deligitimise a sure political behavior (Schwab-Trapp 2003, p. 172). This analysis does not establish representativity and cannot be used to command certain factors while varying others (Schwartz-Shea and Yanow 2012, p. 70). Rather, it seeks to spell out core aspects of publicly visible and recognised communication for the construction of collective identities and social relations (Barbehön et al. 2015, p. 240). Thus, the study seeks to discern dominant discursive patterns used to make sense of the refugee situation. Limits of this kind of textual analysis include the neglect of the production processes of the texts and the perceptions by the audition (Fairclough 2003, p. fifteen).

The corpus of the assay is formed past all newspaper articles in 2 1-calendar week periods (31^st of August to 6^th September in 2015 and 2016 respectively) that contain keywords relating "refugees" and "Islam". The four newspapers selected, Dice Welt, Süddeutsche Zeitung, The Daily Telegraph, and The Guardian, are among the about read and influential quality newspapers in Germany and the UK (Duffy and Rowden 2005, p. 30). The rationale behind choosing broadsheet instead of tabloid newspapers for the analysis is that this selection represents the less obvious and harder case. Arguably, the clan of refugees with Islam through implicit presuppositions and suggestive causal claims is much more than likely to be found in the tabloid press. All the same, the analysis of broadsheet newspapers that are expected to be generally more sympathetic to refugees is probable to uncover more subtle and subconscious assumptions that might indicate furnishings of problematic ability/knowledge formations. Choosing ii newspapers with more bourgeois (Die Welt, The Daily Telegraph) and more left-leaning editorial policies (SZ, Guardian) from two countries allows to uncover patterns differing by national context and political orientation.

The commencement fourth dimension menstruation, from the 31^st of August to the vi^th of September 2015, was chosen because of a series of decisive events with regards to the refugee situation in Europe. First, in the annual summertime press conference on 31^st of August 2015 chancellor Merkel coined the contentious phrase "Wir schaffen das", "we tin do this", which has subsequently been called the most of import sentence of her fourth dimension in role (WeltN24 2016). The context of this statement consists of the almost unprecedented increase in incoming refugees, mainly being brought by buses and special trains from Hungary via Austria to Federal republic of germany. Moreover, the image of the dead trunk of Aylan Kurdi, a Syrian boy of three years who was constitute at a embankment in Turkey virtually Bodrum on September 2^nd, aroused international attention and reactions past leading politicians. Finally, the chosen period witnessed fierce debates between European heads of state regarding a possible distribution mechanism among European union fellow member states. The 2nd time period under scrutiny is from 31^st Baronial to 6^thursday September 2016, exactly 1 year after the beginning one. Choosing this time period allows a diachronic comparison that reflects how media discourse has changed over the course of a yr. Meaning events in that year include the terrorist attacks in Paris, Brussels, Nice, Würzburg and Ansbach, the attacks in Cologne on New year's day's Eve, and the Brexit vote on 23^rd of June 2016. Many articles in the 2d time menses accept critically discussed the "Wir schaffen das" argument past Merkel using the opportunity of the anniversary to reflect on the refugee situation, which is typically particularly urgent in the summer months.

The corpus was built through keyword search in LexisNexis and the SZ digital archive. Articles were included if they independent both a keyword referring to Islam such equally "Islam", "Muslim", "headscarf", "hijab" and a keyword referring to refugees such as "refugee", "migrant", "migrat", or "asyl". A second search included the terms "extremist" and "communit" in combination with the keywords on refugees in order to business relationship for indirect modes of speaking virtually Muslims, especially in the Uk context. After gathering the large corpus with a total of 292 articles, those articles that did not relate to the European "refugee crisis", were removed from the sample. As a issue, the concluding corpus comprised 89 articles with a total of effectually 83,000 words as indicated in Tabular array 1.

Table i Issue of keyword searches and corpus selection

Total size table

Portraying refugees as Muslims in British and German language media

In the following, the research question on the depiction of refugees as Muslims is addressed by outlining three major discursive strands that were uncovered in the media analysis: the construction of a "Christian European Culture" (3.one.), the construction of cultural difference, cocky-responsible victims and a security threat (three.2.), and attributions of responsibility linking chancellor Merkel, Muslim refugees and the rise of the far-right (3.three.).

Constructing a "Christian European culture"

As indicated above, the search entries for the selection of the articles comprised only keywords that were directly related to Islam. Although "Christianity" was not part of the original search mask, it turned out that depictions of the refugee crisis were predominantly fabricated against the background of a purported Christian or "Judeo-Christian" European identity (Kade 2016). For instance, the argumentative construction of the Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán arguing against accepting more than refugees is built on the structure of a sharp differentiation between the religious identity of refugees and of the current Hungarian and European population. He claims that "those arriving have been raised in another religion and represent a radically unlike culture. Nearly of them are non Christians, merely Muslims. [...] Is information technology not worrying in itself that European Christianity is at present barely able to keep Europe Christian?" (Traynor 2015a; Bergmer 2015). This rhetorical question refers to an implicit assumption that Europe is and even should remain Christian. Building on this assumption, Orbán stylises himself in militaristic linguistic communication every bit having to "defend our borders," to defend "European Christianity" against the "offensive" of the "Muslim influx" (Traynor 2015b).

An integral role of what can be called aChristians-equally-insiders and Muslims-equally-outsiders rhetoric is the underlying supposition that certain countries were dominated by 1 religion. Therefore, some articles suggest that it was normal or common sense to try to keep out people that do not share the same organized religion: "Hungarians did not desire Muslims in their country" (Traynor 2015a). Some articles fifty-fifty attribute responsibility for accepting refugees to countries that share the same religion or even the same confession: "Sunni countries, headed by Saudi Arabia, should take in Sunni refugees. Shia countries, headed by Islamic republic of iran, should have Shia refugees. Christian countries should then take Christian refugees." (Sherborne 2015; cf. Steinke 2015). This statement implies that it was more natural and beneficial if different religious groups remained separated. This reveals an ideal of religious homogeneity underlying the text which implies that a man correct such equally aviary should exist granted not according to need merely co-ordinate to religious affiliation. Arguing for such discriminatory measures including watering downwardly human rights standards by invoking Christianity appears paradoxical in face of the proclaimed "Christian" values such as liberal democracy and "dignity of every human existence" (Esslinger und Steinke 2016). ^{Footnote 1} Statements by senior German Christian democratic politicians reveal the aforementioned referential mechanism that fails to specify what a Christian identity of Europe means: "I am not of the stance that Islam is part of the national identity of our country. The Muslims living in Germany vest to us, they are part of our society. But nosotros have a Christian-Jewish tradition" (Kade 2016).

Some other senior Christian democratic political leader claims that the challenge to accept refugees is now bigger compared to refugees coming from a land with Christian tradition. Asked why this is the example, she answers that "The origin and the way of life a human existence lives in his homeland shape him. This is completely normal. Like we Germans are shaped by the dominion of police, the basic law, our civil and personal liberties and Christianity" (Esslinger und Steinke 2016). In this statement, a discursive blueprint of what could be called implication by correlation becomes visible, which occurs on multiple occasions throughout the texts. The conservative politician responds to the question near why it should be more challenging to integrate non-Christian immigrants by naming more often than not positively evaluated concepts as part of German identity. By implication, this suggests that non-Christians—the context of the interview reveals that she is talking most Muslims—are non "shaped past" or as intimately familiar with these concepts. Pushed even further past the interviewer to define what "Christian influence" actually means, she answers "Beloved of neighbour, tolerance. The values that my parents accept taught me, with respecting the dignity of every human being beingness, which ultimately too expresses itself in our constitution" (Esslinger und Steinke 2016). The claims that German identity and Christian culture mainly express themselves in the constitution expose a political theology that is at least in tension with the self-proclaimed religious neutrality of the constitutional state.

In the articles under scrutiny "Christianity" is largely stripped of a genuinely religious meaning and used to signify an indefinite set of concepts and structures that are an integral part of political culture. This change in signification helps to construct the cultural container "Christianity" and a culturally and religiously divers border to the "other". Thus, because refugees do not share this religious tradition, they also purportedly do not share the support for core principles of liberal democracy. In other words, "Christianity" serves to proof that human dignity, dominion of constabulary and civil liberties are unfamiliar or even alien concepts to Muslim refugees. Through this rhetoric, talking most a "refugee influx" into Europe becomes inextricably linked not only to crossing borders of nation states but to crossing the cultural border between "Christian liberal democracy" and the "residual". In the argumentation quoted above, a bars territoriality ("homeland") is connected with an exclusive customs of belonging ("we Germans" and "Christians"), and is linked with cultural superiority ("rule of law" and "our civil and personal liberties"). This tripartite amalgamation can be interpreted as the epitome of the discursive construction of the Muslim refugee as the "Other". In sum, two seemingly clear cut cultural-spatial containers are being constructed that are marked by a sharp distinction between a "European Christian Civilization" "here" and a "Muslim Culture" "there". This spatio-cultural structure provides the discursive basis for arguments claiming that the integration of Muslims was especially difficult or fifty-fifty impossible.

Depicting refugees: cultural deviation, self-responsible victims and security threat

Muslim refugees are not only considered to exist unfamiliar with tolerance and principles of liberal democracy but as well conceived as culturally "completely different" (Braun and Roll 2016) because "The hundred thousands of Muslims, that are coming at present" (Belkin 2016) are from a "radically different civilisation" (Traynor et al. 2015). I author claims "that who comes has to accept the rules hither, the liberties and cultural codes. Who comes hither a thou kilometers by foot has to cover the aforementioned distance in his caput" (Rühle 2016). This argument suggests that the ofttimes very unsafe journey to Europe is as big a claiming for Muslim refugees every bit to span the gap of cultural differences.

While Muslim refugees are depicted as unfamiliar with and often not willing to accept the rules and cultural codes of the host society, one author contends that "Frg has a long tradition of knowing the Orient" (Krause 2016). He claims that considering Muslim people "destroy each other or are beingness alienated past primitive and criminal Islamists from their best traditions, [...] nosotros Germans actually have to reinforce the cocky-consciousness of those that fled to us. Namely past reminding them of their cultural achievements" (Krause 2016). While on an evaluational level this article positively acknowledges some elements of Muslim civilization, it asserts that information technology is upward to Germans knowing the Orient to remind Muslims of the positive sides of their heritage. While on a cognitive level the texts disagree fundamentally about the beingness or value of "Muslim culture", the noesis/power formation that they enact has similar furnishings. No affair whether Muslim refugees are considered lacking something like a positively evaluable "civilization" or as merely having forgotten it, both positions result in the establishment of asymmetrical power relations. Thus, Muslim refugees are constructed every bit passive postcolonial subjects that are dependent on the rules, norms, and codes established by culturally superior Europeans (cf. Said 1978, p. 5).

Addressing the policy dimension of political culture, ane text directly translates these cultural differences into a political demand for an "immigration organisation that is tiered according to qualitative and cultural criteria. Nosotros should privilege well-educated refugees besides as Christians and other persecuted minorities from the Near E that usually have a higher readiness to assimilate" and "cheque whether they are culturally compatible with our bones values" (Wergin 2015). This implies the fifty-fifty more than enervating cerebral assertion that it was somehow possible to class and mensurate "cultural criteria" that on an evaluational level should be the decisive criterion most whether refugees should exist accustomed or not. Therefore, non simply are Christians supposedly more familiar with elements of liberal democracy and culturally more "advanced", they are as well supposed to exist willing to give up their cultural, national, and religious identity in order to assimilate into European societies. This, again, implies a causality between religious homogeneity, cultural similarity, and successful integration or fifty-fifty assimilation. The author goes even further past enervating that those refugees who come up are required to have "sufficient cultural capital in order to persist in a chop-chop irresolute economic system" (Wergin 2015). Therefore, we "demand [...] the right immigration" which means choosing "whom we can make use of" (Wergin 2015). This statement endorses the possibility and the desirability of categorizing refugees into "needed" and "not needed". It is therefore not only a set of cultural codes and political values, but besides a set of skills related to economic performance that is synthetic as requirement for refugees to be granted asylum.

In an amalgamation of economic, cultural, and religious argumentative snippets, the alleged reason for immigrants' failure to be compatible with the European economic and cultural system is that they come from "culturally astern regions effectually the Mediterranean" (Wergin 2015). This "double-bind" becomes evident in the statement by i author: "the refugee is a victim that, however, is self-responsible. And the people come here for good reasons and not to Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. They come up here considering hither at that place are liberties, just you too have to take them" (Rühle 2016). The self-responsible victim turns out to be the paradox figure that is torn between conflicting predications and the imperatives derived from them. On the one manus, the Muslim refugee is seen as victim of war, structural disadvantages, lack of cultural knowledge, deficient education and religious backwardness. On the other hand, the refugee is thought to have freely chosen to come to Europe. This purported act of free will is and then used as an argument to claim that the Muslim refugee is cocky-responsible in overcoming all obstacles and in accepting European rules and traditions, its Christian character, and the demands of a dynamic economic system. This means that the self-responsible victim is depicted every bit being restricted and disadvantaged by deep-rooted, fundamental differences and "trenches", while at the aforementioned time it is equally up to her to successfully integrate according to the vision of European societies.

Forth with the cognitive assessment of deficient skill sets and cultural compatibility, the words used to collectively describe refugees are often metaphors associated with force of nature or the movement of large material quantities. The wordings used in both bourgeois and left-leaning newspapers include "refugee wave" (Fried 2015), "stream of refugees" (Mühlfenzl 2016; Wergin 2015), "refugee overflowing" (Schulte von Drach 2015), "mass migration [Völkerwanderung]" (Herzinger 2015; Büscher 2015), "Muslim influx" (Traynor 2015a), and "onslaught of asylum seekers" (Wergin 2015). Using these metaphors associates the situation with several characteristics of natural forces. On the one mitt, equally the weather causing natural disasters, the situation is suggested to come up from exterior, recalling the dissimilarity betwixt the untamed and wild nature and the well-ordered "civilised" human society. Most narratives that include natural disasters imply that the only reasonable reaction is to build barriers between the forces of nature "outside" and that which must be protected "inside". The repeated collocation of words in ascendant discursive structures make information technology highly unlikely that words like "flood", "wave" and "onslaught" are used to depict a group in a neutral, let solitary positive way. Using a linguistic communication of natural disasters is likely to contribute to a disregard of individual rights and individual needs.

Another central pattern in the depiction of Muslim refugees is the clan with jihadist terrorism. The connectedness between Muslim refugees and terrorism is established through different narrative elements and chains of association. Start, texts indirectly quote politicians alarm of the so-called Islamic State smuggling "sleeping terror cells" every bit refugees to Europe (Brössler et al. 2015; Schulte von Drach 2015). Ane commentator claims that "the security agencies are at present afraid that radicals hide among the refugees that stream uncontrolled into Europe. [...] One should not pretend that Europe does not have a problem with Muslim immigrants, albeit only with a minority" (Wergin 2015). The author claims that there exists a lack of control of refugees that travel to Europe. This ignores the fact that while in that location have been a big number of people crossing borders without beingness registered in transit countries, near refugees, including the attackers of Ansbach and Würzburg, were officially registered every bit refugees past the state. The statement furthermore implies that it was possible to merely start decision-making and thereby stopping the danger of terrorists inbound European countries. It remains unclear, withal, where and how these controls could be implemented and how they would identify potential terrorists. Despite falling short of providing answers to these open up questions, the statements assist to construct the idea of an easy solution in form of the undefined concept of "command".

In add-on to the construction of the "sleeping terror cell" narrative, an implicit causal link betwixt Islam and terrorism is existence established. Making employ of irony to signal out the naïveté of the opposite standpoint, a text claims that "Islam is throughout a noble and peaceful religion and culture, which is why Islamic militants have to exist incited to their infamous actions by evil powers of Western degradation" (Herzinger 2015). Here, the text builds on the presupposition of the audition that Islamic militants are not incited by anything else but past Islam itself. An article by a leading British Labour politico claims that "Our security interest in tackling the refugee crunch remains powerful, too. Criminal trafficking gangs are getting stronger, extremists are able to exploit the crisis, and the disorder of an unmanaged response threatens community cohesion and stability" (Cooper 2016). This can exist interpreted as a securitising speech human activity because a topic that is not conventionally dealt with in terms of security is now framed as a security threat (Buzan et al. 1998, pp. 23–26). Past likewise using "community" every bit key give-and-take in edifice the corpus, it is possible to identify this implicit dual reference to Muslims in the context of the refugee crisis. Both the exploiting extremists and the threatened communities are Muslims. Moreover, both are synthetic to be in need of intervention past the security apparatus: the extremists accept to be persecuted, the communities take to be protected. Therefore, this cognitively constructed need of state intervention, complemented with a threat aiming at creating fearfulness on an melancholia level, is translated into evaluational back up for the stiff security interest in the refugee crisis. Applying the Foucauldian concept of governmentality i can contend that this power/knowledge germination constructs Muslim refugees as a population that needs to be governed past apparatuses of security (Foucault 1991, p. 102; 1978; 1997).

Attributing responsibility: Merkel, Muslim refugees and the rise of the far-correct

A 3rd major discursive strand concerns the cognitive and evaluational dimension towards an incumbent of a political role, the German language chancellor Angela Merkel. Merkel is attributed responsibility for the influx of Muslim refugees to Europe. In improver to that, the increased presence of refugees and Merkel's rhetoric are synthetic equally principal causes for the ascent of far-right parties in Germany. In contrast to the debates around the feared loss of European Christian identity, one commodity hails Merkel as demonstrating "a fiddling leadership, at last" in face of the "outrageous noises coming from some capitals almost albeit only Christian, and non Muslim refugees" (Guardian 2015). Predicates and metaphors used include "Mama Merkel", "compassionate mother", the "female parent of the Outcasts" and "#Merkel_TheEthiopian" referring to a Christian ruler that is reported to accept given refuge to Muslim refugees (Olterman 2015). Again, it is Merkel'due south alleged Christianity that is emphasised when refugees are framed as Muslims. In dissimilarity, one author claims that Merkel's "welcoming of refugees" to the "laid tabular array" was a "moral defeat" (Brössler et al. 2015). Blaming Merkel for alluring refugees and creating a "pull" effect featured in the articles only as quotations from nationalist, correct-wing, Eastern European political leaders in September 2015. Nonetheless, this has completely changed one year on. In September 2016, there has been no mentioning of any positive predicate on an affective level towards Merkel in any of the articles. To the opposite, in 2016, Merkel is mainly remembered for ii interdependent things that have turned her into the personification of the "refugee crunch". The phrase "we can do this" from 31^st of August 2015 has come to signify a whole parcel of terms that are used to criticise regime policy or to advance arguments against accepting refugees (Huggler 2016; Welt 2016).

On the other manus, the argument that "Mrs Merkel opened Germany'due south borders to more a million asylum seekers" (Huggler 2016) indicates on a cognitive level that all these asylum seekers entered Federal republic of germany through newly opened borders. This depiction of the situation ignores the fact that borders between most EU fellow member states have been open since the Schengen agreement that came into force in 1995. The article attributes agency to Merkel past implying that information technology was her actions that made "more than a million aviary seekers" to enter Germany. This reveals a frequent blueprint throughout the discussions of Merkel, refugees and the rising of right-fly parties in Frg in 2016, namely, the supposition of the manageability of migration and especially Muslims coming to Federal republic of germany.

This proposition is made even stronger in articles on the relative electoral success of the far-right political party Alternative for Deutschland (AfD). While the rise of the far-right was not an issue mentioned in whatsoever article in 2015, the relative electoral success in the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state election on the 4^th of September 2016 was a central business in the articles in 2016. In this election, the AfD won 21% of the votes participating in the ballot for the first time. The party programme has been summarised as "openly anti-migrant and anti-Muslim" (Huggler 2016). The "recipe of success" of the AfD is characterised as attacking Merkel's refugee policies and inciting "fear especially from Muslim migrants" (Welt 2016). Moreover, it is claimed that "major attacks of the AfD were launched continuously and extensively against clearing and Islam in particular" (Kamann 2016a). Thus, ane AfD political leader admonishes that "our land is transformed step past footstep into a caliphate" (Burghardt 2016). The manufactures depict details of the "anti-migrant and anti-Muslim" propaganda and claim that both the rhetoric and the topics contributed to their electoral success. The larger causal link suggested in the articles is that since Merkel is responsible for the large number of refugees coming to Germany, most of which are Muslim, right-wing parties with anti-Muslim propaganda are successful.

Constructing cultural borders: across Christian Germany and multicultural Britain

The analysis conducted on newspapers from two countries allows to point at several differences and similarities in British and German language media representations. Complementary to the three major patterns outlined above, this addresses the comparative dimension of the research question on how the refugee state of affairs has been interpreted with regards to Islam in British and German media.

A start upshot of the comparing is that refugees and Islam are much more than often discursively linked in German language media. A look at the article selection forth the criteria mentioned to a higher place reveals that in the first time period there were 28 articles in High german, fifteen in British newspapers, in the second fourth dimension period 32 in German, xiv in British newspapers. This means that the refugee situation and Islam are much less oftentimes associated in the British than in the German printing. An obvious explanation would be that a much larger number of refugees came to Germany than to the UK in this period which is why the topic was more present in the printing. Nevertheless, given the heated debates on migration before and after the "Brexit" vote on 23^rd June 2016, this explanation does non seem fully satisfactory. One reason could be that the debate on immigration was not simply focused on refugees coming from the Middle East and Northward Africa, merely besides on European union migrant workers, mainly from Poland. In the British context, the connectedness between anti-migrant and anti-Muslim seems to be much less well-established than in Germany. Given the long migration history of people with different beliefs including Muslims from former colonies, in item India, Pakistan, and People's republic of bangladesh, this seems plausible. This might as well be an caption for a 2d conjecture: The cultural and religious composition of the receiving society is just directly problematized in High german media. This is indicated past the fact that only in the German newspapers there were comments disquisitional of "multiculturalism" (Broder 2015; Beitzer 2016; Kamann 2016b; Pröhle 2015). Too, the cultural changes effected by more Muslim immigrants were only discussed in German media. Finally, questions like "do we actually want these changes" were expressed by politicians that are not part of the far-correct, only of the ruling Christian democrats. These findings advise that at to the lowest degree in quality newspapers, religious and ethnic diverseness per se is not contested in the United kingdom, at to the lowest degree in relation to refugees. In contrast to that, in Germany the refugee situation has sparked a discussion well-nigh whether the increasing religious diversification is something that should exist welcomed or prevented.

Another substantial difference lies in the culturalist rhetoric that re-constructs German national identity: The reference to a (Judeo‑)Christian heritage is only used in Germany to mark the difference between Muslim refugees and the host guild. It seems that the structure of the "other" in Germany is much more focused on Muslim refugees as not-Christians. Also, but in German media the "cultural compatibility" of Muslim refugees was questioned. The cognitive distinction is based on the discursive reconstruction of "Christian Europe", in particular by leading Christian autonomous politicians. The more frequent occurrence of refugees as Muslims in German newspapers could as well be explained by the fact that mainly conservative and far-right politicians were given the opportunity to express their opinions on the topic in Frg. In contrast to that, a leading Labour politician and a pro-clearing priest from the Church of England were amongst the voices talking about Muslim refugees in the British newspapers. No conservative politician featured in any commodity in the British news that directly addressed or implied the fact that many refugees were Muslims. An explanation could be that high sensation of racism and Islamophobia in the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland makes information technology less benign or less accepted to talk about the religious affiliation of refugees. Another reason for this could be that the grouping of Muslims mentioned most oft in British public discourse is not refugees, merely the oft well-established communities from Commonwealth countries, in particular from South Asia.

The assay of the data reveals that both in British and German media Muslim refugees are linked to terrorism on a cerebral and an affective level. Articles from both national contexts feature the fright of "sleeper cells" hiding among the "masses" of incoming refugees. Therefore, on an evaluational level, Muslim refugees are constructed equally a population that needs to be governed by the state. This includes for example the reintroduction and reinforcement of edge controls and checks on the "compatibility" and "willingness to assimilate". Thus, in what can be called a procedure of securitisation, Muslim refugees are discussed as a security problem for Europe in the UK and Deutschland. The discursive patterns suggests that the "Muslim refugee problem" has to be dealt with past means of security. This requires infrequent measures that transgress the rules of regular politics such equally discrimination on the basis of religious affiliation, curtailing universal human rights, and abandoning foundational international treaties. The strong connection between Muslim refugees and terrorism has been established by statements from tiptop government officials, leading party members, journalists and ordinary citizens in both countries. Thus, the empirical evidence presented here supports both the "state version" and the "ceremonious society version" of the "suspect customs thesis" (Greer 2010, p. 1172).

The construction of a "European Culture", with an emphasis on its distinctive "Christian" character in the case of Germany, is a crucial foundation for the securitizing argumentation. In both countries, the clan of the territoriality of a European, British or German "homeland" with sure cultural and political elements such as liberal democracy and rule of law constructs a socio-cultural edge. In this "culture war" (Beitzer 2016), the "nosotros", the non-Muslim Europeans-equally-insiders, have to be defended against the Muslims-as-outsiders. Only by establishing these culturally and religiously divers boundaries, the exclusion of "them" that exercise not "fit" appears to be both viable and desirable. The part of European societies is predominantly constructed as having to defend Christian culture and to manage and to control refugees. European societies have to intervene in Muslims communities to protect and to persecute. They must become active against "them" coming to Europe and to prevent "what happened in the summer of 2015". Muslim refugees, in turn, are synthetic equally subjects that are self-responsible victims and that have to assimilate into a diffuse bricolage of European history and culture. They are expected to gather economic skills so that they tin be useful to the majority society. Besides, they are constructed as the cause for electoral success of far-right parties.

The assay of media representation of refugees as Muslims has highlighted the immediate salience of what Olivier Roy has called Europe's identity crisis (Roy 2013, pp. 61–65). The importance of a meliorate understanding of this crisis and its relation to the soapbox on refugees and Islam cannot be overstated given the rapid changes in public stance in Germany and the UK. Politics emerging from the highly problematic and emotionally charged depictions of Muslim refugees have the potential to have disastrous furnishings for both new and well-established citizens and political cultures of both countries. It is up to further research to scrutinise to what extent the discursive patterns outlined in a higher place translate into changes in public opinion, voting behavior and legislation targeting both refugees and Muslims.

Notes

1. All quotations from German language newspapers have been translated by the author.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Sybille Münch, Sebastian Scholl, 2 anonymous reviewers, and the participants of the workshop "Migration und Integration als politische Herausforderungen" in Leipzig, June 2016, for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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1. Section of Politics and International Studies, Academy of Cambridge, Alison Richard Edifice, 7 West Road, CB3 9DT, Cambridge, Britain

   Tobias Müller

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Correspondence to Tobias Müller.

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Müller, T. Amalgam cultural borders: depictions of Muslim refugees in British and German media. Z Vgl Polit Wiss 12, 263–277 (2018). https://doi.org/ten.1007/s12286-017-0361-ten

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• Published: xi December 2017

• Issue Date: March 2018

• DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-017-0361-x

Keywords

• Refugees
• Islam
• Refugee crisis
• United kingdom
• Federal republic of germany
• Media

Schlüsselwörter

• Flüchtlinge
• Islam
• Flüchtlingskrise
• Großbritannien
• Frg
• Medien

How Are Muslim Refugees Changing European Culture?,

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