About the project

Project Background
The research process
Summary of findings

Project Background

This research stems from the heated public and scholarly debates on immigrant integration and citizenship that have emerged in many Western societies in recent years.  As we began to plan for this project in the summer of 2001, a series of urban disturbances broke out in a number of Northern towns in Britain.   At that time, discussions about minority self-segregation and shortcomings of British multiculturalism, which had last erupted in 1989 with the Rushdie Affair, came to the fore once again in the British press and political circles.  After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, such discussions intensified in the UK, the United States, and elsewhere, and concerns about non-integration of minorities increasingly became linked to fears about religious extremism and ‘national security’.   

Public debates about citizenship and integration have intersected with academic scholarship on migrant transnationalism, a concept that highlights the persistent linkages between migrants and their homelands.  Migrant transnationalism manifests itself in cross-border social networks and economic flows, as well as in migrants’ direct participation in home country political affairs.  Such phenomena complicate the relationship between citizens and states and raise many practical questions about the relationship between immigrants and ‘host societies’.  In short, how can people be members of two different political communities simultaneously?  Scholars have offered a variety of answers to this question, some more optimistic than others. 

Today, then, scholars, politicians, and social commentators alike agree that migrants operate within an increasingly complex political landscape.  While nation-state boundaries still matter, it seems that contemporary migrants are more able and more inclined to practice membership in different political communities.  What do these new patterns and possibilities mean for the integration of immigrants and minorities and for the functioning of modern political systems?  This research addresses such issues, paying particular attention to the perspectives of immigrants and their children on questions of citizenship, integration, and belonging. 

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The research process

This research has focused on Arab-origin communities (both Muslim and Christian) in Britain and the United States.  British Arabs and Arab Americans are relatively prosperous groups, and they appear to have a high uptake of formal citizenship [see link on this site to About Arab Communities for more information about Arab Americans and British Arabs].  Yet the ‘war on terrorism’, US-British military action in Iraq, and a heightened public awareness of ‘Islamic extremism’ impinge on Arab immigrants’ sense of belonging to their respective countries.  Comparing the UK and the US has allowed us to examine how activists from relatively similar backgrounds have formulated ideas about citizenship in view of their encounters with different public discourses on Arabs/Islam and their experiences with distinctive ‘public philosophies’ of integration.       

For this research, we conducted interviews with over 100 community activists in four US cities (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and Detroit) and in four UK cities (London, Birmingham, Sheffield and Liverpool).  We spoke with people involved in a wide variety of organizations, including social service agencies, political groups advocating particular ‘Arab causes’ (e.g. the Palestinian right to return and the end to the US occupation of Iraq); non-profit and charitable organizations serving communities in the Arab world and/or in host societies; Islamic and Christian organizations, cultural and artistic groups, and hometown/home country organizations serving specific elements of the British Arab or Arab American populations.  Most of these organizations and individual activists have some public presence and a degree of openness to public scrutiny, and almost all participants were either US or UK citizens.  While we undoubtedly missed some small organizations and perhaps those with more extreme views, we were able to collect a wide variety of viewpoints and our interviewees overall were mixed in terms of nationality, religious identity, class background, migration cohort, generation, and sex.

During the interviews, we asked interviewees to describe what they believed to be the key problems or issues facing Arab immigrants and how they were addressing these problems through their activism.  We asked them to describe their aims and objectives in being active, and how they have used communications technologies to further particular aims.  Finally, we asked questions directed at a more personal level: What were their personal motivations for being involved, and did these relate to perceived community needs?  What were their understandings of community, citizenship, integration, and multiculturalism?  Our interviewees’ thoughts on these topics can be seen on this website under In Their Own Words.

Summary of findings

Our analysis highlights the following points:

1. Interviewees tend to see themselves as members of multiple communities.  Their political consciousness, social networks, and identities are not confined to the host society’s boundaries.  In almost all cases, Arab identities (and in some cases, Muslim identities) strongly influence people’s sense of community.  For many of our interviewees, political events in the Arab world - especially the continued conflict between Palestinians and Israel and the 2003 US/British invasion of Iraq - affect their sense of belonging to their adopted countries.

2. The concept of ‘citizenship’ is complex.  Our interviewees adhere to an ideal of ‘active citizenship’.  But not all of them see themselves as ‘citizens’ of a single country, regardless of how many passports they possess.  Many wish to be involved, directly or indirectly, in issues relating to the Arab world - for instance, through participation in charities, cultural/arts organizations, political parties, and so on.

3. Formal citizenship, however, remains meaningful for many of our respondents.  While a few of our interviewees regard their formal membership instrumentally as a ‘work permit’ or travel document, most of them greatly value the rights and security offered by their US/UK citizenship.  This is especially true of the many British Arabs and Arab Americans who have fled civil war, political repression, or statelessness. Interviewees frequently speak of their sense of duty and responsibility toward their adopted countries, their need to follow rules and regulations of the society and, perhaps most importantly, to ‘give back’ to the society which has given them a safe haven and material opportunities.

4. It must also be noted that material and emotional connections between immigrants/minorities and their places of origin are very uneven among our interviewees.  First, not all are able or willing to maintain close links with the Arab world.  Second, while individuals may have a strong affinity to the Arab world, many prefer to focus their energies on building much more localized networks and on ‘solving’ Arab issues through activities directed at more local, and often non-Arab, audiences.  Finally, many of our activists address concerns - instance, housing, access to social services, civil rights, local business development - that are quite specific to local communities and that reflect the rootedness of many immigrants’ lives in their countries and cities of settlement.

5. Moreover, many our interviewees also describe their aims at least partly in terms of community integration - that is, the active engagement of Arab communities in neighbourhoods, cities, and countries of settlement.  They suggest that integration hinges on wider acceptance of Arabs and Arabness (as well as Muslims and Islam), which can only be achieved by changing public attitudes toward the Arab world.  Thus, activists’ desire to raise awareness of the Arab world reflects, in many instances, a desire to improve the cultural and political position of their communities in the US/UK.

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