A framework for studying the politicisation of immigration

When the Muslim fundamentalist Mohammed Bouyeri murdered the Dutch film director Theo van Gogh in November 2004, this sparked off an intense and heated debate in the Netherlands about the alleged incompatibility between the teachings of the Koran and liberal democracy, and on the ‘failure’ of multiculturalism (Hajer and Uitermark, 2008). Earlier that year, in March 2004, Muslim fundamentalists had bombed a metro train in Madrid, killing 191 and injuring 1,800 people. In response to this terrorist attack, hardly any public discussion ensued about the dangers of political Islam and its threats to Western democracy. Why is it that the same issues are sometimes heavily politicised and in other instances practically not? Which mechanisms can explain the differences in the extent to which, and the way in which, potential issues become politicised? In this volume, we seek to answer this general question by means of a comparative study of the (de)politicisation of immigration and integration in seven Western European countries: Austria, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom in the years 1995 to 2009.