Qualify Unification for Shifting Trust

Presentation of a research project as part of the "Jeudis de la Maison Suger", a residents' research seminar.

Presentation of the project

"Qualify Unification for Shifting Trust (QUEST) is a comparative project on how Muslims in Europe are reacting to the growing polarization of European public debates over their social participation and their religiosity. It aimed, first, to review the socio-history of the category “Muslim” as it became the main othering label at the national level – in France, Britain, Spain and Norway, drawing upon academic and journalistic commentary of the main critical events that marked its development. The second aim was to conduct ethnographic fieldwork among varied profiles of Muslims at the city level – Nice, Paris, Madrid, Ceuta, Birmingham and Oslo- to describe shifting identities and collective action in response to the politics of threat around Islam. Finally, efforts at restitution were made in the different cities, involving cooperation partners within Muslim civil society. In this session, Berta Álvarez-Miranda will present the design of the project and the main results from Spain in comparative perspective."

Speakers

Berta Álvarez-Miranda is Professor of Sociology at Madrid's Complutense University. She was formerly Director of Research at the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS), Spain's official opinion polling department. Her research in the field of migration includes both quantitative and qualitative work. She has surveyed the attitudes of immigrants from Muslim-majority countries as part of a comparative study of European cities, and has advised the Spanish and Moroccan governments on how to measure perceptions of migrants and discrimination among the general population. Qualitative sociological methods and ethnographic work have enabled her to better understand identity processes and their mobilization among migrants and their descendants in Spanish cities, as well as perceptions among the next of kin of emigrants in Morocco, with particular attention to religious factors.

Alexandra Poli & Bartolomeo Conti | Centre d'Études des Mouvements Sociaux (CEMS) - EHESS-CNRS