Due to the hard work of campaigners across Europe, the event at which Thilo Sarrazin was due to speak at the LSE today has been cancelled. Congratulations to all those who made the effort to stop his vile message from having a hearing in London.

Excerpt published on the Muslim Council of Britain site

Ours is a righteous cause,” says Stephen Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) of the English Defence League, “Alright, OK,” replies Jeremy Paxman, anchor of BBC2′s flagship news programme Newsnight, “A lot of people are worried, I believe you.

The decision to invite the EDL to appear on Newsnight on February ahead of the its march on Luton planned for February 5, touted as the “the biggest demonstration in its 18-month history” according to The Guardian, was ill-informed. Those interested in engaging in the ‘no platform’ debate may do so. However, what was more striking about the Newsnight appearance was Paxman’s ultimate inability to counter the incendiary, anti-Muslim statements tripping off Lennon’s tongue. Inability or unwillingness?

Although Paxman countered Lennon’s characterisation of Islam as a religion or culture that promotes violence, rape, pimping, and homophobia, by asking whether this is representative of Muslims as a whole and suggesting that a minority among all communities engages in these activities, he makes no attempt to decouple the link between something being called ‘Muslim culture’ and violence, sexism and homophobia. Anyone sympathetic to the notion that Muslims are more likely than any other group to be responsible for such behaviour would not have ended the programme believing that there might be another side to the story. The reason for Paxman’s ineffectualness is not, I believe, because he is actually an Islamophobe but that there is a convergence between the EDL’s position, as expressed by Lennon, and general public consensus which is based on the position espoused by political leaders. The common sense is that there is something that is intrinsic to Islam (and hence Muslims – although the two are far from being the same) which leads them to be more sexist, homophobic or violent than the rest of the population.

This is classic racialization: stereotypes about a particular group of people (often clumped together in a homogenising mass that ignores the internal differences among them) are naturalised and made to stand for them. We are thus no longer able to see Muslims without perceiving the stereotypes about them that abound. The debate I participated in on Wednesday night at the Brighton Dome was a case in point. The majority of the panel and the audience was against the proposal that EU countries are right to ban the wearing of religious symbols (75% of the audience polled) and thought that the bans were actually about Islam per se rather than religions in general. Nonetheless, the representative of the Humanist Society, Peter Cave, represented the belief that in fact represents the majority in society at large – that allowing the wearing of the burka, for example, is a slippery slope towards honour killings and forced marriages. In other words, a simple choice to dress according to a particular interpretation of religious belief was linked directly to the ability to kill another human being. Needless to say, as indeed Paxman was meekly attempting to point out on Newsnight, if this type of argument was made about another group in society, it would not go down as easily. Kudos therefore to the audience at the Dome for largely rejecting it!

Both Lennon and Paxman are mired, therefore, in the contemporary logic that discursively separates between racism and the objection to practices associated with a racialized group; in this case, Muslims. A postracial agenda that relativises the significance of racism and increasingly portrays it as ‘reversed’ – enacted by minorities against an embattled and cowed white majority – has become entrenched. It is within this hegemonic consensus that attacks on Muslim people of the vile nature expressed by Lennon become banalised and palatable: there is, nothing, it is argued unique to Muslims that mean they deserve greater protection against slur and attacks of this kind. Postracialism artificially puts everyone on an equal footing by discounting the relevance of colonialism, racism, immigration, and the contemporary civilizational discourse that pits Islam against the West. Muslims, in this vision are not only responsible for more of the violence in society, but their status as a minority group has afforded them unjustifiable protection; it is time now to unveil (pun intended) them and their true intentions.

Postracialism masquerades under the guise of equality to deliver the most pernicious form of racism, one that is purposefully disingenuous. Lennon’s discourse, and Paxman’s easy capitulation to it, demonstrates how widespread an acceptance of the postracial agenda has spread. The EDL talks the talk of equality and diversity, integrating the language of tolerance and inclusivity: everyone who abhors what Muslims are purportedly doing to British society – Sikhs, Hindus, Jews and gays included – are welcome to join. What acceptance of this discourse and the fact the EDL does have prominent members of all of these groups do is to dismiss the degree to which a certain form of racism has today become compatible with a commitment to diversity and tolerance.

While theorists of ‘culturalist racism’ in the 1980s and 1990s, such as Martin Barker and Verena Stolcke, were taking note of how far right-wing parties were using the language of multiculturalism to make them more politically palatable, the current status quo is slightly different. The EDL’s diversity-speak emerges from contemporary racial arrangements: diversity and exclusion complement rather than oppose each other. Under current arrangements, representing a certain form of acceptable, or ‘good diversity’ (not rocking the boat, being secular – or at least not Muslim, shedding the excesses of your ethnic particularism…) can be painted as acceptable. However whoever diverts from the, albeit ever-changing, script of ‘good diversity’ quickly falls into the category of ‘bad diversity’ (the religious, the radical, the angry, the economically useless, etc.). Where you are on the spectrum can change (Muslims were not construed as a particular problem prior to 1989), and that is the convenience of racism today: it is essentially drawn up around shifting inclusions in and exclusions from ‘good diversity’. However, the lip-service paid to diversity itself shields us – the EDL included – from being condemned as racist because, it is suggested, one need only reject ‘bad diversity’ and become ‘good diverse’ subjects for the spotlight to be taken off. The fact that the dividing lines between good and bad are constantly being redrawn is rarely drawn attention to, but it is this that should make us wary of the postracial agenda and its utility in facilitating the persistence of racism.

I will be appearing at this event tonight. If you are in Brighton, please come along although, annoyingly, it clashes with Judith Butler’s lecture at the University of Sussex at 17h00. I have a feeling this will be an event heavily skewed towards the liberal standpoint of the type advocated by Christian Joppke in his book Veil: Mirror of Identity, an approach we critique in our forthcoming book, The Crises of Multiculturalism (with Gavan Titley). Joppe argues in favour of the French ban on the hijab because, to put it bluntly, you have to be illiberal to protect the overarching values if liberalism which bizarrely place freedom on top of its list of priorities. Mainly in reaction to Joan Scott’s excellent 2007 book, The Politics of the Veil, Joppke continually rejects an analysis of the French ban in terms of racism, poo-pooing any such claim as naive and immature. However, what becomes clear is it is the racialised whose freedom is sacrificable in favour of the protection of the right ‘not to be offended by the Other’ of the dominant culture.

All this in light of the English Defence League’s appearance last night on BBC 2′s Newsnight programme and the call from the Muslim Council of Britain to respond to what AbdoolKarim Vakil of the MCB calls an example of how “mainstream politicians irresponsible remarks license and legitimise populist and extremist racism and Islamophobia.”

A longer and more considered to response to that event will appear here tomorrow in juxtaposition to tonight’s Salon debate – let’s see how far away from each other they will be!

Sussex Salon: ‘Are EU countries right to ban the wearing of religious symbols?’

With Belgium and France taking steps to ban the wearing of veils in public places, and some UK hospitals banning the wearing of crucifixes, we ask whether such steps violate human rights or ensure them? Join the debate with a panel including: Anglican vicar, writer and broadcaster Rev. Peter Owen-Jones (Around the World in 80 Faiths), Dr Alana Lentin (The Politics of Diversity in Europe and Racism: A Beginner’s Guide) and Dr Sue Collard (Politics, University of Sussex). Wed 2 Feb 2011, 8pm, Pavilion Theatre

The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a Neoliberal Age, co-wrtten with Gavan Titley is currently in press and will be published with Zed Books in 2011 with a preface by Gary Younge.

A young asylum seeker at Mosney Direct Provision Centre in County Meath, Ireland, waits for a decision that will define her life.

Following the Irish government’s plans to move asylum seekers from a detention centre at Mosney, a former Butlins style holiday camp, where they have, despite all the odds, made a home, Gavan Titley responds to a racist article by Ian O’Doherty of the Irish Independent. In the Irish Left Review, Titley argues that,

The genre of new realism translates the culturalist racism of the 1990s for a new era. Based on the false assumption that racism was always about biological difference, rather than a historically shifting form of thinking organised through the modern nation state that fuses biology and culture in systems of power and essential difference, new realism allows exclusion, inequality and hierarchy to be parsed through ideas of irreducible differences and exaggerated threats to our little land and its scarce resources. It frames racism as a moral criticism of ordinary people, rather than as a political critique of how power is distributed and inequality justified. It doesn’t matter if it is coded as ‘culture’, race-thinking remains constant.

Read the full article here

An article I wrote at the time of the last World Cup in 2006 which resonates with racist nationalism as it is being played with respect to this year’s championship.

What is there left to say about Zinedine Zidane’s already infamous head-butt in the last minutes of the finals of the 2006 World Cup? Articles, blogs and bar room conversation have hashed and rehashed the French captain’s act. He has been damned a traitor and hailed a hero. He has been condemned, understood and forgiven. But the symbolic impact of his charge of rage, his head ramming into the chest of the Italian Matterazzi, “like a bull” (Liberation, July 11), is yet to be fully felt in France.

Many commentators have spoken about Zidane, the son of poor Algerian immigrants from La Castellane in the council houses of Marseille’s Quartier Nord. He is said to be understated, generally humbled by his stardom, unsure of what to do with the adulation that his football prowess has earned him. It is this that endeared him to everyone in France, except of course the supporters of the Front national’s Jean-Marie Le Pen who has repeatedly condemned the make-up of France’s ethnically mixed tricolor national team. The majority even forgive him for not singing the national anthem when it is played at the beginning of matches. He has been, until Sunday’s crucial trespassing, a symbol of all that liberal France hopes for the sons and daughters of the immigrants from the quartiers difficiles (literally the “difficult neighbourhoods of the ill-famed banlieues). He was held up as an example for the kids whose dream it is to become the Zizous of the future: keeping his head down and making a positive contribution to the Republic, rather than burning its schools and jeering at its police.

As several comments on the website of the campaigning organisation, Indigènes de la République (http://www.indigenes-republique.org/) have pointed out, the French press loves to remind us of Zidane’s Algerian Muslim origins. The intimation is that had he not become a football star he could easily have participated in the rioting by black and North African youth in the suburbs of France’s cities in November 2005. His victories for France, like those of his mainly black team mates, made his Muslimness acceptable and made all of France feel a little métisse. As long as the football was on. It is clear to France’s non-white population, which includes the largest number of Muslims in any European state, that such a feeling of identification with blacks and Arabs is absent from all spheres besides football. As one online commentator put it, if Zidane and his team of blacks and beurs hadn’t led France to the World Cup finals, they could have been one of the many young men of immigrant origin with higher education qualifications working shifts as security guards or drawing the dole.

Understanding has been relatively forthcoming in Zidane’s case. Despite his bad boy behaviour, he remains a national hero and beyond his FIFA sponsored statements against racism, he toes the marketing line as the face of Adidas shampoo. But what of November’s rioters or the anti-capitalist, anti-racist activists of the controversially named Mouvement des Indigènes de la République, making reference to France’s “native” African soldiers? The first have been written off as “scum” by French interior minister and presidential hopeful, Nicolas Sarkozy. The latter have been criticised for their analysis of French republican principles, such as secularism and integration, in terms of racism and neo-colonialism. Many among even the most liberal of mainstream French society lose their sense of multicultural affinity when confronted with violence or with open critique of a state constantly upheld to be the cradle of Human Rights.

What does Zidane’s head butt mean in a country struggling, and mainly failing, to understand what it means to be postcolonial? French commentary on multiculturalism, or integration as most prefer it, struggles for a route between recognising difference and stressing citizenship over community. In other words, French republican ideals dictate a strict separation between the public and private spheres. Citizens are free to observe religious or other minority allegiances at home. In public they must show no outward sign of difference, be it in dress (there is the law forbidding the wearing of religious symbols in public institutions) or speech and behaviour. In reciprocation, a system of meritocracy is promised. However, as the majority of those of non-white immigrant origin in France will attest, the system exists in name only. Those who come from low-income, marginalized neighbourhoods in the ghetto-like outer suburbs have very little chance of accessing calibre education and employment. Even when some succeed to win the highly sought-after places in elite schools and universities, rarely do they achieve the success in the job market that such qualifications would normally promise them.

While all of this is well-known, it cannot be openly admitted. French law forbids ethnic monitoring and even the discussion of difference is difficult in public discourse. Euphemisms such as “les jeunes” (the youth) are often used to mean young black and brown men. The disparity between the reality of discrimination and the discourse of liberty, equality and fraternity which continues to underpin French national myth-making is stark. If French people of immigrant background want to be called French, not Muslim or black, it is because the official discourse promises them that, due to the law of jus solis, they are nothing but citizens of the Republic. Yet despite the colour-blindness of the system, the otherness of those who are not white-skinned and of Christian origin, is constantly being reminded through the daily acts of discrimination that are a part of every “indigène’s” experience. The constant question on most of their lips is why they are forced to remind the country of the fact that they are citizens when this is all that they are officially permitted to be within a system that officially shuns difference, yet in fact reveals itself to be obsessed with it.

Like the November 2005 riots, Zidane’s head butt, very possibly in reaction to a racist comment made by his Italian opponent, was a cry of rage. While for most people, even among those who have forgiven him, his action was unprofessional and he should have remained controlled, for many brown and black French people his was the action of a man pushed one step too far. That breaking point is something that is instinctively understood by anyone who has been the victim of racial abuse. There are limits within which most are forced to operate daily for the sake of survival (it is impossible to beat up every racist taxi driver, employer or police man). But there is a moment when caution is thrown to the wind and even losing the World Cup is a fair price to pay for standing up and saying that a line has been crossed. Zinedine Zidane has been a footballing star and a working class hero. He has not struck me as either. I am neither a football fan nor was I impressed by his various endorsements of products the majority of his fans could ill-afford to buy. It is his “coup de boule” of Sunday night that drew my interest. Beyond football, Zidane is entering French history as a man who stood up to abuse. Whether or not Matterazzi’s comment was racist, the belief that it was and that Zidane refused to ignore it, will stand as a testament to what the sons and daughters of France’s immigrants must do to be recognised. Whether with fists (or heads) or, preferably, words and non-violent actions the time has come for them to be heard.

You can now listen and watch ‘Post-race, post-politics: the paradoxical rise of culture after multiculturalism’, a paper I recently gave at the University of Toronto in Berlin Conference on “Post-Secular Society as a Transatlantic Model? Migration, Religion and Class in Comparative Perspective” by visiting the Media page.

Judith Butler turning down the Civil Courage Award at the Berlin Pride June 19 2010

I must distance myself from this racist complicity

Press Release by SUSPECT on the events of the 19th June, 2010

As Berlin Queer and Trans Activists of Colour and Allies we welcome Judith Butler’s decision to turn down the Zivilcourage Prize awarded by Berlin Pride. We are delighted that a renowned theorist has used her celebrity status to honour queer of colour critiques against racism, war, borders, police violence and apartheid. We especially value her bravery in openly critiquing and scandalising the organisers’ closeness to homonationalist organisations. Her courageous speech is a testimony to her openness for new ideas, and her readiness to engage with our long activist and academic work, which all too often happens under conditions of isolation, precariousness, appropriation and instrumentalisation.

Sadly this is happening once again, for the people of colour organisations who according to Butler should have deserved the award more than her are not mentioned once in the press reports to date. Butler offered the prize to GLADT (www.gladt.de), LesMigraS (www.lesmigras.de), SUSPECT and ReachOut (www.reachoutberlin.de), yet the one political space mentioned in the reports is the Transgenial Christopher Street Day, a white-dominated alternative Pride event. Instead of racism, the press focuses on a simple critique of commercialisation. This even though Butler herself was quite clear: ‘I must distance myself from complicity with racism, including anti-Muslim racism.’ She notes that not just homosexuals, but also ‘bi, trans and queer people can be used by those who want to wage war.’
The CSD, via Renate Künast of the Green Party (who appeared to have difficulties pronouncing the award winner’s name and grasping basic aspects of her writings) introduced Butler as a determined critic. Five minutes later, the same critical determination caused the faces of presenters to drop. Rather than engage with the speech in any way, Jan Salloch und Ole Lehmann could think of nothing better than blanketly refuse any charge of racism and attack the ca. 50 queers of colour and allies who had come out in Butler’s support: ‘You can scream all you like. You are not the majority. That’s enough.’ The finale was an imperialist fantasy matched by the backdrop of the Brandenburger Tor: ‘Pride will just continue in its programme… No matter what… Worldwide and here in Berlin… This is how it’s always been and will always be.’
In the past years, racism has indeed been the red thread of international Pride events, from Toronto to Berlin, as well as of the wider gay landscape (see queer of colour theorists’ Jasbir Puar’s and Amit Rai’s early critique of this in their 2002 article ‘Monster Terrorist Fag’). In 2008, the Berlin Pride motto was ‘Hass du was dagegen?’, which might translate as ‘You go’ a problem or wha’?’. Homophobia and Transphobia are redefined as the problems of youth of colour who apparently don’t speak proper German, whose Germanness is always questioned, and who simply don’t belong. 2008 is also the year that the hate crimes discourse enters more significantly into German sexual politics. Its rapid assimilation was aided by the fact that the hatefully criminal homophobe was already known: migrants, who are already criminalised, and are incarcerated and even deported with ever growing ease. This moral panic is made respectable by dubious media practices and so-called scientific studies: Where every case of violence that can be connected to a gay, bi or trans person (no matter if the apparent perpetrator is white or of Colour, and no matter if the basis is homophobia, transphobia or a traffic altercation) is circulated as the latest proof of what we all know already – that queers, especially white men it seems, are worst off of all, and that ‘the homophobic migrants’ are the main cause for this. This increasingly accepted truth is by no small measure the fruit of the work of homonationalist organizations like the Lesbian and Gay Federation Germany and the gay helpline Maneo, whose close collaboration with Pride ultimately caused Butler to reject the award. This work largely consists in media campaigns that repeatedly represent migrants as ‘archaic’, ‘patriarchal’, ‘homophobic’, violent, and unassimilable. Nevertheless, one of these organizations now ironically receives public funding in order to ‘protect’ people of colour from racism. The ‘Rainbow Protection Circle against Racism and Homophobia’ in the gaybourhood Schöneberg was spontaneously greeted by the district mayor with an increase in police patrols. As anti-racists, we sadly know what more police (LGBT or not) mean in an area where many people of colour also live – especially at times of ‘war on terror’ and ‘security, order and cleanliness.’
It is this tendency of white gay politics, to replace a politics of solidarity, coalitions and radical transformation with one of criminalization, militarization and border enforcement, which Butler scandalizes, also in response to the critiques and writings of queers of colour. Unlike most white queers, she has stuck out her own neck for this. For us, this was a very courageous decision indeed.

Yeliz Çelik, Sanchita Basu, Lucy Chebout, Lisa Thaler, Jin Haritaworn, Jen Petzen, and Cengiz Barskanmaz of SUSPECT, 20 June, 2010.

SUSPECT is a new group of queer and trans migrants, Black people, people of colour and allies. Our aim is to monitor the effects of hate crimes debates and to build communities which are free from violence in all its interpersonal and institutional forms.

by Aren Aizura

I am reprinting the excellent response to the censorship of Out of Place, a book edited by Adi Kuntsman and Esperanza Miyake on the interconnections between queerness and raciality.  As you will read, the book contains an article, ‘Gay Imperialism’, which critiques what Jasbir Puar for example has termed ‘homonationalism’ and the participation by some gay rights and feminist activists in the perpetuation of Islamophobia through the ‘war on terror’ logic.

The book will not be republished due to an attack by the gay rights activist, Peter Tatchell, who has claimed that he is defamed by the article. The article and the book are an excellent critique of the ways in which discourses of liberation have been subverted in the service of power.

Please read this critique and spread it widely. An interesting comment on his piece and on Peter Tatchell’s stance by Sara Ahmed, author of much interesting work on racism, Islamophobia and ‘diversity’ can be read here.

Read on for Aizura’s article…

Over the last few years a number of timely publications have illuminated the connections between gender and sexuality, the War on Terror and racialisation. One of these is Out of Place: Interrogating Silences in Queerness/Raciality, edited by Adi Kuntsman and Esperanza Miyake and published by Raw Nerve Books in 2008. An edited collection examining intersections between race and sexuality in the United Kingdom, Out of Place joins Jasbir Puar’s Terrorist Assemblages as a key contribution to this debate. Alongside other contributions in Out of Place, the
chapter “Gay Imperialism: Gender and Sexuality Discourse in the War on Terror”, by Jin Haritaworn, Tamsila Tauqir and Esra Erdem pointed to the continuing deployment of queerness as a symbol of “freedom” to rationalise the continuing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and future wars in Iran and elsewhere, as well as to rationalise restrictive and racist immigration policies in “Western” or “liberal” nations. “Gay Imperialism” uses the work of activist Peter Tatchell, founder of Outrage!, as an example of how white gay activists can become complicit with this agenda by painting Islam as inherently homophobic and misogynist, and appointing themselves as the saviours of non-white queers.

On September 7th, Raw Nerve Books declared Out of Place to be out of print, removed it from circulation and sale, and issued an online apology to Peter Tatchell. Presumably this is the result of threats of legal action by Tatchell and Outrage!. The apology quotes its own publication to apologise for what it accepts as defamatory statements and misrepresentation of Tatchell and Outrage! by Haritaworn, Tauqir and Erdem. These include:
a) that Tatchell is “Islamaphobic” and “part of the Islamaphobia industry”
b) that Tatchell is “racist”
c) that Tatchell “sling[s] mud onto Muslim communities”

As one sees if one reads “Gay Imperialism”, these so-called accusations are all taken grossly out of context and reduce the complexity of Haritaworn, Tauqir and Erdem’s argument. The apology continues by obsequiously praising Tatchell and Outrage!’s “anti-racist” work, and making further accusations against a number of African LGBT activists, who had refused to work with Tatchell precisely because of his paternalistic attitude, and who are cited in “Gay Imperialism”.

It seems likely that Tatchell’s lawyers presented Raw Nerve with an already-written apology and asked them to sign and publish it. Tatchell is notoriously litigious. He is equally notorious for staging highly publicised, “one man” actions that appear to have just as much to do with his public image as a gay celebrity activist as any political work. However, Tatchell himself is not important here. What is important is
that this critique is evidently so threatening to Tatchell and to the book’s publishers that it must be removed from circulation, and the authors must be condemned as liars.

This incident proves something about how difficult it is to do anti-racist work. Pointing out racism, no matter how carefully we might phrase it and no matter which arguments we have about the use of the word ‘racism’, is often perceived as a personal and individual affront. Those so accused often appear to find it wounding or traumatic — psychically wounding, but more importantly, wounding to their public image. “How dare you accuse me of racism? I am not racist; I have lots of friends who are people of color!” goes the cliched defensive response we are all familiar with. This way, the person or organisation critiqued can escape engaging with the content of the critique and put the burden of proof back on the person who raised the issue. It is not coincidental that the person making a critique of racism is often non-white, deploying old colonial stereotypes that people of colour are untrustworthy ingrates who don’t know what’s good for them. This problem of white, “well-intentioned” activists ignoring or actively silencing the desires of the people they profess to help in order to maintain the myth of their own generous self-sacrifice is endemic to many struggles: feminist anti-”trafficking” activism; indigenous land and rights struggles; migration activism; the backlash against the wearing of hijab by Muslim women in France and elsewhere, and on and on. The only way it might ever stop is for its perpetrators to acknowledge their role.

Meanwhile a really amazing book is being censored. The authors of the chapter and the editors of Out of Place are unable to comment due to UK libel law. It’s unlikely that Raw Nerve will reissue the book, even if the editors wanted this. Meanwhile the authors’ reputations are themselves besmirched. There are several things you can do about this situation:

1. Circulate this and your own commentary among your friends, companeros, colleagues.
2. Circulate “Gay Imperialism” — a PDF is online here

Please pass this around, respond, send it to other listservs and read the other statements written about the censorship of Out of Place:

“Out of Place, Out of Print: On the Censorship of the First Queerness/Raciality Collection in Britain” by Johanna Rothe, Monthly Review,
“On the Censorship of ‘Gay Imperialism’ and Out of Place”, X:Talk website

Aren Aizura is a Post Doctoral Fellow at the Department of Gender Studies of Indiana University, Bloomington.

Due to a number of deferrals, the MPhil in Ethnic and Racial Studies at Trinity College, Dublin is still accepting applications for 2009-10. Please consult their website

MPHIL IN ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES, DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY, SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND PHILOSOPHY, TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN

The MPhil in Ethnic and Racial Studies, founded in 1997, is now in its tenth year. This unique postgraduate programme, which offers specialist theoretical training in issues relating to ‘race’, immigration and ethnicity in Irish, European and global contexts, is well placed in Ireland -where ethnic conflicts have been central to the construction of Irish identities. Although Ireland, traditionally a country of emigration, is increasingly an immigration destination, indigenous ethnic minorities, such as Travellers, black-Irish people and Jews, have a history of racialisation in the Irish context, despite the fact that only recently has racism become part of the political agenda with the immigration of asylum seekers, refugees and labour migrants since the early 1990s.

The MPhil is run by the Department of Sociology whose members have extensive research and publishing record in this area. Upon successful completion, this full-time programme grants students a postgraduate degree of Masters of Philosophy in Ethnic and Racial Studies. The 12-months programme begins in October each year, and consists of two full-year core courses, seven one-term courses and a dissertation. In addition, the programme hosts seminar series, workshops and international conferences.

The programme attracts an ethnically diverse international student body and our graduates play key roles in research and policy organisations in Ireland and globally; many have continued to PhD research.

Over the years the programme has hosted many key scholars in this area, including Prof Zygmunt Bauman, University of Leeds; Prof David Theo Goldberg, University of California; Prof Philomena Essed, University of Amsterdam; Prof Noel Ignatiev, Massachussetts College of Art; Prof Luke Gibbons, University of Notre Dame, Prof Howard Winant, University of California, Santa Barbara; Robbie McVeigh, Derry

APPLICATIONS AND DEADLINES:

We are still accepting applications. Applications for ALL taught postgrasduate courses must be submitted to Graduate Admissions online through www.pac.ie/tcd

For further details please contact:

Dr Ronit Lentin
Head of Department, Sociology / Course coordinator, MPhil in Ethnic and Racial Studies
Department of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin
tel: 353 1 8962766, email: rlentin@tcd.ie
www.ethnicracialstudies.net

http://people.tcd.ie/rlentin