[ecrea] Book announcement: How the Workers Became Muslims

/How the Workers Became Muslims: Immigration, Culture and Hegemonic
Transformation in Europe/.
By Ferruh Yilmaz (Tulane University).

This book explores how the populist far right forces have managed to
push the entire political discourse to the right over by hijacking the
immigration debate.

Keywords: race, class, workers, Muslims, immigration, culture, media,
Denmark, Europe, far right, hegemony, discourse analysis.



Order from press.umich.edu
<http://umich.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a4cd6f758656d0e1542fcb495&id=ef29dcb927&e=6cff5530f0> 

before 3/31/16 and receive *30%* off the list price with promotion code
UMMUSLIMS

Writing in the beginning of the 1980s, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe
explored possibilities for a new socialist strategy to capitalize on the
period’s fragmented political and social conditions. Two and a half
decades later, in /How the Workers Became Muslims/
<http://umich.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a4cd6f758656d0e1542fcb495&id=bb0a453c32&e=6cff5530f0> 

Ferruh Yilmaz acknowledges that the populist far right—not the socialist
movement—has demonstrated greater facility in adopting successful
hegemonic strategies along the structural lines Laclau and Mouffe
imagined. Right wing hegemonic strategy, Yilmaz argues, has led to the
reconfiguration of internal fault lines in European societies.

Yilmaz’s primary case study is Danish immigration discourse, but his
argument contextualizes his study in terms of questions of current
concern across Europe, where right wing groups that were long on the
fringes of “legitimate” politics have managed to make significant gains
with populations typically aligned with the Left. Specifically, Yilmaz
argues that socio-political space has been transformed in the last three
decades such that group classification has been destabilized to
emphasize cultural rather than economic attributes.

According to this point-of-view, traditional European social and
political cleavages are jettisoned for new “cultural” alliances pulling
the political spectrum to the right, against the corrosive presence of
Muslim immigrants, whose own social and political variety is flattened
into an illusion of alien sameness.

“[A] remarkable study on the ways racism has taken in Western Europe, in
particular in relations between Muslim immigrants and Western European
states. Yilmaz has made a first-rate intervention on the discussion
concerning national, popular, and ethnic identities in the contemporary
world. His contribution to contemporary scholarship is outstanding.”
—Ernesto Laclau, author of On Populist Reason

“Yilmaz’s important book charts the rise of culture as the dominant
framework through which we now understand the politics of migration in
Europe. He gives a theoretically sophisticated account of the production
of the ‘Muslim immigrant,’ the rise of right-wing populism, and the way
‘progressive’ values—including those of feminism and gay rights—have
come to serve racist and exclusionary ends.”
—Ben Pitcher, University of Westminster

“Guided by an original reformulation of hegemony theory that highlights
the transformative effects of media-driven moral panics, this book
offers a deep dive into contemporary anti-immigration discourse in
Europe. With great insight, Yilmaz unveils the relations of power
undergirding the seemingly benign ‘common sense’ definitions of the
immigration ‘problem.’”
—Rodney Benson, author of /Shaping Immigration News/

“In this beautifully written and brilliantly argued book, Ferruh Yilmaz
shows how moral panics and political mobilizations against Muslim
‘difference’ function in western nations to obscure pervasive
oppressions of race and class. Drawing deftly on advanced currents in
studies of communication and cultural studies, How the Workers Became
Muslims demonstrates the dynamism of discourse as a social force. Yilmaz
reveals how the prevailing categories and classifications that are
deployed in political discourse deliberately direct attention toward
conflicts over cultural norms and values in order to deflect attention
away from material and political conflicts over resources and rights.
This book shows how anti-Muslim mobilizations are not merely
manifestations of cultural racism and Islamophobia, but rather key tools
for the perpetuation of class dominance and the occlusion of class
conflicts.”
—George Lipsitz, author of /How Racism Takes Place/

“Dr. Yilmaz’s book is a highly original and sophisticated study of
public discourse on immigration in Denmark. The argument he puts forward
here is significant for its understanding of the social and political
changes in Europe in the last two decades. Yilmaz’s work sheds important
new light on the politics of immigration and is particularly effective
in showing how immigration politics has restructured the basic ways in
which social and political interests are conceived in Europe. Beyond the
issue of immigration, Yilmaz makes important interventions in
theoretical and methodological discussions about political discourse and
‘ideological hegemony.’ This important book will make a real impact and
will be widely read, both as a statement about contemporary European
politics and as a statement about how to study discourse and political
power.”
—Daniel C. Hallin, University of California–San Diego

*Ferruh Yilmaz* is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at
Tulane University.

https://www.press.umich.edu/8857103/how_the_workers_became_muslims
http://www.amazon.com/How-Workers-Became-Muslims-Transformation/dp/0472053086/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457630082&sr=8-1&keywords=workers+became+muslim




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