Papers by Sara Lei Sparre
The Struggle for Citizenship Education in Egypt, 2018
Middle East Christians in Europe, 2021
This article employs Hage’s concept of “domestication” as a lens for understanding how various fo... more This article employs Hage’s concept of “domestication” as a lens for understanding how various forms of civic engagement among Coptic, Assyrian, and Chaldean Christian migrant communities in Denmark reproduce and contest a Danish model of citizenship, a particular construction of both the national subject and its Others. While churches are a primary place for civic engagement among Middle Eastern Christians as an ethnoreligious group, internally in the communities three modalities of civic engagement—serving, committing, and consuming—are practiced. Each produces different manifestations of citizenship because they engage with the local, national, and transnational differently. Christians of Middle Eastern origin are not publicly visible as political or activist groups as they, along with other immigrant groups, are expected to immerse themselves into the Danish model where ethnic and cultural differences are acknowledged but disregarded of their original context and its power relat...
Anthropology & Aging, 2021
In Europe, a growing population of aging citizens have migrant background, and many have their or... more In Europe, a growing population of aging citizens have migrant background, and many have their origin in non-Western countries. Often, care arrangements in these families are different from those of the majority populations. In Denmark, a growing number of immigrant families utilise an option in the Social Service Act, under which municipalities can contract a family member to take care of an elderly citizen at home. Due to the special construct of the ‘self-appointed helper arrangement’, the caregiver is both a professional care worker, formally employed by the municipality, and a close relative. As such, the arrangement provides a unique opportunity to examine ideas and practices of care at the intersection of the immigrant family and the state.Based on data from interviews with and observations among both immigrant families and municipal care managers, we explore consequences of this care scheme for aging citizens and their self-appointed helpers. Drawing on the concept of ‘lenti...
Ethnicities, 2020
This article investigates identity and belonging among Christians of Iraqi origin in Denmark thro... more This article investigates identity and belonging among Christians of Iraqi origin in Denmark through an analysis of their narratives of flight and interreligious relations, with a particular focus on the underlying dynamics of a widespread anti-Muslim discourse. Based on qualitative interviews and informal conversations with Chaldean and Assyrian Christians from Iraq, I examine how they presented themselves to me through their stories of flight from Iraq and settlement in Denmark. The analysis draws on perspectives on positionality and belonging among migrants as well as the ambiguous concept of (in)visibility, understood both as something structurally enforced and as how individuals and groups experience their (in)visibility and strive towards mobility and recognition. In addition, the analysis incorporates insights and discussions from literature on racialization and minority–majority relations, while particularly focusing on religious identity and Muslim–Christian relations. Agai...
Identities, 2017
This article investigates young middle-class Egyptians' engagement with the religious and nationa... more This article investigates young middle-class Egyptians' engagement with the religious and national visions of Resala, Egypt's largest Muslim youth NGO, and how they come to rethink themselves existentially and politically through this commitment, in the context of the 2011 uprising and its aftermath. I show how their volunteering through Resala, shaped by specific socio-political circumstances, paved the way for personal hopes to develop into utopian aspirations. Demonstrating the dynamic relationship between the formation of political subjectivities and how utopias emerge, develop and are sometimes shattered, I argue that while utopic aspirations continue to characterise parts of Egypt's 2011 youth generation, for others, such aspirations have to give way for other more personal concerns to establish a secure adult life. Therefore, activism and experiments with societal alternatives in contexts like the Egyptian continue to depend on inclusive and less risky spaces for civic engagement outside formal politics and institutions.
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2017
This article investigates how two Middle Eastern Christian churches in Denmark are constructed as... more This article investigates how two Middle Eastern Christian churches in Denmark are constructed as particular sensorial spaces that invite attendees to participate in and identify with specific times and spaces. As with other Christian groups, rituals of the Sunday mass constitute a highlight of the activities that confirm the congregations' faith and community, but for members of a minority faith, these rituals also serve other functions related to identification and belonging. Inspired by a practice-oriented (Bell 1992) and phenomenological approach to placemaking (Cresswell 2002) through sensory communication (Leistle 2006; Pink 2009), the article examines constructions of religious identity and belonging through ritual practices. The findings stem from fieldwork carried out in 2014-2015 and are part of a larger crossdisciplinary study of Egyptian, Iraqi and Assyrian Christians in Denmark. We argue that in various ways, the ritual forms a performative space for memory and belonging which, through bodily practices and engagement with the materialities of the church rooms, creates a memory that reconnects the practitioners with places elsewhere. More specifically, we argue that the Sunday ritual facilitates the connection with God and the eternal, a place and time with fellow believers, and a relocation to remember and re-enter a pre-migration past and 'homeland'.
Tidsskrift for Islamforskning, 2016
Denne artikel belyser religiøs identitet og muslimske-kristne relationer blandt irakiske kristne ... more Denne artikel belyser religiøs identitet og muslimske-kristne relationer blandt irakiske kristne i Danmark. I de irakiske kristnes narrativer om flugt og mødet med Danmark er der en konstant svingning mellem dels opnåelse af tryghed, lige rettigheder og religiøs frihed og dels minorisering pga. oplevelser af at blive gjort usynlige som kristne og synlige som muslimer. Jeg argumenterer for, at de irakiske kristne fortolker og navigerer i disse oplevelser af minorisering og (u)synlighed ved at genskrive deres narrativer om flugt og forfølgelse og således også forholdet til den muslimske anden.
Politics of Modern Muslim Subjectivities, 2014
When launching the research project for this book in 2006, we did not imagine what kind of conseq... more When launching the research project for this book in 2006, we did not imagine what kind of consequences the spirit behind the above quote from one of our informants would have. Like the overwhelming majority of the Middle East studies community, we were surprised by the events subsequently labeled the “Arab Spring.” There is no doubt that the various uprisings across the Arab Middle East were driven by a multiplicity of different visions. Yet they were united by the fundamental goal of getting rid of regimes that have stifled the development of Arab societies and the personal life expectations of their people for decades.1 The Arab Spring was motivated by a deep dissatisfaction with the general living conditions in the region. In Egypt and beyond, we have also witnessed the rage of a defeated, frustrated, and often humiliated middle class (cf. Amin 2011, 85). Consequently, the cry for democratic politics is closely intertwined with visions of the “good life” and attempts to successfully construct meaningful modern selfhoods. In addressing the politics of modern Muslim subjectivities, we perceive the Arab Spring as an historical event that made visible a much more fundamental social transformation. How to understand this social transformation?
Politics of Modern Muslim Subjectivities, 2014
On November 11,1920, Sharif Abdullah arrived from Medina by train in the British mandatory territ... more On November 11,1920, Sharif Abdullah arrived from Medina by train in the British mandatory territory of Transjordan. Previously serving his father, King Hussein of the Hijaz, as foreign minister, Abdullah announced in the border town of Maan his will to redeem the Syrian Arab Kingdom whose short life had ended with the French advance into Damascus on July 24, 1920 (Salibi 1993, 49). At this point in time, prospects to transform the Transjordanian territorial remnants of the Arab Kingdom into a modern national state were pretty bleak. Under Ottoman rule, the territory was never an administrative unit and because of its tribal social nature (almost) impossible or difficult to be governed by Istanbul. Moreover, the territory was part of the British mandate and therewith under colonial rule. Given these conditions, state building required strategies for both internal nation building and external efforts to gaining international recognition as an independent state. The crucial balancing act for Abdullah was to cultivate a sense of national unity among independent tribes and to achieve the support of London to establish a sovereign national state. Although formal independence from Great Britain was achieved in May 1946, the very difficult internal nation-building process was further aggravated by the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948–1949. Following his long-standing territorial ambitions, King Abdullah eventually succeeded in incorporating the West Bank into the Transjordanian state in 1950.
Politics of Modern Muslim Subjectivities, 2014
Religious social welfare organizations in Egypt have a long tradition, and from the beginning the... more Religious social welfare organizations in Egypt have a long tradition, and from the beginning they have been critically observed and have stood in competition with policies of poor relief made by the Egyptian state (cf. Ener 2003). The first Muslim and Coptic charitable associations appeared in the nineteenth century,1 and in the twenty-first century this religious part of Egyptian civil society comprises a broad variety of organizations, ranging from small-scale charities related to local mosques and community-based associations to large national organizations with branches all over the country. In addition, there are numerous zakat committees, religious schools, health clinics, orphanages, women’s organizations, and so on.2 In 1939, the state established the ministry of social affairs, bringing the state back into the center of charity and countering responses to the needs of Egypt’s poor made by the Muslim Brotherhood and leftist movements (Ener 2003, 134). In their activities, self-image and discursive representations, the new youth organizations very much draw on this tradition and its interlacement in state affairs. However, they also differ in more than one respect from Egypt’s traditional religious social welfare organizations. These differences have been manifested in four new trends.
Kristeligt Dagblad, Jan 28, 2014
Journal of Religion in Europe, 2016
Despite little scholarly attention, Middle Eastern Christian Churches are a well-established elem... more Despite little scholarly attention, Middle Eastern Christian Churches are a well-established element of the European religious landscape. Based on collaborative research, this article examines how three mutual field visits facilitated a deeper understanding of the complexity that characterises church establishment and activities among Iraqi, Assyrian/Syriac and Coptic Orthodox Christians in the uk, Sweden and Denmark. Exploring analytical dimensions of space, diversity, size, and minority position we identify three positions of Middle Eastern Christians: in London as the epitome of super-diversity, in Copenhagen as a silenced minority within a minority, and in Södertälje as a visible majority within a minority.
Politics of Modern Muslim Subjectivities
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Papers by Sara Lei Sparre