Drafts by Mieke Groeninck
Ongepubliceerde paper voorgesteld op de CEMIS-conferentie n.a.v. 50 jaar Marokkaanse immigratie (... more Ongepubliceerde paper voorgesteld op de CEMIS-conferentie n.a.v. 50 jaar Marokkaanse immigratie (27/11/’14)
Wat de meeste mensen weten over de Ramadan is dat het één van de vijf pijlers van de islam is en ... more Wat de meeste mensen weten over de Ramadan is dat het één van de vijf pijlers van de islam is en dat het betekent dat moslims vasten tussen zonsopgang en zonsondergang. Niet eten, drinken, roken en geen seksuele betrekkingen tussen 3u30 's ochtends en 22u 's avonds (dit is bij benadering en het kan ook licht verschillen afhankelijk van welke kalender gevolgd wordt). In gesprekken met niet-moslims wordt vaak het gezondheidsaspect aangehaald van deze vastenperiode, met name de "zuivering van het lichaam". Maar voor bewuste gelovigen draait de maand Ramadan ook en vooral rond de "zuivering van het hart". Dat is niet altijd gemakkelijk te "vertalen" naar niet-gelovigen toe, dus aan hen vraag ik een beroep te doen op hun inlevingsvermogen. Want het is over dit spirituele aspect dat ik het hier wil hebben.
Papers by Mieke Groeninck
Religions, 2020
This paper focuses on the move towards "academization" of Islamic religious education in private ... more This paper focuses on the move towards "academization" of Islamic religious education in private institutes belonging to the reform movement in Brussels. An attempt is made to think through this move in terms of the sacred knowledge concerned, and the alleged implications for teachers and students of Islam. Some of the crucial elements that go with this shift are the aspiration for "distantiation" in teaching and knowing aspects of internal diversity, as well as the aspired changes in the professor-student (instead of shaykh-disciple) relationship. By focusing on ethnographic examples, the aim is to contribute to our understanding of the importance of the internal debates instigated by an attempt towards academization, the search for coherence that goes with it, its repercussions on people's daily life and personal sensibilities, as well as on Islamic expert authority formation.
Journal of Refugee Studies, 2020
By elaborating on the concept of ‘resilient moves’, we try to show how resilience in the case of ... more By elaborating on the concept of ‘resilient moves’, we try to show how resilience in the case of asylum-seeking families living in open, collective reception centres exists in a complicated relationship with vulnerability and is very much a matter of local negotiation rather than mere adaptation in the face of adversity. Building upon consecutive waves of resilience research, this approach inspired by practice theory focuses on the agency of acts performed by families themselves or facilitated by people and structures in various types of relationships to them. It also allows a repoliticization of resilience, explaining how denouncing vulnerability due to structural precarity might constitute resilience through resistance. An in-depth case example of an Afghan family residing for 4 years in a collective reception centre will provide illustrations of our findings and approach.
Introduction to Special Issue on 'Exploring New Assemblages of Islamic Expert Education in Western Europe', 2020
What constitutes ‘relevant’ and ‘apt’ Islamic knowledge and expert education of future
Islamic au... more What constitutes ‘relevant’ and ‘apt’ Islamic knowledge and expert education of future
Islamic authorities in Western Europe? This central point of departure of this Special Issue is a burdened question in the current public and political debate in Western Europe. In the last decades, higher education on Islam in Europe has predominantly taken place in two domains: in the publicly funded university context as Islamic Studies, and in the privately funded context of mosques, madrasa’s and teaching institutes, often with strong links to Muslim countries of origin. In recent years, however, different answers have been formulated to this question; alternative initiatives have been taken—or are in the making—to train Islamic experts who are preparing for professional and academic careers in Europe. Publicly funded universities have started to organize imam training or Islamic theology programs, notably in Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries. Furthermore, private confessional Muslim institutes are now recruiting lecturers who
also graduated from Western Islamic Studies university programs. This Special Issue focuses both theoretically and empirically on these new aspirations, initiatives, debates and practices of those various actors who navigate between and beyond. To understand these developments, we need a theoretical framework that is able to deconstruct the power related epistemological narratives constituting these dichotomies. Therefore, we will use this introductory editorial article to elaborate
on how these spaces/places of departure are not absolute or analytically stable, but per definition uncertain, blurry and constantly ‘in the making’, constituted by what David Scott has called ‘a problem-space’. Moreover, in addition to thinking only in terms of ‘interstices’ in order to overcome these dichotomies by way of ‘bonding or bridging’, but which often seems to presume an essential character to both ends, we suggest to consider these alternative initiatives in terms of ‘assemblages’.
Radicalization in Belgium and the Netherlands – Critical perspectives on violence and security, 2019
The material for this chapter is based upon ethnographic fieldwork that goes back to May 2013, co... more The material for this chapter is based upon ethnographic fieldwork that goes back to May 2013, conducted in the Brussels’ Islamic scene. However, it draws on the developments after the Paris (13 November 2015) and Brussels (22 March 2016) attacks, and the debates that intensified. In the days after the tragic events, a lot of Islamic authorities and representative organs in Belgium and elsewhere have condemned the attacks. But it has also brought momentum to a number of underlying internal discussions on the origin and meaning of ‘radicalism’ that have been going on during the last couple of years, and which also seem to build upon even longer theological and juridical divergence. One of the most articulated matters of ‘contestation’ in these debates is the presence of ‘salafism’ and its presumed ideological links to ‘extremism’, ‘radicalism’ and terrorism. Only one of the two positions described in this chapter underlines this causal relation, but both nonetheless articulate a problem of ‘radicalism’ within their community. A discourse analysis of the discussions on audiovisual and social media after the attacks, together with fieldwork and interviews conducted between 2013-2016, will unravel these differences expressed by central authority figures in the Brussels’ Islamic scene.
The aim of this chapter is to give an illustration of how the mainstream discourse of radicalization, which, as has been referred to in the introduction of this book, currently refers to notions of ‘acceptable’ and ‘non-acceptable’ forms of Islam articulated around the concept of ‘salafism’, also induces intra-Muslim contestation on what is correct Islamic teaching and understanding.
Within the Brussels Islamic community as elsewhere, growing attention is paid to the instruction ... more Within the Brussels Islamic community as elsewhere, growing attention is paid to the instruction and transference of correct Islamic knowledge, ‘ilm al-Islam. What exactly is considered correct knowledge (transference), is object of continuous debate. But whereas before Islamic educational initiatives only aimed at adult men or children under the age of twelve, now the search for correct knowledge elaborates towards women, and recently to adolescents as well. This study is based on two years (2013-2015) of participant observation in women-only and gender separated courses on Islam in three mosques and three Islamic institutes in the region of Brussels. Their curriculum offered courses in Qur’anic exegesis (tafseer), Qur’anic recitation (tajweed), Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), the biography of the prophet (al-sirah), Islamic dogma (‘aqidah), and Islamic ethics. The people I came into contact with were mostly from a Moroccan background and the places they visited can be described as belonging to the Sunni pietist reform movement in Europe (Jouilli 2015). The most important leitmotiv of the courses is the idea of personal and communal reform. Therefore attention is paid to the perfection of one’s ‘ibadat (five pillars of Islam), as well as to one’s ethical behavior towards others (almu’amalat), and one’s spiritual relation with the ultimate Other. I will describe how, in the process of reforming and ‘becoming pious’, these three elements relate to each other during, but ideally also outside of the courses. Knowledge acquaintance, then, is not only aimed at a reform of the self, but also of the self’s being in the world next to and in a mutual relation with similar and dissimilar, visible and invisible o/Others; hence politics of ‘ilm that relate to the private, public and universal sphere of existence.
Through my ethnographic research on Islamic religious knowledge transmission for lay adults in th... more Through my ethnographic research on Islamic religious knowledge transmission for lay adults in three mosques and three Islamic institutes in the region of Brussels, I have been regularly confronted with themes such as suffering, compassion, as well as social and personal responsibility. These courses in Islamic sciences can be situated within the field of Islamic revivalism, which focuses on a pious personal reform through the incorporation of specific ethics and virtues. Apt behavior in reaction to one’s own and other’s misfortune belongs to human’s ‘domain of well-doing’ and ethical self-formation. However, whereas previous research has approached this ethical phronesis as a process of reasoning that takes into account not only one’s self, but also the larger society’s well-being (Jouili 2015 : 18), I tend to expand this approach by elaborating on the ontological status of suffering in the subject/Divine axis as well. This allows me to focus on what Amira Mittermaier has called an ethics of passion, wherein suffering is perceived as a situation of being acted upon (Mittermaier 2010). By focusing on how personal and diverse others’ suffering is enacted, understood and reacted upon, new possibilities for agency, or for the development of a specific form of agent, emerge (Asad 2003 : 79-91).
Asad, T. (2003). Formations of the Secular. Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Jouili, J.S. (2015). Pious practices and secular constraints. Women in the Islamic revival in Europe. Stanford : Stanford University Press.
Mittermaier, A. (2010). Dreams from Elsewhere : Muslim subjectivities beyond the trope of self-cultivation. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.), 18, 247-265.
Through an ethnographic study of courses on tajweed (Qur’anic recitation) in Brussels' mosques an... more Through an ethnographic study of courses on tajweed (Qur’anic recitation) in Brussels' mosques and Islamic institutions, this article throws a light at the semiotic ideology of Muslims (Keane 2007). It clarifies the adult male and female students' relation with the parole of Allah, the materiality of Qur’anic recitation, the significance of Qur’anic words, as well as how this relates to their personal agency in becoming a pious subject. Qur’anic recitation, or tajweed, is perceived as an illocutionary act of adoration that, if performed correctly and sincerely, enables students of tajweed to not only re-perform, but also to re-enact the moment of revelation. The article additionally demonstrates how studying tajweed is aimed at the construction of spiritual moods and motivations not only in the short, but also in the long term. It elaborates on how a changing relation with the semiotic form of Allah's parole in the Qur’an may not only influence a person's inner feelings, but also his conduct towards himself and others.
Conference Presentations by Mieke Groeninck
The PhD project that I’ve finished successfully in June 2017, was based on almost three years (20... more The PhD project that I’ve finished successfully in June 2017, was based on almost three years (2013-2016) of ethnographic fieldwork at courses in Islamic sciences for lay adults in three mosques and three Islamic institutes from a Moroccan background in the region of Brussels. During fieldwork, I have followed over 200 classes in fiqh (Islamic law), sirah (biography of the Prophet Muhammad), tafsīr (Quran exegesis), tajwīd (Quran recitation), al-akhlāq (ethics), usūl al-fiqh (legal studies), ‘aqīdah (creed), Hadīth and kalām (systematic theology). In the thesis, I’ve focused mostly on female Muslim students who, driven by a self-reflexive desire for personal and communal reform, sought to redefine themselves as pious subjects through a renewed focus on Islamic knowledge acquisition (Mahmood 2005; Jouili 2015). However, the acquisition of ‘ilm al-Islam did not only concern a personal engagement to fulfill a religious duty or to perfect one’s ‘ibadāt (religious rituals) and mu’āmalāt (ethics in social relations); it also contained a ‘rappel of adherence to an order of things’ (Ricoeur 1977: 40). The students not only learned the appropriate practices and beliefs that reached them through their conscious and bodily engagement with the ‘Islamic discursive tradition’ (Asad 1986: 15). It equally reminded them of ‘root assumptions concerning the essential nature of things’ (Scott 2007: 3), upon whose correct discernment students learned to act ‘aptly’ (Asad 1986: 15). Whereas the element of ‘spiritual rappel’ can be ascribed to every Islamic practice, the specificity of the courses was that they seemed to provide students with tools to enlarge their ‘Islamic perspective’ (Viveiros De Castro 1998 [1996]: 470-72) to other spheres of life, in which they also aspired to act as Muslims who stand in a conscious relation to their Creator, of which they learned (or remembered) to recognize signs all around them. Drawing on Asad’s argument that ‘the connection between religious theory [or knowledge] and practice is fundamentally a matter of intervention – of constructing religion in the world (not in the mind)’ (1993: 44), I expand this by arguing that this also implies a religious deconstruction (in the sense of unveiling) of the world. Hence, instead of departing from a Geertzian disjunction between religious and other perspectives (Geertz 1968: 96, 107), I found that ‘the everyday’ was being incorporated by the courses into a holistic Islamically inspired discourse on God’s providence and the created nature of humans, the world, and everything in it, which underlied and enabled the existence of multiple perspectives and humans’ ‘forgetfulness’ in al-dunya. Attending courses on ‘ilm al-Islam pointed, in other words, to what Karen Barad has called an ‘onto-ethico-epistemology’ (Barad 2007), which determined how people saw, treated, imagined and perceived themselves, others, the material as well as
the invisible world in the past, present and future. In order to ‘translate this coherently’ (Asad 1993: 176-77, 185; Viveiros De Castro 2004: 5), I combined insights from the recent ‘ontological turn’ in anthropology (Barad 2007; Henare, Holbraad & Wastell 2007; Holbraad 2009; Scott 2007) and the ‘anthropology of al-ghayb (the invisible)’ (Mittermaier 2011; Suhr 2013), with the former ‘ethical turn’ (Mahmood 2005; Hirschkind 2006; Jouilli 2015).
This paper is based on research among women who can be situated within the Islamic revival movem... more This paper is based on research among women who can be situated within the Islamic revival movement (Jouili 2015: 4) and who subscribe for adult courses on Islamic sciences in Brussels’ mosques and Islamic institutions. Following Talal Asad (1986: 16), it is no surprise that in such environments, where correct practices and beliefs are being taught, internal debates regularly (re-)flourish. Over the last couple of years however, normative terms such as “radicalist”, “rigorist”, “extremist”, “literalist” or “salafist” are no longer exclusively used by popular (media) discourses, but they are equally being adopted within the Islamic community to assign certain authoritative figures, references, books, practices or religious opinions to a specific category. Their perceived deviation from al-wasat (the middle way) is decided upon a number of “problematizations” (Foucault 1985) that, in the words of Asad, “relate conceptually to a past and a future, through a present” (Asad 1986: 14). Based on my own two-year research, I believe these sites of problematization to center around a number of core theoretical discussions on the one hand (concerning both jurisprudential and dogmatic questions), and the choice of referential authority (from the past and present) on the other. By using etnographic material from fieldwork in three mosques and three Islamic institutions in the region of Brussels, I will try to unravel these elements of problematizations. Additionally, I am also concerned with the reason of their mattering and the manners of their reasoning in the peculiar contemporary context. In other words, I will not only look at the relationships of power that create – or are being created by – these internal debates within a particular context and with a particular history (Asad 1986: 15), but I will also focus on the “impact of these dialogues on the wider work on the self and its milieu” (Garriott & O’Neill 2008: 386-388). That is why I will also look at strategies to cope with this internal ambiguity, contradictions and uncertainty and to look for religious coherence (Asad 1986: 17; Garriott & O’Neill 2008: 388).
For my doctoral research, I have conducted participant observation in the period between 2013-201... more For my doctoral research, I have conducted participant observation in the period between 2013-2015 in three mosques and three Islamic institutes from a Moroccan background in the region of Brussels. I have followed the entire curriculum of the religious courses that they provide for lay adults in what can be called the Sunni revivalist movement. Whereas one of the aims of the courses is to remind students that God sends signs to each and every one of them in various discernable ways (which has been described among others through Lévy-Bruhl's concept of 'participation' (1947 [1922]: 17-18)), the courses also provide a unique site for understanding the role of authorities and discursive religious knowledge transmission, as well as what is meant by the latter. But besides the preservation of the Islamic discursive tradition (Asad 1986: 14), they also deliver insights into the logical trajectories (Scott 2005: 106) that arise internally; the kind of internal critique (Asad 1993: 189) that is launched and how it relates to the Islamic tradition on the one hand, but is also informed by the current time and space on the other. I will present both the aspect of reconfiguration and internal skepticism in my paper for this conference. I will do so by starting from ethnographic findings that illustrate the efforts of practitioners to achieve coherence through skepticism (Asad 1986: 17). This will result in a more general conclusion about how religious authority is proliferated.
In 2015-2016, there was a sharp increase in the numbers of refugees claiming for asylum in Europe... more In 2015-2016, there was a sharp increase in the numbers of refugees claiming for asylum in Europe. As in the neighboring countries, the priority in Belgium was to register asylum seekers via the asylum procedure, whilst providing shelter in collective refugee centers. These are often not equipped to shelter the high percentage of families arriving from Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. How to help sustaining the coping strategies and resilience of these families in the light of various types of adversity during the different stages upon their arrival, is the object of research on which this paper is based.
Previous research has shown how collective centers have a negative impact on family life (Hjern et al. 2012; Sauer et al. 2015). But also in the case of recognition, the challenges remain legio: finding an affordable home, coping with language, finding education or work and rebuilding social networks. In the context of these structural challenges, an early emphasis on preventive psychosocial and educational support, together with material aid, is considered crucial for the resilience of families and their success on the long term (Sleijpen et al. 2015).
However, as our two focus groups with aid workers and in-depth interviews with refugee families have made clear, the sensed success of any preventive offer is dependent on its ability to sustain a culture sensitive approach when it comes to ‘resilience’ and ‘coping mechanisms’ (Bala & Kramer 2010; Ungar 2012), as well as to avoid the pitfalls of racialization, culturalization and dehistoricization (Gans 2017; Malkki 1996). Therefore, we aim to unravel some general strategies shared by some of the methods, structures or (micro)practices that were put in place by volunteers or professionals in order to support newly-arriving families and that were considered successful by all parties. We also try to highlight to what extent these strategies can be considered micropolitics of resistance in the light of popular and political discourses on (how to deal with) ‘the refugee crisis’, and an ensuing racialization of, for instance, colored Middle-Eastern refugees.
With the share of refugee families amongst newcomers increasing, there are various challenges for... more With the share of refugee families amongst newcomers increasing, there are various challenges for family resilience due to pre and post flight experiences, possibly causing cracks in the ‘capacity of the family system to withstand and rebound from adversity’ (Walsh 2003).
In our interdisciplinary research on asylum seeking and refugee family resilience (shortly) after arrival in Belgium, we focus on the emic conceptualization of what it means to be resilient as a family (Ungar & Liebenberg 2011; Vindevogel ea. 2015), and how this is reflected in, as well as operationalized throughout, relations between the individual, the family and the context (Anaut 2012).
Through mixed methods inspired by PRA (such as depth interviews, fieldwork, focus groups, social diagrams and PRM-rounds), we question between 15 and 18 families from an Iraqi, Afghan and Syrian background (through purposive sampling and with the additional variables low/high educated, living in a collective asylum center or individually), as well as aid workers from their own direct network within the domains of wellbeing, education and (asylum) reception.
The first additional question we hope to address by analyzing the results of both groups of stakeholders, is whether the contextual change is reflected in reconfigurations of family’s understanding and aspirations of resilience (as well as its alleged opposite – ‘vulnerability’), influenced by the hegemonic understanding of it – considering that the latter functions as a ‘discourse of knowledge’ (Bergström 2017) structuring various forms of asylum and integration policy, as well as individual and family aid. Secondly, we are attentive to aid workers’ capability to transcend the dichotomous understanding of resilient/vulnerable, victim/suspect, helpless/self-dependent, and their capacity to navigate the intersections on a daily basis in contact with these families.
Books by Mieke Groeninck
Gezinnen op de vlucht hebben veel achtergelaten om een veiliger bestaan op te zoeken. Hun verlies... more Gezinnen op de vlucht hebben veel achtergelaten om een veiliger bestaan op te zoeken. Hun verlieservaringen dragen ze mee, over grenzen heen. In het land van aankomst wachten weer nieuwe uitdagingen. Ingrijpende gebeurtenissen, en toch reageren deze gezinnen vaak heel dynamisch en veerkrachtig. In dit boek gaan we op zoek naar wat een divers-sensitieve invulling van veerkrachtig handelen kan zijn, met oog voor de persoonlijke, relationele en contextuele dynamieken in en rond het gezin. Dit laat ons toe om veerkracht te erkennen, ook in situaties waar we dit voordien niet zagen, en deze te ondersteunen op een manier die betekenisvol wordt over culturen heen. Via diepte-interviews vertellen ouders en kinderen van asielzoekende en vluchtelingengezinnen van Afghaanse, Syrische en Iraakse origine, zelf hun verhaal. We krijgen inzicht in hun kwetsbaarheid. We zien welke veerkrachtige acties echt doorwegen in het leven van gezinnen op de vlucht.
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Drafts by Mieke Groeninck
Papers by Mieke Groeninck
Islamic authorities in Western Europe? This central point of departure of this Special Issue is a burdened question in the current public and political debate in Western Europe. In the last decades, higher education on Islam in Europe has predominantly taken place in two domains: in the publicly funded university context as Islamic Studies, and in the privately funded context of mosques, madrasa’s and teaching institutes, often with strong links to Muslim countries of origin. In recent years, however, different answers have been formulated to this question; alternative initiatives have been taken—or are in the making—to train Islamic experts who are preparing for professional and academic careers in Europe. Publicly funded universities have started to organize imam training or Islamic theology programs, notably in Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries. Furthermore, private confessional Muslim institutes are now recruiting lecturers who
also graduated from Western Islamic Studies university programs. This Special Issue focuses both theoretically and empirically on these new aspirations, initiatives, debates and practices of those various actors who navigate between and beyond. To understand these developments, we need a theoretical framework that is able to deconstruct the power related epistemological narratives constituting these dichotomies. Therefore, we will use this introductory editorial article to elaborate
on how these spaces/places of departure are not absolute or analytically stable, but per definition uncertain, blurry and constantly ‘in the making’, constituted by what David Scott has called ‘a problem-space’. Moreover, in addition to thinking only in terms of ‘interstices’ in order to overcome these dichotomies by way of ‘bonding or bridging’, but which often seems to presume an essential character to both ends, we suggest to consider these alternative initiatives in terms of ‘assemblages’.
The aim of this chapter is to give an illustration of how the mainstream discourse of radicalization, which, as has been referred to in the introduction of this book, currently refers to notions of ‘acceptable’ and ‘non-acceptable’ forms of Islam articulated around the concept of ‘salafism’, also induces intra-Muslim contestation on what is correct Islamic teaching and understanding.
Asad, T. (2003). Formations of the Secular. Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Jouili, J.S. (2015). Pious practices and secular constraints. Women in the Islamic revival in Europe. Stanford : Stanford University Press.
Mittermaier, A. (2010). Dreams from Elsewhere : Muslim subjectivities beyond the trope of self-cultivation. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.), 18, 247-265.
Conference Presentations by Mieke Groeninck
the invisible world in the past, present and future. In order to ‘translate this coherently’ (Asad 1993: 176-77, 185; Viveiros De Castro 2004: 5), I combined insights from the recent ‘ontological turn’ in anthropology (Barad 2007; Henare, Holbraad & Wastell 2007; Holbraad 2009; Scott 2007) and the ‘anthropology of al-ghayb (the invisible)’ (Mittermaier 2011; Suhr 2013), with the former ‘ethical turn’ (Mahmood 2005; Hirschkind 2006; Jouilli 2015).
Previous research has shown how collective centers have a negative impact on family life (Hjern et al. 2012; Sauer et al. 2015). But also in the case of recognition, the challenges remain legio: finding an affordable home, coping with language, finding education or work and rebuilding social networks. In the context of these structural challenges, an early emphasis on preventive psychosocial and educational support, together with material aid, is considered crucial for the resilience of families and their success on the long term (Sleijpen et al. 2015).
However, as our two focus groups with aid workers and in-depth interviews with refugee families have made clear, the sensed success of any preventive offer is dependent on its ability to sustain a culture sensitive approach when it comes to ‘resilience’ and ‘coping mechanisms’ (Bala & Kramer 2010; Ungar 2012), as well as to avoid the pitfalls of racialization, culturalization and dehistoricization (Gans 2017; Malkki 1996). Therefore, we aim to unravel some general strategies shared by some of the methods, structures or (micro)practices that were put in place by volunteers or professionals in order to support newly-arriving families and that were considered successful by all parties. We also try to highlight to what extent these strategies can be considered micropolitics of resistance in the light of popular and political discourses on (how to deal with) ‘the refugee crisis’, and an ensuing racialization of, for instance, colored Middle-Eastern refugees.
In our interdisciplinary research on asylum seeking and refugee family resilience (shortly) after arrival in Belgium, we focus on the emic conceptualization of what it means to be resilient as a family (Ungar & Liebenberg 2011; Vindevogel ea. 2015), and how this is reflected in, as well as operationalized throughout, relations between the individual, the family and the context (Anaut 2012).
Through mixed methods inspired by PRA (such as depth interviews, fieldwork, focus groups, social diagrams and PRM-rounds), we question between 15 and 18 families from an Iraqi, Afghan and Syrian background (through purposive sampling and with the additional variables low/high educated, living in a collective asylum center or individually), as well as aid workers from their own direct network within the domains of wellbeing, education and (asylum) reception.
The first additional question we hope to address by analyzing the results of both groups of stakeholders, is whether the contextual change is reflected in reconfigurations of family’s understanding and aspirations of resilience (as well as its alleged opposite – ‘vulnerability’), influenced by the hegemonic understanding of it – considering that the latter functions as a ‘discourse of knowledge’ (Bergström 2017) structuring various forms of asylum and integration policy, as well as individual and family aid. Secondly, we are attentive to aid workers’ capability to transcend the dichotomous understanding of resilient/vulnerable, victim/suspect, helpless/self-dependent, and their capacity to navigate the intersections on a daily basis in contact with these families.
Books by Mieke Groeninck
Islamic authorities in Western Europe? This central point of departure of this Special Issue is a burdened question in the current public and political debate in Western Europe. In the last decades, higher education on Islam in Europe has predominantly taken place in two domains: in the publicly funded university context as Islamic Studies, and in the privately funded context of mosques, madrasa’s and teaching institutes, often with strong links to Muslim countries of origin. In recent years, however, different answers have been formulated to this question; alternative initiatives have been taken—or are in the making—to train Islamic experts who are preparing for professional and academic careers in Europe. Publicly funded universities have started to organize imam training or Islamic theology programs, notably in Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries. Furthermore, private confessional Muslim institutes are now recruiting lecturers who
also graduated from Western Islamic Studies university programs. This Special Issue focuses both theoretically and empirically on these new aspirations, initiatives, debates and practices of those various actors who navigate between and beyond. To understand these developments, we need a theoretical framework that is able to deconstruct the power related epistemological narratives constituting these dichotomies. Therefore, we will use this introductory editorial article to elaborate
on how these spaces/places of departure are not absolute or analytically stable, but per definition uncertain, blurry and constantly ‘in the making’, constituted by what David Scott has called ‘a problem-space’. Moreover, in addition to thinking only in terms of ‘interstices’ in order to overcome these dichotomies by way of ‘bonding or bridging’, but which often seems to presume an essential character to both ends, we suggest to consider these alternative initiatives in terms of ‘assemblages’.
The aim of this chapter is to give an illustration of how the mainstream discourse of radicalization, which, as has been referred to in the introduction of this book, currently refers to notions of ‘acceptable’ and ‘non-acceptable’ forms of Islam articulated around the concept of ‘salafism’, also induces intra-Muslim contestation on what is correct Islamic teaching and understanding.
Asad, T. (2003). Formations of the Secular. Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Jouili, J.S. (2015). Pious practices and secular constraints. Women in the Islamic revival in Europe. Stanford : Stanford University Press.
Mittermaier, A. (2010). Dreams from Elsewhere : Muslim subjectivities beyond the trope of self-cultivation. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.), 18, 247-265.
the invisible world in the past, present and future. In order to ‘translate this coherently’ (Asad 1993: 176-77, 185; Viveiros De Castro 2004: 5), I combined insights from the recent ‘ontological turn’ in anthropology (Barad 2007; Henare, Holbraad & Wastell 2007; Holbraad 2009; Scott 2007) and the ‘anthropology of al-ghayb (the invisible)’ (Mittermaier 2011; Suhr 2013), with the former ‘ethical turn’ (Mahmood 2005; Hirschkind 2006; Jouilli 2015).
Previous research has shown how collective centers have a negative impact on family life (Hjern et al. 2012; Sauer et al. 2015). But also in the case of recognition, the challenges remain legio: finding an affordable home, coping with language, finding education or work and rebuilding social networks. In the context of these structural challenges, an early emphasis on preventive psychosocial and educational support, together with material aid, is considered crucial for the resilience of families and their success on the long term (Sleijpen et al. 2015).
However, as our two focus groups with aid workers and in-depth interviews with refugee families have made clear, the sensed success of any preventive offer is dependent on its ability to sustain a culture sensitive approach when it comes to ‘resilience’ and ‘coping mechanisms’ (Bala & Kramer 2010; Ungar 2012), as well as to avoid the pitfalls of racialization, culturalization and dehistoricization (Gans 2017; Malkki 1996). Therefore, we aim to unravel some general strategies shared by some of the methods, structures or (micro)practices that were put in place by volunteers or professionals in order to support newly-arriving families and that were considered successful by all parties. We also try to highlight to what extent these strategies can be considered micropolitics of resistance in the light of popular and political discourses on (how to deal with) ‘the refugee crisis’, and an ensuing racialization of, for instance, colored Middle-Eastern refugees.
In our interdisciplinary research on asylum seeking and refugee family resilience (shortly) after arrival in Belgium, we focus on the emic conceptualization of what it means to be resilient as a family (Ungar & Liebenberg 2011; Vindevogel ea. 2015), and how this is reflected in, as well as operationalized throughout, relations between the individual, the family and the context (Anaut 2012).
Through mixed methods inspired by PRA (such as depth interviews, fieldwork, focus groups, social diagrams and PRM-rounds), we question between 15 and 18 families from an Iraqi, Afghan and Syrian background (through purposive sampling and with the additional variables low/high educated, living in a collective asylum center or individually), as well as aid workers from their own direct network within the domains of wellbeing, education and (asylum) reception.
The first additional question we hope to address by analyzing the results of both groups of stakeholders, is whether the contextual change is reflected in reconfigurations of family’s understanding and aspirations of resilience (as well as its alleged opposite – ‘vulnerability’), influenced by the hegemonic understanding of it – considering that the latter functions as a ‘discourse of knowledge’ (Bergström 2017) structuring various forms of asylum and integration policy, as well as individual and family aid. Secondly, we are attentive to aid workers’ capability to transcend the dichotomous understanding of resilient/vulnerable, victim/suspect, helpless/self-dependent, and their capacity to navigate the intersections on a daily basis in contact with these families.