Religion and Ethnicity: Which boundaries? A study with young people in Switzerland

Zusammenfassung Statt wie üblich die Integrationsmodi der zweiten Generation zu untersuchen, nimmt der Artikel eine andere Perspektive ein und fragt, wie sich die zweite Generation gegenüber ethno-nationalen Grenzlinien positioniert und ob sie sich als zugehörig betrachtet. Anhand von Interviews mit 16 bis 19-Jährigen unterschiedlicher Herkunft aus den Kantonen Luzern und Neuenburg wird aufgedeckt, welche Positionierungen und Strategien sie angesichts von Grenzziehungen entwickeln. Der Vergleich macht insbesondere deutlich, wie die regionalen Kontexte ihre Positionierungen und Strategien kanalisieren. Unabhängig davon, ob sich die zweite Generation als zugehörig wahrnimmt, sind sie in Luzern durch Integrationsforderungen und in Neuenburg durch einen republikanischen Toleranzdiskurs geprägt.

Based on ethnographic material, this article explores how three groups of apprentices negotiate masculinities in the specific setting of a male-dominated vocational school in Switzerland dedicated to the building trades. We use an intersectional and relational perspective to highlight how the institutional setting of the school—mirroring wider social hierarchies—influences these young men’s identity work. The apprentices use three discursive dichotomies: manual vs. mental work; proud heterosexuality vs. homosexuality; and adulthood vs. childhood. However, the three different groups employ the dichotomies differently depending on their position in the school’s internal hierarchies, based on their educational path, the trade they are learning and the corresponding prestige. The article sheds light on the micro-processes through which existing hierarchies are internalised within an institution. It further discusses how the school’s internal differentiations and the staff’s discourses and behaviours contribute to the (re)production of specific classed masculinities, critically assessing the role of the Swiss educational system in the reproduction of social inequalities.

Comme tout jeune, les enfants d’immigrés doivent trouver leur place dans la société dans laquelle ils vivent. Ce qui les singularise par rapport à leurs contemporains est la nécessité d’asseoir la légitimité de leur présence dans cette société qui tarde à les reconnaître comme uns des leurs. La reconnaissance passe par l’insertion consolidée dans le marché du travail et par des identités qui rendent compte de leurs diverses appartenances.

Dans un canton laïc, il est intéressant d’examiner comment on parle de religion. Nous nous intéressons à la manière dont de jeunes adultes neuchâtelois⋅e⋅s font mention de la religion et la laïcité – la leur, celle des autres – au quotidien, dans leur rapport aux autres et face à des questions personnelles. Il apparaît que, si les jeunes semblent bien s’être approprié les discours et les valeurs laïques de leur environnement social, ils et elles en font parfois paradoxalement usage pour exclure.

Cet article soulève la question du rapport que les jeunes de confession musulmane vivant dans le Canton de Neuchâtel entretiennent avec leur religion et avec les autres jeunes. Il questionne la supposition selon laquelle ces jeunes auraient un rapport plus assidu à la religion. L’analyse s’appuie sur des données quantitatives obtenues lors d’une enquête téléphonique menée auprès de jeunes de toutes confessions à Neuchâtel et à Lucerne.

Based on ethnographic material, this article explores how three groups of apprentices negotiate masculinities in the specific setting of a male-dominated vocational school in Switzerland dedicated to the building trades. We use an intersectional and relational perspective to highlight how the institutional setting of the school – mirroring wider social hierarchies – influences these young men’s identity work. The apprentices use three discursive dichotomies: manual vs. mental work; proud heterosexuality vs. homosexuality; and adulthood vs. childhood. However, the three different groups employ the dichotomies differently depending on their position in the school’s internal hierarchies, based on their educational path, the trade they are learning and the corresponding prestige. The article illuminates the micro-processes through which existing hierarchies are internalised within an institution. It further discusses how the school’s internal differentiations and the staff’s discourses and behaviours contribute to the (re)production of specific classed masculinities, critically assessing the role of the Swiss educational system in the reproduction of social inequalities.

Using ethnographic material, this article analyzes the processes at work in the construction of valued masculinity among young men in a Swiss vocational school. By adopting a theoretical boundary-making approach, we argue that double boundary work takes place in order to assert a specific form of hegemonic masculinity as the only legitimate way to be “a real man”. First, young men in the school draw symbolic boundaries between themselves as hard-working, tough, heterosexual, economically responsible men on one side, and effeminate, intellectual, lazy, despicable men on the other. A second boundary is drawn towards women, relying on a specifically constructed form of femininity and institutionalized gender boundaries, where women are depicted as dependant wives whose daily activities have little value. These processes are analyzed as a strategy used by these young men to counter a socially disadvantaged position on the labour market and in the society in general. Yet, the valorization of the masculine nature of their working identity has social consequences as they contribute to reproducing unequal gender hierarchies.

In many European countries, cultural and religious diversity is increasingly discussed as being a fundamental problem. This paper addresses this issue by applying the theoretical perspective of boundary work: On behalf of a mixed-method-study with young adults, we explore how public discursive constructions about 'differences' are used and interpreted in daily life in order to constitute groups and define the boundaries between them. The data shows that a majority (Swiss and second generation youth of Italian, Spain, French or Portuguese origin) constructs a bright boundary against 'Muslims' by mobilizing specific ideas about religious practices and by underpinning them with gender equality arguments. The Muslim minority youth are not able to tackle this boundary because of its bright nature; therefore, they develop individual strategies of repositioning within this stratified boundary system. We argue that in this transnationalized context established forms of domination emerge based on the intersection of religion and gender.

The idea of boundary work has become a key concept in studies on ethnicity and provides new theoretical insights into the social organisation of cultural difference. People articulate ethnic boundaries in everyday interactions using conceptual distinctions to construct notions of ‘us’ and ‘them’. This study is based on an empirical case study (ethnographic fieldwork, interviews) with young people (16-21 years old) in a Swiss vocational school. The results emphasize how gender relations and the moral imperative of gender equality are the most significant categories to create boundaries between Swiss and Albanian migrants. Our study considers boundary work as relational and thus examines the strategies of both the Swiss majority and the (male) Albanian minority. Results suggest that the boundary itself is seldom contested by either Swiss or Albanians, and we argue that the visibility of the boundary (‘brightness’) is closely linked to larger power relations in society between those groups.

Einwanderer und ihre Nachfahren sind beim Zugang zu gesellschaftlichen Ressourcen und Positionen oft mit Barrieren konfrontiert. Wie werden diese in der Lebenswelt aufrechterhalten und wie werden sie umkämpft? Das Buch gewährt Einblicke in den Schweizer Schulalltag und zeigt, wie Jugendliche Ungleichheiten interaktiv über symbolische Grenzziehungen reproduzieren: Gestützt auf religiöse und ethnische Zuschreibungen wird bestimmten Einwanderergruppen soziale Anerkennung verweigert – aber auch für sie eingefordert.

Civic integration policies have become common in many European states and require that immigrants commit to integrating into the host society. This article draws on a study with young people in Swiss schools and investigates how these new political debates around civic integration find resonance in everyday narratives about immigration. The boundary approach is used as a framework to study the daily (re)production of the ‘Swiss-foreigner divide’. It reveals that assimilation into ‘Swiss culture’ (e.g. speak the local language and conform to social norms) remains a criterion defining who can become a legitimate member of Swiss society. Nonetheless, integration deficits are often perceived as the rule and transformed into a stigma so that ‘foreigners’ are frequently not recognised as legitimate members of society. This study indicates how the Swiss youth in this study legitimise and (re)produce exclusion and how this exclusion is embedded within past and current Swiss immigration policies.

Die Schweiz gilt international als Modell eines gelungenen Multikulturalismus, dann nämlich wenn es das Zusammenleben der vier Sprachgruppen (Romands, DeutschschweizerInnen, TessinerInnen, RäteromanInnen) betrifft. Ein sprachlicher wie auch religiöser Pluralismus ist und war stets ein Grundbaustein des Selbstverständnisses der „Willensnation“ Schweiz. Geht es aber um MigrantInnen präsentiert sich die Geschichte anders, denn in diesem Falle erscheinen religiöse und ethnisch-kulturelle Pluralität vorwiegend als problematisch. MigrantInnen gehören entsprechend den öffentlichen und politischen Diskursen nicht zum multikulturellen Staat, vielmehr sind Prozesse kollektiver Grenzziehungen und damit Schließungsmechanismen zu beobachten, in denen Ethnizität, Religion und Kultur zu den wichtigsten Differenzierungsmerkmale werden, wie Gemeinsamkeiten gegen innen (SchweizerInnen) und Barrieren gegen außen (Ausländer, Migranten, Muslims, etc.) hergestellt werden. Ich argumentiere in diesem Kapitel, dass sich dieser „Kulturdiskurs“ im letzten Jahrzehnt verstärkt hat und gleichzeitig semantischen Verschiebungen unterworfen war. Mittels der Grenzziehungsperspektive wird historisch nachvollzogen, wie Zuwanderung und Integration in politischen Debatten und Gesetz zunehmend kulturalisiert und ethnisiert wurden. Ein Fallbeispiel aus der Forschung dient mir anschließend der Veranschaulichung dieser theoretischen Perspektive und dieses „neuen“ Essentialismus.

The binary opposition between ‘equal European women’ and ‘oppressed Muslim women’ has become a powerful representation in Switzerland and throughout Europe. Yet little is empirically known about the mechanisms through which actors in their everyday lives (re)produce this prominent construction. In this mixed-method study with young adults in a French-speaking Swiss Canton, we explore how and on behalf of which markers they construct such a bright boundary against ‘the oppressed Muslim woman’. We argue that the Swiss tradition of ethicising and culturalising migrant issues is relevant for the construction of the boundary against Muslims in a way that renders ethnicity salient. However, when it comes to the concrete markers of the boundary – the ‘cultural stuff’ mobilised by the young people to mark the boundary – the local highly secular context has the paradoxical effect that religious contents become more salient than ethnicity. Normative ideas about ‘gender equality’, in contrast, cross both ethnic and religious markers in the same way. We argue that although ethnicity, religion and gender have commonalities in terms of categories of identification and exclusion, they should be treated as different elements when it comes to the social organisation of difference because each of them displays a specific logic.