Mainstreaming Islamophobia: The Politics of European Enlargement and the Balkan Crime-Terror Nexus

East European Quarterly, vol. 43, no. 2-3, 2015, pp. 189-214

26 Pages Posted: 21 Dec 2015

Date Written: 2015

Abstract

This article examines Islamophobia not as an exclusive feature of far-right politics in Europe but as a constitutive part of mainstream European Union enlargement processes. Looking at EU commission and parliament reports, as well as enlargement strategies, I examine security practices and policies that stem from recent policy debates on the “crime-terror nexus.” Specifically, I look at how EU taxonomies of Islamophobia come to influence broader securitization and bordering practices that mark and produce Muslim populations in the Western Balkans as suspect communities in need of disciplinary violence under the promise of EU integration. As the EU instrumentalizes the fight against organized crime and terrorist networks to demarcate its geopolitical frontiers in the Western Balkans, it also labors in the enactment of physical and political borders that divide Muslims in the Balkans from the larger Muslim world.

Keywords: crime-terror nexus, EU enlargement, Islamophobia, Balkans

Suggested Citation

Rexhepi, Piro, Mainstreaming Islamophobia: The Politics of European Enlargement and the Balkan Crime-Terror Nexus (2015). East European Quarterly, vol. 43, no. 2-3, 2015, pp. 189-214, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2706058

Piro Rexhepi (Contact Author)

New York University (NYU) ( email )

Bobst Library, E-resource Acquisitions
20 Cooper Square 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10003-711
United States

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