Contemporary Conflicts and Ethnic-religious Tensions
Work Package Leader:
Michael Emerson – Centre for European Policy Studies
Overview
A large fraction of recent violent mass conflicts across the world have been attributed to clashes originating from opposing interests or perceived injustices between different religious, cultural or ethnic groups. Although there is a large literature that relates mass violence with high levels of ethnic and religious fragmentation and polarisation, it is not clear how ethnicity is associated with outbreaks of conflict. Indeed, most multiethnic societies live relatively peacefully.
This Work Package is complementary to that on Group Formation, Identities and Mobilisation, exploring further the role of ethnicity and religion in mobilisation in violent conflicts. The Work Package links sociological, economic and political aspects behind collective action, with the analysis of psychological categories of group identity and perception and key historical processes of religious and ethnic integration inside and outside Europe.
The projects in this Work Package focus to a large extent on understanding and conceptualising communal-level conflicts that may or may not generate or be generated by mass violence. Through this analysis, the Work Package will uncover micro-level motivations that may transform communal conflicts into large scale mass violence, such as violent riots observed recently in Birmingham (UK), France and Gujarat (India), amongst others.
Although forms of internal communal unrest may not necessarily result in mass violence, they are often responsible for the destruction of livelihoods, increases in economic and social uncertainty, loss of trust between communities and the waste of significant human and economic resources. Persistent forms of civil unrest have also often constituted the preliminary stages of more violent conflicts, including civil wars.
This Work Package aims to take these considerations further by providing concrete evidence on micro-level processes linking communal conflicts grounded on religious and ethnic divides and mass violence.
Publications
RWP16: Identity and Islamic Radicalization in Western Europe - Mansoob Murshed and Sarah Pavan
Project 5: From violence and conflict to models of integration of Muslims in Europe
Project leader:
Michael Emerson – Centre for European Policy Studies
Project researchers:
Amel Boubekeur – Centre for European Policy Studies
Prof. Felice Dassetto and Dr. Brigitte Marechal – Centre d’Études de l’Islam Contemporain
Dr.
Sara Silvestri – Centre for International Studies, University of Cambridge
Dr. Richard Youngs - Fundacion para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Dialogo Exterior
Publications
PWP2: Al Qaeda in the West as a Youth Movement: The Power of a Narrative - Olivier Roy
PWP5: Political, Religious and Ethnic Radicalisation among Muslims in Belgium - Theodoros Koutroubas, Ward Vloeberghs and Zeynep Yanasmayan
PWP6: Muslims in the Netherlands: Tensions and Violent Conflict - Tinka Veldhuis and Edwin Bakker
PWP7: Radicalisation among Muslims in the UK - Rachel Briggs and Jonathan Birdwell
PWP8: Muslims in Spain and Islamic Religious Radicalism - Patricia Bezunartea, José Manuel López and Laura Tedesco
PWP9: Radicalisation of Russia's Muslim Community - Aleksei Malashenko and Akhmet Yarlykapov
This project will examine key aspects of Muslim integration in Europe. This work will be based on the analysis of selected case studies in Belgium, Bulgaria, France, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Sweden and the UK. These countries have significant Muslim populations that participate to varying degrees in local and national political processes with reference to their religious identity.
An expert will be appointed in each country to work with a team of local researchers on focus group activities. The collective body of work produced by this team of experts will provide the basis for policy recommendations addressed to member states and the European Union.
Project 6: Muslim integration in Bulgaria and Serbia
Lead researcher: Dr. Daniela Koleva – DVV International
Researchers: Dr. Teodora Karamelska, Vanya Ivanova and Christian Geiselmann – DVV International
Publications
RWP29: Experience, Memory and Narrative: A Biographical Analysis of Ethnic Identity - Teodora Karamelska and Christian Geiselmann
The aim of this project is to analyse the ways in which Muslims and non-Muslims in Bulgaria and Serbia manage their interreligious relationships on individual, household and local levels. The project will rely on life history interviews (oral history). The interviews will focus on inter-ethnic and inter-religious relationships in the local communities, the way respondents perceive these relationships, their perception of the own and the other, their interpretation of ethnic/religious group conflict on the local level and personal contacts (including neighbours, friends, colleagues), their values and their experience in avoiding or controlling conflict.
In Bulgaria, four regions with different types of mixed population will be covered (Southern Rhodope, Eastern Rhodope, West Rhodope, Deliorman). The Serbian case study will cover two areas (an area bordering Bulgaria and the Montenegro borderlands).
Project 7: Religion, caste and civil violence in India
Project leader:
Dr. Patricia Justino – Institute of Development Studies
Project researchers:
Dr. Puja Vasudeva Dutta, Dr. Sandip Sakar and Jean-Pierre Tranchant – Institute of Human Development
Publications
RWP3: Carrot or stick? Redistributive transfers versus policing in contexts of civil unrest
PB2: Tackling Civil Unrest - Policing or Redistribution?
This project addresses the role of ethnicity and religious identities in explaining the onset of communal violence. This project will utilise data from a number of extensive but under-researched databases, as well as new data to be collected through open-ended individual and group interviews in three Indian states: Maharashtra, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The project will examine the role of ethnic divisions along caste and religious lines (Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Christian) in explaining contemporaneous and dynamic inequalities of access and outcomes that result in violent conflicts.
Countries studied in this Work Package
Funded by EC under FP6
