Europäisierung von Religionspolitik. Zur institutionellen Umwelt der Anerkennungskämpfe muslimischer Migranten

Abstract

Recent comparative social science research has emphasized that different patterns of Muslims' struggle for recognition in Western Europe are related to the institutional varieties of religious governance in various countries. This article focuses on the institutional structures of religious governance at the European level and on their impact on the inclusion as well as exclusion of Muslim migrant minorities at the national level. Bringing together the literatures of citizenship studies, European studies, and the sociology of religion, it is argued that the emergence of highly differentiated institutional domains of law, politics, and identity at the European level has resulted both in the convergence of legal principles of religious governance (religious freedom, non-discrimination) and in the re-interpretation of divergent church-state-relations as symbols of national identities. Europeanization with its contradictory institutional tendencies of isomorphism and path-dependence thus explains important aspects of contemporary Muslim migrants' struggle for public recognition.