Invasion and colonization: Islamophobia and anti-refugee sentiment in West Virginia

Abstract

Amidst a rise in hate crimes, hate group organizing, and anti-Muslim and anti-refugee policy making in the United States, this paper examines efforts by a national hate group to organize opposition to the resettlement of Syrian Muslim refugees in West Virginia, a non-traditional refugee destination. Through analysis of materials disseminated at a public seminar titled the “Invasion and Colonization of West Virginia,” we identify four unique social-spatial themes this group is using to make alarmist and conspiratorial claims about Muslim refugees invading and colonizing the state and nation. These themes include the language of smallness, which affixes a white and Christian identity to certain spaces and suggests that these spaces are threatened. Spatial themes of ‘fresh territory’ and ‘sowing seeds’ are used to frame refugee resettlement as an assertion of social-spatial control to change ‘small spaces’ and ultimately change America. Claims of invasion and colonization function powerfully through the fourth theme of the “Other Islamic Bomb,” which frames Muslim women’s fertility as the vehicle of the invasion and colonization. This paper adds to emerging literature on the geographies of Islamophobia by examining not only the convergence of anti-Muslim and anti-refugee sentiment but its mobilization in regionally and locally specific contexts. The analysis demonstrates the dynamic interplay between spatial and social claims on which these alarmist narratives rely to vilify Muslims and refugees and to foment opposition in places not historically associated with immigration or refugee resettlement.