Theorizing Belonging and Citizenship in Ethnically Divided Societies

Abstract

In order to understand contemporary ethnic relations in European countries between the so-called non-European immigrants and dominant European subjects, postcolonial theory provides an adequate conceptual and theoretical framework. It helps us to explain how Orientalist and colonial notions about non-Europeans still haunt Europe and shape its universalizing rhetoric about equality between all political subjects. Colonial ideologies have consequences for the relationship between minoritized groups and the ways they value themselves in relation to each other and the way they embrace whiteness as a normative point of comparison following its axiomatization as a universal identity. As Radhakrishnan notes, “in a world structured in dominance, comparisons are initiated in the name of those values, standards, and criteria that are dominant” (2003, p. 74). Postcolonial theory can enable us to understand how European states can use a rhetoric of equality at a formal and judicial level and assert commitments to fight and ban racism from their public spheres while at the same time legitimizing social inequalities in terms of racial, ethnic, and cultural differences (see Balibar, 2004a).