Interiorising the borders of the nation: Civic education in Europe and the making of the Muslim citizen

In this doctoral project, I explore how a notion of 'civic education' is mobilised vis-à-vis Muslim immigrants and their descendants in Europe. Across the continent, a civic educational approach to issues of immigration, Islam, and integration has been on the rise since the 1990s. It is deployed to address potential security threats (notably emanating from 'home-grown' terrorism), as well as to manage domestic ethnic and religious difference. I aim to investigate what kind of Muslim citizen-subject is imagined and constructed by civic educational projects. In particular, I am interested in the political stakes, unquestioned assumptions, and partisan battles structuring these projects - and in how their imaginings of a 'good Muslim citizen' contribute to the re-entrenchment of patterns of inclusion and exclusion in contemporary Europe