In an era of global risk and uncertainty, individuals and political communities have been exposed to an increasingly broad and unpredicted range of economic, strategic, cultural, and political forces. Rapidly accelerating changes and sudden events exert an impact everywhere from the broadest planetary scale down to the scope of the individual mind and heart. The Political Psychology of Globalization: Muslims in the West explores how these shifts and shocks have conditioned the identity strategies adopted by Muslim minorities in order to construct their roles as political actors. On the basis o ... More

In an era of global risk and uncertainty, individuals and political communities have been exposed to an increasingly broad and unpredicted range of economic, strategic, cultural, and political forces. Rapidly accelerating changes and sudden events exert an impact everywhere from the broadest planetary scale down to the scope of the individual mind and heart. The Political Psychology of Globalization: Muslims in the West explores how these shifts and shocks have conditioned the identity strategies adopted by Muslim minorities in order to construct their roles as political actors. On the basis of conversations with Muslims, the data uncover three typical identity strategies, each shaped by the citizenship regimes of particular Western states: retreatism, essentialism, and engagement. Grounded in an analysis of their colonial histories, patterns of immigration, and citizenship regimes, six Western countries—Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom—serve as places for exploration of the emergence of Muslim political identities. Those regimes that have best been able to balance individual and community rights have most adequately promoted the politics of engagement, while regimes that focus on antiterrorist legislation and exclusionary majority discourses have conditioned retreatist and essentialist identity strategies among both minority and majority communities. In addition to describing the politics of engagement, the authors make the normative case for a climate of engagement among both minority and majority political communities, grounded in recognition, dialogue, deep multiculturalism, and a new global and “cosmopolitical” consciousness.