How Religion came into Play: Religion as a Category of Practice in Immigrant Integration Policies

‘Muslim’ has become a frequently applied category in immigrant integration policy. This use of religion as a category to identify the addressees of these policies is often emphasised in the literature although there are few empirical studies. This paper asks how and why the category ‘Muslim’ entered and evolved in the field of immigrant integration. To this end we analysed parliamentary immigrant integration debates in Austria, Germany and Switzerland (1993 – 2013). We find that populist right-wing parties make use of the category ‘Muslim’ in relation to issues of security and values. Left-wing actors, by contrast, take up the category to criticise this use, while mainstream parties do so when discussing the accommodation of Islam. Instances of violence in the name of religion were not reflected in a sustained increase in category use, while the agenda setting of populist parties on the right and the extent to which the accommodation of Islam is debated proved to be decisive. Located in the broader debate on diversity in liberal democracies, these empirical results and their potential consequences on processes of inclusion and exclusion are discussed against the backdrop of theoretical debates on contested liberalism.