The central problem for the European left is this: the largest and fastest-growing groups of immigrant voters originate from Muslim-majority countries and often bring with them the socially conservative traditions of their homelands. This comes just as left-wing parties have rebranded themselves as champions of secularism, cosmopolitanism, and feminism in order to appeal to their increasingly liberal middle-class base. The result is a clash of values, which plays out most often in cities, where Muslim communities have replicated the village ties, patriarchal structures, and religious practices of their home countries next door to secular, progressive middle-class enclaves. In Brussels, to give just one example, more than 80 percent of Muslims think that women should work less “for the sake of their family,” while only 37 percent of non-Muslims agree. [...]
Many center-left parties want to recruit Muslim candidates who fit their constituents’ secular and socially liberal preferences. They want to have it both ways: appeal to their cosmopolitan base by appearing tolerant while signaling to the Muslim electorate that they are interested in their vote, a strategy that I call “symbolic inclusion.” Parties usually try to achieve symbolic inclusion by selecting secular, progressive, and feminist Muslims. These candidates are frequently female, since simply by running for office, a Muslim woman can convey she is assimilated and not held back by patriarchal norms—a signal that is reinforced when she doesn’t wear a headscarf. A Muslim man cannot so easily convey that he is progressive, and previous research has shown that such shortcuts matter when voters evaluate candidates. [...]
In Belgium and the United Kingdom, by contrast, the percentage of elected Muslim candidates is several times higher than in Austria and Germany, yet the share of female Muslim candidates is much lower. For instance, nearly half of Muslim local politicians in the Austrian and German cities I studied were women, but in British cities only 14 percent were. [...]
Finally, neither symbolic nor vote-based inclusion necessarily advances Muslim social and economic integration. Parties frequently use symbolic candidates as tokens that are meant to please non-Muslim cosmopolitans but that are not supposed to act as agents of real change. Vote-based inclusion of religious traditionalists comes from different motives, but it also does a disservice to the many Muslim voters who want to elect representatives who will fight for good schools, jobs, and housing. Research consistently shows that European Muslims face severe and widespread discrimination in each of these areas. Yet when left-wing parties pursue the Muslim enclave vote, their primary goal is to pick candidates on the basis of their voter mobilization skills rather than their economic policy or antidiscrimination positions.
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