Institutionalised Islamophobia in British universities

This thesis is a conceptual study of institutionalised Islamophobia in British universities. My analysis is illustrated, although not driven, by exemplars drawn from fieldwork undertaken in four case study universities. The thesis is situated in the paradoxical context of increasing provisions for Muslim students that occurred throughout the 1990s while simultaneously fears of Muslim student 'fundamentalism' on campus were also on the increase and resulted in targeted action by the National Union of Students, the Committee for Vice-Chancellors and Principals, and a number of individual universities concerned about the possible threat to campus harmony posed by Muslim students. Employing a conceptual vocabulary influenced by anti-foundationalism and psychoanlysis, I explore the ways in which racialised governmentality is exercised over Muslim students. This analysis includes consideration of the functions of formal multiculturalist practices as strategies for the governance of bodies, and through which racialised exercise of disciplinary power over Muslim students can be exercised. The thesis begins with a general consideration of the reasons why perceived distinct changes to the ways in which Muslims articulate their identities should so often be seen as potentially transgressive or disruptive, It then proceeds to an analysis of the ways in which Muslim students are constructed through institutional practices, paying particular attention to strategies for stabilising representations of Muslims, whiteness and the west which range from lslamophobic hoaxing to lslamophobic violence.