Flying While Muslim: Encounters of Racialization at U.S. Airports

• In Event: 130 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Islamophobia

Abstract

From religious studies to sociology, research on Muslims is broad and varied. A handful of scholars have attempted to situate the Muslim experience in the United States and Europe utilizing a racial lens (Meer 2013; Rana 2011; Bayoumi 2006). My research follows this line of scholarship. I conducted 48 in-depth qualitative interviews between 2009 and 2012 with Muslim Americans in the Chicago and Dallas-Ft. Worth areas. I demonstrate how Muslim American men and women experience gendered forms of racialization by the state in U.S. airports. The testimonies highlight how Muslim men and women have been targeted in these spaces in unique ways. For example, Muslim men were put on Transportation and Security Administration’s (TSA) lists, while Muslim women who wear the hijab were routinely stopped and searched by TSA agents in the security line, regardless of if they made the metal detector go off. In my talk, I will present empirical evidence permitting a more complex analysis of how airports have become spaces where Muslim Americans are racialized due to their religious identity. I identify the denial of privileges associated with citizenship as one of the processes of racialization. Muslim men and women, regardless of their status as a citizen, are treated as if they are foreigners and a threat to national security because of their religious identity.

Author

• Saher Farooq Selod, Simmons College