Inclusion Projects: The Practices and Trade-Offs of Civic Belonging

• In Event: Sociology of Culture Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): 8. Migration and Assimilation

Abstract

This article introduces inclusion projects as a novel theoretical lens for analyzing how groups pursue civic belonging within pluralistic yet racialized contexts. Existing theories of civil inclusion often distinguish between frontlash and backlash movements based on their visions of solidarity, locating power at the level of the institutionalized discourse of civil society. I argue that this focus overlooks the implicit exclusions that emerge in practice, as advocates carve out space for civic action through backstage negotiations and trade-offs that shape public representation. I propose centering the role of hegemonically situated actors within processes of civic incorporation to better explain the symbolic exclusions that arise when civic belonging becomes an end-in-view. Drawing on three years of participant observation at two Muslim civic organizations, I examine how American Muslim advocates navigate internal heterogeneity by deciding which images of “Americanness” to project or suppress in multiply stigmatizing public arenas. These efforts inadvertently sideline certain constituents—either by reproducing respectability politics that marginalize Blackamerican Muslim voices or by framing progressive self-expression in ways that stigmatize non-progressive Muslims. Inclusion projects thus complicate binary frameworks of frontlash versus backlash, resistance versus domination, and inclusion versus exclusion, revealing the interactional processes through which groups negotiate belonging and perform cultural power in patterned ways.

Author

• Valentina Cantori, University of Southern California