The main research question of the study is: How and why do some European citizens generate a populist and Islamophobist discourse to express their discontent with the current social, economic and political state of their national and European contexts, while some members of migrant-origin communities with Muslim background generate an essentialist and radical form of Islamist discourse within the same societies? The main premise of this study is that various segments of the European public (radicalizing young members of both native populations and migrant-origin populations with Muslim background), who have been alienated and swept away by the flows of globalization such as deindustrialization, mobility, migration, tourism, social-economic inequalities, international trade, and robotic production, are more inclined to respectively adopt two mainstream political discourses: Islamophobism (for native populations) and Islamism (for Muslim-migrant-origin populations). Both discourses have become pivotal along with the rise of the civilizational rhetoric since the early 1990s. On the one hand, the neo-liberal age seems to be leading to the nativisation of radicalism among some groups of host populations while, on the other hand, it is leading to the islamization of radicalism among some segments of deprived migrant-origin populations. The common denominator of these groups is that they are both downwardly mobile and inclined towards radicalization. Hence, this project aims to scrutinize social, economic, political and psychological sources of the processes of radicalization among native European youth and Muslim-origin youth with migration background, who are both inclined to express their discontent through ethnicity, culture, religion, heritage, homogeneity, authenticity, past, gender and patriarchy. The field research will comprise four migrant receiving countries: Germany, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and two migrant sending countries: Turkey and Morocco.

Nation-building processes comprise not only of creating a collectivity but also of defining its borders through abjection. This research will analyse how theatre has served the processes of national abjection, and how abjected minorities have used theatre to negotiate the politics of belonging in Turkey and its diasporas. Employing a rigorous transdisciplinary theoretical and methodological framework, the project will study the key role theatre has played in the constitution of “the Turkish nation” and its Others. Staging National Abjection covers the period from the rise of European-style theatre in the Ottoman Empire in the mid-nineteenth century to contemporary productions. Using both mainstream and alternative archives and ethnographic research methods, the project will investigate topics of vital importance that have received limited academic attention: theatre productions involving Armenians after the Genocide; negotiation of sexuality and national identity in queer dramas; Islamic theatre in Turkey and its European diasporas; Sephardic Jewish theatre in Turkey and diasporic productions in Israel and Europe; and Alevi theatre in Turkey and Europe. These case studies will bring different perspectives to the issue of national abjection, and provide insights into the political economy of contemporary Turkish theatre responding to pressures of a conservative neoliberal government. Using the case of Turkey as a vantage point, this project will ask critical questions of broader theoretical significance about the role of theatre in regulating the politics of belonging in the nation-state, and about the relationship between artistic performance and the everyday performance of citizenship. This research will illustrate the political tensions that define Turkey and its growing diasporas, advance our understanding of diasporic and refugee theatre in Europe, and provide ground-breaking insights into cultural politics in post-Imperial contexts and illiberal democracies.