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Jonathan Laurence, Transatlantic Academy

Jonathan Laurence is a Transatlantic Academy fellow at the German Marshall Fund, non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an assistant professor of political science at Boston College. He has received his Ph.D. (2006) and M.A. (2003) from Harvard University's department of government. See www.jonathanlaurence.net for more info.

1. What are your main priorities at the Transatlantic Academy?

The idea of the Transatlantic Academy is to bring together a small group of professors and scholars -- half from Europe and half from the US -- for one year in Washington, DC to focus on a theme of importance to the transatlantic relationship. This year the theme is "the movement of peoples." (www.transatlanticacademy.org).

My first priority is to complete my book on religious accommodation and the political integration of Muslims in Europe, and I also serve as a resource for the immigration and foreign policy communities in DC by doing lectures, short articles, interviews, etc. to share my empirical findings and my theoretical approach. My book examines the new Islam councils and other institutional responses of individual European governments to the challenge of state-Islam relations. I compare these arrangements -- which balance the state's agenda of governance and moderation alongside the management of religious authorities at the local, national and international levels -- to earlier processes of political incorporation of "new citizens," such as working classes one century ago and Jewish communities in the 19th century. For a political scientist, the way that the British approach, this differently from the French, or the Germans from the Italians and Dutch, provides a nice illustration of the persistence of national institutional distinctions in the face of common transnational challenges. Interestingly, the EU is nearly absent from this debate. The management styles of different governments have in turn shaped national debates about Islam's "compatibility" with western democracy as well as the political behavior of Muslims' religious leadership in these countries.

In addition to working on my own research agenda, the six academy fellows will produce a collective report on the desirability of high-skilled migration as a quick fix to demographic and labor shortages in the US and Europe. One working hypothesis concerns the renewed enthusiasm in the US and the EU for high-skilled or temporary migration policies. We're mindful of the unintended consequences of "guestworker" programs one generation ago, and wary that the focus on "blue cards" might be used as a way to avoid devising sound and inclusive integration policies for second and third generations, or to avoid finding a comprehensive solution for the growing population of undocumented migrant workers on both sides of the Atlantic. We've gone on one study trip to the Arizona-Mexico border region to conduct interviews with officials and NGOs there, and will embark on a similar tour in Dublin this spring, and will present the report in several cities in June of '09.

2. What kind of future do you envision in regard to Muslims in Europe and their societal, political, economic capabilities? Will there be greater opportunity? Or can we expect jingoistic backlashes?

We're at the beginning of a historic process of Muslims' settlement in contemporary Europe, and the short path thus far has undeniably been rocky. But things appear to be moving in the right direction. There are a handful of organizations whose democratic credentials are questionable, as well as clusters of "radicals" and even isolated terrorist plots planned in the name of Islam. And due to the relative new-ness of alternative, credible voices, those "problematic" figures are sometimes the only European Muslims the public hears about. This is changing, if slowly. To this day, only around half of Muslims in Europe are citizens of the member states they live in -- and only around half of those are of voting age. So the process of political integration will take time, but before long the parliaments of Europe will reflect their increasingly diverse populations. The Netherlands and the UK have a pretty good record of electing officials of Muslim background, as do Belgium and Germany; France's government notably includes three women of Muslim heritage. Symbolic achievements of this kind make it easier for the general public and Muslim minorities to see what kind of position they can carve out in European societies. This kind of deep social change does not come easily. Even a self-defined "immigration country" like the US, where identity politics is an art form, has had more than its share of major embarrassing deficiencies.

While awaiting political integration, however, European governments should continue to engage leading mosque federations and theological figures in order to develop a set of consultative institutions that is appropriate within each national "state-church" context. This can help settle the practical questions of religious observance that shouldn't be a matter of political debate: such as providing for sufficient prayer space and adequate imams in Europe's mosques (and chaplains in prisons), or dietary restrictions, facilities for Eid-al-adha and other basic institutional accommodations. It doesn't make sense to have a Leitkultur-slugfest every time a Muslim community wants to build a mosque. So many European countries have proud traditions of religious diversity (or the post-war rehabilitation thereof), which are demeaned by local politicians who seek votes by playing "six degrees of separation to Yusuf al-Qaradawi" with any Muslim leader bearing a mosque blueprint.

On the socio-economic front, equal access to educational opportunity will be critical any future success story. This can mean early language training (pre-Kindergarten), but it can also mean seeking out the best and the brightest to make sure they have the chance to attend the top high schools and universities. I'm agnostic on the methods a government uses to accomplish this, but these are crucial steps to avoiding the trap of "parallel societies" and to making sure there are opportunities for social mobility based on meritocratic values. Whether or not there will be greater opportunities, unfortunately, depends a good deal on the health of the economy. The fact that economies are contracting does not bode well for those of migrant background, who suffer higher unemployment rates because of lower skill sets as well as occasional discrimination.

3. What is the greatest challenge to transatlantic relations today?

As we enter the Obama era full of high expectations, the biggest challenge will be cooperation and coordination on key foreign policy matters -- and to hang in there through the inevitable differences of opinion or tactics. The US and Europe must tackle together the challenges posed by Iran's weapons programs, Russia's NATO-enlargement sensitivities, Palestinian-Israeli blockage, terrorist detention and many others. As the new administration tries to undo some of the international damage done by the previous one, our friends should resist seeing this as a sign of weakness and can help the new administration fix some of the things we've broken in the past two terms. The last thing we want is for this historic opportunity to descend into another banana trade war, for example, or squabbles over who does counter-terrorism or minority integration better.

Obama's popularity in Europe and his absolute majority in November's elections are an excellent reminder of the values we share, as well as of just how ethnically diverse our societies have become. Reading the headlines this November, I thought back to a class trip to city hall in the mid 1980s, where my classmates and I went to greet and take a photo with David Dinkins, then Borough president and on his way to becoming the first black mayor of New York City. The unconscious effect this had on us kids is hard to measure, but it must be similar to the proud feeling of possibility -- and the promise of "normalization" of minority-majority relations -- that Obama's election represents for both sides of the Atlantic. Or, as the crowds who cheered the newly-elected German Green Party Chairman Özdemir might put it, yes we Cem.