Abstract

This paper is critically engaged in the elaboration of the securitization and stigmatization of migration and Islam in the West, which is believed to be leading to the rise of Islamophobic sentiments and to the backlash of both multiculturalism and republicanism. Migration has been framed as a source of fear and instability for the nation-states in the West in a way that constructs ‘communities of fear’. It will be claimed that both securitization and Islamophobia have recently been employed by the neo-liberal states as a form of governmentality in order to control the masses in ethno-culturally and religiously diverse societies at the expense of deepening the already existing cleavages between majority and minorities with Muslim background