What Causes Political Marginality? a Comparative Analysis of Western Muslims and the White Working Class

The deficiency of cross-national and transatlantic data on Western Muslim populations not only makes difficult the analysis of political attitudes and behavior among this minority. It also challenges scholars' capacity to contextualize such trends among similar developments in other disadvantaged populations to better determine whether Muslims' marginality and inequality is in fact exceptional. This paper undertakes a comparison of British and American Muslim minorities and their primary antagonist, white working class populations that increasingly feel frustrated by their weakening social and political status. Drastically different demographically, religiously and culturally, I find that the marginality felt by these communities in the US and UK may be explained in similar terms. Based on comparative ethnographies and the analysis of new survey data on political participation and attitudes, this paper contends that Western Muslims and white working class people share a similar set of unrealized expectations about their place and power in their local societies.