Mind the Gap! Making Stronger Connections between Hate Crime Policy and Scholarship

With hostility and prejudice continuing to pose complex challenges for societies across the world, developments in hate crime scholarship and policy have facilitated a greater prioritization, improved understanding and collective action amongst a range of different actors, including law-makers and enforcers, non-governmental organisations, activists and ‘ordinary’ citizens. Despite this progress however, our collective responses to hate crime have been undermined by a disconnected approach to scholarship and policy. This article focuses on a series of problems which are created and reinforced through such an approach. This includes the limited reach of hate crime scholarship, and specifically the perception that academic theorising is often too detached from the everyday realities confronting those who respond to – or live with – the consequences of hate crime in the ‘real world’. Equally problematic is policy which is not empirically-driven or linked to academic knowledge, or which is based on tokenistic, cynical or ‘tick-box’ foundations. The article draws from these faultlines to underline the symbiotic relationship between hate crime scholarship and policy-formation: one where policyformation needs academic substance to be fit for purpose; and where scholarship needs to inform policy to have any lasting ‘real-world’ value to responses to hate crime

Re-Thinking Hate Crime : Fresh Challenges for Policy and Practice.

Hate crime has become an increasingly familiar term in recent times as the harms associated with acts of bigotry and prejudice continue to pose complex challenges for societies across the world. However, despite the greater recognition now afforded to hate crimes by scholars, policy makers and law enforcers, uncertainty continues to cloud the scope and legitimacy of existing policy frameworks. This article draws from an emerging body of inter-disciplinary scholarship and empirical research to highlight a series of important realities about hate crime victimization and perpetration that tend to remain peripheral to the process of policy formation. It suggests that the focus on particular strands of victims and particular sets of motivations has overshadowed a range of significant issues, including the experiences of "marginal" groups of victims, and the way in which identity characteristics intersect with one another-and with other situational factors and context-to leave some targets of hate crime especially vulnerable. The article calls for a more fluid and multi-layered approach to policy formation, which engages with these realities, and which maximizes the real-life value of hate crime discourse

Islamophobia, Victimisation and the Veil

This book examines the experiences of veiled Muslim women as victims of Islamophobia, and the impact of this victimisation upon women, their families and wider Muslim communities. Based on empirical research, it explores the vulnerability of veiled Muslim women to acts of Islamophobic hate and prejudice in public places.Zempi and Chakraborti examine how Islamophobic victimisation is experienced as 'part and parcel' of wearing the veil, rather than as isolated one-off incidents, and how repeat incidents of supposedly low-level forms of hostility such as name-calling, persistent staring and other types of intimidatory behaviour place a potentially huge emotional burden on victims. The threat of Islamophobic abuse and violence has long-lasting effects for both actual and potential victims, underlining the case for a more effective approach to engaging with veiled Muslim women as victims of Islamophobia; one which recognises their multiple vulnerabilities and which takes into consideration their distinct cultural and religious needs.Islamophobia, Victimisation and the Veil provides a timely insight into an under-researched and challenging set of issues, and will be essential reading for students, academics and practitioners working across a range of disciplines including Criminology, Sociology, Victimology and Gender Studies

Unveiling Islamophobic Victimisation

The chapter examines the nature and extent of Islamophobic victimisation and explores explanations behind this type of victimisation through the lens of gender. Evidence suggests that veiled Muslim women are at heightened risk of Islamophobic victimisation by virtue of their visible ‘Muslimness’. Popular perceptions that veiled Muslim women are passive, oppressed and powerless increase their chance of assault, thereby marking them as ‘easy’ targets to attack. Furthermore, attacks towards veiled Muslim women are justified because of the conflation of Islam with terrorism. Collectively, these arguments highlight the gendered dimensions of Islamophobic victimisation. The chapter emphasises that there is no single monolithic Muslim experience of Islamophobia. Recognising the interplay of different aspects of victims’ identities with other personal, social and situational factors is highly relevant to understanding the vulnerability of veiled Muslim women as victims of Islamophobia. [First paragraph

“It Felt Like a Little War”: Reflections on Violence against Alternative Subcultures

This article examines the forms and impact of violence against people identifying as members of alternative subcultures. It draws upon the findings from interviews and focus groups undertaken with over 60 participants from a range of alternative subcultural backgrounds, conducted as part of a broader two-year study of many different strands of targeted hostility. The article presents evidence to show that ‘alternatives’ are subjected to a wide range of violent and intimidatory behaviour, from ‘everyday’ abuse such as verbal insults through to more extreme acts of brutality. This can affect their physical and mental health, causing them to change the way they conduct their routine activities. However, the article suggests that some of this victimisation forms part of ongoing conflict with a group that participants describe as ‘chavs’, that has hitherto been unacknowledged. This ‘little war’ is characterised by mutual hostility and antipathy flavoured by class antagonism that can escalate into violent confrontation