This article examines ‘migration debates’ in Europe as mediated political rituals. It argues that the consistent meta-commentary within such debates-never regarded as sufficiently ‘open’ or ‘honest’ – can be taken as a starting point for exploring the simultaneous trace and disavowal of race and racializing discourses in public debate. It examines the disjuncture between the normative expectations of democratic deliberation and decision-making present in migration debates, and the ways in which migration stands for the transformation of the political conditions on which such normative eexpectations depend. Under these conditions, ‘debate’ must be approached as having ritual forms of value, and these forms of value are explored in a case study of a short-lived ‘burka debate’ in Ireland in late 2011
