Promoting belonging through religious institutionalisation?

A significant number of immigrant workers who arrived during the 1960s in France and Germany, as well as in many other countries in Western Europe, came from Muslim countries. Despite the different historical relationships between sending and receiving states, these immigrants, whether Turkish, Maghrébin, or otherwise, were seen in both countries as temporary (Gastarbeiter). Under the assumption of the ‘myth of return,’ ² local politicians and governments cooperated with the states of origin in numerous domains, most significantly education and religion, with the goal of facilitating the awaited departure when it arrived. This ‘outsourcing’ of state services was ostensibly logical, given that the foreign workers in question were very rarely citizens of the receiving states. However, with the rise of family reunification programmes and the growth in numbers of naturalised foreign workers, the myth of return vanished and the demands and concerns of these communities became questions of internal politics.