Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

The rapid increase in the population of Muslim immigrants in North America has created new debates in Canada and the United States. As part of these new debates, many of the long-held concepts and policies are challenged and/or being reformulated, including immigration and multiculturalism policies, secularism, dual citizenship, religious freedom, and so on. The current study involves a content analysis of all the parliamentary debates involving Muslims that have happened in three countries of Canada, The United States, and France, in the period 1994-2017. The study draws on the thematic analysis of more than 12,000 documents – the transcriptions of parliamentary debates – using the qualitative research software NVivo. The emergent themes, the difference among the three countries, and some policy and research implications of the study will be discussed.