Hate, crime and epistemic vulnerability: on sense-making and feelings of (un)safety among Danish Muslims

TL;DR

This paper explores how Danish Muslims experience safety and vulnerability when sharing knowledge about hate crimes and how societal reactions influence their sense of belonging.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel framework for understanding safety in epistemic interactions by combining criminology, psychology, and philosophy.

Findings

Young Muslims in Copenhagen perform significant emotional labor to balance their need for recognition with the risk of being discredited.

Epistemic vulnerability is shaped by societal responses such as questioning, supporting, or ignoring their experiences.

The framework highlights how hate crime impacts not only directly but also indirectly through psychological and ethical dimensions.

Abstract

This article investigates feelings of (un)safety emerging from knowing and sharing knowledge about hate crime and hate incidents. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with young Muslims living in the greater Copenhagen area, the article explores the way the interlocutors seek to make sense of their experiences through available epistemic categories, and how this sense-making is shaped by reactions from the surrounding society, e.g., whether it is questioned, supported, ignored etc. Combining criminological and psychological research on direct and indirect harms of hate crime with insights from philosophy on epistemic encounters and their ethical implications the article provides a framework for investigating safety in epistemic interactions. Based on this framework, the article show the often hard work that people perform in order to balance epistemic needs (e.g. the need for knowledge and for recognition) with epistemic risks (e.g. the risk of testimonial rejection, of damaged epistemic confidence, or loss of credibility).