Societal Banopticon: Visibility,Surveillance,and the Exclusion of Migrant Muslims

Pan-Opticon and Punishment: What is the form of the punishment in our age?

In his seminal work Surveillance and Punishment (Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la Prison), Michel Foucault examines the nature of surveillance and the evolution of punishment in modern society (Foucault, 1975). He argues that modern punishment no longer inflicts physical pain on offenders but instead imposes mental anguish by depriving them of the time and capacity to function as humans, thereby inflicting psychological suffering (Foucault, 1975). Unlike pre-modern forms of punishment, which involved physical pain and allowed spectators to derive a sense of moral superiority and pleasure from observing it, modern punishment has become invisible while retaining its capacity to cause mental distress (Foucault, 1975). Then, punishment in modern society may not be limited to confining offenders in custodial institutions within the bounds of the law. As a result, productive power moves society. Productive power is not a force that simply controls or represses people, but a power that shapes how people understand themselves and how they act. In other words, it is a force that leads individuals to recognize for themselves what they ought to do and how they ought to live—a power that “makes” the person in an active way.

Foucault did not view power as a mere instrument of repression. Rather, power operates within social relations, causing people to internalize rules and social norms. In that process, people come to control and constitute themselves. The Panopticon is a representative example that shows how such power operates. Within a structure in which the gaze of surveillance can always be present, people, even without external coercion, come to monitor themselves and regulate their behavior. Surveillance is no longer imposed only from the outside; it is internalized and turns into everyday self-regulation. In the end, productive power makes individuals appear to act autonomously, but in fact causes them to adjust themselves according to the norms and standards set by society. Instead of repression and punishment, it is a way of maintaining social order through discipline and self-control. In this way, the productive power Foucault describes offers an understanding of power on a different plane from traditional concepts, in that power operates not through repression but through production (Foucault, 1975).

Even when living freely within society, there may be those who are subject not to legal punishment but to the productive power of society and the public. As society constantly draws distinctions between normal and abnormal with respect to individuals and places specific marks, the range of those subjected to such marking has expanded in modern times (Foucault, 1975, 309). The historically accumulated techniques of surveillance and punishment are now deployed to measure, control, and correct those deemed abnormal, and these practices have subsequently been institutionalized as part of the social order (Foucault, 1975, 309). In the 21st century, one of the most visible social minorities subjected to such surveillance is migrant Muslims living within non-Islamic cultural contexts. If a Muslim is fully acculturated into a society and refrains from visibly expressing a religious identity that deviates from the mainstream, they are not perceived as abnormal, despite their differing religion. However, if a Muslim has recently migrated or visibly asserts a strong identity as a migrant Muslim, they are rendered abnormal in Foucault’s terms—marked as different from the mainstream and necessitating control by dominant societal norms. This raises an important question: how does the surveillance system function to stigmatize and screen such individuals?

Jeremy Bentham conceptualized the Panopticon as a design for the most efficient prison system, where surveillance could be maximized with minimal resources (J. Bentham, 1791, 60-64). Michel Foucault later adapted this concept to explain the mechanisms of surveillance and punishment in modern society (Foucault, 1975). The Panopticon is designed to compartmentalize spatial units in such a way that a small group of observers can maintain constant surveillance over subjects (Foucault, 1975, 310). Notably, the panoptic structure suppresses two of the three primary functions of the traditional dungeon—concealment and the exclusion of light—while maintaining confinement as its core function (Foucault, 1975, 310). Through this arrangement, individuals under surveillance are rendered visible and exposed, perpetually under the control of the observers. Although the subjects may occasionally have the opportunity to present themselves as they wish, there is no mechanism for dialogue or reciprocal communication between the watcher and the watched. Foucault asserts that the Panopticon’s structure embodies the interplay of visibility and invisibility, wherein the watcher maintains an omnipresent gaze while remaining unseen by the watched (Foucault, 1975, 310). This structural dynamic closely resembles the surveillance imposed upon migrant Muslims. As will be elaborated later, when migrant Muslims become visible or are rendered visible within non-Muslim societies, surveillance by non-Muslims becomes particularly pronounced. However, the surveilled are left without a clear avenue for dialogue or communication, instead existing in a state of societal stigmatization.

In other words, the Panopticon—the surveillance regime—is a schema of disciplinary techniques whose productive effects replace and complement repressive/legal punishment. It operates as an automatic mechanism of control, de-individualizing those under surveillance. The more anonymous and transient the observers, the greater the perceived risk of being observed, thereby heightening the subject’s anxiety and sense of vulnerability (Foucault, 1975, 313). Migrant Muslims recognize that they are under a surveillance regime. They know that various members of society—especially those who do not possess the power to assess (in)security and act upon it—are watching them, and they know precisely how they are seen within society. Among them, those who wish to make their identity visible and to maintain it consistently sometimes raise their voices in resistance to social discipline (Winkler-Titus & Crafford, 2022).

In the 1989 “Creil incident,” middle-school students were excluded from class for wearing the hijab, thereby triggering a hijab controversy across French society. At the end of the same year, the Conseil d’État, in relation to the principle of laïcité, offered the view that “in principle, students’ wearing of religious signs is permitted, but it may be restricted when it entails proselytism (prosélytisme) or causes disruption of order.” Thereafter, throughout the 1990s, similar disputes recurred at the level of local schools, and in 1994 the Ministry of Education circular (the so-called Bayrou Circular) clarified the direction of banning “ostentatious (ostentatoire) religious symbols” in school spaces while reaffirming a selective prohibition that allowed “small, discreet (signes discrets) signs” (Roy, 2007). Even so, interpretation and application in schools varied from region to region, and the disputes did not disappear. To settle the matter comprehensively, in 2003 the government established a reflection commission on the application of laïcité (commonly called the Stasi Commission) and recommended that public elementary, middle, and high schools prohibit signs and dress that “clearly” display religious affiliation (Roy, 2007). Based on these recommendations, on March 15, 2004, Law No. 2004-228 (Loi n° 2004-228, 2024) was enacted, unifying at the statutory level the standard that bans visible and ostentatious religious signs in public schools—most notably the hijab, the kippah, and large crosses—while permitting small signs (Loi n° 2004-228, 2024).

The French Republic has long defined itself as fundamentally a secular state, grounded in the 1905 tradition of church–state separation and republican universalism. Public schools are understood as core spaces of “neutrality (neutralité)” and crucibles of civic formation, and a reading of laïcité that places individual faith in the private realm is widely shared. For this reason, “visible” religious symbols are readily perceived not merely as expressions of faith but as political markers that can threaten the neutrality of the state and the homogeneity of citizens. The hijab sits precisely at this intersection. The hijab, on the one hand, is a form of dress that visibly proclaims religious identity; on the other hand, in French society it has, in entanglement with women’s freedom, the public gaze, and Islamophobia, acquired an excess of symbolic meaning (Mizel, 2019; Alameer Hasan, 2023; Ahmed, 2021). Since 1989, a woman wearing a hijab in the public sphere has often been categorically identified not as “a woman” but as a “Muslim woman,” and this became an institutionalized norm with the enactment of the 2004 law (Roy, 2007; Loi n° 2004-228, 224). Consequently, the conflict surrounding the hijab can be read not only as a clash of values—freedom of religion versus public neutrality—but as an instance of the operation of productive power that, through the management of visibility, defines who may count as a “normal citizen,” that is, the internalization of surveillance and self-censorship. Although the French legal apparatus does not single out the hijab and targets all “ostentatious” religious symbols, in practice the hijab has been the most frequently applied object, producing the effects of stigmatizing Muslim women and intensifying surveillance (Roy, 2007; Loi n° 2004-228, 224; Mizel, 2019; Alameer Hasan, 2023).

In the modern world, the surveillance apparatus asserts its authority in the name of mainstream society, serving as a symbol of its power. While some individuals strive to assert their visibility and express their identities within society, many others become absorbed and subjugated by the coercive force of power, adapting to the intentions and norms imposed by those in control. The effects of this power are perpetuated, intensified, and endlessly reproduced as it consolidates and reinforces itself (Foucault, 1975, 314). Migrant Muslims, within this context, find themselves living under the pervasive panopticon of modern society. Consequently, they adapt to this societal Panopticon, internalizing their position as subjects of constant surveillance. This adaptation often manifests in the form of conforming to the norms of mainstream society, which includes censoring their religious identity to align with the expectations of the modern Panopticon. This process is frequently described as acculturation or assimilation, as migrant Muslims minimize the visibility of their Islamic cultural expressions. In doing so, they integrate and assimilate into the dominant culture of mainstream society while simultaneously concealing and suppressing their religious identity.

Banopticon of Didier Bigo

Bigo advanced the Panopticon by one step and proposed the Banopticon. The Banopticon is a surveillance regime led by public and private experts endowed with authority and power in the field of (in)security, focused on identifying and excluding specific groups. Its purpose is to prevent dangerous situations such as terrorism that may arise within society and to normalize those population groups deemed not to be targets of surveillance (Bigo, 2002, 2008). In other words, the Banopticon develops the Panopticon further by shifting the aim of surveillance from the mere maintenance of discipline to the exclusion and banning of particular groups. Most importantly, the agents of the Banopticon are public institutions or private experts with recognized authority who, by leveraging the own power, select and define surveillance targets and conduct surveillance over them (Bigo, 2002, 2008). Put differently, it is to identify and single out, through surveillance, those who pose a threat within society and to ban (prevent) their entry into the social body. And such activities are judged not as infringements of the individual fundamental right to freedom of movement, but rather as exercises of power that protect national security and manage borders.

In his work, Didier Bigo identifies five defining features of the Banopticon: (1) practices of exceptionalism, (2) the exclusion of certain groups and the surveillance of minorities, (3) the violation of freedom of movement, (4) the establishment of transnational surveillance networks, and (5) the utilization of advanced technologies. Carl Schmitt’s assertion that “the sovereign is the one who decides on the state of exception” (Schmitt, 2021, 16-18) underscores the centrality of power in determining the boundaries of legality and exceptionalism. In this context, the sovereign exercises the greatest power in modern society by declaring, controlling, and navigating the state of exception. Under the Banopticon, the rules that are applied during exceptional circumstances gradually become normalized as ideal practices (Bigo, 2002, 2008).

Moreover, the Banopticon as described by Bigo is a governance apparatus grounded in a risk-management rationality that treats “undesired” groups not through ex post punishment but through ex ante exclusion. Here, the key actor is less a unitary “state” than a field of (in)security experts—comprising police, border control, and intelligence services alongside security officers of airlines and transport companies, database and biometrics providers, and private risk-management consultants—and this network classifies and filters population flows into “trusted mobilities” and “risky mobilities” (Bigo, 2002, 2008). In this configuration, surveillance targets not present criminal acts but future potential conduct, and profiles and indicators (origin, religion, travel itineraries, networks, etc.) function as risk cues rather than concrete evidence of individual behavior. As a result, preventive measures become standardized—tightened visa vetting, the operation of watchlists, denial of boarding, interdiction of transit, stricter refugee adjudication—and, through inter-state information-sharing and blacklist interlinkages, transnational exclusion mechanisms are routinized (Bigo, 2008; Marcoux, 2006).

Such preventive surveillance-exclusion inevitably restricts freedom of movement, yet in public discourse it is justified not as an infringement of individual rights but as the legitimate management of national security and public order. In other words, as the “securitization” of migration and refugee issues proceeds, exclusion is increasingly redefined not as racism or discrimination but as a “rational measure for safety” (Humphrey, 2013). In particular, the repeated shocks of Islamist terrorism—9/11, the U.K. 7/7 bombings, the November 2015 Paris attacks, and the Nice truck attack—served to diffuse broad suspicion of Muslims in general, beyond hostility toward extremists, across politics, the media, and civil society, accompanying the mainstreaming of anti-Muslim discourse (Bail, 2015). In this context, migrant Muslims were targeted as the Banopticon’s prototypical “potential risk group,” and not only entry refusals and movement interdictions at the border but also domestic residence, employment, and access to welfare were conditioned by the logic of risk selection. As will be seen below, the preventive logic of classification and exclusion within this state–expert network is translated into local communities to trigger informal, voluntary surveillance—directly linking to the mechanism of the Societal Banopticon advanced in this paper (Bail, 2015; Bigo, 2002, 2008; Humphrey, 2013).

Consequently, the Banopticon inherently infringes upon the fundamental right to freedom of movement (Bigo, 2002, 2008). However, as previously noted, this infringement has increasingly been reframed not as an individual rights issue but as a matter of national security, a justification that has gained significant legitimacy in the 21st century. This is largely because surveillance and banning are positioned as preventive measures against terrorism. Moreover, if the Banopticon were to operate independently within a single country, its existence would lack significance (Humphrey, 2013). Instead, the Banopticon underpins transnational networks and facilitates the realization of transnational security frameworks (Marcoux, 2006). For example, countries share blacklists and coordinate common border control measures (Humphrey, 2013). Thus, the Banopticon functions as a cross-border system of surveillance and control, effectively banning individuals deemed dangerous rather than allowing their movement. Additionally, the operational capabilities of the Banopticon are enabled by advancements in modern technologies, including biometrics, databases, and electronic surveillance systems (Bigo, 2002, 2008). These technological developments have elevated the Banopticon from the original Panopticon, transforming it into a more advanced and pervasive surveillance mechanism. Notably, the Banopticon has gained further legitimacy in the name of national security, particularly in the aftermath of large-scale terrorist incidents. This legitimization has provided a backdrop for states that previously hesitated to engage in such panoptical activities—due to concerns over racism and individual rights violations—to pursue these measures with greater intensity and confidence.

Ultimately, migrant Muslims who pass the screening of the Banopticon and reside in non-Muslim-majority contexts are individuals who have received state-level certification of identity and security. In other words, they acquire the status of conditional inclusion as “authorized-to-stay members” (Hackl, 2022). Yet it is precisely here that the issue raised by this paper arises. First, as the logic of preventive risk management that operated at borders and within airport/consular networks is carried over into everyday life, the state proclaims inclusion while society still withholds acceptance, producing an “authorization–acceptance gap” (Bigo, 2002, 2008). Second, as the Banopticon’s categorization of “potential risk” is translated into the local community, it triggers lifeworld profiling that uses thin signs—mosques, hijab, religious practices—as proxy variables of danger (Bail, 2015). Third, rather than bridging this gap, the good/bad Muslim distinction solidifies it: while originating in national security discourse (Mamdani, 2002), it is reappropriated in local communities as a norm of social stigmatization and exclusion. As a result, the inclusion of migrant Muslims is managed as if under a permanent probationary period, and can be easily reduced to social exclusion by a single “trigger.”

The core hypothesis advanced by this paper is as follows. State-certified “inclusion” does not automatically guarantee social trust. Rather, when the Banopticon’s preventive/screening rationality is socialized beyond the institutional realm, local communities substitute for (legally accountable and transparent) public bodies to conduct informal surveillance, increasing the likelihood that misidentification/overinclusion (false positives) and the routinization of discrimination will occur (Humphrey, 2013). The divergent responses of European countries during the rise of ISIS and the influx of Syrian refugees in 2015 show clearly that, despite state authorization, social acceptance is variable (Connor, 2016). That is, although the Banopticon was developed to “filter people out,” it paradoxically functions as a device for selecting “who is allowed to remain,” yet the social ratification of that selection is not guaranteed. This desynchronization between political–institutional inclusion and social–affective inclusion leads directly to what the next section will treat as the Societal Banopticon—voluntary, informal surveillance and exclusion at the local scale. At this juncture, the study traces how the preventive classification logic of the state–expert network is translated into the action repertoire of micro-communities (observation, reporting, “doxxing,” symbolic desecration, picketing, etc.), and empirically analyzes the mechanism by which the “good/bad Muslim” category, combined with emotions (anxiety, aversion) and discourses of everyday order, functions as a justificatory device.

The Features of Societal Banopticon

If the Banopticon is a surveillance regime led by public and private experts endowed with authority and power in the field of (in)security, then at the micro level of society—within communities—surveillance is also directed, at both the individual and community scale, toward heterogeneous communities, the “other” distinct from the mainstream society. This behavior reflects a societal mechanism to ban the “specifically other” from coexisting within their social environment. This phenomenon is termed the Societal Banopticon, representing the actions, responses, or reactions of a society toward such groups. While the Societal Banopticon shares similarities with the Banopticon, it possesses distinctive characteristics, particularly in its causes and forms. Specifically, the Societal Banopticon can be identified by two unique traits: (1) it arises as a response to the visibility of an undesirable “other,” and (2) It is a spontaneous response by communities within society, independent of the recognition of public and private experts endowed with authority and power in the field of (in)security, and an expression of Productive power.

The visibility of migrant Muslims in society is unavoidable once a Muslim migrant community begins to take shape. All human beings naturally form communities and engage in struggles for recognition as a means of affirming their existence and attaining societal acknowledgment (Honneth, 1992). Consequently, the visibility of migrant Muslims is an inevitable phenomenon wherever Muslims migrate to non-Islamic countries, establish communities, and engage in struggles for recognition. While other migrant groups also form their own communities and often live segregated or marginalized lives, the oppositional framing of Islamic versus non-Islamic cultures amplifies the visibility of Islamic migrants’ identities, particularly when these identities include overtly religious elements.

Why, then, are visible migrant Muslims subjected to the Societal Banopticon? Society is composed of many fields with distinct structures and dynamics (Bourdieu, 1979). The degree to which migrants adapt to the societies they move to is a significant issue, as evidenced by the development of acculturation theories, which evaluate whether migrants retain their own culture or adopt the culture of the mainstream society (Berry, 1992). Integration and assimilation are contingent on the extent to which migrants either maintain their cultural practices or incorporate those of the host society (Berry, 1992). At this juncture, the visibility of migrants becomes a crucial factor. If migrants operate within society without making their presence visible, the broader community may remain indifferent to them. In other words, as long as migrants do not infringe upon a space already structured by mainstream society, the communities within that space are unlikely to react. Each group exists within its own domain.

However, this dynamic shifts when migrants—especially migrant Muslims—begin to assert their identity, making the religious identity of “Islam” visible. Migrant Muslims with a visible identity bring with them a narrative that extends beyond merely being perceived as a stranger.

In Western Europe and North America, through the waves of industrialization and postcolonial migration in the 1960s–70s as well as family-reunification migration, the visibility of immigrants had already become deeply embedded in the public sphere, and through long-term settlement extending into second and third generations, interactions across schools, labor markets, and residential spaces were routinized. In the process, experiences such as the hijab debates (France), multiculturalism (the UK), and the Gastarbeiter experience (Germany) produced an accumulation of institutional and social adjustments surrounding visible religious and cultural signs (Roy, 2007; Croucher, 2008). While visibility at times heightened conflict (Alameer Hasan, 2023; Mizel, 2019), it simultaneously opened pathways of “everyday normalization,” such as the institutionalization of religious education, civic dialogue, and public events. In short, in the West a long-term trajectory of “visibility → conflict/adjustment → partial normalization” unfolded comparatively early.

By contrast, South Korea and Japan have a relatively short history of fully receiving migration, and despite increases in resident foreigners since the 1990s and longer-term settlement since the 2000s, they are only now entering a stage in which social visibility is rising in earnest. In particular, as marriage migration and labor migration (Korea’s non-professional employment; Japan’s technical intern/specified skills), along with the growth of international students and long-term residents and the entry of second generations into schools and local communities, have advanced, visible markers such as mosque construction, halal shops, and religious dress have for the first time begun to stand out in local lifeworlds (Yi 2018; 2022). In this early phase of visibility, because experience of institutional learning and adjustment has not yet accumulated, informal surveillance coupled with discourses of risk and order is more readily triggered. That is, unlike the West’s long trajectory, in Korea and Japan a pattern of “a surge in visibility → lagging institutional adjustment → immediate local-level backlash” has overlapped, operating as a condition that reinforces the Societal Banopticon.

In sum, the temporality of visibility and the degree of accumulated institutional learning differ markedly between the West and East Asia (Korea/Japan), and this divergence directly shapes micro-communities’ repertoires of response (observation, reporting, online exposure, defacement of symbols, picketing, etc.) and the ways stigma discourses are formed. This study underscores that, even where the “visibility of Islam” is the same, these contextual differences produce varying intensities and forms of the Societal Banopticon. Their presence evokes discourses around Islamophobia, fear, and fake news, elements often inseparable from contemporary discussions about Muslims and Islam. These narratives influence public perceptions and sentiments, shaping how communities react (Emcke, 2019). Furthermore, the visibility of migrant Muslims is often perceived as a threat to the existing social order, challenging the mental and material advantages that mainstream individuals or communities have long secured (Bourdieu, 1979). In this context, the emergence and visibility of migrant Muslim communities represent a perceived disruption to the stability of mainstream society, giving rise to the Societal Banopticon as a reactive mechanism.

The problem is that this operates “inside society.” Having already gone beyond the border-management processes overseen by public and private experts endowed with credibility and power in the (in)security field, people who have migrated to another society—particularly, in this study, migrant Muslims—find themselves once again confronted with the demand to prove that they are permitted to exist in the society in which they now live. Regardless of recognition by public and private experts with credibility and power in the (in)security field, actions undertaken by the mainstream to ban and exclude place the broader social community and the migrant Muslim community in a situation of separation. That is, such actions are a spontaneous response mounted by communities within society to migrant Muslims in circumstances that bear no direct relation to the intentions or interventions of public and private experts with credibility and power in the (in)security field. This is precisely the point at which the Banopticon is transformed into the Societal Banopticon. In other words, when a Societal Banopticon emerges, there is likely to be a trigger, and the existence of such a trigger offers society a clue—a line—by which to discern the points at which the Societal Banopticon arises and at which it is called to account. Consequently, the Societal Banopticon is not a ban imposed at the level of public and private experts in the (in)security field, but surveillance mobilized, on the basis of particular incidents, to institute a ban inside society against minority groups who become the targets of surveillance and exclusion.

Migrant Muslims targeted by the Societal Banopticon, of course, attempt to resist and respond. From their standpoint, because communities that have no legal authority to sanction their state-recognized right to stay—recognized by public and private experts with credibility and power in the (in)security field—impose private sanctions and turn them into matters of public opinion, they are compelled to resist. In response to the imposition of a Societal Banopticon, migrant Muslims utilize tools such as the media to express their agency and make their presence felt through protests (Razaq, 2023; Hwang, 2022; Choi, 2022; Lee, 2022). Nevertheless, there are no notable examples of significant empowerment for migrant Muslims or a transition in their societal presence from negative to positive perceptions. On the contrary, cases such as the hijab conflict in France (Croucher, 2008; Roy, 2007), the issue of Sharia vigilantes in Germany (Nordbruch, 2011), and the influx of Middle Eastern refugees since 2015, which has fueled social conflicts across Europe, have only intensified the segregation and division of Muslim communities from mainstream society.

Of course, the society we live in is not composed solely of the binary gaze—or the binary conditions of life—produced by the Societal Banopticon. It is also a fact that efforts toward integration and coexistence continue throughout society. In Western Europe, not only frictions arising from visibility but also tendencies toward institutionalized contact and normalization coexist. Germany, following the 2005 Immigration Act, has universalized the integration course (Integrationskurs) and operated a standard 700-hour program—600 hours of language and 100 hours of orientation—which has taken root as an institutional pathway for enhancing the civic capacities of long-term residents and aspiring naturalizers (The Website “BAMF”). In addition, across Germany since 1997, the “Day of the Open Mosque” (Tag der offenen Moschee) has been held annually, with more than 1,000 mosque communities inviting their non-Muslim neighbors and routinizing mutual contact (The Website “DIK”). In the United Kingdom, the Muslim Council of Britain has run the “Visit My Mosque” campaign since 2015, with hundreds of mosques opening their doors to the public each year, and London City Hall operates “Eid in the Square” as a regular city-organized festival (The Website “London City Hall”). In attitude and identity indicators as well, the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA)’s EU-MIDIS II reports that a majority of Muslim respondents in Europe express a strong sense of belonging to their country of residence (FRA, 2018). In the case of South Korea, too, a government-led iftar event has been held for the 19th year (The Website ‘MOFA Korea’). Some German states have institutionalized Islamic religious instruction (IRU) in public schools, and regulations on related teacher qualifications and appointments have also been put in place (The Website “DIK”). Even if such institutionalized contact infrastructures do not fully resolve frictions produced by visibility, they function as anti-banopticon devices that buffer the eruption of conflict and make possible the renewal of mutual perceptions.

Cases of the Societal Banopticon

The status of migrant Muslims in Korea and Japan is very similar. Of course, since Japan’s population is about twice that of Korea, the proportion is about half as large, but the absolute numbers show very similar patterns. The number of registered foreign residents in both South Korea and Japan is similar, at approximately 2.5 million. Among these, the number of immigrant Muslims is estimated to be between 230,000 and 250,000, with the estimates being the same in both countries (Ministry of Justice, 2025; Asahisimbun, 2023; Yi & Koo, 2025; Tanada & Okai, 2015), Kuroda (2021). In both countries, it is difficult to obtain precise statistics related to religion because the religion of foreigners entering the country is not surveyed. Therefore, it is also difficult to quantitatively determine the degree of their religiosity or their perceived piety. However, the steadily increasing number of mosques and musallahs, along with activity on social media, indicate that immigrant Muslims maintain their Islamic religious identity even after migrating to Korea or Japan (Yi & Koo, 2025; Tanada & Okai, 2015; Asahisimbun, 2023), Kuroda (2021). Most immigrant Muslims in Korea and Japan enter primarily as migrant workers. International students follow as the next largest group (Yi & Yang, 2024; Tanada & Okai, 2015), Kuroda (2021). Thus, similarities exist in the social class and community activities of immigrant Muslims in both countries. Similarities also exist in the fact that the proportion of the total population identifying as Muslim is very small, and that significant Muslim migration only began in modern times. Furthermore, the mainstream societies receiving these migrants are both Confucian cultural spheres, located in East Asia, and nations that became part of the Global North after World War II. This shared national and cultural background provides a common framework for assessing receptivity to migrant Muslims. Of course, acceptance of immigrants cannot be evaluated based solely on the factors listed here. However, synthesizing the analysis and interview results of this study, Korea and Japan are sufficiently persuasive as background contexts for comparing cases and analyzing common social phenomena regarding the acceptance of migrant Muslims and social conflicts.

In 2021, in Daegu, South Korea, a conflict over mosque construction arose and has continued to the present. The migrant Muslim community experiencing this mosque construction conflict consisted primarily of university students and long-term residents in Korea, who, prior to the conflict, had not had particular disputes with local residents. However, once it became known in the local community that they were building a mosque, the conflict began in earnest.

The conflict over building a mosque (a small prayer space) near Kyungpook National University in Buk-gu, Daegu, was initially triggered by a plan to remodel a residential building to serve as a worship space for international students and foreign workers. As the commencement of construction and the possibility of a change of use became known to the local community, resident complaints surged, and objections articulated in the everyday language of noise, parking, sanitation, and falling property values soon expanded into frames of public order, security, and child protection (Lee, 2022; Choi, 2022). With the formation of a residents’ countermeasure committee, successive petitions and complaints, routine picketing and media tips, the conflict escalated into administrative responses - requests to halt construction and administrative orders - and legal disputes (Choi, 2022).

The key “trigger” in this process was a sharp increase in visibility. When Muslim international students and residents, who had until then been relatively invisible, sought to leave a permanent and symbolic trace in the community space through the material marker of a mosque, the local society perceived it as an “invasion of the field.” Consequently, a micro-surveillance routine of observation–recording–reporting–mobilization took shape. Residents continually collected on-site photos and videos, disseminated them to online communities and local media as “tips,” and organized repeated reports and petitions to official channels such as government offices, councils, and the police (Lee, 2022; Choi, 2022). Symbolic acts also appeared. Some opponents made the message of hate visible by leaving pig heads near the prayer space or pouring oil, practices that functioned as symbolic violence marking the target group as unfit, unclean, and dangerous (stigmatization) (Razaq, 2023).

Local residents initiated constant observation of the migrant Muslims, who were perceived as having “crossed over” into the community’s territory, and frequently reported their activities to the media (Choi, 2022). Notably, in 2022, some residents scrutinized the social media profiles of a student serving as a spokesperson for the Muslim community during the mosque construction conflict. They uncovered references to the Taliban, although these references were unrelated to extremism, and reported the findings to state authorities (Author’s Interviews with Muslim in Daegu). Consequently, the student was subjected to a police investigation (Author’s Interviews with Muslim at Daegu). This case in South Korea serves as one of the most recent and illustrative examples of the Societal Banopticon.

This cannot be simply classified as right-wing, nor can it be simply dismissed as the actions of those who espouse the far right. They were members of society leading ordinary lives and, in fact, were not people who harbored particular antipathy toward Islam or opposed Muslims until they confronted conflicts related to migrant Muslims. In the case of the Daegu mosque construction conflict, from 2014 until 2021, when the conflict actually became visible, residents and Muslims had coexisted without significant conflict (Based on Author interview with migrant Muslims and residents). However, it should be understood that when the Muslim presence became visible, a Societal Banopticon directed at them was triggered.

In reality, these Muslims are either invited by the South Korean government as students or granted permission to reside, yet their behavior is constantly monitored by local residents who scrutinize their actions for any deviation from social norms as a basis to demand their removal from the area. Indeed, most of the claims are centered around calls for them to leave the area (Hwang, 2022). Even though their safety and eligibility to stay have already been verified by the state, societal units impose additional informal checks to determine whether they can remain. Furthermore, residents often resort to actions designed to exert pressure on these individuals by targeting culturally or religiously sensitive areas—such as pouring oil or placing pig heads near their living or worship spaces (Razaq, 2023).

Of course, such actions can fall within the category of racism in a broad sense. However, the core driver in this case is not a particular “race” per se, but a desire to maintain boundaries against otherness made visible through markers such as mosques, the hijab, and halal signage. That is, residents activate repertoires of exclusion less in response to skin color or nationality than when visible religious and cultural signs and changes in spatial occupancy are perceived to encroach upon their everyday field. Accordingly, whether the person is Korean or foreign matters less than whether they “appear Muslim.” Indeed, as similar pushback re-emerged in the Incheon attempt to build a mosque led by Korean Muslims, exposure to the same symbols triggers the same social backlash. In this context, residents’ actions are less a matter of biological racism than a paradigmatic instance of the Societal Banopticon, conjoining culturalist racialization (culturalization of difference) with the boundary management of the local community. Visibility functions as a device that catalyzes informal surveillance (on-site observation, video collection, doxxing) and stigmatizing discourses (public order/policing, child protection, everyday order), thereby justifying exclusion and, ultimately, activating a mechanism through which society arbitrarily re-adjudicates “who has the right to remain among us.”

The scene cited above distills how the core mechanisms of the Societal Banopticon—(1) visibility as a trigger, (2) the organization of voluntary, informal surveillance, and (3) justificatory discourses of stigma and exclusion—mutually amplify one another. First, visibility is generated by mosque construction notices, media reports, the circulation of rumors on social media, and attire or prayer performed in the street. Second, the organization of surveillance refers to the repetition and routinization of the repertoires of micro-communities such as residents’ groups, merchants’ associations, and parents’ associations—on-site observation and filming, online “doxxing,” petitions and civil complaints, vandalism of symbols, rallies, and picketing (Lee, 2022; Choi, 2022; Razaq, 2023). Third, justificatory discourses stage the necessity of exclusion in the language of everyday order and child protection, and further of security and policing, while the ‘good/bad Muslim’ categorization rationalizes the selection of surveillance targets and the intensity of exclusion.

Residents’ discourse initially uses the language of “everyday inconvenience,” but over time it takes on the narrative of “risk.” For example, competition over everyday resources such as odors, noise, and parking fuses with risk imaginaries about unspecified others, and then expands into a child-protection frame—safety along school routes, proximity to schools, religious influence (Choi, 2022). At the same time, some reports and community posts selectively invoked overseas terrorist incidents and instances of extremism to underscore potential risks, using them as linguistic mediators that reinforce the figure of the “bad Muslim” (see Bail, 2015). This assemblage of risk–morality–order supplies the moral legitimacy for informal surveillance and serves, vis-à-vis administrative bodies, as a resource for pressuring tougher regulation—construction halts, permit revocations, use restrictions, and the like (Lee, 2022; Choi, 2022).

In this phase, the Muslim parties themselves also responded with counter visibility strategies. The parties pursued legal procedures such as administrative appeals and lawsuits, explained their positions through press conferences and interviews, and attempted to manage the conflict through proposals for mediation and dialogue (Choi, 2022; Lee, 2022). However, as Razaq (2023) points out, when symbolic violence and everyday harassment are prolonged, the parties’ self-censorship and withdrawal intensify, tending toward passive adaptation (acculturation) that avoids the use of public space altogether. This is a textbook scene of productive power in the Foucauldian sense operating through self surveillance and the internalization of norms.

The action repertoire of the Societal Banopticon (observables in the Daegu case)

- Ongoing observation and documentation: continuously filming/recording entries, movements, and gatherings to amass an “evidence” database (Lee, 2022).

Unlike the state/expert-led Banopticon, this repertoire is an informal system of surveillance and sanction implemented by micro communities without legal authority. The goal is not to block inflows at the border but to create, at the neighborhood scale, a state of “unlivability” that induces eviction/migration—an internal ban within society. In the process, administrative authority becomes the target of petitions and pressure, and public power is indirectly enacted through the outsourcing of social exclusion.

The ripple effects of this incident spread through a learning effect. In 2023, reports followed that an attempt to build a mosque in Incheon ended in withdrawal at an early stage as opposition discourse referencing the Daegu case was rapidly shared (Kim & Kim, 2024; Lee, 2024). In other words, a repertoire of surveillance and exclusion accumulated in one locality is repurposed as a manual for analogous situations. This suggests that although the Societal Banopticon is triggered on an event basis, once ignited it can circulate and be repeatedly reproduced in the form of experiences, narratives, and tactics.

In sum, the Daegu mosque conflict shows how, within a chain of meanings in which a visible religious marker leads to everyday inconvenience—moral panic—security discourse, micro surveillance, symbolic violence, and calls for administrative regulation combine to assemble an internal system of exclusion. Despite the parties’ counter visibility and legal remedies, prolonged everyday surveillance intensifies the spiral of self-censorship and silence, which in turn converges on the collapse of the infrastructure of coexistence—erosion of trust, contraction of public space, and breakdown of interaction. Rather than enhancing community safety, this informal surveillance regime raises social costs by normalizing discrimination and reproducing conflict.

It is important to emphasize that prior to the mosque construction conflict, these Muslims coexisted harmoniously with the local community. However, the visibility of the Muslim presence, made tangible through the construction of mosques, marked a turning point, initiating organized opposition. While various justifications can be presented for the mosque construction conflict, at its core, it reflects a perception of exclusion—a desire to prevent Muslims from settling in the area and to “ban” and “exclude” them from the community.

In Japan, the Kurdish community had long been close to an “invisible” presence. In fact, in the Middle East the Kurdish community is not a subject of conflicts grounded in religiosity, but a community that experiences social and ethnic conflicts based on ethnic identity (Tezcür and Mehmet, 2017). Within Japanese society, Kurds do not experience social conflict along only one axis of identity—religious or ethnic. Both identities generate conflict in society, but the parties to the conflict are different. According to interviews, Kurds residing in Japan are mainly Kurds from Turkiye, and they have at times sparked or experienced conflicts with non-Kurdish Turks (based on the author interview with Kurdish community in Japan). However, it is difficult to regard this as a conflict they cause with Japanese society as migrants; rather, it is a case in which social and ethnic conflicts from the homeland have been transplanted into the society to which they migrated. Conflicts with Japanese society are hard to see as grounded in ethnicity; instead, religious background and the identity of “migrant” play a greater role (Yamashita, 2022).

Although the Japan Kurdish Cultural Association, established in 2013, came to serve as the community’s representative body, the presence of Kurds did not stand out in local society at the level of everyday life (Arabnews, 2024, based on the author’s interviews with the Kurdish community. Kurds create their own communities in which, alongside their ethnic culture, they teach Islam as a religion and consistently conduct religious activities in mosques and musallahs. In this way, they maintain their religiosity even in Japan (Kyodo news, 2023). Despite the gradual increase in the Muslim population in Japan and the expansion of Muslims’ economic activities in certain sectors such as used-car exports, the Kurdish community was perceived by many non-Muslim residents as a relatively low-visibility neighbor (Asahi Shimbun, 2023). This phase of low visibility shifted rapidly when reports emerged of a violent incident involving a number of Kurds at a hospital in Saitama Prefecture in July 2023 (NHK, 2024; The Sankei Shimbun, 2024, based on the author’s interviews with the Kurdish community). In the wake of the incident, the group marker “Kurd” entered the cognitive landscape of local residents at once, and the spike in visibility began to interlock with frames of risk and anxiety.

This incident functioned as a typical “trigger” for the operation of the Societal Banopticon advanced in this paper. Immediately afterward, local governments unusually appealed to the Ministry of Justice and other central authorities for order-keeping and institutional support, urging administrative responses (NHK, 2024), while at the local level a variety of repertoires oriented toward informal surveillance and exclusion unfolded. Specifically, (1) on-site observation and video documentation—filming and sharing the daily movements of those identified as Kurds and posting them to online communities; (2) reporting and petitions—repeated reports to immigration control and the police; (3) online stigmatization—the spread of rumors and attempts to identify “problem individuals”; (4) rallies and picketing—street demonstrations and slogan-chanting in conjunction with far-right organizations; and (5) efforts to seize the discursive agenda—attempts at institutional pressure such as demands for local ordinances and guidelines—were observed (Arabnews, 2024; The Sankei Shimbun, 2024; Yahoo Japan, 2025; based on the author’s interviews with the Kurdish community). Among these, some local governments expressed caution about enacting hate-speech prohibition ordinances, raising the dilemma with “freedom of expression,” but that very void in turn contributed to the expansion of stigmatizing discourse in online spaces (Yahoo Japan, 2025).

What merits attention is that this process constitutes a form of voluntary surveillance within society that is distinct from the state- and expert-led (in)security apparatus—i.e., Bigo’s Banopticon. Regardless of the legality of Kurds’ residence, residents, civic groups, and online communities invoked the “peace and order of our neighborhood” to self-assign and exercise informal surveillance authority. As a result, preventive stigmatization was expanded not toward “individuals who had broken the law” but toward the entirety of a “group that might become a problem.” Furthermore, when some reports highlighted cases of Kurdish economic success, information that conflicted with the preexisting image of “poor outsiders” fused with sentiments of envy and vigilance, acting as a catalyst that raised the emotional temperature (The Sankei Shimbun, 2024). This is a typical phase in which discourses of risk (public security), everyday order, and cultural unfitness combine with emotions of anxiety and hate to set in motion the social categorization device of “good/bad Muslims.” That is, those who work quietly and comply with norms “invisibly” are reclassified as “good” neighbors, while those who are identified through visible incidents, symbols, or actions are reassigned to the “bad” category. At this point, the selection criteria are reconstructed not by state certification but by the feelings and impressions of the local community.

The operation of this societal banopticon is accompanied by several structural effects. First, the cycle of visibility–surveillance–stigma–exclusion is reinforced. Visibility heightened by the incident is accumulated as “evidence” through filming, posting, and dissemination, and is then recalled as a resource to justify stigma and exclusion. Second, everyday spaces shrink. Kurdish members experience subtle refusals, stares, and uneasy encounters in using public spaces, entering commercial venues, and in children’s commutes to school, thereby intensifying self-censorship and avoidance strategies. Third, interactions with the state banopticon arise. Requests from local governments to the center and expanded points of contact with immigration control increase the density of institutional surveillance, but the gap between local society’s expectations (“stronger eviction/crackdowns”) and the limits of the institutions ironically serves to bolster the legitimacy of informal surveillance (NHK, 2024; Yahoo Japan, 2025).

This does not mean, however, that the situation culminates in wholesale expulsion or segregation. Like the mosque conflict in Daegu, South Korea, the Japanese case traces a trajectory of long-term low visibility → rapid hyper-visibility through a specific incident → the triggering of a societal banopticon, with repeated cycles of de-escalation and re-visibility over time. What is crucial is that—even if the conflict does not disappear entirely—institutional and social devices must be put in place to enable normalization into “ordinary neighbors.” In the absence of relational infrastructure such as norms for responding to hate speech, swift procedures for correction and takedown, public channels for mediation and dialogue, and religious literacy education, the societal banopticon is highly likely to be reproduced more quickly and in stronger form in subsequent similar events via learning effects.

In sum, the Saitama Kurdish case shows that the legality conferred by the state and the yardsticks of surveillance imposed by society can diverge. The moment an “invisible” outsider becomes a “visible” presence via an incident, the local community activates mechanisms of informal surveillance and exclusion to reset the boundaries of the community. This confirms, in the Japanese context, the core operating principles of the Societal Banopticon argued in this paper—a response to visibility, voluntary surveillance at the micro level, and the moral sorting of “good/bad.” At the same time, unless institutional responses (the refinement of ordinances and guidelines) and devices for relationship repair (dialogue, mediation, joint events, etc.) are established, the shock of visibility may corrode the possibility of sustainable coexistence through the routinization of hate and fear.