Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The editors have selected from both the grounding classics and the best new work to show
how migration is transforming the rich democracies.
Professor John Mollenkopf, The City University of New York
A collection of must-read, though sometimes hard-to-find, pieces that any scholar or
student interested in immigration to Europe and its consequences will want to consult.
Professor Roger Waldinger, University of California, Los Angeles
A must not only for courses focused on Europe, but also a most useful tool for shedding new
light on North American migration by casting it in an often neglected comparative context.
Professor Aristide Zolberg, The New School for Social Research
Migration and ethnic studies are on the rise. A body of literature has rapidly
grown and, within it, a European research area is emerging. Yet, the scholarship
is still highly fragmented, being largely orientated towards the United States
and other countries with longer, older narratives of immigration. Unlike
people, theories and concepts do not travel easily, meaning we cannot take for
granted that research results are equally applicable on all continents. The first
volume of the imiscoe Textbooks Series answers the pressing need for a
European perspective on migration. Assembling for the first time in a single
binding are 25 classic papers that have had a lasting impact on studies of
international migration and immigrant integration in Europe. Not only is
this book a body of knowledge drawing together complementary expertise
developed in the field thus far, it is a launch pad for cross-national comparisons
around the globe.
TEXTBOOKS
Selected Studies in
International Migration
and Immigrant
Incorporation
marco martiniello & jan rath (eds.)
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IMISCOE
International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in Europe
The IMISCOE Research Network unites researchers from, at present, 25 institutes
specialising in studies of international migration, integration and social cohesion
in Europe. What began in 2004 as a Network of Excellence sponsored by the Sixth
Framework Programme of the European Commission has become, as of April 2009, an
independent self-funding endeavour. From the start, IMISCOE has promoted integrated,
multidisciplinary and globally comparative research led by scholars from various branches
of the economic and social sciences, the humanities and law. The Network furthers existing
studies and pioneers new scholarship on migration and migrant integration. Encouraging
innovative lines of inquiry key to European policymaking and governance is also a priority.
The IMISCOE-Amsterdam University Press Series makes the Networks findings and
results available to researchers, policymakers and practitioners, the media and other
interested stakeholders. High-quality manuscripts authored by Network members and
cooperating partners are evaluated by external peer reviews and the IMISCOE Editorial
Committee. The Committee comprises the following members:
Christina Boswell, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh,
United Kingdom
Tiziana Caponio, Department of Political Studies, University of Turin / Forum for
International and European Research on Immigration (FIERI), Turin, Italy
Michael Collyer, Sussex Centre for Migration Research (SCMR), University of Sussex,
United Kingdom
Rosita Fibbi, Swiss Forum for Migration and Population Studies (SFM), University of
Neuchtel, Switzerland / Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lausanne
Albert Kraler, International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), Vienna,
Austria
Leo Lucassen, Institute of History, Leiden University, The Netherlands
Jorge Malheiros, Centre of Geographical Studies (CEG), University of Lisbon, Portugal
Marco Martiniello, National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS), Brussels / Center for
Ethnic and Migration Studies (CEDEM), University of Lige, Belgium
Patrick Simon, National Demographic Institute (INED), Paris, France
Miri Song, School of Social Policy and Sociology, University of Kent, United Kingdom
IMISCOE Policy Briefs and more information can be found at www.imiscoe.org.
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IMISCOE Textbooks
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The multidisciplinary IMISCOE-AUP Textbook Series encompasses, at present, four volumes, and
aims to present both an international comparison of the development of international migration and
immigrant integration in Europe and an assessment of theoretical approaches with regard to this
issue. Materialisation of this objective strengthens the development and dissemination of a body
of common knowledge in this field and consequently boosts the growth of a European research
area. The current volume encompasses 25 theoretical papers that have had an impact on research
in Europe or reflect a European perspective on international migration and immigrant integration.
Our thanks are due to IMISCOE and to all those who have contributed, in whatever way, to the
realisation of this first volume. We especially thank Anna Swagerman and, most of all, Kim Jansen.
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Contents
Marco Martiniello and Jan Rath
Introduction: migration and ethnic studies in Europe
Part 1 - The migration process
1 Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack
The function of labour immigration in Western
European capitalism
2 Tomas Hammar
Introduction to European immigration policy:
a comparative study
3 Thomas Faist
The crucial meso-level
4 Steven Vertovec
Conceiving and researching transnationalism
5 Russell King
Towards a new map of European migration
6 Virginie Guiraudon
The constitution of a European immigration policy
domain: a political sociology approach
7 Abdelmalek Sayad
Immigration and state thought
Part II - Modes of incorporation
8 Hans van Amersfoort
Minority as a sociological concept
9 Tariq Modood
Black, racial equality and Asian identity
10 William Rogers Brubaker
Introduction to immigration and the politics of citizenship
in Europe and North America
11 Marco Martiniello
Ethnic leadership, ethnic communities political
powerlessness and the state in Belgium
12 Michel Wieviorka
Racism in Europe: unity and diversity
13 Rainer Baubck
Changing the boundaries of citizenship:
the inclusion of immigrants in democratic polities
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List of sources
Index
contents
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Introduction:
migration and ethnic studies in Europe
Marco Martiniello and Jan Rath
Over the past few decades, practically every country in the advanced
world has witnessed a substantial increase in immigration (Castles
& Miller 2009). Some countries such as Canada or the United States
have hosted immigration for centuries, and their mental map and
social fabric are consequently geared to accommodating newcomers.
But even for those countries, the magnitude of the current flow of
people crossing the border with or without valid documents was unexpected. The US had its version of the guest worker system in the
Mexican Bracero Program of the 1940s, but the immigration of Latino
workers for the agricultural industry is nothing when compared to
what was in store. The previous immigration regime favoured immigrants from Europe, but the abolition of restrictions for immigrants
from Africa, Asia or Latin America in 1965 opened the US to nonEuropeans (Cornelius, Martin & Hollifield 1994). Immigration laws
were tightened in the 1980s and 1990s in response to growing political pressure against what some regarded as unbridled immigration
as well as mounting unemployment and rising public expenditures
for documented and undocumented immigrants alike. Meanwhile,
Los Angeles outnumbered Americas all-time city of immigration,
New York. That being said and contrary to the general political
mood in the US authorities still maintain that the city warmly welcomes immigrants. Even if immigrants are not always treated as
welcome guests, still acknowledged are the contributions they have
made to the metropolis flourishing, now and in the past.
On the other side of the Atlantic, similar developments have occurred,
though under different circumstances. One striking difference is
that Europes nations have never really considered themselves countries of immigration the way North America has. On the contrary,
many, including Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal. Spain sending
countries in living memory and even the Netherlands presented
themselves as countries of emigration. International migration and
the social problems it allegedly generates and with which it usually
international
migration
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migration and
ethnic studies
This ambiguity did not, however, preclude social scientists from becoming very prolific. Proliferation of migration and ethnic studies
in Western Europe is a relatively recent phenomenon. This branch
of social scientific research took off in several European countries
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introduction
in the early 1980s and a little earlier in countries such as the United
Kingdom. In the first stages, the study of migration was largely reserved for demographers and political economists. Traditionally,
it has been a key area of study for the discipline of demography.
Political economy has quite logically developed an interest in this
field. Until the oil crisis of 1973, the mere economic dimension of
migration was actually assumed to be the most obvious and most
natural dimension of the process. It was usually portrayed in terms
of the movements of the labour force.
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absence of an
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binary perspectives
not represent any exception. Sociologists have actually started categorising the social experience of migrant populations into distinctive domains, which they elaborated as specific social problems to be
studied and resolved. In fact, we have observed how construction of
the sociological perspectives on migration and ethnic relations in the
early hours of the discipline simply mirrored the intuitive theories
of migration among the wider public. This led to the development
of a literature rife with binary perspectives, such as immigrants and
housing, immigrants and school, immigrants and criminality, immigrants and security, immigrants and health, immigrants and culture, immigrants and the labour market. A great number of studies
has been produced and continues to be in all these sub-fields of
research. In the worst cases, they have been either flatly empiricist or
simply unfruitful due to their redundancy. On the whole, one must
reckon with this first major difficulty in order to account for the relative theoretical stagnation of the field. (For a more critical point of
view, see Rath 2001.)
Its as though migration and ethnic studies were meant to contribute
to solving the social problems associated with a phenomenon still
dominantly perceived as a threat to the social order (Sayad 1984).
Insofar as it tends to answer a social demand more or less directly,
the sociology of migration has been constrained. It has been forced
to internalise the problematised and dramatised perception of the
common sense which is itself largely determined, as stated above,
by a concern for social order. In this situation, it is quite difficult to
establish a positive assessment in terms of the scientific value of the
works produced. As noted by Michel Oriol:
In their concern for solving concrete problems quickly, they [the researchers] can only raise the problems in terms comparable to those
of the public opinion. It becomes therefore more difficult to break
off with ideology in order to establish a properly scientific approach.
(1981: 6)3
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introduction
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the social sciences in its own right. The study of migration and ethnic
relations could hardly pretend to compete academically with more established branches of sociology, anthropology, political science and
so forth because of its major theoretical weaknesses and fragmentation. Others believe that mainstream sociology is not theoretically
stronger. As such, the problem would be related to the structure of
social science research, which is fairly disciplinarily oriented, with
disciplinary-based institutes, evaluations and funding. Meanwhile,
migration and ethnic studies is thematically oriented and multidisciplinary. For sociologists, this field is not sociological enough; for
anthropologists, geographers and political scientists the same holds
true. Consequently, scholars publish in specialised migration and
ethnicity journals that attract fewer readers, reach lower citations and
have less impact scores. The list goes on.
It is apparent that migration and ethnic studies was for a long time
marginalised in academic circles and universities. As already underscored by Abdelmalek Sayad (1984) and Philippe Lorenzo (1989),
it was an undervalued field of research. The field consequently remained unattractive for academic researchers until not so long ago.
This is mainly the case in Continental Europe. In the US and, to a
lesser extent, in the UK, things are different. In the New World, the
professionalisation of sociology happened in the context of a country
conceiving its history as one of immigration. It comes therefore as
no surprise that this discipline has grown while maintaining immigration as a central concern. For instance, the research produced in
this field has allowed the Chicago School to develop and to become
a world-famous school of sociology. In many other European countries, the leading figures of social sciences were until rather recently
not interested in these phenomena. When they did show an interest,
they did it in a way that was once characterised by Lorenzo (1989) as
marginal, periodical and brief.
undervaluation of
European migration
and ethnic studies
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introduction
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second-class
researchers
professionalisation
of European
migration and
ethnic studies
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theoretical and
conceptual imports
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These two problems of the theoretical and conceptual imports, especially from the US, may be illustrated briefly through the example
of the late introduction and the development of concepts linked to
ethnicity, multiculturalism (Martiniello 1997) and underclass in
Continental Europe. It is unquestionable that these external elements
of debate can potentially reinvigorate this field of research. However,
these categories must be used carefully. Indeed, can we assert that
the concept of ethnicity refers to the same intellectual representation in a society that has always conceived of itself as an immigration
country? This representation has been shaped for a long time by the
powerful ideology of the melting pot. Countries with old and strong
national and nationalist traditions have traditionally considered migrant populations as a temporary labour force. European researchers
have often neglected this crucial question. Beyond that, sociological
debates about ethnicity in the US gave rise to the creation of competing schools of thought. Today, the advocates of the substantialist conception of ethnicity seem to be mostly minorised because
of the thorough criticism of their position in the early 1960s and,
even more sharply, after the publication of the influential works of
Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan (1972). Now, among European
researchers manipulating the concept of ethnicity in migration and
ethnic studies, some still adopt an ambiguous position concerning
substantialism, which may bring the theoretical debate a few decades
back.
Another example concerns underclass. The concept is highly contested in American academia, notably for having a strong moralistic
content. By reintroducing it in French social sciences in the early
1990s, Didier Lapeyronnie imported the American controversy and,
to a certain extent, the moralistic approach to the issue of social and
economic exclusion in Europe. Importing a concept without referring to the context in which it was created or the controversies it has
produced is problematic. We cannot assume a priori that underclass
is a useful concept for Europe.
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ethnicity
underclass
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1995), and that there exist only very narrow margins for developing
crucial scientific research activities such as data collection and standardisation on an international level. However, at present, there are
wider opportunities being offered to European researchers, allowing
them to meet on a more or less regular basis and to exchange ideas
in collaborative research projects.
IMISCOE
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introduction
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cally. Chapters 1 through 7 deal with the migration process and its
related policies. Chapters 8 through 17 discuss modes of incorporation. Finally, chapters 18 through 25 bring together works dedicated
to transversal conceptual issues. Although some formatting changes
have been made, the substance of each chapter is a reproduction of
the text as it appeared in its original publication. In each thematic
section, the chapters appear in chronological order of their publication. We hope this organisation will help contextualise the works,
giving readers a sense of when and how these specific topics and approaches in European migration and ethnic studies emerged.
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Notes
1 See for example Johnson & Crawford (2004) New Breed of Islamic Warrior
is Emerging: Evidence in Madrid Attack Points to Takfiris, Who Use
Immigration as a Weapon, The Wall Street Journal 29 March: A16.
2 See 2002s special issue of the Journal of International Migration and
Integration, 3 (3/4).
3 Free translation of: Par souci de rsoudre vite des problmes concrets, ils (les
chercheurs) ne peuvent gure les poser que dans les termes o lopinion publique
les reconnat. Il sera alors dautant plus difficile de sarracher lidologie, pour
essayer de fonder une dmarche proprement scientifique... (Oriol 1981: 6).
4 Free translation of: La science du pauvre, du petit (socialement) est-elle une
science pauvre, est-elle une petite science? (Sayad 1984: 20).
5 Free translation of: La Sociologie a connu la mme fascination que les peuples
pour les Amriques et vint y chercher ses paradigmes tandis quils y qutaient fortune. (Oriol 1981: 24).
References
Bachelard, G. (1973), La formation de lesprit scientifique. Paris: Vrin.
Bourdieu, P., J. C. Chamboredon & J.C. Passeron (1973), Le mtier de
sociologue. Paris: Mouton.
Cornelius, W., P. Martin & J. Hollifield (1994), Controlling
Immigration: A Global Perspective. Stanford: Stanford University
Press.
Castles, S. & M. Miller (1999), The Age of Migration, 4th edition
(2009). New York: Guilford Press.
Florida, R. (2000), The Rise of the Creative Class: And How Its
Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. New
York: Basic Books.
Glazer N. & D. P. Moynihan (1970), Beyond the Melting Pot: The
Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City.
Cambridge: MIT Press.
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18
Lloyd, C. (1995), International comparison in the field of ethnic relations, in A. Hargeaves & J. Leaman (eds.), Racism, Ethnicity and
Politics in Contemporary Europe, 31-44. Aldershot: Edward Elgar.
Lorenzo, P. (1989), Approche qualitative des recherches sur limmigration
en France. Paris: Centre de Recherche et dtudes dAnthropologie
et DUrbanisme.
Martiniello, M. (1997), Sortir des ghettos culturels. Paris: Presses de
Sciences Po.
Noiriel, G. (1989), Enjeux: Une histoire sociale du politique est-elle
possible?, Vingtime Sicle October/December: 81-89.
Oriol, M. (1981), Bilan des tudes sur les aspects culturels et humains
des migrations internationales en Europe Occidentale 1918-1979.
Strasbourg: Fondation Europenne de la Science.
Penninx, R., M. Berger & K. Kraal (eds.) (2006), The Dynamics of
Migration and Settlement in Europe: A State of the Art. IMISCOE
Joint Studies. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Rath, J. (2001), Research on Immigrant Ethnic Minorities in the
Netherlands, in P. Ratcliffe (ed.), The Politics of Social Science
Research: Race, Ethnicity and Social Change, 137-159. Houndmills/
Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Sayad, A. (1984), Tendances et courants des publications en Sciences
Sociales sur limmigration en France depuis 1960, Current
Sociology 32 (3): 219-304.
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Part I
The migration process
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mechanisms of
domination
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industrial
reserve army
labour aristocracy
Engels pointed out that English manufacture must have, at all times
save the brief periods of highest prosperity, an unemployed reserve
army of workers, in order to produce the masses of goods required by
the market in the liveliest months.1 Marx showed that the industrial
reserve army or surplus working population is not only the necessary
product of capital accumulation and the associated increase in labour
productivity, but at the same time the lever of capitalist accumulation, a condition of existence of the capitalist mode of production.2
Only by bringing ever more workers into the production process can
the capitalist accumulate capital, which is the precondition for extending production and applying new techniques. These new techniques throw out of work the very men whose labour allowed their
application. They are set free to provide a labour reserve which is
available to be thrown into other sectors as the interests of the capitalist require. The whole form of the movement of modern industry
depends, therefore, upon the constant transformation of a part of
the labouring population into unemployed or half-employed hands.3
The pressure of the industrial reserve army forces those workers who
are employed to accept long hours and poor conditions. Above all:
Taking them as a whole, the general movements of wages are exclusively regulated by the expansion and contraction of the industrial
reserve army.4 If employment grows and the reserve army contracts,
workers are in a better position to demand higher wages. When this
happens, profits and capital accumulation diminish, investment falls
and men are thrown out of work, leading to a growth of the reserve
army and a fall in wages. This is the basis of the capitalist economic
cycle. Marx mentions the possibility of the workers seeing through
the seemingly natural law of relative over-population, and undermining its effectiveness through trade-union activity directed towards cooperation between the employed and the unemployed.5
The labour aristocracy is also described by Engels and Marx. By
conceding privileges to certain well-organized sectors of labour,
above all to craftsmen (who by virtue of their training could not be
readily replaced by members of the industrial reserve army), the capitalists were able to undermine class consciousness and secure an
opportunist non-revolutionary leadership for these sectors.6 Special
advantages, sometimes taking the form of symbols of higher status
(different clothing, salary instead of wages, etc.) rather than higher material rewards, were also conferred upon foremen and nonmanual workers, with the aim of distinguishing them from other
workers and causing them to identify their interests with those of
the capitalists. Engels pointed out that the privileges given to some
British workers were possible because of the vast profits made by the
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economic crises
employment of
immigrant workers
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dispensed with. The second is its importance as the basis of the modern industrial reserve army. Other groups which might conceivably
fulfil the same function, non-working women, the disabled and the
chronic sick, members of the lumpenproletariat whose conditions
prevent them from working,17 have already been integrated into the
production process to the extent to which this is profitable for the
capitalist system. The use of further reserves of this type would require costly social measures (e.g. adequate kindergartens). The main
traditional form of the industrial reserve army men thrown out of
work by rationalization and cyclical crises is hardly available today,
for reasons already mentioned. Thus immigration is of key importance for the capitalist system.
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Immigrants as
percentage of
total population
Date of figures
(latest available)
West Germany
2,977
4.8
September 1970
France
3,177
6.4
December 1969
972
16.0
December 1969
2,603
5.0
1966
Switzerland
Britain
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changing function
of immigrant labour
from former colonies in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. France has
617,000 Spaniards, 612,000 Italians, 480,000 Portuguese, as well as
608,000 Algerians, 143,000. Moroccans, 89,000 Tunisians, about
55,000 black Africans and an unknown number (probably about
200,000) from the remaining colonies (euphemistically referred to
as Overseas Departments) in the West Indies and the African island
of Runion. The largest immigrant group in Britain comes from
the Irish Republic (739,000 in 1966). Most of the other Europeans
were displaced persons and the like who came during and after the
war: Germans (142,000), Poles (118,000). Cypriots number 60,000.
There are also an increasing number of South Europeans, often allowed in on a short-term basis for work in catering and domestic
service. Coloured immigrants comprise about one third of the total,
the largest groups coming from the West Indies (269,000 in 1966),
India (240,000) and Pakistan (75,000).20
The migratory movements and the government policies which
direct them reflect the growing importance and changing function
of immigrant labour in West Europe. Immediately after the Second
World War, Switzerland, Britain and France recruited foreign workers. Switzerland needed extra labour for the export boom permitted by her intact industry in the middle of war-torn Europe. The
European Voluntary Workers in Britain (initially displaced persons,
later Italians) were assigned to specific jobs connected with industrial reconstruction. The reconstruction boom was not expected to
last. Both Switzerland and Britain imposed severe restrictions on
foreign workers, designed to stop them from settling and bringing
in their families, so that they could be dismissed and deported at the
least sign of recession. France was something of an exception: her
immigration policy was concerned not only with labour needs for
reconstruction, but also with permanent immigration to counteract
the demographic effects of the low birth-rate.
When West German industry got under way again after the 1949
Currency Reform there was at first no need for immigrants from
Southern Europe. An excellent industrial reserve army was provided
by the seven million expellees from the former Eastern provinces
of the Reich and by the three million refugees from East Germany,
many of whom were skilled workers. Throughout the fifties, the
presence of these reserves kept wage-growth slow and hence provided the basis for the economic miracle. By the mid-fifties, however, special labour shortages were appearing, first in agriculture and
building. It was then that recruitment of foreign workers (initially
on a seasonal basis21) was started. Here too, an extremely restrictive
policy was followed with regard to family entry and long-term settle-
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mobile labour
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permanent
employment
Occupational position
The immigrant percentage of the population given in the table above
in no way reflects the contribution of immigrants to the economy.
They are mainly young men, whose dependents are sent for later if at
all. Many of them remain only a few years, and are then replaced by
others, so that there are hardly any retired immigrants. Immigrants
therefore have higher than average rates of economic activity, and
make contributions to health, unemployment and pension insurance
far in excess of their demands on such schemes.29 Particularly high
rates of activity are to be found among recently arrived groups, or
among those who for social and cultural reasons tend not to bring dependents with them: Portuguese and North Africans in France, Turks
in Germany and Pakistanis in Britain. Immigrant workers are about
6.5 per cent of the labour force in Brirain, 7-8 per cent in France, 10
per cent in West Germany and 30 per cent in Switzerland. Even these
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figures do not show adequately the structural importance of immigrant labour, which is concentrated in certain areas and types of work.
The overwhelming majority of immigrants live in highly industrialized and fast-growing urban areas like Paris, the Lyon region,
the Ruhr, Baden-Wrttemberg, London and the West Midlands. For
example 31.2 per cent of all immigrants in France live in the Paris
region, compared with only 19.2 per cent of the total population. 9.5
per cent of the inhabitants of the Paris region are immigrants.30 In
Britain more than one third of all immigrants are to be found in
Greater London compared with one sixth of the total population.
Immigrants make up 12 per cent of Londons population.31
More important still is the concentration in certain industries.
Switzerland is the extreme case: the whole industrial sector is dominated by foreign workers who make up more than 40 per cent of the
factory labour force. In many branches for instance textiles, clothing, building and catering they outnumber Swiss employees.32 Of
the nearly two million foreign workers in Germany in September
1970, 38.5 per cent were in the metal-producing and engineering industry, 24.2 in other manufacturing branches and 16.7 per cent in
building. Foreign workers accounted for 13.7 per cent of total employment in metal producing and engineering. The proportion was
even higher in some industries with particularly bad working conditions, like plastic, rubber and asbestos manufacture (18.4 per cent).
In building, foreign workers were 17.5 per cent of the labour force.
On the other hand they made up only 3-4 per cent of all employees
in the services, although their share was much higher in catering
(14.8 per cent).33 Similar concentrations were revealed by the 1968
Census in France: 35.6 per cent of immigrant men were employed in
building and 13.5 per cent in engineering and electrical goods. 28.8
per cent of foreign women were domestic servants. In Britain the
concentration of immigrants in certain industries is less marked,
and different immigrant groups have varying patterns. The Irish
are concentrated in construction, while Commonwealth immigrants
are over-represented in metal manufacture and transport. Pakistani
men are mainly to be found in the textile industry and Cypriots in
clothing and footwear and in distribution. European immigrants are
frequently in the services sector. Immigrant women of all nationalities tend to work in services, although some groups (Cypriots, West
Indians) also often work in manufacruring.34
In general immigrants are concentrated in certain basic industries, where they form a high proportion of the labour force. Together
with their geographical concentration this means that immigrant
workers are of great importance in the very type of enterprise and
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concentration in
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socio-economic
distribution
area which used to be regarded as the strongholds of the class-conscious proletariat. The real concentration is even greater than the
figures show, for within each industry the immigrants tend to have
become predominant in certain departments and occupations. There
can be hardly a foundry in West Europe in which immigrants do not
form a majority, or at least a high proportion, of the labour force.
The same applies to monotonous production line work, such as carassembly. Renault, Citroen, Volkswagen, Ford of Cologne and Opel
all have mainly foreign workers on the assembly line (the British motor industry is an exception in this respect).
Perhaps the best indication of the occupational concentration of
the immigrant labour force is given by their socio-economic distribution. For instance a survey carried out in 1968 in Germany showed
that virtually no Southern Europeans are in non-manual employment. Only between 7 per cent and 16 per cent of the various nationalities were skilled workers while between 80 per cent and 90 per
cent were either semi-skilled or unskilled.35 By comparison about a
third of German workers are non-manual, and among manual workers between one third and one half are in the skilled category in the
various industries. In France a survey carried out at Lyon in 1967
found that where they worked in the same industry, the French were
mainly in managerial, non-manual or skilled occupations, while the
immigrants were concentrated in manual occupations, particularly
semi-skilled and unskilled ones. The relegation to unskilled jobs is
particularly marked for North Africans and Portuguese.36 In Britain,
only about 26 per cent of the total labour force fall into the unskilled
and semi-skilled manual categories, but the figure is 42 per cent for
the Irish, 50 per cent for the Jamaicans, 65 per cent for the Pakistanis
and 55 per cent for the Italians.37
Immigrants form the lowest stratum of the working class carrying out unskilled and semi-skilled work in those industrial sectors
with the worst working conditions and/or the lowest pay.38 The entry
of immigrants at the bottom of the labour market has made possible
the release of many indigenous workers from such employment,
and their promotion to jobs with better conditions and higher status,
i.e. skilled, supervisory or white-collar employment. Apart from the
economic effects, this process has a profound impact on the class
consciousness of the indigenous workers concerned. This will be discussed in more detail below.
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Social position
The division of the working class within the production process is
duplicated by a division in other spheres of society. The poor living
conditions of immigrants have attracted too much liberal indignation and welfare zeal to need much description here. Immigrants get
the worst types of housing: in Britain slums and run-down lodging
houses, in France bidonvilles (shanty-towns) and overcrowded hotels,
in Germany and Switzerland camps of wooden huts belonging to
the employers and attics in the cities. It is rare for immigrants to get
council houses. Immigrants are discriminated against by many landlords, so that those who do specialize in housing them can charge
extortionate rents for inadequate facilities. In Germany and France,
official programmes have been established to provide hostel accommodation for single immigrant workers. These hostels do provide
somewhat better material conditions. On the other hand they increase the segregation of immigrant workers from the rest of the
working class, deny them any private life, and above all put them
under the control of the employers 24 hours a day.39 In Germany
the employers have repeatedly attempted to use control over immigrants accommodation to force them to act as strike-breakers.
Language and vocational training courses for immigrant workers
are generally provided only when it is absolutely necessary for the
production process, as in mines for example. Immigrant children
are also at a disadvantage: they tend to live in run-down overcrowded
areas where school facilities are poorest. No adequate measures are
taken to deal with their special educational problems (e.g. language
difficulties), so that their educational performance is usually belowaverage. As a result of their bad working and living conditions, immigrants have serious health problems. For instance they have much
higher tuberculosis rates than the rest of the population virtually everywhere.40 As there are health controls at the borders, it is clear that
such illnesses have been contracted in West Europe rather than being brought in by the immigrants.
The inferior work-situation and living conditions of immigrants
have caused some bourgeois sociologists to define them as a lumpenproletariat or a marginal group. This is clearly incorrect. A group
which makes up 10, 20 or 30 per cent of the industrial labour force
cannot be regarded as marginal to society. Others speak of a new
proletariat or a sub-proletariat. Such terms are also wrong. The first
implies that the indigenous workers have ceased to be proletarians
and have been replaced by the immigrants in this social position. The
second postulates that immigrant workers have a different relation-
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inferior conditions
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division of the
proletariat
Discrimination
institutionalized
discrimination
Upon arrival in West Europe, immigrants from under-developed areas have little basic education or vocational training, and are usually
ignorant of the language. They know nothing of prevailing market
conditions or prices. In capitalist society, these characteristics are
sufficient to ensure that immigrants get poor jobs and social conditions. After a period of adaptation to industrial work and urban life,
the prevailing ideology would lead one to expect many immigrants
to obtain better jobs, housing, etc. Special mechanisms ensure that
this does not happen in the majority of cases. On the one hand there
is institutionalized discrimination in the form of legislation which
restricts immigrants civic and labour market rights. On the other
hand there are informal discriminatory practices based on racialism
or xenophobia.
In nearly all West European countries, labour market legislation
discriminates against foreigners. They are granted labour permits for
a specific job in a certain firm for a limited period. They do not have
the right to move to better-paid or more highly qualified positions,
at least for some years. Workers who change jobs without permission are often deported. Administrative practices in this respect have
been liberalized to some extent in Germany and Switzerland in re-
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cent years, due to the need for immigrant labour in a wider range
of occupations, but the basic restrictiveness of the system remains.
In Britain, Commonwealth immigrants (once admitted to the country) and the Irish had equal rights with local workers until the 1971
Immigration Act. Now Commonwealth immigrants will have the
same labour market situation as aliens. The threat of deportation if
an immigrant loses his job is a very powerful weapon for the employer. Immigrants who demand better conditions can be sacked for
indiscipline and the police will do the rest.41 Regulations which restrict family entry and permanent settlement also keep immigrants
in inferior positions. If a man may stay only for a few years, it is not
worth his while to learn the language and take vocational training
courses.
Informal discrimination is well known in Britain, where it takes
the form of the colour bar. The PEP study,42 as well as many other
investigations, has shown that coloured immigrants encounter discrimination with regard to employment, housing and the provision
of services such as mortgages and insurance. The more qualified
a coloured man is, the more likely he is to encounter discrimination. This mechanism keeps immigrants in their place, i.e. doing
the dirty, unpleasant jobs. Immigrants in the other European countries also encounter informal discrimination. Immigrants rarely get
promotion to supervisory or non-manual jobs, even when they are
well-qualified. Discrimination in housing is widespread. In Britain,
adverts specifying no coloured are forbidden, but in Germany or
Switzerland one still frequently sees no foreigners.
The most serious form of discrimination against immigrant
workers is their deprivation of political rights. Foreigners may not
vote in local or national elections. Nor may they hold public office,
which in France is defined so widely as to include trade-union posts.
Foreigners do not generally have the same rights as local workers
with regard to eligibility for works councils and similar representative bodies. The main exception to this formal exclusion from political participation concerns Irish and Commonwealth immigrants in
Britain, who do have the right to vote (the same will not apply to those
who enter under the 1971 Act). But the Mangrove case shows the type
of repression which may be expected by any immigrants who dare to
organize themselves. Close police control over the political activities
of immigrants is the rule throughout Europe, and deportations of political and trade-union militants are common. After the May Events
in France, hundreds of foreign workers were deported.43 Foreign language newspapers of the CGT labour federation have been repeatedly forbidden. The German Foreigners Law of 1965 lays down that the
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racialism and
xenophobia
Discrimination against immigrants is a reflection of widespread hostility towards them. In Britain, this is regarded as colour prejudice
or racialism, and indeed there can be no doubt that the hostility of
large sections of the population is at present directed against black
people. Race relations theorists attribute the problems connected
with immigration partly to the immigrants difficulties in adapting
to the prevailing norms of the host society, and partly to the indigenous populations inbred distrust of the newcomers who can be
distinguished by their skin colour. The problems are abstracted from
the socioeconomic structure and reduced to the level of attitudes.
Solutions are to be sought not through political action, but through
psychological and educational strategies.45 But a comparison of surveys carried out in different countries shows that hostility towards
immigrants is everywhere as great as in Britain, even where the immigrants are white.46 The Italian who moves to the neighbouring
country of Switzerland is as unpopular as the Asian in Britain. This
indicates that hostility is based on the position of immigrants in society and not on the colour of their skin.
Racialism and xenophobia are products of the capitalist national state and of its imperialist expansion.47 Their principal historical
function was to split the working class on the international level, and
to motivate one section to help exploit another in the interests of the
ruling class. Today such ideologies help to deepen the split within
the working class in West Europe. Many indigenous workers do not
perceive that they share a common class position and class interests
with immigrant workers. The basic fact of having the same relationship to the means of production is obscured by the local workers
marginal advantages with regard to material conditions and status.
The immigrants are regarded not as class comrades, but as alien in-
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truders who pose an economic and social threat. It is feared that they
will take away the jobs of local labour, that they will be used by the
employers to force down wages and to break strikes.48 Whatever the
behaviour of the immigrant workers and in fact they almost invariably show solidarity with their indigenous colleagues such fears
are not without a basis. It is indeed the strategy of the employers to
use immigration to put pressure on wages and to weaken the labour
movement.49 The very social and legal weakness of the immigrants is
a weapon in the hands of the employers. Other points of competition
are to be found outside work, particularly on the housing market.
The presence of immigrants is often regarded as the cause of rising rents and increased overcrowding in the cities. By making immigrants the scapegoats for the insecurity and inadequate conditions
which the capitalist system inevitably provides for workers, attention
is diverted from the real causes.
Workers often adopt racialism as a defence mechanism against a
real or apparent threat to their conditions. It is an incorrect response
to a real problem. By preventing working-class unity, racialism assists the capitalists in their strategy of divide and rule. The function
of racialism in the capitalist system is often obscured by the fact that
racialist campaigns usually have petty-bourgeois leadership and direct their slogans against the big industrialists. The Schwarzenbach
Initiative in Switzerland which called for the deportation of a large
proportion of the immigrant population is an example,50 as are
Enoch Powells campaigns for repatriation. Such demands are opposed by the dominant sections of the ruling class. The reason is
clear: a complete acceptance of racialism would prevent the use of
immigrants as an industrial reserve army. But despite this, racialist campaigns serve the interests of the ruling class: they increase
tension between indigenous and immigrant workers and weaken
the labour movement. The large working-class following gained by
Powell in his racialist campaigns demonstrates how dangerous they
are. Paradoxically, their value for capitalism lies in their very failure
to achieve their declared aims.
The presence of immigrant workers is one of the principal factors contributing to the lack of class consciousness among large sections of the working class. The existence of a new lower stratum of
immigrants changes the workers perception of his own position in
society. Instead of a dichotomic view of society, in which the working
masses confront a small capitalist ruling class, many workers now
see themselves as belonging to an intermediate stratum, superior to
the unskilled immigrant workers. Such a consciousness is typified by
an hierarchical view of society and by orientation towards advance-
racialism
defence mechanism
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Economic effects: the new industrial reserve army of immigrant workers is a major stabilizing factor of the capitalist economy. By restraining wage increases, immigration is a vital precondition for capital accumulation and hence for growth. In the long run, wages may grow
more in a country which has large-scale immigration than in one
which does not, because of the dynamic effect of increased capital
accumulation on productivity. However, wages are a smaller share,
and profits a larger share of national income than would have been
the case without immigration.51 The best illustration of this effect is
obtained by comparing the German and the British economies since
1945. Germany has had large and continuous increases in labour
force due to immigration. At first wages were held back. The resulting capital accumulation allowed fast growth and continuous rationalization. Britain has had virtually no growth in labour force due
to migration (immigration has been cancelled out by emigration of
British people to Australia, etc). Every phase of expansion has collapsed rapidly as wages rose due to labour shortages. The long-term
effect has been stagnation. By the sixties, German wages overtook
those of Britain, while economic growth and rationalization continued at an almost undiminished rate.
Social effects: The inferior position of immigrant workers with regard to employment and social conditions has led to a division of
the working class into two strata. The split is maintained by various
forms of discrimination and is reinforced by racialist and xenophobic
ideologies, which the ruling class can disseminate widely through
its hegemony over the means of socialization and communication.
Large sections of the indigenous workers take the position of a labour aristocracy, which objectively participates in the exploitation of
another group of workers.
Political effects: the decline of class consciousness weakens the
working-class movement. In addition, the denial of political rights
to immigrants excludes a large section of the working class from po-
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litical activity, and hence weakens the class as a whole. The most
exploited section of the working class is rendered voiceless and powerless. Special forms of repression are designed to keep it that way.
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opposition and
acceptance
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the formation of
immigrant unions
them into the unions. In Germany, the DGB has accepted immigration and has set up offices to advise and help immigrants. The member unions also have advisory services, and provide foreign language
bulletins and special training for immigrant shop-stewards. In general, those unions which have recognized the special problems of immigration have not done so on the basis of a class analysis (here the
CGT is to some extent an exception). Rather they have seen the problems on a humanitarian level, they have failed to explain the strategy
of the employers to the workers, and the measures taken have been
of a welfare type, designed to integrate immigrants socially, rather
than to bring them into the class struggle.
Therefore, the unions have succeeded neither in countering racialism among indigenous workers, nor in bringing the immigrant
workers into the labour movement on a large scale. The participation
of immigrant workers in the unions is on the whole relatively low. This
is partly attributable to their rural background and lack of industrial
experience, but in addition immigrants often find that the unions do
not adequately represent their interests. The unions are controlled by
indigenous workers, or by functionaries originating from this group.
In situations where immigrant and indigenous workers do not have
the same immediate interests (this happens not infrequently due to
the differing occupational positions of the two groups, for instance
in the question of wage-differentials), the unions tend to take the
side of the indigenous workers. Where immigrants have taken action against special forms of discrimination, they have often found
themselves deserted by the unions.53 In such circumstances it is not
surprising if immigrants do not join the unions, which they regard
as organizations for local labour only. This leads to a considerable
weakening of the unions. In Switzerland many unions fear for their
very existence, and see the only solution in the introduction of compulsory solidarity contributions, to be deducted from wages by the
employers. In return the unions claim to be the most effective instrument for disciplining the workers. When the employers gave way to
a militant strike of Spanish workers in Geneva in 1970, the unions
publicly attacked them for making concessions.
Where the unions do not adequately represent immigrant workers, it is sometimes suggested that the immigrants should form their
own unions. In fact they have not done so anywhere in contemporary
West Europe. This shows a correct class position on their part: the
formation of immigrant unions would deepen and institutionalize
the split in the working class, and would therefore serve the interests
of the employers.54 On the other hand, all immigrant groups do have
their own organizations, usually set up on the basis of nationality,
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and having social, cultural and political functions. These organizations do not compete with the trade unions, but rather encourage
their members to join them. The aim of the political groups have
so far been concerned mainly with their countries of origin. They
have recruited and trained cadres to combat the reactionary regimes
upon returning home. At present, as a result of greater length of stay
and increasing problems in West Europe, many immigrant political
groups are turning their attention to class struggle in the countries
where they work.
It is the task of the revolutionary movement in West Europe to
encourage this tendency, by making contact with immigrant groups,
assisting them in co-ordinating with immigrants of other nationalities and with the working-class movement in general, giving help in
political education and cadre-training, and carrying out joint actions.
Such co-operation means surmounting many problems. Firstly, language and culture may make communications difficult. Secondly,
the risk of repression to which immigrant militants are exposed may
make them reluctant to make contacts. Thirdly, the experience of discrimination may cause immigrants to distrust all local people. This
leads in many cases to cultural nationalism, particularly marked for
historical reasons among black people. In order to overcome these
difficulties, it is essential for indigenous political groups to study the
problems of immigrants and the special forms of discrimination and
exploitation to which they are exposed. Concrete attempts to combat
these must be made. Indigenous groups must offer co-operation and
assistance to immigrants in their struggle, rather than offering themselves as a leadership.
It is not only when revolutionary groups are actively trying to cooperate with immigrant workers organizations that they come up
against the problems of immigration. The majority of immigrants
are not politically organized, whether through apathy or fear of repression. Groups agitating in factories or carrying out rent campaigns are likely to come up against large numbers of unorganized
immigrants in the course of their daily work. It is then essential to
take special steps to communicate with the immigrants and to bring
them into the general movement. Failure to do so may result in the
development of petty-bourgeois chauvinism within factory or housing groups, which would correspond precisely with the political aims
of the capitalists with regard to labour migration. In Germany, the
large numbers of revolutionary groups at present agitating in factories almost invariably find it necessary to learn about the background
and problems of immigrant workers, to develop special contacts with
them, and to issue leaflets in the appropriate languages. The same
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pre-conditions for
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and class struggle
Notes
1 Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, in Marx and
Engels, On Britain, Moscow 1962, p. 119.
2 Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Moscow 1961, p. 632.
3 Ibid., p. 633.
4 Ibid., p. 637.
5 Ibid., p. 640.
6 Engels, Preface to the English edition of The Condition of the Working
Class in England, op. cit., p. 28.
7 Engels, The English Elections, in On Britain, op. cit., p. 505.
8 Lenin, Imperialism the highest Stage of Capitalism, Moscow 1966, pp. 96-7.
9 Ibid., pp. 99-100.
10 In this article we examine the function of labour migration only for the
countries of immigration. Migration also plays an important stabilizing role
for the reactionary regimes of the countries of origin a role which is understood and to some extent planned by the ruling class in West Europe.
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Although we are concerned only with West Eucope in this article, it is important to note that the use of certain special categories of workers, who
can be discriminated against without arousing general solidarity from other
workers, is a general feature of modern capitalism. The blacks and chicanos
are the industrial reserve army of the USA, the Africans of white-dominated
Southern Africa. Current attempts by liberal capitalists to relax the colour
bar to allow blacks into certain skilled and white-collar jobs, both in the USA
and South Africa, however estimable in humanitarian terms, are designed
mainly to weaken the unions and put pressure on wages in these sectors.
11 Marx mentions several forms taken by the industrial reserve army. One is
the latent surplus-population of agricultural labourers, whose wages and
conditions have been depressed to such an extent that they are merely waiting for a favourable opportunity to move into industry and join the urban
proletariat. (Capital, Vol. I., op. cit., p. 642.) Although these workers are not
yet in industry, the possibility that they may at any time join the industrial
labour force increases the capitalists ability to resist wage increases. The
latent industrial reserve army has the same effect as the urban unemployed.
Unemployed workers in other countries, in so far as they may be brought
into the industrial labour force whenever required, clearly form a latent industrial reserve army in the same way as rural unemployed within the country.
12 See E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, Harmondsworrh
1968, pp. 469-85.
13 The Condition of the Working Class in England, op. cit., p. 123.
14 Letter to S. Meyer and A. Vogt, 9 April 1870, in On Britain, op. cit., p. 552.
15 Imperialism, op. cit., p. 98.
16 Hans Pfahlmann, Fremdarbeiter und Kriegsgefangene in der deutschen
Kriegswirtschaft, 1939-1945, Darmstadt 1968, p. 232.
17 For the role of the lumpenproletariat in the industrial reserve army, see
Capital, Vol. I, op. cit., p. 643.
18 We use immigrants in a broad sense to include all persons living in a West
European country which is not their country of birth. Much migration is of
a temporary nature, for a period of 3-10 years. But such temporary migration
has effects similar to permanent migration when the returning migrant is
replaced by a countrymen with similar characteristics. Such migrants may
be regarded as a permanent social group with rotating membership.
19 For sources, as well as a detailed analysis of social conditions of immigrants,
see Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack, Immigrant Workers and Class
Structure in Western Europe, London, Oxford University Press for Institute of
Race Relations, 1972 (forthcoming).
20 The 1966 Census figures are at present the most recent ones available. It
should, however, be noted that, for technical reasons, they seriously under-enumerate the Commonwealth immigrants in Britain. Moreover, the
number has grown considerably since 1966, particularly if we look at the
whole community including children born to Commonwealth immigrants
in Britain, who were not counted by the census. We shall have to wait for
the results of the 1971 Census to obtain a more accurate picture of the immigrant population in Britain.
21 Many foreign workers are still employed on a seasonal basis in building,
agriculture and catering in France and Switzerland. This is a special form
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38 Some employers particularly small inefficient ones specialize in the exploitation of immigrants. For instance they employ illegal immigrants, who
can be forced to work for very low wages and cannot complain to the authorities for fear of deportation. Such cases often cause much indignation in the
liberal and social-democratic press. But, in fact, it is the big efficient firms
exploiting immigrants in a legal and relatively humane way which make the
biggest profits out of them. The function of immigration in West European
capitalism is created not by the malpractices of backward firms (many of
whom incidentally could not survive without immigrant labour), but by the
most advanced sectors of big industry which plan and utilize the position of
immigrant workers to their own advantage.
39 So far as we are concerned, hostel and works represent parts of a single
whole. The hostels belong to the mines, so the foreign workers are in our
charge from start to finish, stated a representative of the German mining employers proudly. Magnet Bundesrepublik, Informationstagung der
Bundesvereinigung Deutscher Arbeitgeberverbande, Bonn 1966, p. 81.
40 A group of French doctors found that the TB rate for black Africans in the
Paris suburb of Montreuil was 156 times greater than that of the rest of
the local population. R.D. Nicoladze, C. Rendu, G. Millet, Coupable dtre
malades, Droit et Libert, No. 280, March 1969, p. 8. For further examples
see Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe, op. cit., Ch.
VIII.
41 For a description of how a strike of Spanish workers in a steel-works was
broken by the threat of deportation, see P. Gavi, Les Ouvriers, Paris 1970, pp.
225-6.
42 W. W. Daniels, Racial Discrimination in England, based on the PEP Report,
Harmondsworth 1968.
43 See Review of the International Commission of Jurists, No. 3, September 1969,
and Migration Today, No. 13, Autumn 1969.
44 Cf. Der Spiegel, No. 7, 7 February 1972.
45 See Mark Abrams study on prejudice in Colour and Citizenship, pp. 551-604.
The results of the study are very interesting, but require careful interpretation. The interpretation given by Abrams is extremely misleading. The
results of the prejudice study, which was said to indicate a very low level
of prejudice in Britain, attracted more public attention than all the other
excellent contributions in this book. For a reanalysis of Abrams material see
Christopher Bagley, Social Structure and Prejudice in five English Boroughs,
London 1970.
46 We have attempted such a comparison in Immigrant Workers and Class
Structure in Western Europe, op. cit., Chapter IX. Historical comparisons also
tend to throw doubt on the importance of race as a cause of prejudice: white
immigrants like the Irish were in the past received just as hostilely as the
black immigrants today.
47 Oliver Cromwell Cox, Caste, Class and Race, New York 1970, p. 317 ff. This
superb work of Marxist scholarship is recommended to anyone interested in
racialism.
48 Surveys carried out in Germany in 1966 show a growth of hostility towards
immigrants. This was directly related to the impending recession and local
labours fear of unemployment.
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49 Historically, the best example of this strategy was the use of successive waves
of immigrants to break the nascent labour movement in the USA and to
follow extremely rapid capital accumulation. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
gives an excellent account of this. Similar was the use of internal migrants
(the Okies) in California in the thirties see John Steinbeck, The Grapes of
Wrath.
50 Although the Federal Council, the Parliament, the employers, the unions
and all the major parties called for rejection of the Schwarzenbach Initiative,
it was defeated only by a small majority: 46 per cent of voters supported the
Initiative and 54 per cent voted against it.
51 Many bourgeois economists and some soi-disant Marxists think that immigration hinders growth because cheap labour reduces the incentive for
rationalization. Bourgeois economists may be excused for not knowing (or
not admitting) that cheap labour must be the source for the capital which
makes rationalization possible. Marxists ought to know it. A good study on
the economic impact of immigration is: C.P. Kindleberger, Europes Postwar
Growth the Role of Labour Supply, Cambridge (Mass.) 1967.
52 See Bob Hepple, Race, Jobs and the Law in Britain, London 1968, p. 50 and
Appendix II.
53 For details of such cases see Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western
Europe, op. cit., Chapter IV.
54 We do not wish to imply that it is always incorrect for minority groups to
form new unions, if the existing ones are corrupt and racialist. It was obviously necessary for militant blacks in the USA to do this, as the existing
union structure was actively assisting in their oppression. But organizations
like the Detroit Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM), though consisting initially of blacks only, were not separatist. They had the perspective of
organizing class-conscious workers of all ethnic groups. Such organizations
appear to be neither necessary nor possible in the present stage of struggle
in West Europe.
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tomas hammar
representative
countries
The project countries have been chosen partly because of their size
and their large immigrant populations and partly because they offer a high degree of variation in the regulation of immigration and
in immigrant policy. Germany, France and Britain were included
from the outset because of their sizeable immigrant populations, and
Switzerland because of its high proportion of foreigners. In addition
these four countries provide examples of very different sorts of international migration as well as different immigration policies. Sweden
could not be left out, partly because the initiative and financing of
this study was Swedish, but more important it deserves a place as the
Scandinavian country which has both admitted the most immigrants
and developed first a specific immigration policy. The Netherlands
was included as the sixth country because of its mixture of post-colonial and Mediterranean labor immigration, and also because of its
traditional emphasis on cultural pluralism and its influence on current ethnic minorities policy.
The selection of countries was also made with the idea that the
two major ways of regulating immigration should be represented:
the guestworker or rotation system (Germany and Switzerland),
and the policy of permanent immigration (Britain and Sweden). The
post-colonial immigration that prevails in Britain and has played a
major role in France and in the Netherlands is included as well as
immigration to countries with no such colonial ties, represented by
Sweden, Germany, and Switzerland. We further hoped that our selection would give examples of various types of immigrant policy, based
on different welfare ideologies and on the different social and political
organizations of the societies represented.
Other immigration countries, of course, could have been included
as well, had the project resources not required that the number of
selected countries be limited. Norway and Denmark have both admitted immigrants from, among other countries, Turkey and Pakistan,
and they offer interesting cases for policy comparison. Yet immigration to these two countries has been relatively small, and if only one
Scandinavian country can be included, Sweden is the logical choice.
Belgium had a large immigrant population of some 900,000 in
1980. The number of foreign citizens residing in Austria at the same
time was estimated to be about 250,000. Although both countries
have adopted policies directed towards the temporary employment of
foreign workers, they have found that their immigrants tend to stay
permanently. They would offer excellent additional studies, but their
exclusion does not significantly reduce the breadth of our study.
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47
Migratory paths
Postwar migration to and within Europe has been characterized as
a movement from south to north, although such postwar migration
would be better characterized as a movement from the periphery to
the center. Migration from Italy reached considerable proportions in
the 1950s and was joined during the 1960s by an even larger migration from Spain and Portugal in the southwest and from Yugoslavia,
Greece, and later Turkey in the southeast. African migration has
gone mainly to France, while the bulk of transoceanic migration
from the West Indies, Pakistan, and India has gone to Britain. The
Netherlands has had immigration from Indonesia and Latin America
as well as from Morocco and Turkey.
On the map (Figure 1.1) two additional arrows from Ireland to
Britain and from Finland to Sweden reinforce the impression of a
movement from periphery to center. Nevertheless, although both arrows show a movement across national boundaries, one is reluctant
to say that they represent international migration in the same sense
as do the other arrows. Irish immigrants have always been allowed to
enter Britain and seek employment without restriction. Until at least
1948 they were regarded as full British citizens. Finnish immigrants
have a similarly privileged position because of the common Nordic
labor market and their countrys traditional ties to Sweden. In contrast to the Irish, however, a large number of Finnish immigrants
have considerable language difficulties after arrival, and in this respect they resemble the immigrant groups in Sweden that have more
distant origins.
Eastern Europe is blank on the map, not because it has no migration or exchanges of labor, but because we lack information about
it. The sizeable immigration to West Germany from East Germany
and from Poland is discussed in the chapter on Germany, but it
would also be interesting to have had examples of migration within
Eastern Europe. We probably would have found surprising similari-
movement from
periphery to center
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distribution of
nationalities
Labor force
Foreign
citizens
Percent
of total
Foreign
citizens
Percent
of total
Sweden
405.5
4.9
2227.7
5.2
Netherlands*
543.6
3.7
208.4
3.7
France*
4,459.0
7.2
1,436.4
6.3
Great Britain
1,705.0
3.1
931.0
3.8
West Germany
4,666.9
7.6
2,037.6
9.2
925.8
14.5
647.9
21.9
Switserland
Source: OECD, Continuous Reporting System on Migration, SOPEMI 1983, for all countries except Great Britain.
Notes:
* Data from 1982, and for labor force in France 1981. Based on number of residence
and work permits, and therefore an overestimate of the size of the foreign population.
Data from 1981, Labour Force Survey.
Yearly average. Seasonal workers (13,400) and frontier workers (108,400) are included.
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restricted policies
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The same is true for Britain, where almost all postwar immigration
has come from former colonies in the West Indies and from India
and Pakistan. The majority of immigration to Sweden has come
from Finland and from the other Nordic countries, although there
has also been a significant inflow of immigrants from Yugoslavia,
Greece, and Turkey.
There are a number of possible explanations for the distribution
of nationalities among the receiving countries. In many cases bilateral agreements and recruitment practices based on such agreements
have led to concentrations of certain nationalities, for example,
Turks and Yugoslavs in Germany or Moroccans in the Netherlands.
Geographical proximity between sending and receiving countries
has often had a similar effect, particularly when accompanied by a
history of close relations. Geographical distance has sometimes reduced the potential for certain kinds of immigration. Since Britain
and Sweden are located somewhat on the periphery of continental
European migration, they have not received as many immigrants
from Southern Europe and Turkey. Ex-colonies and countries with
whom they have historically had close contact have provided much of
the immigration to France, the Netherlands, and especially Britain.
Finally, the distribution of immigrants by nationality can also be explained by chain migration, which occurs when an initial group of
immigrants settles in a country and then, by encouraging others in
their home country or by providing a model for them, attract others
of the same nationality to a particular receiving country.
The sources of migration to Europe have progressively moved to
areas farther and farther away. While immigration from Southern
Europe, initially quite extensive, has decreased in recent years, immigration from Africa, Asia, and especially the Near East has increased.
The change in the sources of immigration has meant that many of
the new minority groups are more highly visible, as they differ more
in culture and tradition from indigenous European population than
did the so-called traditional immigrant groups of the past. There
are indications that this newer long-distance immigration will continue and increase in the future.
An important change in immigration policy occurred during the
period from 1970 to 1974. For economic and other reasons the immigration countries of Western Europe heavily restricted or usually
stopped recruiting foreign labor, and since then only refugees and
the relatives of resident aliens are admitted. Policymakers have now
come to realize, to their surprise, that many foreign workers are likely to remain as permanent residents.
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This change in immigration policy, which we will call the turning point, was the first clear break with the relatively open and unrestricted policies of the previous two decades. The change was declared in Switzerland (1970), Sweden (1972), Germany (1973), and
France (1974). Though it was made with the consent of each national
government, it was made without open political debate and without
any formal, official decisions. It is important to note that this turning
point should be thought of as a policy change towards stricter regulation but not necessarily as a stop for labor migration.
In Britain and the Netherlands, where most immigrants came
from colonies or former colonies and usually held the citizenship of
the mother country, the turning point in immigration policy did not
occur at a specific time but came gradually. In Britain this process
has involved the gradual elimination of the immigration rights of
colonial citizens. Though this process began there in 1962 and has
not yet ended, one can nevertheless say that the passage of the 1971
Immigration Act was perhaps the most significant legislation in this
area. In the Netherlands there was a major revaluation of immigration policy at the end of the 1970s. The number of new work permits
issued fell sharply in 1973, but labor immigration was never formally
stopped. Not until 1980 did the government impose serious restrictions on post-colonial immigration and begin to develop a new
immigrant policy.
Immigration to the six European project countries has changed
during the past decade in other ways as well. While the number of
single, male immigrants has decreased, mainly because of the policy
change that occurred at the turning point, the immigration of refugees and the dependants of resident aliens has increased. In other
words, the total amount of immigration to the project countries has
not decreased substantially as a result of the stop in labor recruitment, but has remained constant or in some cases has actually increased. Thus, there is a relationship between the imposition of the
stop and the change in the composition of immigrant population.
This relationship is discussed in more detail in the comparative analysis presented in Part II.
Immigration policy
There are many definitions of immigration policy. They vary even
within a single country. Yet when we compare a number of countries, we need a working definition that is relevant to all these countries. Thus, under our scheme, immigration policy will consist of
two parts which are interrelated, yet distinct: (a) regulation of flows of
immigration and control of aliens, and (b) immigrant policy.
a working definition
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permitted to return again the following season. Some countries organize so-called rotation systems under which foreign workers are
allowed to stay in the country only a maximum number of months or
years, after which (in theory at least) they must depart to make room
for new workers. In this way these countries hope to avoid the establishment of any new, permanent population groups whose needs
and demands would be considerably greater than those of temporary
guestworkers.
Even in countries that do not apply seasonal employment or rotation systems, however, it often takes many years before foreign citizens are guaranteed that they will not be forced to leave the country against their will. By delaying permanent status, immigration
countries retain the legal right to repatriate foreign workers when
desired, even those with many years of residence. The conditions attached to permanent status can thus function as a means of controlling the size or composition of immigration and must therefore also
be included as a part of immigration regulation.
Compulsory repatriation of large groups of immigrants is rare.
Nevertheless, it has long been a possibility which hangs over the
heads of many of the foreign workers employed in Western Europe.
Though seldom utilized, it nonetheless influences their living conditions and their attitudes towards residence in the host country.
Thus, the very existence of the possibility of compulsory repatriation is a factor in a countrys immigrant policy. Immigration regulation may be said to foster a considerable degree of legal insecurity
because decisions concerning permanent status are made by administrative authorities who have much discretion in interpreting such
regulations. Such legal insecurity is made worse when foreign citizens have no right to appeal against the decisions of administrative
authorities.
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legal insecurity
Immigrant policy
Immigrant policy is the other part of immigration policy and refers
to the conditions provided to resident immigrants. It comprises all
issues that influence the condition of immigrants; for example, work
and housing conditions, social benefits and social services, educational opportunities and language instruction, cultural amenities,
leisure activities, voluntary associations, and opportunities to participate in trade union and political affairs. Immigrant policy may be
either direct or indirect.
Immigrants have a number of special needs to begin with be-
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direct immigrant
policy
indirect immigrant
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tomas hammar
cause they are different from the host population. They often speak a
foreign language and represent a different culture. Immigrants also
have special economic interests and ambitions for the future. All of
this may sometimes prompt a country of immigration to devise special measures to improve the situation of its immigrants. Since these
measures do not usually apply to the non-immigrant population, we
will call them direct immigrant policy.
Like the non-immigrant population, immigrants are also affected
by a countrys general public policy, which involves economic, social,
political, and other measures. These measures are not designed with
only immigrants in mind; instead, they are intended to apply to all
inhabitants of a country whether citizens or not. Yet they may not
be applied to all inhabitants in the same way, i.e. there may be discrimination, both positive and negative, in the allocation of resources
and opportunities. When general public policy affects immigrants
substantially, we will talk about indirect immigrant policy.
Indirect immigrant policy can be termed inequitable or discriminatory when immigrants receive significantly less than others,
and when they are denied opportunities to participate in society. Even
when the distribution of benefits is perfectly equal, however, immigrants can still remain in an inferior position, primarily because they
have recently made a new start in the host country and experience
less favorable circumstances than the rest of the population. This
situation can be ameliorated if immigrants are given greater benefits
than other people, e.g. special language instruction, special cultural
support, and so on. These measures are the tools of direct immigrant
policy.
To summarize in outline form, immigration policy comprises:
1. Immigration regulation and aliens control
(a) strict or liberal control of the admission and residence of
foreign citizens
(b) guarantees of permanent status; legal security versus vulnerability to arbitrary expulsion
2 Immigrant policy
(a) indirect: immigrants inclusion in the general allocation of
benefits; equal versus discriminatory distribution
(b) direct: special measures on behalf of immigrants; affirmative
action and the removal of legal discrimination
Although we will in our analysis distinguish between these two parts
of immigration policy, they are of course in practice at work simultaneously. What is very often not understood is the profound effect
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that they can have on one another. A system of rotation might, for
example, leave most immigrants in a very weak legal position as
residents. This may in turn impede integration and the full enjoyment of social and civil rights both areas of concern to immigrant
policy. Another example of the mutual influence between immigration regulation and immigrant policy would be when a country uses
instruments of immigrant policy (e.g. housing applications, school
registers, and so on) to identify and expel illegal immigrants, thus
accomplishing a task of immigration regulation.
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General preconditions
Immigration policy should be analyzed in the context of a countrys
history, economy, geography, population, international relations,
etc., for these are factors that affect immigration to a country, both
quantitatively and qualitatively. Valid comparisons between the project countries are possible only when the general preconditions for
the countries immigration policies are analyzed.
Policymakers in each country may have tried to shape immigration policy on the basis of their own experience and their particular
national needs, but the policies of all the project countries nevertheless have numerous features in common. Periods of passport exemption, rigid immigration control, and active recruitment of foreign
workers have come at the same or almost the same time in every
country. Thus, it seems that the shaping of immigration policy is
determined in part by conditions beyond the control of policy makers
in the individual countries. For example, two world wars have disrupted long-standing patterns of habitation and have forced people
to flee their home countries. Economic disruptions, resulting either
from the wars or from other causes, have been possibly even more
unsettling than the wars themselves. The Great Depression in the
1930s affected the entire industrialized world and resulted in the
widespread traumatic belief that future economic crises had to be
avoided at all costs. During the following decades, Keynesian economic theory gradually provided new policy options, starting with
active budget policies, which were applied to counter depressions.
Of course, all countries have not been affected by war and economic crisis to the same degree, and partly because of this, there
are significant differences in the immigration policies of the project countries. One might say that although they came from different
parts, they are all sailing on the same heaving ocean, all exposed to
the same fluctuations in weather, winds, and currents. Yet because
local conditions
matter
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conditional
constraints
tomas hammar
they each set a different course and sail in a different kind of vessel,
no two voyages are ever exactly alike. Similarly, no two countries immigration policies are ever exactly alike, even though all countries are
affected by and must contend with the same external conditions.
General preconditions, as the term will be used here, are background conditions which, on the whole, remain stable for a considerable period of time and are not easily influenced or altered in the
short term. For the general as well as attentive public, and also for
policymakers, these conditions act as constraints on the possibilities
for state action; in other words, they form a factual, concrete framework for immigration policy over a relatively long period of time.
Terminology
definition of
immigrant and
immigration
This definition thus excludes people that pay only a short visit to a
country; for example, those who come on vacation or to visit relatives, or those who come on business trips or to do some specific
job (a mechanic to install machinery for instance, or artists to give a
performance), as long as their stay is for less than three months. On
the other hand, immigrant does not only refer to those who plan
from the beginning to stay permanently in a country. Thus, students,
scholars, artists, and others who spend longer than three months as
guests in a country are considered immigrants although they do
not plan to stay permanently.
The decisive criterion is the actual length of time that a person
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terminologys
influence
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meso-level
thomas faist
are not automatically ruptured. For example, between 1960 and 1993
out of an estimated total of 12 million labour migrants and dependants from the Mediterranean countries of Southern Europe and
North Africa, 9.3 million returned to their countries of origin from
Germany (own calculations, based upon Statistisches Bundesamt
1955-95). Nevertheless, the immigrant population in Germany increased as a result of family reunification during the later 1970s and
1980s after the ending of guestworker recruitment.
In short, any theoretical attempt should therefore not focus on
movers only, but on both movers and stayers, and also on how stayers
who once make a move shuttle back and forth, or become stayers
again, be it in the countries of origin or destination.
Most theoretical efforts have mostly focused either on global
structural factors inducing migration and refugee movements (macro-theories) or on factors motivating individuals to move (microtheories). This review and partial reconstruction of theories about
international South to North migration emphasises the meso-level
between what are usually called the micro- and the macro-levels, the
level of analysis between individuals and larger structures such as
the nation-state. It does so in focusing on social relations (social ties)
between individuals in kinship groups (e.g. families), households,
neighbourhoods, friendship circles and formal organisations.
Two strands of literature have paid attention to the meso-level.
Firstly, in recent years the processes of immigrant incorporation
have been studied in economic sociology (Portes 1995). However,
so far little has been said about the costs and benefits involved in
transferring human capital abroad or about the mediating role of
resources inherent in social relations (social capital) in the decisionmaking process. Secondly, there is a huge and impressive empirical
literature on migrant networks (Massey et al. 1993). There are also
plausible arguments as to why these migrant networks embedded in
migration systems (Kritz and Zlotnik 1992) are crucial elements in
explaining international migration. Yet this literature is more successful in explaining the direction (e.g. from former colonies to the
European and North American core) than the volume of international
movement. In particular, it is not clear what exactly happens in networks and collectives that induces people to stay, move and return.
The specific characteristics of social capital are important in explaining the low volume of international movement, chain migration and often high rates of return migration. It is very difficult to
transfer social capital abroad; even harder than the transfer of human capital. However, once pioneer migrants have moved abroad,
relatives, friends and acquaintances can draw upon social capital and
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micro- and
macro-level theories
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basic
value-expectancy
model
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constraints and
opportunities
location-specific
capital
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their positions. Structural tensions arise from inequalities and status inconsistencies in the sending country. These structural tensions
may generate anomic tendencies, i.e. an imbalance between power
and status. Action directed to resolve these tensions may take forms
such as social mobility, giving up the social position held or emigration to a country where status aspirations can be attained (HoffmannNowotny 1973: 11-14). In essence, for Hoffmann-Nowotny (international) migration constitutes an interaction between societal systems
geared to transfer tensions and thus balancing power and prestige
(1973: 19; translation T.F).
Later migration-systems approaches have four main characteristics. Firstly, migration-system theories assume that migration systems pose the context in which movement occurs and that it influences actions on whether to stay or to move. An analysis of trade and
security linkages and colonial ties helps to explain the origin and direction of international movement. Basically, a migration system is here
defined as two or more places (most often nation-states) connected
to each other by flows and counterflows of people (see Faist 1995).
Secondly, using dependency-theory and world-systems approaches,
systems theories have stressed the existence of linkages between countries other than people, such as trade and security alliances, colonial
ties and flows of goods, services, information and ideas (Portes and
Walton 1981). These linkages often have existed before migration
flows occurred. For example, in the case of European receiving countries (e.g. France, Netherlands and Great Britain) most movers come
from former colonies.
Thirdly, migration systems theory focuses on processes within migration systems. Movement is not regarded as a one-time event but
rather as a dynamic process consisting of a sequence of events across
time (Boyd 1989: 641). Already Mabogunje suggests in his programmatic article on rural-urban migration in Africa that migration needs
to be studied as a circular, interdependent, progressively complex
and self-modifying system (1970: 4). Theorising the dynamics of
migration has thus moved from a consideration of movement as a
linear, unidirectional, push-and-pull, cause-effect movement to notions that emphasise migration as circular, interdependent, progressively complex and self-modifying systems in which the effect of
changes in one part can be traced through the entire system. For
example, once it has started, international migration turns into a selffeeding process. Petersen assumed that pioneer migrants or groups
set examples that can develop into a stream of what he called mass
migration (1958: 263-4). This helps to explain international movement as a self-feeding process that gains in momentum as networks
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four main
characteristics
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thomas faist
reduce both the direct monetary costs of movement and the opportunity costs (that is, the earnings forgone while moving, searching for
work and housing, learning new skills), and also decrease the psychological costs of adjustment to a new environment in the receiving
country. Movers and stayers are regarded as active decision makers
(Fawcett 1989).
Fourthly, within the context of important factors such as economic inequalities within and between nation-states and the admission
policies of the receiving states, individuals, households and families
develop strategies to cope with stay-or-go alternatives. Lately, systems
theorists have started to apply social network theory vigorously. The
main assumption is aptly summarised in Charles Tillys provocative
phrase that it is not people who migrate but networks (1990: 75). In
other words, migrants are not atomistic flies (Cohen 1987). Social
networks consist of more or less homogeneous sets of ties between
three or more actors. Network patterns of social ties comprise economic, political networks of interaction, as well as collectives such
as groups (e.g. families, communities) and (public) associations.
Network theory builds its explanations from patterns of relations.
It captures causal factors in the social structural bedrock of society,
bypassing the spuriously significant attributes of people temporarily
occupying particular positions in social structure (Burt 1986: 106).
Migrant networks, then, are sets of interpersonal ties that connect
movers, former movers and non-movers in countries of origin and
destination through social ties, be they relations of kinship, friendship or weak social ties (see Choldin 1973). In international migration, networks may be even more important than in domestic migration because there are more barriers to overcome, e.g. exit and entry
permits, and if not available, costs for illegal border crossing.
Concerning migration and non-migration, a system-theoretic
perspective emphasises that predisposing factors of very different
kinds can enhance migration (e.g. wage differentials between countries, population growth, civil wars) when embedded in the context of
historically grown political, economic and cultural linkages between
senders and receivers, while other macro-factors may lead to non-migration, such as very restrictive exit and entry policies. Precipitating
events (e.g. economic crises in sending countries) and intervening factors (e.g. migrant networks) are then thought to enhance migration.
An important insight is that migration processes are accompanied by
feedback effects affecting decisions to stay or go. For example, earlier
internal migrations may lead to international migration or pioneer
migrants may serve as role models for other potential migrants.
In sum, migration-systems theories constitute a great advance in
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political-economiccultural structures
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density, strength
and content
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degrees of freedom
interpersonal and
inter-group decisions
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of societal disorganisation but as an active strategy to diversify income in rural households dependent on crops, etc. Yet what may
be needed most for a comprehensive interpersonal and processual
account is a focus on migration that includes processes of both societal organisation and disorganisation. Clearly, the focus of these two
authors on household, communal and other ties remains valuable
because it helps to construct the meso-level, whether we focus on
disorganisation (e.g. persecution of political refugees) or organisation (e.g. migration as a household strategy for economic survival or
even advancement).
Thomas and Znaniecki observed that potential migrants can
reorganise both in the country of origin and in the new country of
settlement. In the former country examples of co-operative collective action included education of peasants through the press and the
emergence of co-operative institutions, such as co-operative shops,
lean and savings banks, and agricultural improvement societies (ibid.
4: 178-304). We could add forms of political voice such as peasant
protests (see Scott 1976). Indeed, there were alternatives to moving
in improving the life situation in the country of origin. In the main
country of destination, the United States, Polish immigrants came to
be members of various forms of communal life, ranging from mutual aid societies and parishes to cultural organisations. Typically,
immigrants such as Poles used their investment in family, ethnicity and religion as resources to redefine their situation, as workers,
citizens, and members of household and religious groups. A parallel
story could be told about political refugees. Although the root causes
may differ and options to stay without endangering their lives may
be minimal for refugees at the time of flight, the same principles of
social analysis could be applied.
societal organisation
and disorganisation
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thomas faist
MICRO-LEVEL:
INDIVIDUAL
(political-economiccultural structure)
(social relations)
(degrees of freedom)
social ties:
strong ties: families
and households;
weak ties: networks
of potential movers,
brokers and stayers;
symbolic ties:
ethnic and religious
organisations
individual values
goals, preferences and
expectancies)
improving and
securing survival,
wealth, status, comfort, stimulation,
autonomy, affiliation
and morality
economics:
income and
unemployment
differentials; access
to capital
politics:
regulation of spatial
mobility (nationstates and international regimes);
political repression,
etnic and religious
conflicts
interdependence in
international system
of states
cultural setting:
dominant norms
and discourses
demography and
ecology:
population growth;
availability of arable
land
level of technology
MESO-LEVEL:
RELATIONAL
social capital:
resources available to
potential movers and
stayers by participation in networks and
collectives through
weak, strong and
symbolic social ties
individual resources:
financial capital
human capital:
educational credentials; professional
skills
cultural capital:
common worldviews,
forecast, memories,
symbols
political capital: voice
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actions between the actors involved. They are durable and involve
obligations and substantial emotions. They are most widespread in
small, well-defined groups such as families, kinship and communal
organisations. By contrast, weak ties are defined by indirect relationships. They involve no direct or only fleeting contact. Weak ties refer
to a more narrow set of transactions. Transactions among friends of
friends is an apt shorthand for weak social ties.
Social capital are those resources inherent in patterned social
ties that allow individuals to co-operate in networks and collectives,
and/or that allow individuals to pursue their goals.2 Such resources include information on jobs in a potential destination country,
knowledge on means of transport, or loans to finance a journey to
the country of destination. Social capital also serves to connect individuals to networks and collectives through affiliations. Social capital
thus has a dual thrust: it facilitates co-operation between individual
(and group) actors in creating trust and links individuals to social
structures. Furthermore, social capital serves to mobilise financial,
human, cultural and political capital. (For other and differing definitions of social capital, see Bourdieu 1983 and Portes 1995.)
Social capital is not simply an attribute of individual actors. The
amount of social capital eventually available to individuals depends
on the extent of the network of social ties that can be mobilised and
the amount of financial, cultural and political capital that members
of collectives or network participants can muster. In short, social capital is created and accumulated in social relations, but can be used by
individuals as a resource. Social capital is thus primarily a meso-level
category.
The primary question concerning the meso-level is how social
capital is created, accumulated and mobilised by collectives and networks, given certain macro-conditions. Moreover, how is this capital
made available to individuals, members and non-members of these
collectives? How does it serve to mobilise other forms of capital such
as financial, cultural and political capital? It certainly makes a difference whether we deal with first-time movers, return movers or
non-movers. For the sake of simplicity this section deals exclusively
with first-time movers while the section on the dynamics of migration takes up the issue of return movers and their influence on decision making.
Analytically, we can distinguish three different macro-level dimensions for this relational analysis: functional considerations,
normative expectations and collective identity (distinction based on
Peters 1993; see also Habermas 1981). On the level of potential movers and stayers we can then make an ideal-typical distinction between
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three macro-level
dimensions
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exchange, reciprocity
and solidarity
macro-level
dimensions
functional
considerations
normative
expectations
collective
identity
orientation of
movers and stayers
interest-related
norm-oriented
expressive
exchange
reciprocity
solidarity
The first context in which social capital figures prominently is exchange relationships. This is the classical case analysed by rationalchoice approaches. Accordingly, migrants move when they expect
that they can reap higher benefits in another location. Persons who
are involved in aiding these movers (facilitators) can also expect to
benefit through material (e.g. money) and immaterial (e.g. social status) gains. Favours, information, approval and other valued items are
given and received in transactions between movers and facilitators
(e.g. pioneer movers who return to the place of origin). In the course
of social interaction the movers, stayers and facilitators involved accumulate deposits based on previous favours by others, backed by
the norm of reciprocity.
Reciprocity does not imply that favours given and received must be
of the same value or identical. For example, in many cases the head
of the family is responsible for the flow of the household income. Yet
this does not mean that the head moves himself or herself in order to
supply cash. Reciprocity is a form of social capital when at least two
norms are adhered to: Firstly, persons help those who have helped
them, and secondly, persons should not harm those who helped
them before (Gouldner 1960). Reciprocity may serve to increase the
financial capital available in collectives such as families or households. Migrant labour is a means to get much-needed cash to supplement income earned through crops. In case of crop failure income
through labour migration can even act as a temporary substitute. In
this case reciprocity would mean that, on the one hand, the moving
family members remain loyal and actually send money back home
and, on the other hand, the remaining family members work in the
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fields. Trust between members of relevant collectives such as families or households is a very valuable resource upholding reciprocity.
This norm-related aspect of reciprocal transactions also refers to the
third type of social capital, solidarity.
Solidarity is based on a group identity (we) that refers to a unity
of wanting and action. It is an expressive dimension to be distinguished from interest-based and norm-oriented behaviour. The
groups self- and other-definition makes it meaningful to talk about
the importance for potential movers that membership of a collective
and participation in a network have.
Usually, transactions of the exchange type are characterised by
weak social ties, while reciprocity and solidarity require strong social ties (Sahlins 1965). Yet norms of solidarity go with weak social
ties, when individual or collective actors feel closely bound to ethnic, religious and national identities. Movers and recipients may be
connected through symbolic ties, characterised by transactions based
on shared worldviews, understandings, forecasts and memories. For
example, in many African countries borders of nation-states are the
result of drawing-board exercises by the former colonial powers, and
arbitrarily cut across ethnic and linguistic groups. Refugees who
cross international borders are often more generously received by
groups with whom they share strong ethnic and linguistic affinities.
The existence of symbolic ties across nation-states and the fact that
most refugees in the South are movers with few resources explain
why many refugees, especially in Africa, end up in countries adjoining the state of origin, and why only a minority ever moves on to
countries in the North.
Taking Talcott Parsons distinction between self-orientation and
collectivity-orientation as a point of departure (Parsons 1951: 60), we
can further distinguish between migration decision making that is
oriented towards the self and towards relevant collectives. Tensions
can arise between, for example, occupational self-fulfilment and the
expectation to contribute to the sustenance of the family in the country of origin, as Thomas and Znaniecki have amply demonstrated.
For example, movers at the onset of political persecution could decide further to support their family (collectivity orientation) although
imminent danger of being singled out as a target of violence strongly
suggests that they move immediately, albeit individually. To complicate matters even further, potential movers are not only members of
families but also citizens of a nation-state, members of religious or
ethnic groups, etc. In short, they occupy several roles, i.e. there are
cross-cutting ties.
self-oriented and
collectivity-oriented
decisions
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high transferral
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social capital
thomas faist
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tion) or to transfer the whole set of important social ties abroad (e.g.
family migration in the context of chain migration).
The first-time decision-making process
We may now conceptualise decision making and dynamics of movement in various networks and collectives. The most relevant units
constituting meso-levels are households and families, groups of kinship, the reference community, but also friends and acquaintances
in the workplace, and groupings such as ethnic, religious and political associations. Interest-guided survival strategies, normative obligations of family members to each other and expressions of collective identity are not mutually exclusive realms, the first relating to
hard-core purposive (economic) action, the second to the soft fringe
of social and the third to the even softer fringe of cultural action.
We must analyse the set of social relations that structures decision
making and the dynamics of migration, the social connectivity itself,
the direct and indirect connections between actors. Here, we have to
measure the density, strength, symmetry, range, and so on, of the
ties that bind and the transaction and conversion costs and gains of
various forms of capital. Furthermore, we must study the cultural
content of functional imperatives and normative expectations.
Using the threefold typology developed earlier, we can hypothesise that exchange relationships, albeit asymmetrical regarding
power and authority, may explain why family or household members
engage in a division of labour and migration. Thanks to reciprocity
as a form of social capital, household members can count on a fair
division of burdens and benefits. As a subsistence and socialising
unit, the household allocates economic roles and assigns tasks according to age, sex and kinship ties. It may give incentives to household members both at home and abroad to forgo more immediate satisfactions and carry burdens in the expectation that migratory
arrangements serve the household and its members in the long run
through factors such as acquisition of land, durable consumer goods
and improved human capital. Also, reciprocity could lead movers to
continue sending remittances home although they do not intend to
return. In cases of refugee flows social ties with actors in the country
of origin are likely to be severed quite abruptly. Family members are
often separated for long time periods. In these situations solidarity
between family members really needs a basis in past practices and
family bonds, including both reciprocity and solidarity as forms of
social capital.
On a cautionary note it should always be remembered that families or households are defined by different economic, political, cul-
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exchange
relationships
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thomas faist
tural, demographic and ecological settings and are not social units
with universal behaviour (see chapter 8). For example, it certainly
makes a difference whether we analyse movement from Africa to
Europe or from Latin America to the United States as well as from
various communities, regions or countries within these continents.
Factors such as household size and expectations directed towards
family members are likely to differ, not to speak of the variations
pertaining to historical links between sending and receiving regions,
current exit and admission policies, income, wage and unemployment differentials between sending and receiving countries.
subsequent
developments
of choice processes
So far, the main question has been why potential migrants decide
either to stay or to go. If we consider the dynamics of moving, questions then arise as to what happens after the migrants have moved
and why they return to the country of origin or stay in the receiving
country. After an analysis of first-time decisions on moving or staying we shall now specify the causal mechanisms that allow us to follow subsequent developments in the flow of choice processes over
time.
All the previous conceptual considerations on migration decision
making at the different levels of households, kinship relations (e.g.
families), friends and even larger groups suggest that there is a continuum along the definiteness of the break of social ties with the origin. Return migration is one case in which strong social ties between
sending and receiving regions matter.
Historical evidence of earlier transatlantic migrations also attests to this thesis: While estimates vary and although most records
of immigration are imprecise, return rates probably ranged from
25 to 60 per cent for European immigrants in the United States in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Piore 1979: 110).
Sometimes, even permanent migrants retained strong ties with their
rural regions of origin; they maintained their location-specific human and social capital, e.g. bought land, built houses, and contributed to village and city projects.
Furthermore, leaving and returning may not be decisions taken
only once. Empirical research suggests that they occur repeatedly over
the life course of a mover. This suggests that space in international
migration is inadequately described by focusing solely on countries
of origin and destination (see chapter 2). Rather, as international
migration proceeds, transnational spaces unfold that cross-cut na-
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facilitating social
networks
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selective access
thomas faist
ets, they are expected to pay back the expenses defrayed beforehand.
Often only formal agreements and not legal contracts undergird these
kinds of transactions between movers and intermediaries. Solidarity
may be a prime resource when the actors living and working abroad
send back remittances or arrange for their family members to join
them in the country of destination.
Access to migrant networks tends to be selective. Usually, it is not
open for all members of a sending. Access is governed by available
information and financial resources, but also by (in)formal norms
of reciprocity and solidarity. For potential movers to get access to
migrant networks does not necessarily require everyday social interaction and direct acquaintance within a community. Indirect social contacts maintained over large geographical distances may also
work. Although there is no empirical evidence yet, we can draw on
the strength of weak ties (Granovetter 1973). The argument here
is that weak ties may break more easily, but also transmit distant
information on migration opportunities more efficiently under certain circumstances, for example, potential movers may remember
persons in destination and sending countries with whom some kind
of contact existed in the past, or who know friends who know migrants. These persons then serve as brokers of information or even
gatekeepers for entry into the receiving countries, and access to jobs
and housing. Those to whom potential movers are weakly tied are
more likely to move in circles different from theirs and will thus have
access to resources such as information different from that of the
community of origin.
The value of networks for international movers and stayers differs, among other things, by the amount of human, financial, cultural and political capital available to the participants. We may hypothesise that if the amount of financial, human and cultural capital
held by individuals or collectives forming a network is very low, networks may act to retard the adjustment of movers into the receiving
nation-state (see also Pohjola 1991). The reason is that the capacity
to employ social capital crucially depends on the amount of other
forms of capital the respective network participants can muster. For
example, a comparative study on Colombian and Dominican immigrants in New York City during the 1980s found that movers with
higher amounts of human and financial capital were found to be less
likely to rely on kin at the place of destination, while movers who had
lower amounts of capital depended more on kinship networks to get
established (Gilbertson and Gurak 1992). Among others, the latter
group relied more heavily on relatives to assist them with housing
upon arrival. They received assistance in seeking employment. The
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participation of
collectives in
networks
Figure 7.3. Networks of movers and stayers and organisations in international migration
Networks of Movers and Stayers
Organisations
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thomas faist
a snowball effect
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relative deprivation
theory
inverted U-curve
thesis and S-shaped
curve
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thomas faist
Number or
Percentage of
Migrants
(Cumulative)
Time
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alised in the community. Yet all those who could participate in migration had a chance trying to overcome their sense of relative deprivation vis--vis the early movers. As the migrant potential is gradually
exhausted in the sending communities, some migrants settle in the
country of destination, some return to the country of origin for good
and others, probably a minority, may continue to move back and
forth for extended periods of time. Eventually, the volume declines
again.
Cumulative causation: feedback effects in the sending regions
Some of the feedback effects of migration that lead to further migration are part of a process called cumulative causation, dating back
to Gunnar Myrdals use of the term. As is clearly seen by the new
economics of migration, temporary migration may be a strategy of
risk diversification in rural households. Foreign wages sometimes
lead farmers to farm their land less intensively than before or even
let it lie fallow. If these migrants buy land, the outcome might be that
there is less land under intensive cultivation in the community, that
local food production is reduced, the price of staple crops raised and
the demand for labour decreased. These consequences may give incentives to the remaining members of the community to move, too.
Also, if land is more intensively cultivated, as farmer migrants
can now afford more capital, this could lead to more out-movement
because less manual labour is needed (Massey (1990). However, remittances spent on agriculture could actually increase agricultural
profits. In some Mexican villages, for example, the money from El
Norte has helped to develop productivity and output, and migrant
farmers have even been able to keep marginal land under production (Cornelius 1991: 108). In this latter case we could not expect
economic feedback effects to encourage further migration.
Even very high and increasing levels of migration do not necessarily imply the exodus of virtually all potential movers or the settlement of all movers in the receiving country. Assets and capital may
be location-specific and the transferral costs of social and other capitals may keep the volume lower than expected.
As to return rates, movers may maintain social ties with the sending region and build new ones in the receiving country. Caces and
others have tried to capture the first phenomenon on the household
or family level by using the concept of the shadow household. It includes all individuals whose principal commitments and obligations
are to a particular household but who are not presently residing in
that household (Caces et al. 1985: 8). The intensity of their commitments or obligations can be operationalised as indicators of house-
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thomas faist
hold affiliation. Of course, they may differ from one culture to another, and depend on the closeness of kinship and other social or
symbolic ties that keep the family or household together.
Therefore, decisions over moving or staying made by families and
individuals not only influence later decisions made by other individuals and households but also the long-term social and economic
arrangements within the families, households and the sending communities. Furthermore, changes in the networks and collectives in
the country of origin could be expected during the absence of movers
and upon their return. For example, migration may entail the reallocation of responsibilities which ultimately impact on the roles and
status of household members. In the absence of male adult members
of the household, the gendered division of labour may change, as
women may take over additional roles, or vice versa. Female contract workers from Indonesia in the oil-exporting countries of the
Gulf have often spent months away from their families, and special
arrangements have been made for the care of their children. In addition, there is empirical evidence that the traditional division of
labour along gender lines has broken down as women have taken
pride in autonomy and competence in handling family affairs in the
absence of their husbands, or as men have taken more responsibility
in childrearing during the overseas employment of their wives or as
women have increased their involvement in financial affairs upon
returning home (Hugo 1995).
Women more than men may be willing to settle in the receiving
countries. For example, male and female migrants from a Mexican
village in the United States in the late 1980s differed strongly in their
responses to whether they planned to return to Mexico on a relatively
permanent basis. In general, women looked much less favourably
than men on the idea of returning to live in Mexico. It could be that
women may not get a job on the formal labour market there, and that
womens housework in the Mexican countryside generally involves
more drudgery than it does in US cities. For men, however, rural
Mexico represents a place where tradition is adhered to and men can
be men through either work or leisure activities, while the United
States remains the place of work, proletarian and spatial discipline,
and diminished male authority (Goldring 1995).
On the community level in the country of origin the feedback effects can be conceptualised as virtuous and vicious cycles: In some
cases a virtuous cycle evolves because migration eases the pressure
on land and labour. Remittances enable subsistence. However, one
also has to consider that the dependence on harvests or crop price is
replaced by one on urban wages. Moreover, not only economically,
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but also politically, this may strengthen the voice option. This is especially the case when members of groups opposing the political regime in the country of origin move back and forth between the two
regions. Even political campaigning may take place in the country
of destination, e.g. Dominicans in New York City and Algerians in
France. Refugees in the country of destination may stay in contact
with political activists in the sending country. Sikh secessionists in
the United Kingdom and Kurdish activists in Germany constitute
clear-cut examples of this.
It is equally plausible that a vicious cycle evolves. When labour migration grows in importance, this works against economic and political co-operation at the village level. Financially, external links might
become the most significant and the nexus of social pressures and
economic imperatives that held a subsistence-oriented village together
could weaken. Here, new forms of solidarity and reciprocity may
arise as described by Thomas and Znaniecki (1918-20). If efforts to
build mutually beneficial arrangements of exchange, reciprocity and
solidarity fail, however, social disorganisation may ensue that rules
out the mutuality and the shared poverty, replacing it with involution and mutual hostility. What Edward Banfield has termed amoral
familism in Southern Italy is perhaps the accumulation of migration feedback effects in a village that became economically marginal.
According to Banfield this effect has been produced by three factors
acting in unison: a high death rate and important for our context
certain land tenure conditions and the absence of the institution of
the extended family (Banfield 1958: 10).
The importance of change and stability
One hypothesis is: the stronger the commitment of migrants to social units in the country of origin (not only in terms of strength of
social ties weak and strong but also regarding the content reciprocity and solidarity), the more likely it is that return migration of
successful migrants takes place. In turn, the higher the rate of this
kind of return migration, the greater the likelihood that positive economic feedback effects occur.
To determine the rates of return, we have to ask to what degree
the goals of the actual movers could be fulfilled while living abroad
and whether a change in their preferences has taken place in the
course of their absence from the sending place. Firstly, high rates of
return migration may attest to the fact of the successful achievement
of some goals involved (e.g. transfer of remittances and skills). Or,
alternatively, it could be an indicator that the goals aspired to could
not be achieved, a sign of failure. Secondly, return may also indicate
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illusion of return
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transnational
social spaces
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Notes
1 The author would like to thank his collaborators in the Migration and
Development project for fruitful comments. Thanks also go to the authors colleagues at the centre for Social Policy Research and at the Institute
for Intercultural and International Studies at the University of Bremen.
Moreover, various individuals contributed stimulating criticism that sometimes differs vigorously from the positions taken by the author: Hartmut
Esser, Jutta Gatter, Jrgen Gerdes, Hans-Joachim Hoffmann-Nowotny,
Stefan Leibfried, Bernhard Peters, Stefan Sandbrink, Charles Tilly,
Madeleine Tress and Carsten G. Ullrich.
2 Social capital is created when the relations between persons change in
ways that facilitate action (Coleman 1990: 304).
04-03-10 15:56
Anthropologist Steven Vertovec played a crucial pioneering role in the development of transnationalism studies in Europe. In this article published
in 1999 in a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies on transnational communities, Vertovec reviews the literature on transnationalism and suggests
several themes to disentangle the term. He presents transnationalism successively: as a social morphology, as a type of consciousness, as a mode of
cultural reproduction, as an avenue of capital, as a site of political action and
as a reconstruction of locality. This categorisation helped to renew the field of
transnationalism studies, which was at the time slowly running out of breath
and imagination. Furthermore, Vertovec presents a very clear research agenda for his programme on transnational communities, sponsored by the UKs
Economic and Social Research Council. Today, this programme remains intact as one of the major attempts to systematise research on transnationalism in Europe. It is also one of the more innovative initiatives in the area of
marge tekst
migration studies.
To the extent that any single -ism might arguably exist, most social scientists working in the field may agree that transnationalism
broadly refers to multiple ties and interactions linking people or institutions across the borders of nation-states. Of course, there are
many historical precedents and parallels to such patterns (see, for instance, Bamyeh 1993 as well as the introduction to this special issue).
Transnationalism (as long-distance networks) certainly preceded the
nation. Yet today these systems of ties, interactions, exchange and
mobility function intensively and in real time while being spread
throughout the world. New technologies, especially involving telecommunications, serve to connect such networks with increasing
speed and efficiency. Transnationalism describes a condition in
which, despite great distances and notwithstanding the presence of
international borders (and all the laws, regulations and national nar-
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defining
transnationalism
steven vertovec
ratives they represent), certain kinds of relationships have been globally intensified and now take place paradoxically in a planet-spanning
yet common however virtual arena of activity (see among others, Glick Schiller, Basch and Szanton-Blanc 1992; Castells 1996;
Hannerz 1996).
Transnationalism represents a topic of rapidly growing interest
witnessed in the proliferation of academic articles, university seminars and conferences devoted to exploring its nature and contours.
While broadly remaining relevant to the description of transnationalism offered above, however, most of this burgeoning work refers
to quite variegated phenomena. We have seen increasing numbers of
studies on transnational... communities, capital flows, trade, citizenship, corporations, inter-governmental agencies, non-governmental
organizations, politics, services, social movements, social networks,
families, migration circuits, identities, public spaces, public cultures.
These are obviously phenomena of very different natures, requiring
research and theorization on different scales and levels of abstraction. In the excited rush to address an interesting area of global activity and theoretical development, there is not surprisingly much
conceptual muddling.
It is a useful exercise therefore to step back at this point in order to review and sort out the expanding repertoire of ideas and approaches so as perhaps to gain a better view of what we are talking
about as transnationalism is variously discussed.
Transnationalism as...
In the Introduction to this special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies,
Alejandro Portes, Luis E. Guarnizo and Patricia Landolt (1999) rigorously describe the meaning of transnationalism as it pertains to a
significant, and arguably new, category of contemporary migrants.
While others have approached migration by way of addressing transnationalism, Portes, Guarnizo and Landolt emphasize that it is the
scale of intensity and simultaneity of current long-distance, crossborder activities especially economic transactions which provide
the recently emergent, distinctive and, in some contexts, now normative social structures and activities which should merit the term
transnationalism. This is a compelling contribution to theory.
In a number of recent works on transnationalism (many of which
do not focus on migration) the characteristics of intensity and simultaneity are also, in different ways, offered as the terms hallmarks.
However, such works offer an often confusing array of perspec-
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different
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ethnic diasporas
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2. Type of consciousness
Particularly in works concerning global diasporas (especially within
Cultural Studies) there is considerable discussion surrounding a
kind of diaspora consciousness marked by dual or multiple identifications. Hence there are depictions of individuals awareness of
decentred attachments, of being simultaneously home away from
home, here and there or, for instance, British and something else.
While some migrants identify more with one society than the other,
write Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Basch and Cristina Szanton-Blanc
(1992, p. 11), the majority seem to maintain several identities that
link them simultaneously to more than one nation. Indeed, James
Clifford (1994, p. 322) finds, The empowering paradox of diaspora
is that dwelling here assumes a solidarity and connection there. But
there is not necessarily a single place or an exclusivist nation... [It is]
the connection (elsewhere) that makes a difference (here).
Of course, it is a common consciousness or bundle of experiences
which bind many people into the social forms or networks noted in
the section above. The awareness of multi-locality stimulates the desire to connect oneself with others, both here and there who share
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the same routes and roots (see Gilroy 1987, 1993). For Stuart Hall
(1990), the condition of diaspora or transnationalism is comprised of
ever-changing representations that provide an imaginary coherence
for a set of malleable identities. Robin Cohen (1996, p. 516) develops
Halls point with the observation that
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imaginary
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new ethnicities
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An increasingly significant channel for the flow of cultural phenomena and the transformation of identity is through global media and
communications. Appadurai and Breckenridge (1989, p. iii) comment that
Complex transnational flows of media images and messages perhaps
create the greatest disjunctures for diasporic populations, since in
the electronic media in particular, the politics of desire and imagination are always in contest with the politics of heritage and nostalgia.
transnational
corporations
4. Avenue of capital
Many economists, sociologists and geographers have seen transnational corporations [TNCs] as the major institutional form of transnational practices and the key to understanding globalization (see,
for instance, Sklair 1995). This is due not least to the sheer scale
of operations, since much of the worlds economic system is dominated by the TNCs (Dicken 1992). TNCs represent globe-spanning
structures or networks that are presumed to have largely jettisoned
their national origins. Their systems of supply, production, marketing, investment, information transfer and management often create
the paths along which much of the worlds transnational activities
flow (cf. Castells 1996).
Alongside the TNCs, Leslie Sklair (1998) proposes that there has
arisen a transnational capitalist class comprised of TNC executives,
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globalizing state bureaucrats, politicians and professionals, and consumerist elites in merchandizing and the media. Together, Sklair
claims, they constitute a new power elite whose interests are global,
rather than exclusively local or national, and who thereby control
most of the world economy.
In addition to the Big Players in the global economy, however, the
little players who comprise the bulk of transnational communities
are making an ever greater impact. The relatively small amounts of
money which migrants transfer as remittances to their places of origin now add up to at least $75 billion world-wide (Martin 1994). The
scale of this activity has soared over the past thirty years: in Algeria,
the value of remittances climbed from $178 million in 1970 to $993
million in 1993; in India from $80 million in 1970 to over $3 billion
in 1993; and in Egypt from $29 million in 1970 to nearly $5 billion
in 1993 (World Bank 1995).
Beyond what they mean to the families receiving them, for national
governments remittances represent the quickest and surest source
of foreign exchange. Indeed, a great number of national economies
today, such as the Philippines, Pakistan and many Latin American
states, absolutely depend on monetary transfers of many kinds from
nationals abroad. This fact has prompted many countries to develop
policies for the transnational reincorporation of nationals abroad
into the home market and polity (Guarnizo and Smith 1998). One
often cited case is India, which provides a range of favourable conditions for non-resident Indians [NRIs] to use their foreign-honed
skills and capital to invest in, found or resuscitate Indian industries
(Lessinger 1992; ct. The Economist, 6 June 1998). Such policies have
impacts beyond the economic dimension. As Katharyne Mitchell
(1997b, p. 106) observes, the interest of the state in attracting the investments of wealthy transmigrants widens the possibilities for new
kinds of national narratives and understandings.
Resources do not just flow back to peoples country of origin but
to and fro and throughout the network. Robin Cohen (1997, p. 160)
describes part of this dynamic; anywhere within the web of a global
diaspora,
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Traders place orders with cousins, siblings and kin back home;
nieces and nephews from the old country stay with uncles and
aunts while acquiring their education or vocational training; loans
are advanced and credit is extended to trusted intimates; and jobs
and economically advantageous marriages are found for family
members.
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transnational
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INGOs
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ethnic diasporas
The politics of homeland engage members of diasporas or transnational communities in a variety of ways. The relations between
immigrants, home-country politics and politicians have always been
dynamic, as Matthew Frye Jacobson (1995) and Nancy Foner (1997)
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remind us with regard to the Irish, Italians, Poles and Jews in turnof-the-century America. Yet now expanded activities and intensified
links are creating, in many respects, deterritorialized nation-states
(Basch, Glick Schiller and Szanton-Blanc 1994). Political parties now
often establish offices abroad in order to canvass immigrants, while
immigrants themselves organize to lobby the home government.
Increasingly, emigrants are able to maintain or gain access to health
and welfare benefits, property rights, voting rights, or citizenship in
more than one country (around half the worlds countries recognize
dual citizenship or dual nationality; see Traces world news digest
No.1 on the Transnational Communities Programme website, URL
address below). Other forms of recognition have developed as well.
For instance, in Haiti, a country that is politically divided into nine
departments or states, during President Aristides regime overseas
Haitians were recognized as the Tenth Department complete with
its own ministry (Basch, Glick Schiller and Szanton-Blanc 1994).
And in one of the strangest cases of transnational politics, the government of El Salvador has provided free legal assistance to political
refugees (fleeing their own regime!) in the United States so that they
may obtain asylum and remain there, remitting some $1 billion annually (Mahler 1998).
social fields
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Researching transnationalism
The subject of transnationalism is receiving ever greater attention
through a range of approaches and disciplines. Nonini and Ong
(1997, p. 13), however, are critical of the creeping dilution of research
by a cultural studies approach that treats transnationalism as a set
of abstracted, dematerialized cultural flows, giving scant attention
either to the concrete, everyday changes in peoples lives or to the
structural reconfiguration that accompany global capitalism (cf.
Mitchell 1997a,b).
While there is certainly much to be learned about the construction and management of meaning offered by cultural studies, there
is immediate need for more, in-depth and comparative empirical
studies of transnational human mobility, communication, social ties,
channels and flows of money, commodities, information and images
as well as how these phenomena are made use of. In addition to
helping us to understand the rapid forms of change (and their historical antecedents) which transnationalism represents, more social
scientific studies will help us to recognize how and why, as Nancy
Foner (1997, p. 23) puts it, some groups [and places] are likely to be
more transnational than others and we need research that explores
and explains the differences. Within immigrant groups, there is also
variation in the frequency, depth and range of transnational ties.
Luis Eduardo Guarnizo and Michael Peter Smith (1998) outline
some serious shortcomings in contemporary theorization of transnationalism. Perhaps foremost among these is the question of the appropriate level of analysis and the connection between scales. In the
introduction to this special issue, Alejandro Portes, Luis E. Guarnizo
and Patricia Landolt (1999) have addressed these issues and made
significant strides in establishing, delimiting, analytically defining
and typologizing transnational phenomena.
George E. Marcus (1995) has provided a useful methodological
outline of multi-sited ethnography essential to the study of transnationalism. Such research involves tracing a cultural formation across
and within multiple sites of activity (ibid, p. 96) by way of methods
designed around chains, paths, threads, conjunctions, or juxtapositions of locations (ibid, p. 105). Marcus advocates approaches which
either follow the... people (especially migrants), the thing (commodities, gifts, money, works of art, and intellectual property), the
shortcomings in
transnationalism
theories
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2. Economics
Global Economic Networks a theme representing a core area of
the programme, including a study of the Russian diaspora and
post-Soviet economic restructuring, research on British experts in
global financial centres, an examination of Chinese global entrepreneurship with special reference to Southeast Asia, plus a study
of production and marketing strategies surrounding commodity
flows between India and Britain;
Transnational Corporations [TNCs] focused on a study of
Japanese and Korean corporations and their managers in Britain;
Transnational Household Strategies work assessing the impact
of legal status and children on the strategies of female migrant
domestic workers in Britain, plus research on remittance patterns
among Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in Britain;
3. Politics
Global Political Networks includes research on Turkish political
networks in Europe and on the indigenous peoples movement
and its localization in Ecuador and Bolivia;
City, Region, National and Supra-National Policies consisting of
a comparative study of dual citizenship strategies, of the state and
of immigrants, in Canada, Germany and Britain;
Gender, Communities and Power addressed by a project examining gendered aspects of British and Singaporian transmigration
to China;
4. Society and culture
Social Forms and Institutions concentrating on a set of three
interlinked projects concerning culture flows in societies of the
Arab Gulf;
Cultural Reproduction and Consumption addressed by two teams,
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transnationalism as
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one concerned with literature and film within a variety of diasporas, the other with the place of broadcast media among Turks in
Europe;
Transnational Religious Communities devoted to a multi-sited
study of a prominent Sufi Muslim movement.
While conducted independently, the projects will gain a kind of synergy through their coordination as a programme.
The programme does not exist solely for the projects, however.
Other facets include: a weekly seminar series; an annual conference,
each year devoted to one of the programmes key themes; workshops
organized within Britain and abroad focusing on a variety of issues
and bringing together academics and non-academics. A Working
Paper series including papers by such distinguished writers as
Alejandro Portes (1998), Zygmunt Baumann (1998) and Stephen
Castles (1998) has been established in both hardcopy and internetdownloadable formats. The Transnational Communities programme
will also be supporting a newsletter, world news digest, and three
book series. Information on the projects and all other aspects of
the research programme can be found on the ESRC Transnational
Communities Programme website (http://www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk).
Although invoked with a variety of meanings, transnationalism
provides an umbrella concept for some of the most globally transformative processes and developments of our time. The terms multivocality may actually prove to be advantageous: as Alejandro Portes
(1998, p. 2) points out, the concept may actually perform double
duty as part of the theoretical arsenal with which we approach the
world system structures, but also as an element in a less developed
enterprise, namely the analysis of the everyday networks and patterns of social relationships that emerge in and around those structures. The ESRC Transnational Communities Programme, working
in conjunction with parallel projects and programmes in Europe,
North America and the Asia-Pacific will add significant new data and
analyses to test some of transnationalisms more speculative conceptualizations.
04-03-10 15:56
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References
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KEARNEY, MICHAEL 1995 The local and the global: the anthropology of globalization and transnationalism, Annual Review of
Anthropology, vol. 24, pp. 547-65
KING, RUSSELL, CONNELL, JOHN and WHITE, PAUL (eds) 1995
Writing across Worlds: Migration and Literature, London: Routledge
KRIESBERG, LOUIS 1997 Social movements and global transformation, in Jackie Smith, Charles Chatfield and Ron Pagnucco
(eds), Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics, Syracuse,
NY: Syracuse University Press, pp. 3-18
LESSINGER, JOHANNA 1992 Nonresident-Indian investment and
Indias drive for industrial modernization, in Frances Abrahamer
Rothstein and Michael L. Blim (eds), Anthropology and the Global
Factory, New York: Bergin & Garvey, pp. 62-82
MAHLER, SARAH J. 1998 Theoretical and empirical contributions
toward a research agenda for transnationalism, in Michael Peter
Smith and Luis Eduardo Guarnizo (eds), Transnationalism from
Below, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, pp. 64-100
MARCUS, GEORGE E. 1995 Ethnography inlof the world system: the emergence of multi-sited ethnography, Annual Review of
Anthropology, vol. 24, pp. 95-117
MARTIN, PHILIP 1994 International migration and trade, HCO
Dissemination Notes No. 29, The World Bank
MITCHELL, KATHARYNE 1997a Different diasporas and the hype
of hybridity, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, vol.
15, pp. 533-53
1997b Transnational discourse: bringing geography back in,
Antipode, vol. 29, pp. 101-14
MORLEY, DAVID and ROBINS, KEVIN 1995 Spaces of Identity:
Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries,
London: Routledge
NONINI, DONALD M. and ONG, AIHWA 1997 Chinese transnationalism as an alternative modernity, in Aihwa Ong and Donald
M. Nonini (eds), Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of
Modern Chinese Transnationalism, London: Routledge, pp. 3-33
PORTES, ALEJANDRO 1998 Globalisation from Below: the Rise
of Transnational Communities, ESRC Transnational Communities
Programme Working Paper No. 1
GUARNIZO, LUIS E. and LANDOLT, PATRICIA 1999 The
study of transnationalism: pitfalls and promise of an emergent research field, Ethnic and Racial Studies (this issue)
ROBINS, KEVIN 1998 Spaces of Global Media, ESRC Transnational
Communities Programme Working Paper No.6
SAFRAN, WILLIAM 1991 Diasporas in modern societies: myths of
homeland and return, Diaspora, vo1. 1, pp. 83-99
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Introduction
Established forms of international migration which have historically
been very important (nineteenth-century settler migrations from
Europe to the Americas, post-war guest-worker migration from the
Mediterranean to northwest Europe, refugee migrations post-World
Wars) have for too long now shaped our thinking about how migration is conceptualised and theorised.1 These migrations, and their
conceptual codification by writers ranging in time from Ravenstein
(1885, 1889) to Sjaastad (1962), Lee (1966), Harris and Todaro (1970)
and White and Woods (1980), have led to the assumption, or at least
the inference, that all migrants are poor and uneducated. This assumption, when applied to European (and other) migrations today,
leads to false characterisations: for instance, to the notion that the es-
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new geographies of
migration
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tially geographical, involving human movement across space, influencing and changing the environments of both the places of arrival
and of departure; it is demographic, since it affects the structures of
the populations at both origin and destination; it is economic to the
extent that many shifts in population (especially of workers) are due
to economic imbalances between areas; it may be a political problem,
where states feel the need to control or restrict departure or entry of
international migrants and refugees; it involves social psychology inasmuch as migrants motives for leaving and their problems of adapting to the new host society have to be studied; and it is a sociological
phenomenon since the social structure and cultural systems, again
both in the places of origin and arrival, are affected by migration, and
in turn affect the migrant.
Anthropologists might feel offended at being left out of the above
list, but to some extent their fields of enquiry have been subsumed by
Jansen under his definition of migration as a sociological phenomenon; nevertheless, the important recent research by anthropologists
on a wide range of migration-related issues to do with culture, identity, transnationalism and gender deserves more prominent mention
here (even if nearly all of it post-dates Jansens overview). And the
above list is by no means exhaustive, given the interest shown in migration studies by historians, lawyers and human rights specialists,
social policy analysts, philosophers, literary and media scholars and
others. As the map of learning constantly evolves, so fresh perspectives are opened up; in recent years, for instance, migration has come
to be seen as a crucial element in cultural studies.
The need, therefore, is for an interdisciplinary (rather than a
cross-disciplinary or a multidisciplinary) synthesis which brings together and integrates a range of perspectives, frameworks, theoretical
stances and methodologies in order to study migration (or the various forms of migration) in a manner which is holistic (embedding
migration in its social context) and which recognises its multifaceted
diversity. This sounds like a challenging agenda, but it can be (and is
being) achieved.3 Too often, on the other hand, does one read papers
which attempt to model or explain migrant behaviour by reference
to economic or psychological variables which seem to have scant
linkage with the reality of the migrant experience in the specific context in which they are being studied; too often are the economic data
upon which some analyses are built insufficiently scrutinised (if they
are questioned at all) for the accuracy and relevance of the sources.
Too often, also, does one come across qualitative research which has
insufficient claim to rigour or representativeness; the insights might
be valid for the group studied, but often the reaction is so what?
interdisciplinary
study of migration
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barrieres to
interdisciplinarity
russell king
The results generated by a given micro-scale study may be very different from those of similar groups studied elsewhere, but comparative
analysis necessary for migration studies to reach a mature stage as
a unidisciplinary or postdisciplinary branch of the social sciences
and humanities is too often lacking.
The interdisciplinary study of migration is only achieved over
time: by studying migration assiduously in different contexts, by
having benefited from an interdisciplinary formation (something
not easy to achieve within the UK university system), and by wide
reading and engagement with migration scholars from different
disciplinary and interdisciplinary backgrounds. The objective is to
overcome single-discipline narrowness for instance, by exposing
the lack of reality and humanity in many econometric studies or by
critiqueing the myopia of folkloric studies carried out in some tiny
corner of the world and also to be open-minded towards the numerous ideological paradigms which often underlie discipline-based
studies (neo-classical economics, Marxist sociology, systems theory
in its various forms, theories of transnational identity or hybridity,
etc.). Further barriers to a holistic, synthesising study of migration
are posed by the division of the migration process into its many
fragmented component stages (departure, arrival, return) and by the
hegemonic role of national models and discourses of immigration
and ethnicity (assimilation, integration, multiculturalism, ius sanguinis, etc.). In short, disciplinary and paradigmatic closure are the enemy of an effective, sympathetic study of human migration (Castles,
2000: 15-25).
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the migratory
process and the
product of migration
One might also add that migration influences the lives of other migrants in the destinations. The study of transnational communities,
for many scholars the new migration paradigm of the last half-dozen
years, affords an integration of patterns of movement within the establishment, maintenance and evolution of migrant communities in
two or more countries (Glick Schiller et al., 1995; Portes et al., 1999;
Pries, 1999; Faist, 2000).
Internal versus international migration
We have another primary distinction between studies of internal and
those of international migration. Again, rather separate literatures
have evolved, with somewhat different conceptual frameworks and
models.4 Only very recently has research begun to link the two scales:
searching for common conceptual models; noting how internal migration is often sequenced or interleaved with international migration; examining how international migrants and ethnic minorities
are mobile within the host countries; and realising that, as nationstates become less important, so the distinction between internal and
international mobility becomes blurred. This is obviously the case
within the European Union, and has particular meaning for thirdcountry nationals for whom different types of European boundaries
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(e.g. within and outside Schengenland) present different (im)permeabilities for their movement and access to rights.
Studies of migration that focus on the household or family have
often noted how, within such a unit, different individuals migrate in
different ways to different destinations, both internal and international. Often such a division of labour in migration may be gendered,
with a difference between men and women as to who goes abroad
and who migrates internally.
Another blurring of the difference between internal and international migration occurs when international borders change. The
breakup of Yugoslavia or the former Soviet Union, or the unification
of Germany, are examples of significant international frontier shifts
which affect migration status, in effect turning internal migrants
into international movers, and vice versa. This raises an interesting
question: are there internal migrants who are destined to become international migrants at some stage in the future, not through actual
movement but through some hitherto unforeseen political event?
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globalisation
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privatised
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the last 15 years, since the European migrations of Fordism, family reunion and post-Fordist economic restructuring (King, 1993a;
Blotevogel and King, 1996; Koser and Lutz, 1998).
crisis-driven
migrations
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of whom have now been pressured to return in the wake of the 1995
Dayton Agreement which ended hostilities in Bosnia and provided
for the planned repatriation of the displaced and refugee populations.
The Albanian emigration of the last ten years is a good example
of how the notion of crisis can differentially interact with migration,
producing a continually evolving dialogue between the two terms
(Pastore, 1998):
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Albanian
emigration
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a kind of semi-permanent feature of the Italian and Greek political and press discourse, which tends overwhelmingly to stigmatise Albanians as criminals (Jamieson and Silj, 1998; Lazaridis
and Wickens, 1999). On the one hand this might be thought to be
a negation of the very meaning of the term crisis; on the other,
it asks important questions about how media representations of
migrants come to be constructed, and about the power of such
representations to influence public opinion.
sex, marriage
and maids
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skilled migration
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lifestyle migrations
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amounts of time during the year living and relaxing in the warm
south illustrate very well one of the dimensions along which the
divide between migration and more frequent forms of mobility is
particularly difficult to draw. The spectrum of movements ranges
from tourism through seasonal residence to permanent relocation to
a holiday area, such as international retirement migration (Williams
and Hall, 2000). In some recently completed work I carried out
with Tony Warnes and Allan Williams (King et al., 2000), we found
that British retiree migrants to southern Spain and the Portuguese
Algarve generally had extensive prior experience of visiting the region on holiday before making the semi-permanent retirement
move.9 Repeated holidays in sunny seaside resorts had frequently
led to a progressively more committed engagement with a destination which was seen as both enjoyable and desirable, and as increasingly familiar. Often the purchase of a flat or holiday villa as a second
home became a stepping-stone to a more-or-less permanent transfer
of residence upon retirement.
These forms of movement and dual place connections are not dissimilar to movement patterns associated with other kinds of transnational community, although the motivations behind the establishment of such transnational communities may be very different. In
contrast to diasporic communities spawned by refugee scatterings
or transnational communities built out of labour migrations, the
British on the Costa del Sol (or the Germans in Majorca, or whatever)
are engaging in migration and resettlement as a lifestyle activity.
They have become heliotropes, permanent sun-seekers, and all the
evidence suggests their numbers are set to grow (King et al., 2000).
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Conclusion
This paper has attempted to map out both some new migratory forms
and processes in Europe, and the attendant conceptual and methodological challenges of how to approach their study. These new forms
of migration derive from new international divisions of labour, the
new European geopolitics after the Cold War, new motivations of
migrants (above all the retreat from labour migrations linked to
Fordist production systems), new space-time flexibilities and technologies, and the relatively new notion of migration as consumption
and self-discovery. Thus, and in a variety of ways, migration processes in Europe (and globally) have certainly become more diverse in
the past 20 years or so. Whilst the structural underpinnings of the
new migrations have been implicit throughout much of the forego-
new migratory
forms
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Mediterranean
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ing account, there remain some reservations about how new these
migrations are. Koser and Lutz (1998: 4-5), for example, cautioned
against a posteriori descriptions of newness and pointed out that historical analysis often exposes the arbitrariness of the application of
the term new to a social phenomenon such as changing migration.
Nevertheless, they seem to have been broadly happy with the appellation new, and theirs is not the only book on European migration to
include this word in its title (King, 1993b; Thrnhardt, 1996).
This diversification and (albeit contested) newness of migratory
forms encourages both the reassertion of some basic tenets of migration study, and opens up the potential, indeed the necessity, of new
methodological approaches.
Firstly, I reiterate my earlier plea for an integrated interdisciplinary approach which also recognises paradigmatic plurality and the
value of mixed methodologies combining, for instance, economic
analysis, class analysis, studies of ethnicity and culture, and attempts
to capture the richness of the human experience of migration.
Secondly, the need for comparative analysis remains paramount if
studies of migration are to rise above the ideographic. Comparisons
can be between migratory groups (in the same country), or across
countries (comparing similar or contrasting migratory groups), or
across time.
Thirdly, we need to recognise what I would call the double embeddedness of migration; at the individual scale, migration must be
embedded in a migrants life-course (and in some cases of the lifecourse of the family, even across generations); and at the macro scale,
the study of migration must be embedded in the societies and social
processes of both the countries/places of origin and of destination.
Fourthly, it has to be acknowledged that many of the new forms
of migration/mobility surveyed or mentioned in this paper are inadequately captured by statistics, if at all. There is a tendency for migration not to be documented if it is not seen as problematic. Hence less
and less reliance can be placed on data sources such as Eurostat or
the OECDs SOPEMI database for measuring human spatial mobility in Europe. More reliance will need to be put on primary research
surveys carried out on the new migratory forms.
As well as new data-frames, new terms and metaphors are required to describe the new mobility types which challenge the binary polarisation of origin and destination and the semi-permanence
of the common notion of migration. Regarding new metaphors of
migration, I am much attracted by the notion put forward by Ribas
Mateos (2001) of the Mediterranean caravanserai a common
space for migrant groups and flows where they can arrive, stay a
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no borderless utopia
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Migrations can be spectacular or mundane, or, as noted a little earlier, regarded as problematic or non-problematic. By and large, the
mundane, unproblematic forms of movement are left unrecorded
and often unstudied. The spectacular, problematic ones get all the
attention, although here it must be stressed that the nature of the
spectacle is often exaggerated and distorted by its media portrayal
and politicisation. Even the notions of home and away or abroad
have become blurred. Members of transnational communities
may feel at home in two or more places (or not feel at home anywhere). Furthermore, one can be homeless at home, as evidenced
by Jansens (1998) narratives of post-Yugoslav identities; or one can
be transnational at home, without ever having migrated, as Golbert
(2001) demonstrates in her study of Ukrainian Jews.
These new, more diverse and flexible varieties of mobility/migration pose obvious challenges for migration policy, especially within
the mind-set of Fortress Europe, and for attitudes towards regulation, governance and citizenship (Pugliese, 1995; Geddes, 2000).
The issue is further complicated by the fact that, in contrast to earlier
generations of migrants (for example the European guestworkers
of the 1960s who were functionally and sociologically rather homogeneous and whose migration was highly regulated), many national
migration flows into Europe nowadays are mixed flows made up of
refugees, economic migrants, people with high skills and those with
no skills. Moreover, many migrants change categories in order to
maximise the success of their migration project, or they may move
between destinations for the same reason. All these facets of the
contemporary map of European migration sit uneasily with regulatory regimes of migration management and control. National bodies
regulate contiguous space, whereas migrations function in network
space. States want to sedentarise and integrate migrants (or certain
accepted categories of them), but mobile people with multiple place
affiliations and hybrid or cosmopolitan identities have no wish to fit
in to the ideology of one national identity. Meanwhile, all around
Europe there seems to be a constantly shifting discourse as to the
desirability of migration, now very much related to economic, labour
force and demographic projections for the next few decades (see, for
instance, Visco, 2000).
Finally, in stressing the importance of the new migratory circumstances of a post-industrial, post-modern Europe, I draw attention
again to movements motivated above all by non-economic, or only
partly economic, considerations those linked to life-cycle such as
student and retirement migrations, both of which have potential
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for future expansion. Within the same vein, the migration of children has scarcely been studied, at least from the childs perspective
(Dobson and Stillwell, 2000). Quite rightly, women have become an
important new focus for migration research in Europe, recognising
their central role in the migration process and as cultural agents in
the structuring of ethnic communities and their relation with host
societies. On this, as on so many other topics in the unfolding map
of new migrations, much still needs to be done. These are exciting
times to be a migration researcher in Europe!
Acknowledgements
This paper is a revised version of a keynote address to the conference
on Strangers and Citizens: Challenges for European Governance,
Identity, Citizenship, University of Dundee, 17-19 March 2001.
Earlier versions were presented and discussed at the conference
on Old Differences and New Similarities: American and European
Immigration in Comparative Perspective (Italian Academy,
Columbia University, New York, 12-13 November 1999) and at New
Patterns, New Theories: A Conference on International Migration
(Nottingham Trent University, 11-13 September 2000). I thank contributors to the discussions following the presentation of the paper at these three fora, and also the many postgraduate students in
Migration Studies at the University of Sussex for their stimulating
conversations Clara Guillo, Nick Mai, Enric Ruiz-Gelices and Chris
Whitwell will all recognise their own individual inputs somewhere in
the text.
Notes
1 Curiously, each of these evolved in ways somewhat different to those originally expected and defined by the terminology: for instance settler migrations involved a lot of unanticipated (and unrecorded) return, and guestworkers generally ended up by staying and transforming themselves into
more or less settled ethnic communities (King, 2000).
2 I nominate these examples of particular nationalities because recent work
on these migrant groups in Europe has demonstrated that they often have
high levels of education and professional expertise which, by and large, they
are compelled to leave behind when they take up what are (for them) much
more remunerative jobs as cleaners, building labourers, streethawkers or
farm workers in destination countries such as France, Italy or Greece: see,
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for example, Chell (1997); Knights (1996); Lazaridis and Wickens (1999);
Riccio (2001). Whilst experiences and reactions differ between and amongst
the various migrant nationalities, some are able to draw strength from their
own cultural values and self-knowledge of their own multilingualism and
cosmopolitan experiences see, for instance, Riccio (2001) and Zinn (1994)
on the Senegalese in Italy.
See, for instance, a number of recent books which attempt an interdisciplinary analysis of the general field of international migration: Brettell and
Hollifield (2000), Faist (2000), Hammar et al. (1997), and Papastergiadis
(2000).
Although it is also true, as Cohen (1995: 5) points out, that some of the early
pioneering studies of migration as a generic process sought to minimise or
overlook this distinction (cf. Lee, 1966; Petersen, 1958; Ravenstein, 1885,
1889; Zelinsky, 1971).
Except, perhaps, after death. The burial place of migrants has particular symbolic meaning, the implications of which have scarcely been considered by
researchers.
The term migrant shopping comes originally, I believe, from a workshop
paper prepared by Robin Cohen (1997). Enlarging Cohens notion, the
shopping market for migrants functions in two directions. Firstly, individual countries shop for migrants within a global market in order to satisfy
certain needs characterised by domestic labour supply shortfall. The UK,
for instance, has recently recruited nurses from Spain and the Philippines.
According to Cohen, the two countries which have perfected the system of
immigration shopping are Australia and Canada. They have structurally
linked their economic development, manpower and immigration departments and are intent on finding selected migrants to fill slots in their labour
market, including business entrepreneurs who bring investment and create new wealth and jobs, and skilled labour migrants for the labour-short
IT sector. The second expression of the migrant shopping market is where
individual migrants shop around for possibilities and opportunities in different countries, often moving on when better economic or social openings
become available in another country. Andall (1999) presents a well-worked
case of this type of migrant shopping in her study of Cape Verdean women
in Europe, whilst Guiraudon (2000) tackles the issue of venue shopping on
the part of asylum-seekers, also in the European context.
To be more precise, the target proposed by the then European Commission
in 1987 was that, by 1992, a tenth of EU graduates would have spent at
least three months of their higher education in another country. By 1992 the
achieved figure was 4% rather than 10% (Adia et al., 1994: 2, 39). Although
the 10% objective was reaffirmed in 1997, this was accompanied by a statement that its achievement would be unlikely, due above all to financial pressures on students (Jallade et al., 1997). Meanwhile, the total European population of students has grown considerably.
At a recent Erasmus conference in Spain, the Italian philosopher and semiologist Umberto Eco said that the main benefits of the EUs Erasmus
programme were as much sexual as cultural. According to Eco, student
exchanges and bi- and multi-lingualism encouraged mixed marriages and
relationships across Europes national frontiers. See report in Times Higher
Education Supplement, 6 July 2001.
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9 This experience of holidaying in the region prior to the migration upon retirement was less important in the other two southern European destinations we surveyed, Malta and Tuscany. Here, career links, family ties and
military service were common additional factors (King et al., 2000: 94-5).
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russell king
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This article by political scientist Virginie Guiraudon was awarded the prize
for 2001s best European Union Studies Association conference paper.
Combining the insights of James March and Johan Olsens Garbage Can
Model with a sociological approach focused on power competition between
actors, it explains the incomplete and complex constitution of the European
immigration policy domain. Guiraudon is one of the first scholars to demonstrate so brilliantly that the melding of policy studies and political sociology
can be fruitful. She helps make sense of the gradual Europeanisation of immigration, asylum and anti-discrimination policy. Whats more, Guiraudons
work seeks to overcome shortcomings of the simple legal approach long
dominant in European Union studies.
*EDITORS NOTE An earlier version of this article was presented as
a paper to the 2001 EUSA conference and was awarded the prize for
the best 2001 EUSA conference paper.
The prize selection committee (Dorothee Heisenberg, James
Hollifield, George Ross) noted that Guiraudons paper captures the
complexity of contemporary EU policy formation in the immigration
area ... [and] is remarkable for its recognition and mastery of different streams of policy-making over time. It foregrounds real EU politics in an unstable, constantly changing set of institutional arenas
without imposing artificial social science parsimony. Reading the
paper we enter the EU as it is, not as we would like it to be in our a
priori models. Guiraudons refreshing theoretical quest instead goes
toward the sociology of organizations, borrowing from March and
Olsons garbage can approach.
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masked complexity
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national, and this article provides an account of the ways they did so.
It thus examines the dynamics of the constitution of this policy
domain to better apprehend its timing, form and content. After setting out the analytical framework that focuses on power struggles
among groups seeking legitimacy (I), I turn to the main chapters of
the story so far: the bureaucratic rivalry that led to Title IV of the EU
Treaty and the incorporation of Schengen via protocol at Amsterdam
which sets the frame for a common immigration and asylum policy (II); the rivalry of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that
carved out a space for EU policy in the area of migrant incorporation,
which resulted in Article 13 on anti-discrimination and a race directive in 2000 (III); and, finally, the parallel activities of the European
Court of Justice (ECJ) and the Commission Trade directorate in the
area of freedom of services that affect migration flows within and
into the EU.
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field
actor-oriented
research questions
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Treaty, an article on anti-discrimination has been added and two directives have since been approved: one covers all forms of discrimination in employment, and the other counter-discriminations on the
grounds of race and ethnic origin in many spheres.7 To understand
why these particular outcomes and not others such as the extension
of free movement or EU citizenship to third-country nationals can be
observed, I now turn to the history of EU mobilization around migration, asylum and anti-discrimination.
When policemen replace diplomats: the emergence of intergovernmental co-operation on migration control
Quand les policiers succedent aux diplomates: the title of this
French Senate report (Turk 1998) sums up in a nutshell the increasing involvement of law and order personnel at the European level
since the early 1980s and, among them, civil servants in charge of
migration management.
Migration control experts took advantage of new organizational
models: the transgovernmental working groups on security-related
issues such as the 1970s Trevi group. These groupings with varied
membership were flexible, informal and secretive. This built trust
among officials who set the agenda of transgovernmental co-operation by emphasizing the kind of technical solutions that required
their expertise. They became inevitable interlocutors at the first negotiation stage, that of the Schengen Implementation Agreement (SIA).
While the 1985 Schengen agreement only contained three articles on
immigration, the issue came to dominate the discussion of the four
Schengen groups in charge of the SIA. During the 1985-90 period
when the SIA was drafted, inter-ministerial quarrels in the founding
Schengen countries flourished. Michel Portal at the French Ministry
of Interior recalls that the inter-ministerial conflicts were and still
are considerable, terrible, especially when the political leaders totally
lost interest.8 Vendelin Hreblay, a negotiator from the French police, admits that Foreign Affairs ministries and in Germany the
Chancellery were progressively ousted by Justice and Interior ministries (1998: 28).9
Given that an international agreement was being negotiated
and that Foreign Affairs ministries deliver visas through consulates
abroad (visa policy being a cornerstone of European co-operation
on remote border control), there was no a priori reason to expect a
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solution invented
before problem
defined
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parallel forums
on migration
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aggregation failure
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security threats
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pro-migrant
transnational
organizations
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Their unit has faced many challenges, given the thin treaty basis
for its actions. Its institutional activists (Ruzza 1999) had to find
other bases for intervention. As Adrian Favell recalls:
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as a political as opposed to economic agenda began to differentiate itself in the Commissions corridors, certain DGs less powerfully placed in the central drive towards EMU, seized on alternative
European public interest agendas, following the path pioneered by
the highly active and progressive minded DG XI (Environment).
(Favell 2000: 167)
European
citizenship
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war on social
exclusion
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ambiguity of the
anti-discrimination
frame
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cal issues and legal wording rather than on the normative underpinnings of immigrant policy and can be contrasted to the emotional
partisan debates observed in many European countries. This closed
venue of debate allowed policy change in favour of migrants that is
arduous in open national venues.
Rush Portuguesa
decision
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and business interests. One particular non-governmental forum supported by the Trade Commission is the European Services Forum
(ESF), an official NGO in the Seattle EU delegation whose focus is to
support the Commissions viewpoint during the General Agreement
on Trade in Services (GATS) negotiations. At a conference of the
ESF under the patronage of the Commission, Trade Commissioner
Pascal Lamy expressed this sentiment: I particularly welcome the
participation of ... NGOs. The key to the success of the ESF is that it
is a forum, open to all stakeholders, including civil society.26
Pascal Lamy has experience in setting up partnerships that
short-circuit member states since this was a key strategy of Jacques
Delors when Lamy was his chef de cabinet (Ross 1995). Lamys reference to civil society is misleading. In fact, the ESE based at UNICE,
the European employers federation, includes thirty-six European
trade federations and fifty EU-based international companies in sectors such as banking, insurance, telecommunications, postal services, aviation, shipping, tourism, retail, legal services, accountancy,
management consulting, architecture, engineering, IT services, publishing, audiovisual, energy and environmental services.
Part of their agenda is lobbying against barriers to the movement
of people and in particular the complex, cumbersome, and timeconsuming procedures to obtain work permits and visas (ESF 2000)
and they favour a GATS visa or passport.27 The adversaries are clearly
identified: the ESF managing director describes them as the understandably defensive interests of WTO Member Countries immigration and labor market developments officials (Kerneis 2000).
At an MPG meeting on this issue organized in Brussels in March
2001,28 immigration officials jaws dropped in silent disbelief when
they heard multinational corporations proposing their passport.
The meeting also showed that strange bedfellows emerge at the
European level. European pro-migrant NGOs are not used, as are
their American counterparts, to engaging in client politics with business interests (on the US case, see Freeman 2001). Yet there seems
to be a fast learning curve, which is fostered by the MPGs transatlantic dialogue with US think-tanks. Strategic alliances between
NGOs and business interests are signs that some of the actors in our
story are trying to co-ordinate their scripts to seize upon the opportunity of the new economic climate and the older free movement and
neo-liberal agenda of European integration.
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Conclusion
conflicting
discourses
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Notes
1 The author thanks Martin Schain and participants of the 2001 EUSA meeting who commented on an earlier version of this paper, Andrew Moravcsik
for his incisive reading, as well as the two anonymous referees for their insightful suggestions.
2 Before 2004, the Council should unanimously adopt measures on asylum,
refugees and displaced persons, on the absence of any controls on persons
crossing internal borders and on external border control (including rules on
visas for stays of less than three months), and on the free travel of thirdcountry nationals within the EU for short-term stays. After 2004, measures
should be adopted with respect to refugee burden-sharing, and the harmonization of the conditions of entry and residence, standards for the issue of
long-term visas and residence permits, or the right of residence for thirdcountry nationals wishing to stay in EU states other than their country of
residence.
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References
Baumgartner, Frank and Jones, Bryan (1993) Agendas and Imtability
in American Politics, Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Bendor, Jonathan, Moe, Terry and Shotts, Kenneth (2001) Recycling
the garbage can: an assessment of the research program, American
Political Science Review 95(1): 169-90.
Bigo, Didier (1996) Polices en rseaux. Lexprience europenne, Paris:
Presses de la Fondation Nationale de Sciences Politiques.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1981) La rpresentation politique: lments pour
une thorie du champ politique, Actes de la recherche en sciences
sociales 36/37: 3-24.
CEC (Commission of the European Communities) (1985) Orientation
pour une politique communautaire des migration, COM(85) 48 def.
Brussels: CEC.
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state thought
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abdelmalek sayad
immigration
It is also for all these reasons that we can say that thinking about immigration means thinking about the state, and that it is the state that
is thinking about itself when it thinks about immigration. And this
is perhaps one of the last things we discover when we reflect upon
the problem of immigration and work on immigration, whereas we
should of course have begun with this, or at least should have known
this before we started. What we discover in this way is the secret
virtue of immigration: it provides an introduction, and perhaps the
best introduction of all, to the sociology of the state. Why? Because
immigration constitutes the limit of what constitutes the national
state. Immigration is the limit that reveals what it is intrinsically, or
its basic truth. It is as though it were in the very nature of the state to
discriminate and, in order to do so, to acquire in advance all the necessary criteria of pertinence that are required to make the distinction,
without which there can be no national state, between the nationals
it recognizes as such and in which it therefore recognizes itself, just
as they recognize themselves in it (this double mutual recognitioneffect is indispensable to the existence and function of the state), and
others with whom it deals only in material or instrumental terms.
It deals with them only because they are present within the field of
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fundamentalism/
purism
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critical reflection
of state thought
abdelmalek sayad
Time helps us forget all these things, but time is not the only factor
involved: time can succeed in this repressive operation only because
it is both in our interests and in the interests of the state itself to
forget its history. The naturalization of the state, or of the state that
exists inside our heads, makes it seem as though the state were an
immediate given, as though it were an object that existed by itself or
that was created by nature. It makes it seem that the state has been
in existence from all eternity, that it has been freed of all determinations external to itself. It appears to exist independently of all historical considerations, independently of history and of its own history,
from which we prefer to divorce it for ever, even though we never
stop elaborating and telling that history. Immigration and this is of
course why it is so disturbing forces us to unveil the state, to unveil
the way we think about the state and the way it thinks about itself.
And it is the way it thinks about immigration that gives this away.
Being children of the nation-state and of the national categories we
bear within us and which the state has implanted in us, we all think
about immigration (in other words about those who are other than
ourselves, what they are, and through them, what we ourselves are)
in the way that the state requires us to think and, ultimately, in the
way that the state itself thinks.
State thought or spirit of the state as analysed by Pierre Bourdieu
is a mode of thought and a distinct way of thinking. The two appear
to be inseparable. It is state thought that creates the states mode of
thinking about everything it is and about all the domains to which
it is applied. In the same way, state thought may, as a result of its
constancy, its repetitions, its own strength, and its ability to impose
its way of thinking on others, have generated durable modes of thinking that are typical of state thought. We must therefore subject the
postulates of state thought to critical reflection, to a process of delegitimizing what is legitimate, of what goes without saying. We must
delegitimize it in the sense of objectifying what is most deeply rooted
within us, what is most deeply hidden in our social unconscious.
Such an operation makes a desanctifying break with doxa. We have
here an undertaking that everything within us resists: our entire social being (individual and collective) and everything that we commit
to it with such passion in other words our whole national being.
For we exist only in this form and only within this framework: the
framework and form of the nation. To take jurists as an example,
it took all the audacity of a Hans Kelsen to free himself from state
thought and even to rebel against that thought, and ultimately to contest the opposition that is de rigueur amongst jurists and (elsewhere)
between national and non-national by demonstrating the arbitrary
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double punishment
historically
situated sins
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mental
representations
object
representations
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Allaying suspicion
A sort of social hyper-correction is required of the immigrant, especially one of lowly social condition. Being socially or even morally
suspect, he must above all reassure everyone as to his morality. There
has never before been so much talk of republican values in France.
That is because it is a way of denouncing what the social and political
morality of French society regards as the deviant behaviour of Muslim
immigrants: wearing veils to school, statutory discrimination against
women, the political use of religion, which is referred to as fundamentalism, and so on. Being conscious of the suspicion that weighs
upon him and which he cannot escape because he is confronted with
it throughout his immigrant life and in every domain of his existence, it is up to the immigrant to allay it constantly, to foresee it and
to ward it off by repeatedly demonstrating his good faith and his good
will. He finds himself caught up in social struggles despite himself,
because they are of necessity struggles over identity. Because he is
involved in them as an isolated individual and almost without wishing to be involved especially in the interindividual interactions of
everyday life he has no choice but to exaggerate in one way or another. Making a virtue of necessity, and to a large extent because of
the dominated position he occupies in the structure of symbolic power relations, the immigrant tends, no doubt rightly, to exaggerate
each of the contradictory options he thinks he has chosen, whereas
they have actually been forced upon him. He is condemned to exaggerate everything; everything he does, everything he experiences and
everything he is. At times, he must, as an immigrant (when he is at
the bottom of the social hierarchy within the world of immigrants),
assume the stigmas which, in the eyes of public opinion, create the
immigrant. He must therefore accept (resignedly or under protest,
submissively or defiantly, or even provocatively) the dominant definition of his identity. We need only recall, in this connection, the fact
that the stigma itself generates a revolt against the stigma, and that
conscious of
suspicion
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assimilation
abdelmalek sayad
one of the first forms of that revolt consists in reappropriating or laying claim to the stigma, which is converted into an emblem in accordance with the classic paradigm of black is beautiful. This can even
lead to the institutionalization of the group, which thus turns the
stigma in other words and roughly speaking the social, economic,
political and cultural effects of the stigmatization of which it is the
object and in part the product into its foundation. At other times,
in contrast, the immigrant devotes himself to the quest for so-called
assimilation. This presupposes putting a great deal of effort into his
self-presentation and representation (the representation others have
of him, and the representation he wishes to give of himself). The effort is therefore focused essentially on his body, his physical appearance, and those forms of external behaviour that are most loaded
with symbolic attributes or meanings. It is intended to remove all the
signs that might recall the stigma (physical signs such as complexion, skin colour, hair colour, etc; cultural signs such as accent, manner of speech, clothes, the wearing of a moustache, a whole lifestyle,
etc.). The other strategy involves conspicuous mimicry and the adoption of features which, in contrast, seem to be emblematically characteristic of those to whom he wishes to assimilate. Whilst they are not
mutually exclusive, the two strategies, or at least parts of them, can
be simultaneously juxtaposed, though there is a danger that this will
exacerbate the contradictions. In all these examples, no matter how
contrasted, the issue appears to centre on the use of strategies of
simulation and dissimulation, pretence and bluff, and the acquisition and projection of a self-image that pleases [qui plat] others and
in which the immigrant delights [se complat], the image he would
like to be in keeping with his material and symbolic interests, or the
image that is least removed from the identity he is laying claim to.
On the one hand, his original identity is credited with having a greater authenticity the identity of the old man which he refuses to kill
off. He must preserve, or believe he is preserving, his original identity because he thinks he is doing so in order not to have to experience it in shame, timidity and scorn, and to avoid the risk of exoticism, all of which can encourage the racism of which they are a
component element. On the other hand is the new identity he wishes
to create in order to appropriate, if not all the advantages bound up
with the possession of the dominant identity, at least the legitimate
identity (i.e. the identity of the dominant) that he will never have and
at least the negative advantages he can expect to derive from no longer having to be judged, or having to judge himself, by criteria that
he knows will always, and of necessity, work to his disadvantage.
There is another point on which the two strategies are basically in
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agreement: both contain within them, each in its own way, a forced
recognition of legitimate identity. The former recognizes it by refusing it, by keeping as great a distance as possible, and by avoiding any
superfluous contact or any contact that is not indispensable. The latter, in contrast, recognizes it by taking its inspiration from it, by taking it as a model, by simulating it and by trying to reproduce it as
faithfully as possible, but also as slavishly as possible. In both cases
and this is another reason why they converge what is really at
stake in these strategies for social struggles, which are found in any
struggle between the dominated and the dominant, or in the face of
domination, is not, as is commonly said, the conquest or reconquest
of identity. It is the ability to reappropriate for oneself the possibility
of constructing ones own identity and of evaluating that identity in
complete autonomy. This is the ability that the dominated are obliged
to surrender to the dominant, so much so that anyone who finds
himself in the dominated position within the field of symbolic power
relations has only two possible ways of gaining recognition or, more
prosaically, continuing to exist. Either he must be negated, and must
therefore consent to his own negation and disqualification, or he
must accept the risks involved in any attempt to assimilate. If he
adopts the first strategy, he must do what he is being asked to do even
though he cannot resign or withdraw completely in the strict sense of
the term from a game he knows to be basically stacked against him.
He must, that is, simply withdraw from the struggle, as he is being
asked to do in other words, abandon it without necessarily leaving
the arena (i.e. immigration) in which such struggles take place. He
must agree to do no more than watch the struggle being played out,
through him and in front of him, without intervening. He must
agree to play the role of the victim designate. This is the fate to which
one is almost always condemned when one is involved in a game one
is not equipped to play and which one can never master (a game one
has not chosen to play, which is always played on the home ground
of the dominant, in their way, in accordance with their rules and with
their weapons of choice). The alternative is to accept the risks involved in any attempt at assimilation, in other words in any form of
behaviour that is explicitly calculated, designed and organized with a
view to bringing about a change of identity, or what he believes to be
the transition from a dominated identity to a dominant identity. This
implies the danger of denying himself and, correlatively, all of his
fellows who reject that choice, who cannot or do not want to act in
that way, and thus deny themselves. Abandoning an identity, be it
social, political (or more specifically national, as in the case of naturalization), cultural, religious or whatever is not without its ambigu-
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constructing and
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identity
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reassuring others
abdelmalek sayad
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feed on one another; and despite all the differences that may exist
between them, they are part of the same attempt to reassure. On
the one hand, there is the fear of the dominant in other words
and in this case, the masters of the house who are all nationals,
no matter which social class they belong to. It can be allayed by the
strength of those who know they are dominant (because they know
that they are naturally at home, and know that they are the countrys
natural inhabitants), and who know they are in a position of strength
because they possess a legitimacy that merges into domination (a
legitimacy which, as such, does not realize that it is dominant). On
the other hand, there is the fear of the dominated (i.e. immigrants),
of the weak who have, in these circumstances, been deprived of all
power and all legitimacy. For the dominant, being reassured means
no longer having to reassure themselves in the face of some danger
(even though there is nothing for them to be afraid of, and even when
the danger is completely imaginary) and, at the same time, reassuring others whose fear is, so to speak, constitutive of their immigrant
condition. For the dominated who, despite their structural weakness,
or perhaps because of that weakness, are perceived as dangerous (or
at least as constituting a collective danger) or, which is worse, are
regarded as enemies (and not only as the class enemies of old,
with whom we were used to coming into conflict), reassuring the
dominant is without doubt the price that has to be paid to ensure
their own security (which is purely relative).
As this self-assurance depends upon a security that has to be won
from the other or in the face of the other, certain immigrants prefer
to withdraw, to take refuge in their hidden fear, and choose (or chose,
in an earlier state of immigration) to opt for the greatest possible discretion or, in other words, to become as invisible as they can. They
are helped here by the social and spatial relegation of which they are
the victims (relegation in space and by space). They also simultaneously turn it into self-relegation: relegation and self-relegation into
the same spaces, the space of social relations, the space of housing
and, primarily, the space of work. These are all spaces where they
find themselves to be in the majority and amongst other immigrants
of the same background (originally from the same country, the same
region, the same village, the same kinship group). These are the immigrants of whom it is said that they hug the walls, which can only
please those who tend to see their reserve as a sign of politeness, or
even the eminently reassuring subservience they expect and demand
from foreigners. For other immigrants who are sufficiently selfconfident, or convinced that they can allay suspicion, providing reassurance appears to consist in simulating the greatest resemblance
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to take refuge
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children of
immigrants
abdelmalek sayad
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deportation
abdelmalek sayad
was yesterday, as every age has its own dangerous classes. If the situation specific to the delinquent foreigner (and even more so the immigrant, even if he does have the nationality of the country), who is guilty
in two ways, or guilty of being guilty, is not necessarily to work to his
disadvantage and is not to act as an aggravating circumstance, judges
must display great restraint and a lot of self-control, and make an attempt at self-correction. Even when it is not openly talked about, this
implicit combination of crimes and therefore punishments does give
rise to another sanction that is often imposed in addition to the other
two. It is intrinsically bound up with the foreigners condition, as a foreigner is by definition liable to be deported, even if, as does happen, it
has been agreed not to deport him. Whether the deportation actually
takes place or not, the foreigners liability to deportation is the sign par
excellence of one of the essential prerogatives of national sovereignty.
This too is a characteristic of state thought, which is not to say that it is
state thought. It is in fact in the very nature of the sovereignty of the nation to be able to deport those foreign residents (foreign in the nationality sense) it sees fit to deport, and it is in the very nature of the foreigner
(speaking nationally) to be liable to deportation, regardless of whether
or not he is actually deported. Whilst it is not a juridical sanction in the
strict sense, as it is not normally pronounced by a court of law, deportation from the national territory, which is an administrative or politicoadministrative measure taken as a result of the judicial condemnation
it extends beyond its effects clearly demonstrates the risks run by any
foreigner who infringes the rules of good conduct. Having supplied
proof of his lack of discretion, he is subject to administrative sanctions.
The same logic governs, a fortiori, the operation of naturalization: the
nation and nationality do not naturalize and nationalize just anyone.
Being an act that basically results from a decision, naturalization may
be incompatible with certain social and cultural characteristics or with
certain customs (in the sense of habits and customs). In the French
case, it is incompatible with polygamy, which is regarded as an offence
against public order in the particular sense in which international private law understands that term. Naturalization may be incompatible
with certain criminal penalties. The nature and hierarchy of some penalties disqualify anyone from claiming the quality of being French, but
they also vary according to the context and the moment. Not surprisingly, these crimes reproduce their punishments and bring them into line,
roughly speaking, with those that lead to deportation, rather as though
the conditions for entering a nationality obeyed, no doubt even more
strictly, the same principles as the conditions for entering and residing
in the nation, because they precede and prefigure them.
For references please consult the bibliography of the book in which
this article was originally published. (see List of sources, page 609)
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Part II
Modes of incorporation
marge tekst
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At a time when most scholars were writing about migratory workers and the
European guest work system, the geographer Hans van Amersfoort published
a study addressing some important questions. Which factors determine the
social position of different categories of migrants in the host society? To
what extent and under what conditions do ethnic minorities form via the
migration process? Van Amersfoorts work relied heavily on American sociological scholarship, resulting in a typology of majority-minority relations and
a definition of immigrant ethnic minorities. The study strongly influenced
the theoretical basis of both integration studies and integration policy in the
Netherlands.
Introduction
The terms minority or minority group are widely used in the sociological literature. Minority appears to be a word with a broad, diffuse meaning and an emotional appeal, exactly the qualities to make
it a candidate for political debate. Unfortunately, almost the opposite
properties are required if the term is to be used in scholarly analysis.
In fact, there are such a variety of meanings and contradictory properties attributed to the term in the scholarly literature that we can
hardly speak of a concept that can serve as an analytical tool.
The origins of this lack of precision can be traced back to that
essay by Louis Wirth which most social scientists take as the starting-point of their analyses. Wirth initially describes a minority as:
A group of people who, because of their physical or cultural characteristics, are singled out from the others in the society in which they
live for differential and unequal treatment and who therefore regard
themselves as objects of collective discrimination (Wirth 1945: 347).
This is not a very satisfactory definition because it makes the exis-
diffuse meaning
of minority
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conceptual
confusion
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democratic moral
judgement
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nation-state
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decision-making
legal position
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tion of a coalition presupposes that there is not a permanently dominant majority; if there is such a dominant group then the rationale
for coalitions collapses. This is decisive in the case where the formal
rights of minorities are recognized. For in mass societies there are
always more needs and wants than can be fulfilled at any given moment. The political goal of each group is to get its own needs and
wants placed somewhat higher on the priority list than those of other
groups, and the formation of coalitions is an essential part of this
process.
By concentrating on these four basic fields we can substantiate
more precisely the claim that a minority must be in a disadvantageous position. It is in these fields that the norms of public life should
prevail, and these norms are derived from the concept of the equality
of the citizen and are not based on ascriptive criteria. This implies
that there must be a degree of consensus about the prevailing norms
in public life. Alternative norms in these fields would not only be an
impediment to required social interaction, but would undermine the
whole idea of equality on which it is based. It is on this point the
necessity for uniform norms regulating public life that many studies about the relation between majority and minority concentrate.
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pluralism
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need for
consensus
the majority must not feel threatened, thus implying that there is a
limit to the degree of pluralism that a society can tolerate. Simpson
and Yinger also seem to recognize this limitation when they define
pluralism as cultural variability within the range still consonant with
national unity and security (Simpson and Yinger 1953: 27). However,
neither Wirth nor Simpson and Yinger are explicit about the precise
limits of pluralism. It is difficult to see what Wirth has in mind, since
pluralism, which seems to me to be a property of society, for Wirth
appears to be primarily a property of the minority group. Moreover,
there are situations of pluralism which hardly can be looked upon as
favourable; for Wirth also states: If there is a great gulf between their
own status and that of the minority groups... the toleration of minorities may go as far as virtually to perpetuate several sub-societies with
the larger society (Wirth 1945: 355). This is not a case of toleration in
the accepted meaning of the term but a strategy for oppression, and
pluralism, in this sense, is in total contradiction with the previous
definition of the concept.
To make things even more complex, there is another scholarly
tradition which uses the term pluralism in the analysis of societies that have a culturally diversified population. As Wirth is writing
within the American political tradition he tends to use the term in
a positive sense. The other tradition stems from the description of
colonial and post-colonial societies and there it generally has a negative connotation. These traditions form separate circuits and most
writers do not appear to link the two, thus giving us a second reason
for analysing the use of the term in both contexts. But our main aim
remains to find an answer to the question of what degree of normative consensus is necessary to allow a minority full participation in
society.
Furnivall introduced the term plural society to describe the colonial societies of South East Asia. He regarded such societies as the
product of the colonial state that brought a number of peoples and
cultures together as far, and only as far, as this was necessary for economic purposes (Furnivall 1948: 304). In Holland, the Furnivall tradition has been continued by van Lier in his social analysis of the history of Surinam. He argues that every reasonable complex society is
made up of elements held together by the state. In a non-segmented
or pluralistic society the component parts are the result of a strict
division of labour and an unequal distribution of the material and
cultural property of the population. This results in the appearance of
social strata with different styles of life and diverse customs and traditions. But these differences are mere gradations within one and the
same culture, the major portion of which is the common property of
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no common value
system
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social distance
ceremonies, the distinct groups can adhere to their own value systems, but, in a domain where they interact, the pattern of relationships will be dominated by a single value system.
However, it is far from clear how significant the cultural differences must be before we can speak of a plural society. Van Lier, for
instance, stresses differences in religion and it is generally agreed
that, from an historical or theological standpoint, the gulf between
the religions in Surinam is greater than the differences between, for
example, Protestants and Catholics in Holland. But does this mean
that the saliency of religion as a factor in social life is therefore automatically greater? The Northern Ireland situation might cause us to
hesitate before jumping to such a conclusion.
All these reservations about the way various authors use the concept of plural society does not alter the fact that there are societies
in which we not only have stratification but also a significant degree
of social distance of a non-hierarchical character. To a certain extent
we find examples of such social distance in all societies. There is
everywhere a social distance between rural and urban peoples, between groups with different religions and philosophies of life, and
these need not be hierarchical. When such differences become institutionalized then we see the emergence of a plural society. Van
den Berghe describes this as follows: social structure is compartmentalized into analogous, parallel, non-complementary sets of institutions. Moreover, there is: primacy of segmental utilitarian nonaffective and functionally specific relationships between corporate
groups and of total, nonutilitarian affective, diffuse ties within such
groups (van den Berghe 1967: 34-5). Van den Berghe calls this social pluralism, which he distinguishes from cultural pluralism. The
emergence of ethnic groups in a society he calls cultural pluralism,
whereas a society that is racially structured, but culturally homogeneous, such as the South of the United States, he terms a socially
plural society (van den Berghe 1967: 35-6, 132-3). It seems difficult to
make this distinction operational because, in order to be stable, cultural pluralism must result in a certain degree of institutionalization.
Any form of cultural pluralism, writes van den Berghe, has a structural facet which can be treated as social pluralism. Furthermore,
a culturally homogeneous society in which the social strata have no
interaction except in strictly specified roles, will become divided into
clearly distinguished subcultures (van den Berghe 1967: 135).
This is of little help if, instead of trying to analyse an historical
situation with the benefit of hindsight, we are confronted by a concrete society. The more so because the significance of these parallel,
non-complementary institutions for the functioning of the society as
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Lijpharts three
conditions
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Dutch society:
pillarization
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obscured profits
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three dimensions of
minoritymajority relations
Social power
Strongest party
Weakest party
Dominant
Majority
Elite
Subordinate
Subordinated masses
Minority
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tions. For concentrated minorities other factors play an intervening role in minority situations, and these include the absolute size
of the group, its size relative to that of the majority at the national
and regional level and the practical support given to the group from
other countries. These factors will also influence the situation of a
dispersed minority but, because such minorities have no core area,
their whole orientation will be different and their aspirations will acquire a different political expression.
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Particularism-universalism
We have already mentioned Wirths idea that minorities differ in
their aims and that this can be seen as an important aspect of their
situation. It is also possible to introduce the orientation of the minority as a simple, dichotomous variable in the construction of a
typology. Either the minority can aim at participation in society, or
it can be focused exclusively on its internal affairs. In the first case
the objective will be to remove any barriers preventing participation.
The minority bases its demands in such a situation on the principle
of equality, and, in general, will also demand the preservation of
alternative roles. The objective is precisely to get these kinds of roles
recognized as alternative. One wishes to be free to participate as a
Jew, Sikh or Black in the society because the public domain ought to
be neutral with regard to these properties. I will use the standard
sociological term universalism to label such situations. In the case
of concentrated minorities, this orientation can acquire the specific
form of regionalism.
Particularistic minorities also aim at improving their position
but their perception of rights and duties is fundamentally different.
They do not demand equal rights with the majority, but derive their
rights from their own particularistic value system. The extreme case
of this is when the minority aims at dominating the majority.
Emancipation, continuation and elimination
A third possibility for classifying minority situations is to use the
aims of the majority as a criterion. Simpson and Yinger have made
such a classification, but because they do not combine this variable
systematically with others, their approach has little practical value.
For instance, they give as an example of their variant pluralism only
cases of what I have called concentrated minorities. (Simpson and
Yinger 1953: 24ff). However, the policy of the majority is an important aspect of the relationship between majority and minority, and
it is possible to distinguish between three major types of objective.
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particularism
advantages
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revised definition
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Over the last few years a consensus had developed amongst race
equality professionals and activists that the term black should be
used to describe all those who because of their race are unfavourably treated within British society. While this idea originated in the
contracts with the US Black Power groups and is associated with the
Left, particularly with the Black Section movement in the Labour
Party, and indeed is most zealously pursued by some Labour controlled local authorities, it has become a commonplace so that, for instance, it is now current practice of the media not least the BBC. The
argument behind this usage of black is that it provides the means
of affecting a unity between otherwise very diverse, powerless minorities that is necessary for an effective anti-racist movement. This
argument is thought to be so decisive that it is rare, at least in print,
to see it critically considered.1 I believe however, that it required too
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tariq modood
Racial simplicities
simplistic dualism
The idea that race equality involves the recognition of cultural and
ethnic diversity is one that is widely paid lip-service. It is true that
talk about cultural variety is sometimes ill-informed or patronising
and all too often an evasion from a serious commitment to fighting against racial discrimination. Indeed, the factual recognition of
cultural plurality is not logically incompatible with forms of hierarchy. Apartheid is a classic case in point. Nevertheless an organisation
which is itself pledged to racial equality cannot but be opposed to
the crude categorisations which divide societies and humanity into
white and black. While the reduction of an over-lapping and interrelated plurality into a simplistic dualism is the stock-in-trade of racist thinking it is not a tool available for anti-racists. For the latter are
committed to challenging the gross ignorance about peoples and the
indifference to their variety that racists utilise. If anti-racists borrow
the racists classifications in order to defeat racism (racists have no
trouble in saying who is black, so why should we? it is often said)2
then however successful or not they may be as an interest group
they will have lost their opposition to racism as a way of thinking. In
particular, they will have lost the ideal of a multi-racial society for a
model of society as composed of two and only two races which for
the forseeable future must live in conflict.
If this seems somewhat abstract it is worth noting, in contrast to
say the USA or Canada, which are often the models for British race
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egalitarians in respect of government action especially in employment policy, the decline of the vocabulary of multi-racialism in the
UK. Similarly, one has to note the divergence of the new British race
vocabulary from that of America, Africa, India or just about any other
part of the globe where black continues to mean of sub-Saharan
African origin (cf. black is beautiful, black music, black Africa).
An anomaly which, for example, leads to even greater confusion in
the international than the British press as to how many black MPs
were elected in June 1987.3
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A black identity
Now, of course, for many who suffer from white domination black
has become a focus of collective pride. This is certainly true of
many black activists and is perhaps quite widely true now of Afro-
black pride
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tariq modood
British Asians
This use of the term black may not in itself, any more than democracy, present any special difficulties. However, there are several
factors about the British situation that conspire to make this positive notion of black harmful to British Asians.5 Firstly, because as a
matter of historical and contemporary fact this positive black identity has been espoused by peoples of sub-Saharan African roots, they
naturally are thought to be the quintessential or exemplary cases of
black consciousness and understand black consciousness to be at its
fullest, something only achieved by people of African ethnicity. The
Handsworth Harambee organisation thus defined itself on a BBC
Open Door television programme as rooted in a belief system influenced by Pan-Africanism, African socialism, and parts of the black
power philosophy. It is believed that though conditions of black people are influenced by what happens in Africa, in this way black people
can carve out for themselves a decent existence in Handsworth.6 So
if Asians in Britain, by virtue of the discrimination practised against
them, come to believe that they too are black in a positive sense it is
obvious that only some of the concepts forged by creators of black
consciousness will be applicable to Asians so that they will necessarily not be capable of being black in the full sense but be only secondary or ambiguous blacks.
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Secondly, some may claim that when Asians are encouraged to think
of themselves as black what is on offer is not the old black consciousness, the one forged exclusively by people of African ethnicity and for
people of African ethnicity, but a new Afro-Asian identity. Leaving new Afro-Asian
aside the question of what is supposed to be the link here between identity
the old and the new, the problem here is to know what content this
new identity has. For the attempt to reduce several groups who have
nothing more in common with each other (except the negative condition of discrimination) than any of those groups have with white
people to a single identity makes, I must confess, such little sense to
me that this concept to me is nothing but a meaningless chimera.
At best it marks not so much a positive identity but a positive determination to oppose white racism, and the adoption of the term
black here usually means by implication and certainly as a matter
of fact, the acceptance by Asians of an Afro political leadership. The
latter is evidenced by the relative numbers and especially positions
of power (e.g. Chairs of Committees) of Afro and Asian members in
inner London Councils ruling groups,7 black workers groups such
as that in the National Association of Local Government Officers
(NALGO), black caucuses and other similar organisations prefixed
by the term black.8 An Afro leadership has of course had some benefits for Asians, as for example in the West Indian lobbying which led
to the inclusion of the concept of indirect discrimination in the 1976
Race Relations Act, but presumably it need not be, as it has presently become, at the price of subordinating their identity to political
concerns. Indeed, if the primary mode by which Asians are made to
publicly relate to the rest of British society is through a black political
identity then no one should be surprised if Asians remain politically
under-represented and misrepresented and increasing numbers of
successful Asians try to make themselves inconspicuous and opt for
a path of apolitical assimilation.
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That Asians cannot be served by a black identity equal to its use for,
say, Afro-Caribbeans is perhaps most pointedly illustrated by the fact
that when even explicit users of the new concept, in the moments
they wish to refer only to Asians do so by the term Asian, while a
book sub-titled West Indians in British Politics after a few introductory remarks about the wider black community thereon confidently
speaks of West Indians as the black community.9 What is particularly significant here is not that the author, Trevor Carter, in writing
exclusively of West Indian experience should use the term black as
an ethnically specific term. What is significant is that Carter, despite
his introductory remarks, is able to use the term in this narrower
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tariq modood
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Too often when the party discusses the membership of black and
Asian people it centres on the level of black public representativeness, magistrates and MPs, rather on ways in which black people can
play a role in the party without necessarily aspiring to hold office; this
is not to diminish the important point that many more black people
should hold such offices.13
A sentence which boldly begins with one meaning of black immediately gives way to an entirely different meaning without any suggestion of having done so. Another example of the same general
phenomenon is when local authority job advertisements proclaim
a desire to attract applications from black and other ethnic minorities or black and Asian people. That in each case the second half of
these conjunctions is very definitely secondary, an irritating addition,
is clear from the fact that regardless of how often these conjunctions
are used their order always follows strict precedence. Rare indeed
in these contexts would a statement be made in terms of all ethnic
minorities including black people. And to expect a phrase such as
Asian and Black might not seem unreasonable given the size of the
respective populations14 or even the convention of alphabetical precedence, let alone the variety normal in the use of language; but it is
an expectation which will invariably be disappointed for it misses the
hierarchical politics of such formulae. When added to this an institution as central to public opinion formation as the BBC decides that
the term Black or Asian is too cumbersome and that for the sake of
editorial simplicity programme makers have the right to abbreviate
that term to Black, what are Asians in Britain supposed to conclude
about their significance as a community in Britain? What is the message that is being sent out to them? As anyone involved in race equality issues knows, constantly being described as an appendix or as an
afterthought erodes ones sense of ones worth so that one comes to
believe that one perhaps is as secondary or inferior as the benevolent
authorities and the media imply.
Ethnic self-definition
This brings us to the central point at issue, namely, the principle of
ethnic self-definition as a basic element of racial equality and multiracialism. When some time ago American blacks insisted on calling
themselves black and on being so-called by others this was rightly thought to be an assertion of collective self-respect and respect
for which by other races was a basic step towards racial equality.
Afro-American
collective self-respect
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tariq modood
Similarly, a while ago when many people here of West Indian origins
took on the term Afro-Caribbean it was part of a search for an identity in which one could have a sense of worth and resist denigrators.
And yet Asians in Britain who do possess a sense of common history and ethnic identity are finding it difficult to hold on to, let alone
develop, this identity by the activities of the very people who publicly
profess racial equality and in many cases are publicly invested with
the task of promoting it. Let me confine myself to one example, the
Commission for Racial Equality (CRE). The CRE in so much of its
publicity literature, videos, recommended ethnic monitoring categories, through the work of its professionals and so on, increasingly
refers to the people about whom it is concerned as black.15 Yet it denies treating Asians in any way less than their due and rejects that it
is smothering any distinctive group identity. The CREs view seems
to be that its proposed categorisation of Asians as black for, say, purposes of ethnic monitoring as a tool in equal opportunity strategies,
is not an attempt to define Asians as such. Rather it is to pick out an
important but limited feature about Asians in Britain while leaving
them free to develop their distinctive identity along lines congenial
to themselves.
If I am right in thinking that this is the CREs view (in the absence
of any official statement it is gleaned from private correspondence
and conversations) then it is morally fraudulent. For when local authorities,16 academics, politicians, the media and public in general
in unison use the categories by which Asians are blacks, and this
categorisation becomes second nature so that anyone who questions
it is thought to be out of touch, there can be no doubt that the fundamental identity of Asians in Britain has been defined for them by the
mode of reference of the race relations establishment. When I raised
this matter with the Community Relations Council of one London
Borough I was told that this issue was out of date, that it had already
been settled by various conferences of professionals and that the
fight against racial discrimination would be best served if the Asian
community coming late to political self-consciousness accepted
it as a fait accompli.
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each of which is larger than the group just referred to. The largest
perhaps is the group that knows that society now refers to them as
black, tolerates this while studiously avoiding referring to themselves
as black. Then there is the group that feels politically obligated to talk
of themselves as black for they see that their political champions,
sponsors and other sympathisers talk of them in these ways and expect them to do so too. Finally, there is the group of Asians to whom
it simply has not occurred that when local authorities, politicians,
media, etc. speak of blacks, for example as in job advertisements
which say applications from black people are welcome, that they are
being referred to.17 It might be thought that this last group must consist of those who are least educated, least connected to British society
and live in areas of the country where race equality is not a major issue. My experience is that this is not so at all and this group can still
be found in large numbers in areas such as Brent in London. They
persist in a cocoon of ignorance because their own understanding of
themselves and of other groups is so different from the assumptions
of the local public vocabulary that those assumptions do not even
register as possibilities within their framework of understanding.18
I have made assertions here about what I believe to be true about
the large majority of Asians in Britain. It may be asked of me how I
can prove these assertions. Perhaps the strict answer is that I cannot
and that no one can prove the opposite either. For and this speaks
more loudly than any words there are very few figures available
on this matter. Virtually no one, certainly not the CRE nor the local
authorities who confidently assume that Asians think of themselves
as black, nor again those who despite what they know feel no inhibition in imposing this identity upon Asians, has thought the Asian
community important enough to merit this research and consultation.19 The one research project that has specifically examined grassroots thinking on this matter has been recently published by the
Office of Population and Censuses Surveys (OPCS).20 Their research
consisted of three separate field tests using three different question
formats and on each occasion in several parts of the country. They
found that when in the few cases that Asians ticked themselves as
Black it was mainly done in error due to the design of the form.21
While it did not specifically test for this it found no wish amongst
Asians to be subsumed under a black identity. It will be interesting to
see whether the issue is thought important enough for others to undertake further research and for race relation professionals to finally
come to respect the principle of ethnic self-definition.
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OPCS research
on Asians
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tariq modood
It will, incidentally, also be interesting to see if the government itself listens to the message of the OPCS research. For while it has
been the case that the Civil Service Commission has for a number of
years been using ethnic classifications which are in tune with OPCS
findings, the Home Office in its recent ethnic survey of probations
service staff and the Department of Education and Sciences survey
of schoolchildren and teachers to begin in autumn 1988 have used
the categories fashioned by the CRE and in the former case despite
the protest and noncooperation of the National Association of Asian
Probation Staff.22 It seems that some government departments have
been persuaded by race professionals on this issue just at the moment when Asian opinion is beginning to stir on this point.
a rainbow
coalition
restoration of
ethnic pride
I said at the start that the argument behind the new usage of black
consists in the unity it provides for anti-racism. Against this I have
tried to show how the argument is not worthy of race egalitarians
and necessarily devalues Asians, the numerically larger party in this
prospective unity. What now in conclusion must be stressed is that
one does not necessarily have to choose between these rival two positions, between an anti-racist common front on the one hand and a
respect for Asian identity on the other. What does follow, however,
is that it is foolish to expect a rainbow coalition (as Jesse Jackson
calls the non-white political alliance in America) to be successful if
it involves asking a partner to this coalition to adopt an identity false
to their own being. Such a coalition will be only skin-deep and will
be betrayed at the first opportunity.23 It is already quite clear how
unattractive current race equality campaigning is to the majority of
Asians who consistently cross the street to avoid it unless some grantaid is in prospect. The current uses on the term black, particularly
those which associate it with what is coming to be called a culture of
resistance,24 may create unity amongst a band of militants but will
lead more Asians to seek a life of quiet assimilation than otherwise
would.
If we follow further the reference to Jesse Jackson and look more
clearly at the American experience we will learn, I believe, that racial
inequality and exclusion is overcome not simply by political institutional change but with an accompanying restoration of ethnic pride.
This latter was achieved by the black is beautiful campaign and is to
some extent being emulated by Afro-Britons. Similarly, it is my con-
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Notes
1 See, however, Sandip Hazareesinghs excellent Racism Cultural Identity:
An Indian Perspective, Dragons Teeth 1986, 24:4-10. See also the brief editorial in the Race and Society supplement of New Society, 6.11.1987. For an
example of the anti-Asian prejudice that the latter hints at, see the editorial
and Voice of Alex in Platform, October 19 and 25, 1987 respectively.
2 This argument is often generalised from a reference to racists to white society in general: the dominant popular culture continues to insist on using the word black to identify people of both Afro-Caribbean and South
Asian descent (Richard Jenkins Countering Prejudice Anthropological or
Otherwise, Anthropology Today 1987, 3:2). Popular culture, however, has yet
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tariq modood
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tariq modood
24 See, e.g., C. Gutzmore The Notting Hill Carnival, Marxism Today, August
1982. Though I cannot speak with any authority here I do not believe that
many black people welcome such descriptions of themselves.
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This article is the introductory chapter of a 1989 publication edited by sociologist Rogers Brubaker, entitled Immigration and the Politics of Citizenship in
Europe and North America. The book was one of the first transatlantic comparisons of the links between immigration and citizenship. Though the volume only deals with six countries, Brubakers introductory chapter well places
the debates on citizenship, membership and immigration in a historical perspective. It also elegantly presents the major issues to be discussed when
dealing with issues of nationhood and citizenship in a migratory context.
citizenship
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comparing
six countries
The essays in the first part of the book articulate a wide variety
of viewpoints. This reflects the preference of the German Marshall
Fund (and of this writer) for a lively clash of perspectives over a chorus of carefully orchestrated bromides. The authors challenge traditional views of citizenship and membership. Joseph Carens disputes
the traditional, state-centered view that moral considerations are out
of place in decisions about admission to citizenship. Peter Schuck
argues that American citizenship has lost much of its value and
meaning. Kay Hailbronner challenges the widespread notion that
the Federal Republic of Germany has an unreasonably restrictive citizenship policy. And Tomas Hammar takes issue with the traditional
negative attitude towards dual citizenship.
The essays in the second part of the book look through a comparative lens at citizenship and membership policies and practices.
I discuss citizenship law and naturalization practices. Mark Miller,
questioning the traditional view of noncitizens as politically passive,
analyzes the many ways in which noncitizen immigrants participate
in politics. And in the concluding essay, I discuss the economic and
social rights of noncitizens.
The six countries examined in the book have very different traditions of immigration and citizenship. Canada and the United States
are classical countries of immigration whose citizenship policies
have long been geared to mass immigration. Britain and France are
former colonial powers whose immigration and citizenship policies reflect in complex ways the legacy of colonialism. Sweden and
Germany are traditional countries of emigration whose postwar
prosperity led to the recruitment, initially on a temporary basis, of
migrant workers.2
Despite these differing traditions, each of these countries today
confronts similar problems. During the last quarter-century, each has
experienced a new immigration to borrow the expression used
to describe the surge in immigration from Southern and Eastern
Europe to the United States in the late 19th century. And the United
States has experienced a new new immigration. Thus Asia is now
the leading source of immigration to both Canada and the United
States; the Indian subcontinent and the Caribbean displaced Ireland
in the 1960s as the leading source of immigration to Britain; half of
the foreign population in France is now from Africa or Asia (mainly
from North Africa); Turks surpassed Italians during the 1970s as the
largest group of foreign workers in Germany; and Asia has recently
displaced Nordic countries as the leading source of immigration to
Sweden.
Contemporary debates about citizenship are simultaneously de-
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bates about nationhood. They are debates about what it means, and
what it ought to mean, to be a member of a nation-state in todays
increasingly international world. To place these debates in perspective, this introductory essay begins by evoking in general terms the
challenge posed by immigration to the nation-state and sketching
the historical background to current debates about immigration and
citizenship in each of the six countries. Next, it outlines the major
questions facing policy makers and sketches the options they have in
addressing these questions. The introduction concludes with some
remarks about the individual essays.
ideal of nation-state
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drop of taken for-granted ideas and ideals against which the politics
of membership unfolds today.
What are these ideas and ideals? First, state-membership should
be egalitarian. There should be a status of full membership, and no
other (except in the transitional cases of children and persons awaiting naturalization). Gradations of membership status are inadmissible; nobody should be a second-class citizen.
Second, membership should be sacred. Citizens should be prepared to make sacrifices etymologically, to perform sacred acts
for the state. They should be willing to die for it if need be. Profane
attitudes toward membership, involving calculations of personal advantage, are profoundly inappropriate.
Third, state-membership should be based on nation-membership.
The political community should be simultaneously a cultural community, a community of language, mores, or belief. Only thus can a
nation-state be a nations state, the legitimate representative and authentic expression of a nation. Those aspiring to membership of the
state must be or become members of the nation. If not (presumptively) acquired through birth and upbringing, such nation-membership
must be earned through assimilation.
Fourth, membership should be democratic. Full membership
should carry with it significant participation in the business of rule.
And membership itself should be open: since a population of longterm resident nonmembers violates the democratic understanding
of membership, the state must provide some means for resident
nonmembers to become members. Over the long run, residence and
membership must coincide.
Fifth, state-membership should be unique. Every person should
belong to one and only one state. Statelessness can be catastrophic
in a world in which even so-called human rights are enforceable for
the most part only by particular states. And dual (or multiple) citizenship has long been considered undesirable for states and individuals
alike. There are legal techniques for regulating and mitigating the
conflicts, inconveniences, and ambiguities it causes. But these techniques cannot solve the central political problem of dual citizenship
the problem of divided allegiance.
Lastly, membership should be socially consequential; it should be
expressed in a community of well-being. Membership should entail
important privileges. Together with the duties mentioned above,
these should define a status clearly and significantly distinguished
from that of nonmembers. Membership should be objectively valuable and subjectively valued it should be prizeworthy and actually
prized.
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This model of membership is largely vestigial. It is riddled,
moreover, with unresolved internal tensions. The idea of an egalitarian and democratic membership points in one direction; the idea
that membership should be sacred and based on cultural belonging
points in a very different direction, with different policy implications.
That the model survives is due mainly to the lack of a coherent and
persuasive alternative. We lack a developed political theory of partial
or limited state-membership. We lack a political theory of desacralized membership, based solely on calculations of personal advantage, or of political membership dissociated from cultural belonging,
or of dual or multiple membership.
Because it is vestigial, the model is significantly out of phase with
contemporary realities of state-membership. There are conspicuous
deviations from the model that have nothing to do with immigration.
The desacralization of state-membership, for example, has more to
do with the emotional remoteness of the bureaucratic welfare state
and the obsolescence of the citizen army in the nuclear age than
it does with immigration and occasional naturalizations of convenience. And if modern-day citizenship is not very robustly democratic, this has more to do with the attenuated participation of most
citizens in the exercise of sovereignty than it does with the exclusion
of noncitizens from the franchise.
Still, the postwar immigration has accentuated existing deviations
from the nation-state model and generated new ones. These include
the proliferation of statuses of partial membership; the declining
value of citizenship; the desacralization of membership through the
calculating exploitation of the material advantages it confers; the increasing demands for, and instances of, full membership of the state
without membership of the cultural nation; the soaring numbers of
persons with dual citizenship; and the long-term exclusion of large
numbers of apparently permanent residents from electoral participation. These membership trends deviate from every component of the
nation-state model. And each one arises from the unexpected development of postwar immigration.
Unexpected especially on the Continent: for what has become a
settlement immigration began in France and Germany and Sweden
as a temporary labor migration. Neither a strictly temporary guestworker system nor unambiguous and accepted settlement immigration poses insuperable problems of membership. But an imperceptible slide from labor migration to settlement immigration, a slide
only partially and belatedly acknowledged by the immigrants themselves and by the country of immigration, could not help generating
delicate problems of membership. And equally delicate problems of
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vestigial model
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fundamentalism
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immigration and
nation-building
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assimilation
mental, the striving for cultural unity has been crucially expressive of
French nationhood. Political inclusion has entailed cultural assimilation, for regional cultural minorities and immigrants alike. The universalist, inclusive theory and practice of citizenship have depended
on confidence in the assimilatory workings of schools, the army, the
church, unions, and political parties confidence that has waned
markedly in recent years.5
If the French conception of nationhood has been universalist, assimilationist, and state-centered, the German conception has been
particularist, organic, and Volk-centered. Because national feeling
developed before the nation-state, the German idea of the nation
was not originally a political one, nor was it linked with the abstract
idea of citizenship. This pre-political German nation, this nation in
search of a state, was conceived not as the bearer of universal political values, but as an organic cultural, linguistic, or racial community
as a Volksgemeinschaft. On this understanding, ethnic or cultural
unity is primary and constitutive of nationhood, while political unity
is derivative. While this way of thinking about nationhood has never
had the field to itself, it took root in early 19th century Germany and
has remained available for political exploitation ever since; it finds
expression even in the Basic Law of the Federal Republic.6
One would expect citizenship defined (as in France) in political
terms to be more accessible to culturally distinct immigrants than
membership defined (as in Germany) in ethnic or cultural terms.
This is in fact the case. The policies and politics of citizenship in
France and Germany have been strikingly different since the late
19th century, and they remain so despite converging immigration
policies and comparable immigrant populations. As a result, a substantial fraction of the French immigrant population has French citizenship, while only a negligible fraction of the corresponding West
German population has German citizenship.
The postwar migrations, to be sure, have placed considerable
strain on French and German traditions alike. The French tradition
of assimilation finds few defenders today: the multiculturalist left
and immigrant organizations argue that immigrants should not be
assimilated, the exclusionary right that they (the North Africans in
particular) cannot be assimilated. The far right, led by Jean-Marie
Le Pen, has embarked on a major campaign to revalorise French
citizenship by restricting immigrants access to it. Le Pens slogan
Etre franais, cela se mrite means roughly: to be French, you
have to deserve it.
Nor is it only the French tradition of inclusion via assimilation
that is under strain. The current conservative government of West
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Germany has had to acknowledge that large numbers of Turkish migrants have in fact become permanent immigrants. It has even proclaimed a public interest in the naturalization of second-generation
immigrants.
It is too early to predict the outcome of the contemporary politics of citizenship in France and West Germany. But the bearing of
traditional shared understandings of nationhood on this politics is
clear. French moves toward a more restrictive and German moves
toward a more liberal politics of citizenship have encountered strong
resistance. The French government withdrew its proposed, mildly
restrictive reform of nationality law in December 1986 after meeting
unexpectedly strong opposition. (Dissenters included the venerable
Council of State, which criticized the reform as contrary to republican tradition and principles.) It subsequently appointed a nonpartisan commission to study the issue; the changes proposed in the
commissions report, if enacted, would actually liberalize access to
French citizenship for second-generation immigrants. On the other
hand, every recent proposal to liberalize German nationality law has
foundered in the upper house. A central argument has been that the
current restrictive nationality law is appropriate for a country that, by
inescapable tradition, is not and cannot become a country of immigration.7
In Sweden, as in France, national feeling and state institutions
developed in tandem long before the age of nationalism. The sense
of nationhood emerged in the course of political and military struggles against Denmark in the late 15th and 16th centuries, before a
distinctively Swedish culture existed. Literature, art, and language
were then permeated by Danish and German influence. Nor were
there sharp ethnic distinctions between Swedes and Danes. In these
circumstances, national feeling was expressed in an attachment to
political and institutional traditions, not in the sense of ethnic or cultural distinctiveness. Later, to be sure, national feeling did find expression in a distinctive culture. And contemporary Sweden certainly
has a relatively homogeneous national culture. But this national culture has never carried a strong political charge in the Swedish tradition. It was not harnessed to a project of domestic assimilation and
overseas imperialism, as in France, nor to a movement for national
unification, as in Germany, nor to a campaign for national autonomy
or independence, as occurred in 19th century Finland and Norway,
neither at that time a sovereign state. Swedens long, continuous history as an independent state with a more or less homogeneous population, and its position as the dominant Scandinavian power from
the 17th century on, provided no occasion for the politicization of
cultural identity.
Sweden: absence of
ethnic nationalism
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England: fuzzy
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ing citizens of the independent Commonwealth countries. But controls were imposed on this latter group in 1962 after a significant
immigration developed from Jamaica, India, and Pakistan. This was
inevitable, in view of the huge population disparity between the independent Commonwealth countries and Britain itself. More troubling
was the fact that the government later drew distinctions in immigration law between persons possessing the same formal citizenship
status citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies. While
other countries were debating the citizenship status of immigrants,
Britain was debating the immigration status of citizens.8
Britain now has a national, postcolonial citizenship, and with it
a clear criterion of admission to the territory. But it achieved this,
in the eyes of some critics, only by drawing the lines of the national
community of citizens too narrowly, and by creating a special second-class citizenship status, without the right of immigration, for
residents of Hong Kong and others.
In the domain of economic, social, and political rights, immigrants in Britain generally have more rights than elsewhere. This
too results from the fact that Britain has not traditionally defined
itself as a nation-state. British law imposes relatively few disabilities
on aliens; more important, relatively few of Britains postwar immigrants have been aliens. Neither Irish citizens nor citizens of independent Commonwealth countries are considered aliens. Outside the
domain of immigration law itself, immigrants from the Caribbean,
from India, from Pakistan, and elsewhere have virtually the same
rights as British citizens, including the right to vote and to run for
office.
American and Canadian conceptions of citizenship and nationhood reflect the historical and contemporary importance of immigration. This distinguishes them sharply from their European counterparts. Even before American independence, the pressing need for
settlers had established naturalization as central to the theory and
practice of citizenship. Characteristics of naturalization a process
through which an individual expresses his or her voluntary adhesion
to a state came to be ascribed to American citizenship as such. The
War of Independence reinforced this understanding of citizenship,
for it led to sharp criticism of the British conception of unchosen and
perpetual subjectship.9 And since the new nation lacked a distinctive
ethnic or cultural identity, American nationhood and nationalism
had to be defined in terms of a universalistic political formula that
would set it apart from the mother country.10
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th Amendment of 1868
definitively established birth in the territory (jus soli) as the criterion
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phases of
exclusiveness
for the attribution of citizenship and affirmed, in principle, the primacy of national over state citizenship. In the aftermath of the Civil
War, the affirmation of jus soli and of national citizenship had an
explicitly egalitarian, inclusive meaning.
The traditional inclusive and universalistic self-understanding
of the United States has always stood in tension with a much less
pretty practice. Free blacks, as well as slaves, were excluded from
U.S. citizenship before the Civil War, even when they possessed state
citizenship. Blacks continued to be excluded from full citizenship
after the Civil War through a restrictive judicial reading of the 14th
Amendment. American Indians were not granted automatic citizenship at birth until 1924. And the category of aliens ineligible for
citizenship, first introduced to exclude Chinese in 1882, was not
finally abolished until 1952. Ethnic exclusion based on national-origin immigration quotas, moreover, persisted until 1965. Still, the
voluntaristic and universalistic understanding of citizenship helped
eventually to undermine the legitimacy of these exclusionary practices. High rates of immigration, liberal naturalization provisions,
and the jus soli rule have made the United States, for most of its
history, exceptionally open to the political incorporation of ethnically
and culturally distinct immigrants.
This tradition of inclusion has been interrupted by periodic phases of exclusiveness. One such phase, marked by the surge of the
KnowNothings in the 1850s, occurred in response to the dramatic
increase in Catholic immigration after 1830; another, culminating in
the severely restrictive legislation of 1917-1924, occurred in response
to the new immigration from southern and eastern Europe after
1890. Today, after twenty years of the new new immigration ushered in by the liberal Hart-Celler Act of 1965 and twenty years of
high levels of illegal immigration, we may be entering another such
phase. Even in the present political climate, however, debates about
immigration and citizenship continue to be informed by the distinctly inclusive American understanding of nationhood. Thus the legalization program of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986
acknowledged the legitimate membership claims of long-settled undocumented immigrants and of seasonal agricultural workers. And
it has been taken for granted that legalized immigrants would become citizens. Newspaper reports on the legalization program sometimes described undocumented aliens as applying for citizenship, although in fact they were applying for temporary resident status and,
if successful, would qualify for permanent resident status only after
18 months, and for citizenship only after another five years.11
Canada, in some respects, has been even more strongly marked
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Questions of membership13
The nation-state is doubly bounded. It has a bounded territory and
a bounded membership. States make decisions about whom to admit to their territories, and about whom to admit as members. This
book is not concerned with admission to the territory. Not that this is
unimportant. Quite the contrary: the intensifying demand for entry
raises urgent and troubling questions about territorial boundaries.
Most fundamentally: what right do states have forcibly to deny entry
into their territories particularly to persons in urgent need of food,
shelter, or protection?14
territorial
boundaries
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Questions of membership, though, differ from questions of entry. Questions of membership concern persons already present in
the territory (although not all such persons: the vast majority of those
admitted to the territory of another state are short-term visitors for
business or pleasure; their membership status is not in question).
Problems of membership arise, rather, for persons whose residence
and participation in the economic and social life of a country have
engendered significant ties to that country.15
It is of course impossible to delimit this group with any precision. Ties develop gradually, and there is no sharp divide between
shortterm visitors whose attachments remain firmly anchored in
their country of origin and persons whose developing attachments
to a new country begin to raise questions of membership personal
questions in the mind of the migrant, and policy questions for the
country in which he or she resides. It is just for this reason that the
personal questions and the policy questions are such difficult ones.
The policy questions are of two sorts. First, under what conditions and on what terms should such persons be admitted to full
citizenship? Second, what is the appropriate status for persons who
are not, or not yet, full citizens? What civil, political, economic, and
social rights should they enjoy? To what obligations should they be
subjected?
weighing interests
Access to citizenship
Citizenship is at the vital center of the political life of the modern
nation-state. Whom should the state admit to the privileges of citizenship, and on what terms and conditions?
The individual essays have much to say about this question.
Without rehearsing their arguments here, let me simply note that
the essays of Part One make arguments about admission to citizenship on two levels, linking political philosophy and public policy.
They raise broad questions of political philosophy, but these questions have definite and sometimes quite far-reaching policy implications.
Central to the essays of Joseph Carens and Kay Hailbronner, for
example, is a perennial conundrum of political philosophy: how
should one weigh the claims and interests of individuals against the
claims and interests of the state? Professor Carens articulates and asserts the claims of individuals, Professor Hailbronner the claims of
the state. These arguments have diametrically opposed implications.
Carens would compel the state to grant citizenship to all persons requesting it, providing they meet minimum residence requirements.
Hailbronner defends the states discretionary power to grant or deny
naturalization in accordance with its own interests.
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ambiguity of
membership
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partial membership
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naturalization
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immigrants and
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access to goods
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agreement on the
meaning of goods
The enjoyment of some of these goods depends directly on membership status on citizenship, permanent residence, or some other
status. Other goods, though, do not depend directly on membership
status, being available to all persons who happen to be present in the
territory. The public peace, for example, may be enjoyed by those illegally or temporarily in the territory as well as by members. Yet even
this good depends indirectly on membership, for only some form
of membership can secure long-term residence and thus long-term
enjoyment of the good.
From a global perspective, the most important basic goods today
are public peace and access to a relatively promising labor market
(one affording a reasonable chance of realizing personal or familial
aspirations). Both goods depend at least indirectly on membership,
and both goods are distributed among states in a highly unequal
manner. It is this that accounts for the unprecedented migratory
pressure and for the increasing salience and urgency of the politics
of immigration and citizenship today.
What is it about the various membership-dependent goods that
makes it reasonable to set different conditions of eligibility for them?
What goods ought to be reserved for full citizens, and why? At the
other end of the spectrum, what goods should be extended to all persons in the territory, regardless of membership?
Michael Walzer has suggested that shared understandings about
the meaning of goods should guide policy deliberations about their
distribution.18 The principle can be applied to the goods of membership. It is the different moral and political meanings of these goods,
I think, that may explain why some are reserved for citizens, others
extended to permanent residents, and others available to all without
regard for membership.
To agree on this principle is simply to agree on a mode of argument. It does not, of course, settle any substantive questions of eligibility. Disagreement about the meaning of particular goods or about
the implications of this meaning for eligibility is not only possible,
it is inevitable. The following remarks are merely illustrative; I make
no attempt to establish the meanings of different sorts of membership goods.
Consider voting. Even those who wish to extend to noncitizens
most rights of citizenship often concede that there is something special about voting in national elections. The fact that national elections
influence policy in the domains of defense and foreign affairs may
justify reserving the right to vote in such elections to citizens, bound
to the state by ties of allegiance and obligations of service. Voting
in local elections, however, has a different meaning. It involves lo-
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our societies. Race and ethnicity then become central to their work.
Social scientists who definitely and exclusively choose one rather
than another of these division principles grow fewer and fewer in
number. There is currently some kind of recognition that a better
understanding of our societies stems from a masterly combination
of all those dimensions in sociological analysis. It is more and more
accepted that class, gender, race and ethnicity, seen as research units,
are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In this view, either none of
those principles is crucial or they all are. In other words, independently of how they are conceptualized, class, gender, race and, ethnicity appear to be interrelated and in some cases even to overlap.
Furthermore, the nature of such interrelations and overlaps is neither definite nor fixed in time. One of the issues facing social research is precisely to try to understand and explain those historical
changes.
The interrelations and overlaps concern class, gender, race and
ethnicity, whether they be considered as analytically distinct research
units or as a basis for individual identity formation, or, as mobilizing principles for collective action. On the one hand, more and more
scholars seek to discover the connections between race and class
(Anthias 1990), between class and gender, and between class, gender
and race. On the other hand, individuals seldom define themselves
simply as black, or female or Moroccan. Usually a persons identity is a combination of several of those dimensions, which prefer to
as many identification processes. At the level of collective action, the
same phenomenon may be empirically observed. Frequently, several
of the four dimensions presented are used simultaneously as organizing principles.
The aim of the present article is not to tackle the issue of the interconnection between class, gender, race and ethnicity in a straightforward manner. However, in looking at our post-industrial post-World
War II societies especially Belgium as massive international labour
and political immigration countries, it will be dealt with indirectly. The
arrival and settlement of immigrants have had significant and complex effects on the class, gender, racial and ethnic composition of
Belgium, as well as on the emergence of new forms of identity and
collective action.
In order to avoid a sterile and endless theoretical discussion about
the interconnection between class, gender, race and ethnicity, it is
useful to introduce the concepts of labour and political immigration as an alternative division principle in our societies. From this
standpoint, Belgium can be characterized by the presence of two
types of human groups: the native population, and the population
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resulting from post-World War II mass immigration. Both are culturally, socially and politically heterogeneous and socio-economically
stratified, even though the socio-economic: stratification follows different patterns in each case.
Situated in that broad context, this article deals mainly with the relations between the Belgian state and political system on the one hand,
and the ethnic communities from immigrant origin on the other. In
Brasss (1985) terms, this is a study of the relations between ethnic
groups and the state in which only specific ethnic groups are concerned. However, the use of the concept ethnic community from immigrant origin does not imply that central importance is given to substantial (i.e., which had a substance, a content) ethnicity. As is shown
in the following section, the proposed definition of ethnic groups is
largely non-ethnic in the primordialist sense of the expression.
In order to clarify the concepts and to avoid confusion about
terms, the next section specifies the main units of analysis used in
this article. The central hypothesis will be dealt with in the second
section. The third and final section presents the main results of an
empirical case-study in Belgium and an evaluation of the previously
stated hypothesis as well as two sets of conclusive remarks.
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ethnic categories
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ethnicity refers only to national origin (Alba 1976; 1895) that stems
mainly from a juridical classification2 of human beings.
Paradoxically, the definition of ethnic collectivities is largely nonethnic because it is not based at all on cultural or ethnic (in the
primordialist sense) elements beyond national origin.3 The second
objective feature is the migratory origin that people have in common.
The reason why people are classified in an ethnic category can be
traced back to one and the same phenomenon, namely post-World
War II international labour and political migration. At the origin, an
ethnic category is made up or can be constituted by migrant workers or political refugees, that is, by people who came from abroad.
However, their family and children, often born in their parents arrival country, are also part of the ethnic category, even though they
have no personal experience of migration and cannot therefore be
considered as immigrants. Consequently, and this is the third feature, ethnic categories are reproduced over several biological generations (Keyes 1976). Their lifetime is thus of long duration.
The collective disadvantages that people classified into ethnic categories face can be observed in many spheres of human life. As far
as the socio-economic sphere is concerned, they are usually concentrated at the level of manual unskilled or semi-skilled labour, often
in declining industries but also in other sectors, such as the services
sector. This relative homogeneity in the weakest positions on the
labour market is to a certain extent reproduced over the biological
generations.4 It is rooted in the history of post-World War II labour
migration which concerned mainly unqualified or at least used as
such manpower. In the legal-political sphere their position is also
weaker than that of the natives. As foreigners they are often deprived of basic political rights such as the right to vote and to be
elected. Even where they have obtained the relevant nationality, and
consequently those basic rights, they are often the targets of unequal
treatment, for example by the police. Their position in education and
housing is also disadvantaged in many ways. Furthermore, ethnic
categories are numerically small compared to the population of the
society at large. Finally, there can be as many ethnic categories as there
are successive labour or political migratory waves in one country.
The notion of ethnic category as used here, is an abstract one. As
a research construction, it is based exclusively on objective criteria.
To be part of an ethnic category, it is not necessary to have a selfconsciousness or an identity. There is no membership, no belonging
to an ethnic category. People are assigned to an ethnic category by a
researcher on the basis of some objective features that they share and
some common disadvantages that they face.
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the ethnic
community
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ethnic leaders
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does not imply that they are fully homogeneous and undifferentiated. Furthermore, the concepts of ethnic elites and ethnic leaders are
very useful when it comes to grasping the social and economic differentiation within ethnic collectivities.
The concept of ethnic elite refers to people from the ethnic category who have reached a significant degree of success as compared
to the average success level of their fellow ethnics in the larger
society involving one or more of the various fields of human activity
(work and profession, arts and culture, politics, business, etc.). Along
with Pareto (1986), one can talk of a plurality of elites, in this case
ethnic elites, each one of them corresponding to one specific field of
human activity. In any case, ethnic elites are a small but variable subcategory of the ethnic category. Moreover, the dividing line between
elite and non-elite is defined in relative terms. It depends on each
categorys economic, social and political characteristics and history
in the immigration country.
The concept of ethnic leader refers to those members of the ethnic
community who have the ability to exert intentionally some variable
degree of influence on the preferences and/or behaviour of the other
members of that community, the aim being to obtain satisfaction of
the groups objective interests as perceived by the leaders. When the
influence is exerted effectively, it is done through the leaders-followers interactions in the ethnic communitys institutions. Ethnic leaders necessarily enjoy some degree of recognition by their followers in
the ethnic community on which the leaderships legitimacy is based.
Finally, the approach taken in this article centres on the concepts
of power and powerlessness as a valid alternative to the dominant perspective, at least in continental Europe, that focuses on cultural or
ethnic relations using notably the concept of integration (Martiniello
1992). The definitions adopted here are largely inspired by the work
of Lukes (1974; 1986). Power is conceived as the ability of an ethnic
collectivity as a group to control results related to issues affecting its
interests. Consequently, an ethnic collectivity is politically powerless,
if it is unable to promote and defend its collective interests in the web
of political relations in a given society.
On the basis of the units of analysis defined above, the next section develops the main theoretical hypothesis of this article before
turning to the case-study.
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collective reactions
two phases
As clarified above, the ethnic collectivities dealt with here are mainly
characterized by the objective disadvantages they collectively face in
many fields. Nevertheless, their disadvantaged position is not perfectly stable in time and space. Furthermore, it varies according to
the type of migratory experience of each receiving country and the
ethnic, collectivity in question. Consequently, not all ethnic collectivities face the same degree of objective disadvantage. For example, the
ethnic collectivities from member states of the European Community
[EC] are in many ways privileged compared to non-EC ethnic collectivities. As workers, they are protected by European law and as ethnic
categories they are much less stigmatized than, for example, North
African collectivities.
However, a certain degree of disadvantage always persists and is
reproduced over the biological generations. This can be reduced or.
increased, but fundamentally, the ethnic collectivities studied live in
a chronically disadvantaged position in the receiving society. To the
extent that the continuation of this situation is contrary to the rankand-file ethnics objective interests, which are not efficiently promoted and defended through an ethnic community collective action, ethnic collectivities are politically powerless and this powerlessness is
thus fundamentally persisting as well. This article does not concern
either the so-called middleman minorities (Bonacich 1973) or the
powerful ethnic lobbies acting in particular political systems.
From an analytical point of view, various forms of ethnic collectivities reactions to their condition can be conceived. Firstly, they
can simply accept their position passively, either individually or
collectively, in which case no form of active response is elaborated.
Secondly, a fraction of the ethnic category can seek individual success in areas that are left relatively open by the native society through
mobilizing personal resources in individual strategies. This process
of escape or exit gives birth to the ethnic elites. Thirdly, there is in
theory the possibility of elaborating active collective responses to political powerlessness.
This process of active collective response could be seen analytically as a two-phased one. In the first phase, the ethnic collectivity
gives itself some kind of structure and constitutes itself in a single
collective actor or set of juxtaposed collective actors. A more or less
dense web of ethnic organizations and institutions takes shape in
which emerging ethnic leaders play a central initiating role, notably
through moulding and constructing some kind of mobilizable collective identity. This move towards ethnic-community building can be
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interpreted as a first reduction in the degree of political powerlessness of the ethnic category. In the second phase, ethnic leaders will
try to promote and defend the ethnic communitys interests, notably
through their relations with the state and the polity. They will also
strive to keep the support of their fellow ethnics and to reaffirm constantly the existence of the ethnic community.
The constitution and the structuration of a collective actor is a
crucial and much contested issue but one which is not dealt with
here. Rather, the problem is considered to have been solved by taking
the existence of ethnic communities as defined above as a premiss.
Seen in this context, the relations between the ethnic community
and the state and polity are the main focus of analysis. In this respect,
the study of the role of ethnic leaders in the reduction of the degree
of the ethnic communitys powerlessness through those relations is
thought to be of utmost importance.
The central hypothesis is this. In Belgium, ethnic leaders generally fail to reduce significantly their ethnic communitys political
powerlessness. They tend either to increase it or to maintain the
status quo. The fundamental reasons for that inability are not to be
found in the intrinsic characteristics of the ethnic leaders, such as
their political inexperience, say, or their incompetence. Rather, it has
to be explained by reasons that relate to the general political climate
in Belgium and its repercussions on the way in which the state and
polity tackle the relevant issues of the ethnic collectivities. Diffused
racism and xenophobia characterize the political climate in Belgium
and this explains the development of the state and polity exclusion
strategies directed towards ethnic collectivities. In other words, the
current political climate does not seem to be favourable to the empowerment of ethnic collectivities through their leaders actions, no
matter how competent the latter may be.
The general will to keep ethnic communities outside or at the
margin of the political system is translated into two related strategies
as far as ethnic leaders and elites are concerned: the neutralization
of ethnic leaders, and the depoliticization of their action. The neutralization of ethnic leaders is done in comparable ways by the state
and other political actors, mainly the political parties and the unions,
notably through the establishment of ad hoc peripheral institutions
or sub-institutions to deal with the problems of ethnic categories.
Furthermore, individual social and economic upward mobility often
accompanies the processes of neutralization and depoliticization of
ethnic leaders. In this second process, politicized ethnic leaders are
transformed into apolitical ethnic elites.
The neutralization and depolitization processes can be clarified
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system. Between 1946 and 1957 Italian immigrant workers were directly recruited in Italy by the Belgian coal industry, with the help of
the government and the acceptance of the reluctant unions, to work
in the coal mines. An agreement between the Belgian and Italian
governments, signed in Rome in 1946 (Morelli 1988), provided for
50,000 workers to be exported annually to Belgium. Every week,
tightly controlled rail convoys were organized in Italy to bring immigrants to Belgium. In the early years, these contingents of workers
were housed in former German prisoners camps. Immigrants had
all signed temporary contracts to work in the mines, and any occupational mobility outside the extractive sector was legally prohibited.
The period of contingented Italian immigration ended with the accident at the Marcinelle mine when 136 Italian miners lost their lives.
Between 1958 and 1968 immigration continued at a slower pace and
was mainly spontaneous. Italians were coming to Belgium as tourists and usually found a non-qualified manual job in the building industry, in the iron industry, metallurgy or the extractive sector quite
easily. Since 1968, Italian immigration in Belgium has slowed down
considerably and is governed by the principle of free movement of
workers in the EC.5 Italian workers have entered every sector of the
Belgian economy and their settlement has become more and more
visible through the continuation of the family reunification process.
As a result of these three migratory phases, the Italian population
in Belgium nowadays amounts to about 240,000 people (Martiniello
1990). Including Belgians of Italian origin, the Italian collectivity
reaches almost 300,000, which is roughly 3 per cent of the countrys total population and 25-30 per cent of the total immigrant origin
population in Belgium. Italians and Belgians of Italian origin are the
largest ethnic collectivity living in Belgium. Seventy per cent of them
are settled in the French-speaking part of the country (Martiniello
1990).
The Italian population is increasingly presented as a model of
perfect integration, to be followed and imitated by all other immigrant origin populations mainly Moroccans and Turks present
in Belgium. In the discourse of politicians and many social scientists, Italians are no longer included in the ethnic categories issue.
However, this is popular science which is not supported by fact. On
the contrary, fieldwork results show that Italians in Belgium are still
an ethnic category as defined above. Taking into account their socioprofessional position, their juridico-political status, their positions
in education and housing as well as the prejudices they still face,
Italians are nevertheless disadvantaged compared to native Belgians.
At the same time, when their position is compared to that of the
Maghrebins and to that of the Turks, it is a privileged one.
Italian immigrants
in Belgium
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a disadvantaged
position
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and Wallonia. There are few Italians in Flanders, except in the mining area of Limburg. Nevertheless, the common prejudices against
Italians, notably concerning the mafia, seem to find some echo in
parts of the Flemish population. In Wallonia, one is used to the presence of Italians. Walloons and Italians mix socially and at work, especially in working-class areas, None the less, a recent poll6 shows that
an anti-Italian tendency subsists among the Walloon population. To
paraphrase Romeo and Juliet, nobody knows why there is a war but
there is a war. In the present case, the word war cannot be used, but
the process is the same, since no one can remember the origin of the
hostility.
However, the situation, globally speaking, is better than it was
forty years ago. Italians no longer live segregated in prisoner-of-war
camps like the pioneers who arrived in 1945 to work in the coal
mines. Nowadays Italians are present in almost all sectors of the
economy: furthermore, there are businessmen, doctors, lawyers and
university students of Italian origin. There are even some Belgians of
Italian origin occupying positions of power in politics; For example,
the Minister of Education in the French Community government7
is Elio Di Rupo, the son of an Italian mineworker who arrived in
Belgium after 1945; The period of gang warfare between Belgian and
Italian youth in the discotheques during the late sixties and seventies is over, and open racism against Italians is often socially condemned. Yet this incontestable improvement of the Italians position
in Belgian society is much more the result of general improvements
that have affected the whole of Belgian society since World War II,
and of a collection of individual and familial efforts, than it is of the
collective action of an Italian community organized around its leaders in the Belgian state and polity. In that sense, the Italian community as such is still as politically powerless as it was in the past.
Contrary to a largely diffused view, ethnic communities are rarely
strongly structured groups of people obeying a single leadership.
This observation applies perfectly to the present case. The Italian
community is no exception. It is a split, heterogeneous and complex
set of local micro-communities each consisting of people with family
or local association links. These micro-communities are guided by as
many local leaders in competition with one another.
In 1985 there were more than 300 Italian voluntary associations
in Belgium.8 In the Liege area alone there were already around ninety associations in 1989.9 Nevertheless, it is important to note that the
web of ethnic institutions effectively gathers together a maximum of
10 per cent of the ethnic category (Martiniello 1989), that is less than
30,000 people. Furthermore, there is no institutional completeness
politically powerless
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Belgium up to medium or high level. There are professional community workers among them, but mostly they remain involved in
community affairs on a voluntary basis. They enjoy internal and external recognition at local level and sometimes also at regional level.
They direct their action towards life in Belgium where they are culturally at ease. The imported leaders are neither immigrant workers
nor were they born in Belgium. They came from Italy to take care of
immigrants on a professional basis. Usually they tend to be elderly
people and mostly well educated. Before being recognized within the
community, they are recognized by Belgian and Italian authorities at
local and regional level. Their cultural references and their activity
concern Belgium as much as Italy.
In their relations with members of the community most leaders
tend to adopt an autocratic, sometimes even dictatorial, style. This
is only possible because of the relative apathy of the community. In
their relations with the external society, most Italian leaders tend to
be accommodation leaders in Myrdals (1962) use of the term.
Even though there is no single coordinating body in which all
leaders come together, Italian leadership is to some extent structured
in the following way. An important characteristic of most leaders is
their multipositionality. They are simultaneously members of several community institutions of the same political family, in which
they are to a greater or lesser degree always active and influential.
In addition, they represent one or more of those institutions in the
ad hoc bodies established for the relations between the community
and the states (Belgian as well as Italian). Leaders get to know each
other, therefore, through the various meetings that their multipositionality implies and a certain form of privileged relationship develops between them. A relatively small circle of competing leaders
is thus constituted inside the same political family. Yet even across
the borders of these political families, the leaders mutually recognize each other as being the only legitimate and valid political opponents. Consequently, there is a kind of common consciousness of
being leaders in leadership circles that must surely be considered as
a structuring factor.
As far as the Italian leaders relations with the Belgian state are
concerned, they mainly develop in two specifically created institutions: the immigrants Communal Consultative Councils [ICCC]
that depend on the local level of the state; and the Foreign Origin
Populations Consultative Councils [FOPCC] that depend on the
communitarian level of the state.10 As far as their relations with the
rest of the polity are concerned, some Italian leaders also belong to
Belgian trade unions and political parties.
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style of leadership
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neutralization and
depolitization
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The fieldwork based on semi-participant observation, semi-directive depth interviews and documentary data did not lead to a rejection of the hypothesis, mentioned above, about the inability of ethnic
leaders to reduce the ethnic communitys powerlessness in spite of
their personal political skilfulness.11 In that sense, the reproduction
of the groups powerlessness is an indicator of the Italian leaders
powerlessness as ethnic leaders in the Belgian polity. The Italian
leaders incapacity is to be explained by the state and polity mode of
action towards them.
The state and polity have neutralized and depoliticized Italian
leaders in two ways. Firstly, they have been confined in consultative
structures completely subordinated to the state both at the legal level
and at the material level. The weight of structures like the ICCC and,
FOPCC has always been virtually nil in Belgian political life. Trade
unions have followed the same logic by creating specific sub-sections
for immigrants, far removed from their decision-making centre.
Secondly, some Italian leaders and other Italian-Belgians have individually reached positions of power within the polity some have
achieved significant success in other fields of human activity too
but have renounced their leadership role in the Italian community.
As such, there are a few important trade unionists of Italian origin, a
minister of Italian origin, and a slowly growing presence of Italians
in the political parties. These people, who were once actual or potential community leaders, have thus changed into collectivity elites. In
other words, the state and the other main political actors have always
either to keep Italian leaders outside the centres of power or to allow
some of them in on the more or less implicit understanding that
they renounce their leadership role. Moreover, the divisions that exist within the Italian community have also been stressed by the state
in order to complicate further the task of the ethnic leaders.
The emergence of an Italian elite is just the other face of the exclusion strategies adopted by the state and the polity. Italian leaders have a choice between two options: they can either stick to their
leadership role in peripheral and uninfluential institutions or they
can seize the opportunity to achieve individual success by escaping
from the community. That choice is the core of the Belgian model
of insertion of ethnic categories, which is constituted by a certain
level of social and economic achievement and, simultaneously, by
complete political powerlessness. By offering this choice, the state
has kept its autonomy towards ethnic communities and replaced the
never-made, let alone implemented, global and coherent ethnic collectivities policy.
How can one explain these exclusion strategies? Part of the an-
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swer is to be found in Belgian political history and part in the inherent characteristics of Belgian political life. Belgium has known political unity but never national unity. In the view of many observers,
Belgium is a mere accident of history which could be countered at
any time. Belgians themselves often question the reality, the existence and the survival of their society (Fox 1978). Since its creation,
Belgium has always had to face tensions, divisions, centrifugal forces
towards decentralization and centripetal forces towards centralization. In these conditions, a set of processes and mechanisms aimed
at constantly assuring and reassuring the unity and global viability of
the society has emerged and become institutionalized. The famous
pacte la belge is one of them. When critical issues are discussed,
conflicting groups never oppose each other beyond a certain point
which is considered to be dangerous for the survival of the state. They
then engage in extraordinary negotiations in an ad hoc commission
aimed at re-establishing harmony and peace between the groups in
a climate of moderation. This willingness to prevent divisions and
conflicts which might lead to the dissolution of the state has been observed since its very creation. Belgium has thus developed the art of
temporizing through setting up multiple commissions and councils,
usually consultative bodies, and habitually finding harmonious solutions to serious problems on the quiet. As Fox (1978) lucidly states,
Belgium is sufficiently concerned with its potentiality for internal
conflicts and with its intrinsic risk of self-demolition to establish and
maintain permanent pacts between the various actors about social
issues considered to be critical.
The hypothesis can be advanced that immigration and the presence of immigrant origin populations are precisely seen as one such
critical issue. To the extent that ethnic categories represent about
8 per cent of the total population and that they come from various
countries whose cultural differences are commonly underlined, their
presence is considered to be a potential danger because it complicates even more the already intricate ethno-national Belgian context.
This hypothesis is supported by the recent political discourse, admittedly during a period of relatively bad relations between the Flemish
and the Walloons, in the context of the new discussions about the
further federalization of the state after the legislative elections of
November 1991. A large consensus has developed between the various Belgian political actors to keep the threat, that is, immigrants
and their descent as communities, outside, or at the margin of, the
polity. The inclusion of ethnic communities in the polity is thought
to introduce a new and dangerous dimension of the ethnicization
of Belgian political life. The generally accepted refusal of this new
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potential danger
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immigrization
marco martiniello
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three types of
reactions
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Rainer Baubck, John Bade, Alec Hargreaves, Ronald
Kaye, Zig Layton-Henry, Jan Rath and Giovanna Zincone for their
helpful comments on a draft version of this article.
Notes
1 In the remainder of this article the phrase from immigrant origin will no
longer be used, since it is now clear that the study deals with populations
whose presence is a consequence of international labour and political immigration in the post-World War II period.
2 The expression national-origin category and community from immigrant
origin might have been used instead of ethnic category and community of
immigrant origin to avoid any possible confusion in the meaning of ethnicity. However, for elegance sake, the ethnic vocabulary has been kept.
3 The question until which biological generation does an ethnic category continue to be named as such will not be addressed here, because it is mainly an
empirical one.
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In the early 1990s, the sociologist Michel Wieviorka was one of the leading
specialists on racism in Europe. He published several books in French on the
issue. This article was published in 1994 in a book entitled Racism, Modernity
and Identity. Here Wieviorka convincingly defends the idea that any analysis
of racism in Europe has to recognise the links between racism and modernity. Furthermore, Wieviorka distinguishes four forms of racism: universalistic, the poor white response, anti-modernist and a form of racism linked to
intergroup conflict in the modern era. This distinction has become a classic
one in the European study of racism.
Observing growing racist tendencies that affect most European
countries, an increasing number of scholars feel an urgent need for
a comparative reflexion that may bring answers to a central question:
over and beyond the empirical evidence of differences, is there not
a certain unity in contemporary racism in Europe? Is it not possible
to elaborate a reasoned set of hypotheses that could account for most
national racist experiences in Europe, while shedding some light on
their specificities?
European unification, in so far as it exists, and the growth of racism are obviously distinct phenomena, and it would be artificial to try
and connect them too directly. The most usual frame of reference for
any research about racism and race relations remains national. And
even the vocabulary or, more deeply, the analytical and cultural categories that we use when dealing with this issue vary so widely from
one country to another that we meet considerable difficulties when
trying to translate precise terms. There may be large differences in
language, and words with negative connotations in one country will
have positive ones in another. Nobody in France, for instance, would
use the expression relations de race, which would be regarded as racist, although it is commonly employed in the United Kingdom.
unity in racism
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michel wieviorka
The key preliminary task, therefore, is not to contribute direct empirical knowledge about the various expressions of racism in Europe,
as can be found, for instance, in the important survey of Racism and
xenophobia published in 1989 by the European Community (CCE,
1989). Nor is the initial task to compare elementary forms of racism, such as harassment, stereotypes, discrimination or political racism in a certain number of countries, in order to prove that they are
more or less similar, or that they follow a similar evolution. Rather
the problem is primarily conceptual. If we want to test the idea of a
certain unity of contemporary racism in Europe, we must elaborate
sociological and historical hypotheses, and then apply them to the
facts that we are able to collect. Thus the most difficult aspect of a
comparative approach is not to find data, but to organize it with wellthought-out hypotheses.
My own hypotheses can be formulated in two different ways, one
of which is relatively abstract and the other more concrete.
sociological
unity of racism
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In a space of this type, the racist actors do not necessarily occupy one
single position, and their speech and their behaviour are frequently
syncretic and vary over time. There are even sometimes paradoxical mixtures of these various positions, when people, for instance,
reproach a racialized group with symbolizing at the same time mo-
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michel wieviorka
colonial racism
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tion, and, above all, the economic crisis that has in fact meant the
beginning of the decline of industrial societies.
Until that time, i.e. the 1960s and 1970s, most European countries had succeeded, to a greater or a lesser extent, depending on the
country, in integrating three basic components of their collective life:
an industrial society, an egalitarian state and a national identity.
Most European countries have been industrial societies: that is,
they have had a set of social relations rooted in industrial labour and
organization. From this point of view, they have been characterized
by a structural conflict, which opposed the working-class movement
and the masters of industry, but which extended far beyond workshops and factories. This conflict gave the middle classes a possibility to define themselves by either a positive or negative relationship
towards the working-class movement. It brought to unemployed
people the hope and sometimes the reality of being helped by this
movement. It was also the source of important political debates dealing with the social question. Furthermore, it influenced intellectual
and cultural life profoundly, and acted as a point of reference for
many actors, in the city, in universities, in religious movements and
elsewhere.
European countries, and this is the second basic component of
our model of analysis, have also been able to create and develop institutions which aimed at ensuring that egalitarian treatment was imparted to all citizens as individuals. The state has generally taken over
various aspects of social welfare and security. It has become a welfare state. The state also introduced or defended a distance between
religion and politics. Although countries such as Spain, Portugal
and Greece have recently experienced dictatorial regimes, states in
Europe have generally behaved, since the Second World War, as warrants for democracy.
Lastly, most European countries have given a central importance
to their national identity. This identity has usually included two different aspects, sometimes contradictory, sometimes complementary.
On one hand, the idea of a nation has corresponded to the assertion
of a culture, a language, a historical past and traditions, with some
tendencies to emphasize primordial ties and call for a biological definition loaded with racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism. On the
other hand, the nation has also been defined in a more positive way,
as bound to the general progress of mankind and to universal values
that could be defined in economic, political or ethical terms. In this
last perspective, a nation is related to reason, progress, democracy of
human rights.
Industrial society, state and nation: these three basic elements have
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industrial society,
state and nation
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michel wieviorka
never been consonant with their highest theoretical image. One can
easily show the weakness of the working-class movement in some
countries, or its constant subordination to political forces, the limits
of the welfare state everywhere in the past, and the domination of the
reactionary and xenophobic aspects of nationalism in many circumstances. Moreover, some European countries have defined themselves as bi- or plurinational. But since we recognize these limits,
and since we recognize many differences between countries, we can
admit, without the danger of creating a myth, that our three basic elements are typical of European countries until the 1960s and 1970s.
Not only have they characterized three countries, but they have also
been relatively strongly articulated, so much so that various terms
are used to express this articulation: for instance, integration, nationstate and national society. We must be very cautious and avoid developing the artificial or mythical image of countries perfectly suited
to the triple and integrated figure of an industrial society, a two-dimensional nation and a modern and egalitarian state. But our representation of the past is useful in considering the evolution of the last
twenty or thirty years, an evolution which is no doubt dominated by
the growing weakness and dissociation of our three basic elements.
transformation
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not only a great many personal dramas, but also a fiscal crisis of the
state. The problems of financing old-age pensions, the health care
system, state education and unemployment benefits are becoming increasingly acute, while at the same time there is a rising feeling of insecurity which is attributed, once again, to immigrants. The latter are
then perceived in racist terms, accused not only of taking advantage
of social institutions and using them to their own ends, but also of
benefiting from too much attention from the state. At the same time,
the ruling classes have been tempted since the 1970s by liberal policies
which in fact ratify and reinforce exclusion and marginalization.
The crisis of the state and the institutions is a phenomena which
must be analytically distinguished from the decline of industrial society and the dualization which results from its decline. But the two
phenomena are linked. Just as the welfare state owes a great deal,
in its formation, to the social and political discussions which are inseparable from the history of the working class, which is particularly
clear in the countries endowed with strong social democracy, so too
the crisis of the welfare state and the institutions owes a great deal to
the destructuration not only of these discussions and conflicts, but
also of the principal actor which informed them, the working-class
movement.
A third aspect of the recent evolution concerns the national issue, which becomes nodal all the more so as social issues are not
politically treated as such. In most European countries, political debates about nation, nationality and citizenship are activated. In such
a context, nationalism loses its open and progressive dimensions,
and its relationship with universal values, and is less and less linked
with ideas such as progress, reason or democracy. National identity
is increasingly loaded with xenophobia and racism. This tendency
gains impetus with the emergence or growth of other identities
among groups that are defined, or that define themselves, as communities, whether religious, ethnic, national or regional. There is a
kind of spiral, a dialectic of identities, in which each affirmation of a
specific identity involves other communitarian affirmations among
other groups. Nationalism and, more generally speaking, communal
identities do not necessarily mean racism. But as Etienne Balibar
explains, racism is always a virtuality (Balibar and Wallerstein, 1988).
This virtuality is not nurtured uniquely by the presence, at times
exaggerated and fantasized, of a more or less visible immigration.
It also owes a considerable amount to phenomena which may even
have nothing to do with it. Thus national identity is reinforced in its
most alarming aspects when national culture appears to be threatened by the superficial and hypermodern character of an internation-
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al culture which originates primarily in America, by the political construction of Europe or, again, by the globalization of the economy.
At the same time, it becomes more and more difficult to assert
that society, state and nation form an integrated whole. Those who
call for universal values, human rights and equality, who believe that
each individual should have equal opportunities to work, make money and then participate fully in cultural and political life in other
words, those who identity themselves with modernity are less and
less able to meet and even to understand those who have the feeling
of being excluded from modern life, who fear for their participation
in economic, cultural and political life, and who retire within their
national identity. In extreme cases, social and economic participation are no longer linked with the feeling of belonging to a nation,
the latter being what remains when the former becomes impossible.
Reason, progress and development become divorced from nation,
identity and subjectivity, and in this split, racism may easily develop.
In the past, industrial society often offered workers disastrous
conditions of work and existence. But the working-class movement,
as well as the rulers of industry, believed in progress and reason, and
while they were opposed in a structural conflict, this was precisely
because they both valorized the idea of progress through industrial
production, and both claimed that they should direct it. The nation,
and its state, as Ernest Gellner explains (1983) were supposed to be
the best frame for modernization, and sometimes the state not only
brought favourable conditions, but also claimed to be the main agent
of development. Nationalism could be the ideology linked to that
perspective, and not only a reactionary or traditionalist force. Today,
waters divide. Nationalism is mainly expressed by social and political
groups frightened by the internationalization of the economy and
culture. It is increasingly differentialist, and racism develops as social problems such as exclusion and downward mobility grow, and as
anxiety develops in regard to national identity.
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classical racism
differentialistic
racism
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would have taken the place of an old one. The sources of European
contemporary racism, as I have suggested, are in the crisis of national identities and in the dualization of societies, which favour a
differentialist logic. But they are also connected with phenomena of
downward social mobility and economic crisis, which lead to populism and exasperation and have an important dimension in appeals
for an unequal treatment of migrants.
Two main levels
As I have indicated in a recent book (Wieviorka, 1991), we may distinguish four levels in racism. The way that experiences of racism
are articulated at the different levels where they act may change with
their historical evolution. Our distinction is analytical, and should
help us as a sociological tool.
A first level refers to weak and inarticulated forms of racism,
whatever they may consist of: opinions and prejudice, which are
more xenophobic and populist than, strictly speaking, racist; and diffuse violence, limited expression of institutional discrimination or
diffusion of racial doctrines, etc. At this first level, racism is not a
central issue and it is so limited, quantitatively and qualitatively, that
I have chosen to use the term infraracism to characterize it.
We may speak of split racism at a second level, in reference to
forms of racism which are still weak and inarticulate, but stronger
and more obvious. At this stage, racism becomes a central issue, but
does not give the image of a unified and integrated phenomenon,
mainly because of the lack of a strong political expression.
We may speak of political racism, precisely, when political and intellectual debates and real political forces bring a dual principle of
unity to the phenomenon. On the one hand, they give it an ideological structure, so that all its expressions seem to converge and define
a unique set of problems; on the other hand, they offer it practical
forms of organization.
At the fourth level, we may call total racism those situations in
which the state itself is based on racist principles. There is nowadays no real threat of total racism in our countries; and we may now
simplify the distinction into four levels of racism by reducing them
to two main ones, the infrapolitical level, including infra and split racisms, and the political one.
We can now come back to our general analysis of European contemporary racism and be more precise. This rise of the phenomenon, following what was previously said, is due to the evolution of
three basic elements, and to their destructuration. We may add that
it appears first at an infrapolitical level, and that it then ascends to the
political level, with variations from one country to another.
infrapolitical to
political level
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than to Jews, and where the Front National tries constantly to instill
anti-Semitism.
More generally, there is still a real distance between infrapolitical and political racism, and this means that racism is not so much
a widely extended ideology offering people a general framework in
which to interpret their own lives and personal experiences, but rather a set of prejudices and practices that are rooted in these concrete
lives and experiences, and which could possibly evolve.
In the present state of things, the development is dominated by
a process of populist fusion in which popular affects and political
discourse converge, but which, paradoxically, protects our societies
from extreme and large-scale racist episodes. However, populism is
never a stable phenomenon and is always potentially open to more
frightening processes.
diversifying factors
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Germany
Italy
michel wieviorka
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dissociation of
society, state and
nation
References
Balibar Etienne, and Wallerstein, Immanuel (1988) Race, classe, nation, Paris: La Dcouverte.
Barkan, Elazar (1992) The Retreat of Scientific Racism, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Barker, Martin (1981) The New Racism, London: Junction Books.
CCE (1989) Eurobaromtre: Lopinion publique dans la Communaut
Europenne, Brussels: Commission des Communauts Europen
nes.
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michel wieviorka
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Changing the boundaries of citizenship:
the inclusion of immigrants in democratic polities*
Rainer Baubck
legitimating
political rule
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rational consent
external exclusion
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many of these actions have been labelled by the aggressors propaganda as liberating or civilizing missions). In other examples, a
damage inflicted upon the population of A may be the by-product
of some action on the part of B, which is less intended to harm A
than to serve Bs interests. Take, as an illustration, the depletion of
natural resources at the detriment of some neighbouring country
(e.g. when the water of a river is diverted or used at the expense of
those living downstream at the other side of the border). Regarding
environmental pollution across international borders it is not only
the neighbouring areas which suffer, but generally the damage is
even greater among the population of the country from which the
emissions originate. Politically speaking, the former are nonetheless
in the worse position because they and their representatives are formally excluded from controlling what affects them. In these cases
interstate treaties, rules of international law or pressure may help to
restrain the ruthless pursuit of a national policy which does not consider the effects on populations beyond the border. However, a fundamental difference remains between such remedies and the kind of
popular involvement which is regarded as essential for democratic
legitimacy.
Yet another problem of external exclusion results from the operations of a global economy. In the 1980s monetarist policy of Western
states pushed up interest rates with the effect of reducing the ability
of highly indebted countries in both Eastern Europe and the so-called
Third World to pay back credits, forcing many of them to adopt severe austerity policies. One could argue that in this example, governments of debtor nations had agreed to terms of contract which
included such a risk. Yet this objection does not fairly represent the
unequal balance of power by virtue of which creditor nations can
unilaterally influence the capacity of debtors to comply with their
obligations.
Many more examples could be given of policies that strongly affect populations which are excluded from democratic legitimation
simply because they live outside the territory of the state which determines and controls this policy. The general problem is that of the
disjunctures of globalization (Held, 1991; Held and McGrew, 1993).
The territorial ranges of ecological systems do not coincide with the
boundaries of states and modernization makes economic systems
increasingly transnational or even global. The modern bureaucratic
state, however, is solidly tied to a territory within which it claims a
monopoly of legitimate violence. Democratic legitimation therefore
also refers to a territorially bounded population. Involving the populations of other countries in the legitimation of national political de-
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(2) However, democratic legitimation may in certain ways also exclude parts of the population living in the territory of a state. In
pre-modern democratic constitutions, free citizens were generally a
minority of the population. Slaves and women were not considered
to be members of the polity. Nineteenth-century democracies still
maintained gender and property requirements for active citizenship2
and racist exclusion was widespread. In contemporary liberal democracies three groups remain internally excluded: minors, the severely
mentally handicapped and convicts. There are two significant shifts
in the patterns of justification from pre-liberal to contemporary exclusions.
Firstly, pre-liberal requirements for citizenship referred to generalized social conditions for individual autonomy which were seen as
preconditions for the formation of an independent judgement about
the common good and the interests of the state. Paupers, workers
and women had to be excluded from full citizenship because their
economic dependency and lack of education presumably prevented
them from developing that kind of judgement. This was clearly also
a self-defeating ideological argument. How could the privileged class
of male property owners be trusted to develop an unbiased view of
the common good? Isnt it more reasonable to assume that they
would rather defend their own interests against those of excluded
groups? Since then it is not only the argument but also social conditions which have changed so that the argument has lost whatever
force it once might have carried. On the one hand, almost everybody
receives nowadays that kind of elementary education which may be
said to be necessary for an active citizen and, on the other hand, a
broad middle class now has to rely on wages and salaries for their
income and on state bureaucracies for their social security. The capitalist welfare state has thus created a new social basis for including
broader populations into citizenship by generalizing education as
well as economic dependency. Any remaining citizenship disabilities are seen to result from a lack of relevant mental capacities and
moral qualities of individuals rather than being attributed to them as
permanent members of ascriptive social groups. Minors are automatically included on reaching their age of majority and convicts may
regain the status of full citizenship when being released from prison.
Mentally handicapped persons may remain permanently disenfranchised but this is justified with regard to a minimum of dialogic capacities that are essential for participating in political deliberation
(see Ackerman, 1980: 78-80).
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Secondly, and I think more importantly, those who remain disenfranchised are no longer excluded from citizenship. Minors, mentally handicapped persons and even criminal convicts are citizens in
the latter sense even though they may be excluded from the vote.
Basic mental capacities and moral qualities are not required for
membership in the polity but serve as criteria for the distribution of
the core rights of political participation within the polity. Citizenship
is acquired at birth rather than at the age of majority and generally
it cannot be taken away by the state or abandoned by citizens themselves as long as they live in the territory. From a liberal democratic
point of view, the status of citizenship, by which a state recognizes
an individual as its member, is not a formal legal concept lacking any
particular content;3 it implies substantial rights to protection, as well
as those against interference, by the state. Democratic legitimation
is not confined to the activity of political participation but rests on
this more comprehensive bundle of rights. For a liberal conception,
in contrast with the republican tradition of Aristotle, Rousseau or
Hannah Arendt, the inclusion of the inactive and even the incompetent as equal members in the polity is a basic achievement of contemporary democracy. This is a guarantee against the degeneration
of democracy into the rule of a self-proclaimed enlightened elite.
Modern liberal citizenship therefore emerges from a dual movement
of (a) turning the narrow privileges of active political participation
into general rights and (b) enriching the generalized condition of
protected subjecthood with the enjoyment of basic rights.
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(3) There is, however, one kind of persistent internal exclusion which
can only be justified by arguments for external exclusion. This is the
peculiar status of resident aliens. Their position in contemporary democracies is a paradoxical one. They are clearly affected by political
decisions in much the same way as citizens. Provided that they speak,
or have learned to speak, the language of their country of residence,
they are not different in their general capacities that quality them for
citizenship. They do, in most cases, enjoy fundamental rights, such
as equal rights in court, civil liberties, social rights to elementary
education and equal employment-related benefits of social security.
Their rights thus go considerably beyond universal human rights,
however, they are granted to them as residents rather than as citizens. On the one hand, this convergence between the rights of residents and of citizens demonstrates that the basic democratic norm of
legitimation applies to a resident population rather than only to those
individuals who are formally recognized as members of a polity. On
the other hand, why are there still so many significant distinctions
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choice
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even for voluntary migrants. Most foreign citizens are not given the
option of naturalization. Admission procedures in ordinary naturalizations are normally discretionary - the final decision is taken by the
naturalizing state, not by the applicant.6 Now suppose, for the sake
of argument, that naturalization became fully optional, i.e. available
upon request after a relatively short time of residence and without
further conditions attached.7 Even then, the question remains why
full rights for resident immigrants should depend upon their opting
for legal membership. Native citizens who enjoy these rights have
not chosen to be members, but have acquired their status at birth
and they are generally denied an option to renounce it while staying in the country. This indicates that, from the perspective of a liberal democratic polity, inclusion seems to be more important than
choice. If a substantial number of the population is excluded from
the polity because of their foreign citizenship, this creates a problem
for the legitimacy of political decisions even if this exclusion were
a voluntary one. Nevertheless, migrants may have special reasons
not to choose naturalization which ought to be taken into account.
Intuitively, it seems obvious that forcing a migrant to adopt a citizenship she or he does not want cannot be compared to the automatic
attribution of citizenship at birth. So the balance between inclusion
and choice should be a different one for native citizens and migrants.
However, this argument does not provide a justification for any kind
of discrimination. The question which I shall take up again in the
concluding section is rather: How different should the status of citizens and resident aliens be in terms of rights in order to make opting
for naturalization a meaningful choice?
The second type of reasoning for maintaining a clear line between
foreigners and citizens emerges from the perspective of the receiving state. The argument is that this line is constitutive for the polity itself and thus cannot be blurred by some democratic principle.
Democracy would become self-destroying if the imperatives of legitimation made it impossible to maintain the boundaries of the polity.
In the framework of Carl Schmitts politics of friend and foe, and
Thomas Hobbess view of international relations as a latent state of
war, it is quite plausible to deny foreigners essential rights of citizenship as well as the optional access to naturalization. The reason
for this is that their allegiance and obligations tie them to another
sovereign. It may be in the interest of a state to encourage immigration (if there is a strong demand for labour), it may even be expedient to naturalize immigrants in great numbers (if there is a lack of
soldiers). However, admission to the polity must remain under the
control of the receiving state in the same way as immigration8 and
political allegiance
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societal membership
rainer baubck
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states monopoly
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way: Completeness means that everybody is at any point in time subject to the territorial sovereignty of a state; discreteness implies that
nobody is subject to more than one state simultaneously. Such an
order can be represented, as in the above diagram, by a political map
of states without stretches of no-mans land or water between them.
However, in contrast with such a geographical representation, this
order can be highly volatile. We can define the stability of an order
as the average probability that an individual who is classified as a
member of set A in t1 will be classified as a non-member of this set
in t2. Individuals who cross international borders will be subject to
different territorial sovereigns before and after this move.
The second kind of order is that of citizenship in the sense which
is also called nationality. I will use the term nominal citizenship
when I want to distinguish it from the substantial aspect of citizenship as a bundle of rights and obligations that individuals hold in
their relation to a state. Citizenship in the former sense identifies
persons in the international arena by using the name of a country
in a manner similar to the use of family names in social interaction
outside the family. Both indicate that an individual belongs to a state
or family, but the name also belongs to the individual; it is a personal
attribute which the individual has the right to carry.10 If we put individuals into sets, first, with regard to their subjection to territorial
sovereignty and then once more with regard to their citizenship, we
shall find that the sets broadly overlap but are usually not identical.
Foreign residents will be included in the former but excluded from
the latter, while the reverse is the case with emigrant citizens.
Apart from this incongruency, the above-mentioned characteristics clearly distinguish the two kinds of orders from one another.
Firstly, the order of nominal citizenship is more stable than that of
territorial sovereignty, secondly, it is neither discrete nor complete.
Citizenship is acquired at birth and most people never change it during their lives. Citizenship is not an ascriptive feature like gender
or race where the immutability of societal membership is emphasized by relating it to innate differences of human bodies, but it is
still intended to last for life. All states rules for naturalization emphasize this temporal stability by inhibiting frequent change. This
can be achieved by residence requirements, by extended waiting periods prior to naturalization, by an oath of allegiance which is meant
to express commitment for an indefinite future and by denying or
delaying expatriation even after emigration. There are important
political reasons for enhancing stability. The exercise of state power
that turns people into subjects is spatially constrained by the range
of territorial sovereignty, but it does not require all who are liable to
nominal citizenship
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obey the law to be bound to the state by any lasting ties of membership. However, any system of government also calls for a durable
relation between the state and those who can be identified as subjects
in a narrower sense of the term. Obligations that states impose on
their subjects can only be enforced when the relation is relatively
stable. Conscription, collecting taxes or enforcing criminal punishment require that people can be identified and that they cannot evade
their obligations by simply moving somewhere else. There is also a
strong democratic argument in favour of stability. Citizens who participate in political deliberation or who elect representatives who are
to take collectively binding decisions need a common temporal perspective that reaches back into the past and forward into the future.
They cannot form reasonable judgements on political matters unless
they share some experience with past decisions and given institutions of their state. Furthermore, they must also share a perspective
of knowing that they themselves, or their children and others close to
them, will be affected by the decisions they support. In contrast with
republican thinking, liberal democracy allows for a wide diversity of
interests that can be legitimately expressed in political choices. While
in such a polity common interests may be reduced to quite a small
number, there must nevertheless be a common time-horizon for all
interests that are put forward in the process of political deliberation.
While the nominal order of citizenship is more stable over time
than that produced by territorial sovereignty, it is at the same time
less perfect with regard to the criteria of discreteness and completeness. Individuals may be multiple citizens or stateless. These phenomena are widely perceived as irregular. Yet, in contrast with a
breach of the principles of territorial sovereignty, such irregularities
generally do not cause conflicts between states and they emerge from
the very rules that guide the allocation of nominal citizenship in the
international system of states. State sovereignty ends where the territory of a neighbouring state begins, but it does not necessarily end
where another state claims an individual as a member. Each state
reserves the right to set up its own rules for the acquisition and loss
off citizenship as a core expression of its sovereignty. Statelessness
and multiple citizenship can thus emerge from a conscious policy of
ignoring the rules of another state or as an unintended side-effect of
rules applied separately by each state involved.
Let me give a few examples. Political refugees who want to naturalize in their state of asylum are sometimes denied voluntary expatriation by their state of origin or they are unwilling to submit to
the procedures for obtaining it from the authorities of the persecuting state. Western democracies normally accept that the person will
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become a dual citizen in this case. Dual citizenship may also result
from rules of optional or automatic admission that are applied by
some Western European states to foreigners born in the country
when attaining their majority or to those who have been married to a
citizen for a certain time. Most cases of dual citizenship emerge from
birth in mixed marriages if both countries involved apply ius sanguinis from both parents11 or result from a simultaneous application of
ius soli by the state of birth and ius sanguinis by the parents state. In
contrast to dual citizenship, statelessness may be the intended effect
of a policy of disenfranchising an ethnic minority or depriving it of
any kind of state protection. Another origin of statelessness is the denaturalization of emigrants regardless of whether they have already
acquired their host countrys citizenship or not. Finally, statelessness
may also result from voluntary expatriation. The right to a nationality has been established in Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights of 1948 and many states have signed the 1961 United
Nations Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. I think that
normative arguments for avoiding statelessness are strong enough
to warrant making the emigrants right to expatriation conditional
upon another states willingness to naturalize them. However, the
rules of international law still do not provide sufficient guarantees
for preventing the re-emergence of these areas of no mans land in
the international order of citizenship.
What I have called the political concept of society points to a third
kind of order. In contrast to the two preceding ones, this order of
societal membership is not formalized in the legal relations between
individuals and states. Its contours emerge, on the one hand, from
sociological observations about the role the state plays in regulating
the conditions for the individuals life prospects and opportunities.
On the other hand, the order is constructed from a normative point
of view in order to answer the question posed in this paper: Who
can claim a right to inclusion in a liberal democratic polity? As illustrated in the diagram above, such an order resembles that of nominal
citizenship because there are overlapping areas, only that here these
are much more extensive. Individuals can be members of more than
one society simultaneously without this fact being reflected in multiple citizenship. At the same time, the order of societal membership
shares the feature of completeness with that of territorial sovereignty. There are hardly any individuals for whom we cannot identify at
least one state to which they are socially tied. Statelessness is not a
condition of cosmopolitan detachment but just on the contrary; it is a
status of extreme dependency upon the protection offered by specific
states without the formal entitlement to claim that protection.
societal membership
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general indicator
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Within the state territory international migration makes the number of societal members larger than the population of nominal citizens, but smaller than the aggregate of everybody physically present
at a certain point in time. Resident foreigners have to be regarded as
members of society but individuals who are passing through on their
way to another destination or who have come for a short temporary
stay need not be counted.12 Outside the states territory the number
of societal members may be either larger or smaller than that of emigrant citizens. If a state adopts a policy of indefinite transmission of
citizenship by ius sanguinis, a third or later generation may still be
registered as citizens of the state where their ancestors have come
from without having any significant social ties to that country themselves. Conversely, an individual may have strong social ties to a state
or depend upon its protection without living there or being one of its
citizens. Two relevant examples may be mentioned as an illustration.
The first is ethnic diaspora minorities who regard a foreign state as
their national homeland from which they expect protection of their
rights. Frequently, these rights will include that of being admitted
to the territory of that state. Some states recognize these claims and
treat such minorities as ethnic citizens abroad without nominal
membership. Germany and Israel are extreme cases who grant their
co-ethnics not only a right of immigration but also immediate access
to nominal citizenship thereafter.13 A second example is that of family members of immigrants who have stayed in the country of origin,
or of migrants who had to return there after a long residence abroad.
Maybe the most obvious case of societal membership of foreigners
who are neither citizens nor residents is that of second-generation
young people who were born in the country of immigration but were
turned into aliens by ius sanguinis and later had to return to their
parents country of origin, either because their parents demanded it
or because they had lost their residence permit.14
In its temporal aspects the order of societal membership is certainly more stable than that of territorial sovereignty but need not be
as rigid as that of nominal citizenship. People can change their social
affiliations that tie them to a state several times during their lives
and, coming to a country where one takes up a permanent residence
does not imply a promise or commitment to stay there for good.
Societal membership does not strictly require a perspective which
reaches back into the past and forward into the future (as democratic
citizenship does). The time of residence is no more than a general
indicator for the consolidation of social ties.
Along the time axis, the transition from one societal membership
to another may follow different paths for different categories of mi-
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first refers to the reality of spatially bounded societies whose boundaries are, then, defined by specifying to whom the proposed norm
should apply. I admit that some circularity of this kind appears to me
unavoidable. It mirrors the fact that transnationally mobile societies
do not only overlap but are also blurred at their margins. There is
thus always some latitude for the contestation of societal membership which can only be decided by specifying normative criteria within the context of a particular society. By contrasting the liberal democratic perspective with alternative ones, I hope to be able to show that
it is not quite so indeterminate as it might seem. No comprehensive
political ideology and system of political rule can do without a political concept of society that sets a standard for inclusion. However,
rival strands of political thought differ in how they construct their
respective concepts of societal membership.
subject by birth
John Lockes reformulation of the social contract allows for a different and somewhat more liberal interpretation that concedes a claim
to protection to foreigners and opens the door to voluntary naturalization but still emphasizes their exclusion, as foreigners, from the
commonwealth:
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libertarian utopia
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republican
conception
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(3) The republican tradition of political thought has emphasized active participation by citizens in politics more than passive recipience
of protection by a state. Citizenship is seen as a set of obligations
more than of rights, as an office more than a status.16 Inclusion in citizenship is not so much connected to territorial residence but to mutual recognition within a community of equal members of the polity
who experience themselves to be the sovereign political authority. In
this approach, the order of citizenship seems to be the only reference
point to which the norm of inclusion can be applied. A republican
conception thus appears to come close to Schumpeters self-defining
populus. However, republican norms of inclusion would still not be
completely redundant. Firstly, they can specify certain features of a
desirable order of citizenship. Republican thought has always strongly objected to multiple membership in different polities, whereas
multiple subjecthood in a Hobbesian world could be perfectly acceptable as long as it is supported by the amity of the soveraigns. A
person can be the loyal servant of two masters but nobody can simultaneously be a full member of two collectives that regard themselves
as sovereign. Secondly, in contrast with the ancient conception of the
polis, modern republicanism has to answer the question: What status
should be given to those who do not qualify as active citizens? Even
if active citizens are seen as an egalitarian political elite among a
broader population, they must refer to a broader concept of society in
their pursuit of the common good. Passive citizenship thus complements the activist conception as a second and wider frame of inclusion. In this respect, the problem with contemporary neo-republican
thought is not the range of inclusion but the dichotomy of active and
passive citizenship that is overemphasized within this range. Seeing
active political participation and voluntary compliance with civic duties as the core expression of citizenship leads to a devaluation of
the enjoyment of rights and liberties as a merely passive experience.
In contrast, a liberal democratic perspective would emphasize the
enabling and activating qualities of civil and social rights which are
the essential precondition for making democracy representative of a
broad population with widely diverse interests, rather than of a small
and socially homogeneous political elite.
The active/passive dichotomy that tends to split the polity into
two classes of citizens is complemented by a second one that divides
a states population into those included in, or excluded from, the polity. Republicanism conceives the bond of citizenship as the essential
factor of social cohesion. From classic contractarian doctrines it inherits the idea that the mere social fact of residence in a territory cannot qualify individuals for full membership. This does not rule out a
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ethnic nationalism
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version is still fundamentally opposed to a liberal conception of society. For nationalism of any kind, the character and boundaries of the
community have been shaped by some irreversible historical process
or event. They are thus given independently of the present shape of
a state territory or the network of social interactions that connect a
population to a state. The nationalist programme is to emancipate
the nation in a sovereign state by uniting its dispersed communities,
by conquering or liberating the territories they inhabit or where their
origins lie, and by assimilating, expelling, or keeping out minorities that do not fit into the national community. Nationalism thus
attempts to make the boundaries of territory and of cultural groups
coincide (Gellner, 1983). Nationalisms success is rooted in the drive
for cultural homogenization of populations within state territories
that comes with the development of industrial economies and of the
modern state bureaucracy. Nationalisms failure lies in the proliferation of rival claims to nationhood that have led to an uneasy truce between national factions in pluri-national states, to the survival or new
formation of ethnic and linguistic minorities resisting assimilation,
and to chain-reactions of separation into ever smaller states that can
hardly claim to be independent in their economic or foreign policies
(Hobsbawm, 1990).
Nationalisms operate with an imaginary map of spheres of hegemony that nations claim over territories and populations. Seen from
the point of view of each single nation, this map resembles that of
territorial sovereignty. It is discrete in terms of populations nobody
can be simultaneously a member of two nations and complete in
terms of territories. It need not, however, be complete for all human
groups: some have been denied the capacity of belonging to any nation or of forming one themselves. This is a characteristic of racism
in both its anti-Semitic and anti-Black varieties. Moreover, the territorial map is no longer discrete when combining the perspectives of
nations that raise rival claims to the same stretch of land.
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three policy
propositions
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forced movement
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liberal citizenship
with transnational
elements
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increase of internal
heterogeneity
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less representative over time. Thirdly, cutting back immigration cannot be accepted as a long-term strategy to increase homogeneity for
both pragmatic and normative reasons. The acceleration of territorial
mobility is inherent in the process of modernization. Contemporary
democracies have to accept this as a fundamental condition of modernity which will undermine their bases of legitimacy unless they
adjust to it. This does not mean denying the necessity or legitimacy
of immigration control, but it does imply that such control must itself be constantly scrutinized for how well it complies with universal
human rights and with specific rights that can be derived from existing ties of membership.
equal polity
Inclusion is not the only relevant norm for the allocation of membership status and rights in liberal democratic polities. After discussing
the range of claims to societal membership let me now turn to the
question as to how such wider inclusion could affect the two other
norms for the allocation of membership in liberal democratic polities: the norms of equality and choice.
The liberal idea of equality is much stronger with regard to the
polity than with regard to society. As citizens, individuals must be
treated with equal respect and concern (Dworkin, 1977), no matter
how unequal they may be in their social status. This equality of citizenship rests on a foundation of basic individual rights, such as those
of equal status in court, equal entitlement to school education or voting rights. However, not all rights of citizenship are perfectly equal
and individual. The wider the social range of inclusion becomes, the
stronger becomes the urgency to take social inequalities and differences into account by differentiating rights according to social positions and groups. Citizenship in a multi-ethnic welfare democracy
is a complex bundle of equal individual rights, as well as of highly
differentiated collective ones. Nevertheless, the norm of equality provides the yardstick. A justification of collective rights must show that
they contribute towards equalizing the standing of individuals in the
polity. In contrast with Hannah Arendts strict division between the
polity as the sphere of equality, and society as that of discrimination
(Arendt, 1958), a liberal democratic approach uses political instruments for combating social discrimination. This fight is a precondition for including discriminated groups as equal citizens in the polity. The norm of equality is thus in a relation of productive tension
rather than of contradiction or identity with that of inclusion. Wider
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nominal citizenship
and territorial
residence
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voting rights
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second-rate political
participation
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consent
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Yet this requirement is not met by any contemporary liberal democracy. Consent to membership is generally not expressed on its acquisition but only on its loss in voluntary expatriation and even then the
choice of exit from citizenship is made conditional upon a previous
exit from the territory and society. In naturalization, on the other
hand, the requirement is heavily biased against the individual who is
not at all at liberty to decide what body politic he will unite himself
to. The choice is restricted to that between the countries of origin
and of present residence and it is normally the state authorities who
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grant admission rather than the applicant who simply chooses a new
membership.
As I have explained above, I think that a strong case can be argued
in favour of enhancing the element of choice by making expatriation
and naturalization symmetrical. Both should be individually chosen
rather than either imposed or discretionarily denied and the option to
change ones membership should be only conditional upon the criteria of residence and societal membership in both cases. Liberalism
increases the scope of individual rights and choice by normatively
constraining the requirement of collective or majoritarian consent
where it threatens to interfere with equal individual liberties and opportunities. This should hold for naturalization in the same way as it
holds for expatriation.
However, why should nominal citizenship not be imposed on
foreigners if the norms of inclusion and equality are of overriding
importance for liberal democracy? The answer is obvious, as long
as we assume that multiple citizenship is not generally tolerated. In
contrast with new-born natives, foreigners have a citizenship to lose
which might be of essential value for their life-projects. Their multiple societal membership gives migrants a strong claim that a naturalizing state must respect their existing affiliation and should not
require its renunciation as the price for the ticket of entry. However,
I do not think that choice loses all importance once dual citizenship
has been granted. A receiving state should not naturalize foreigners
without their consent even if their previous citizenship remains unaffected.
One potential consequence of citizenship which makes the importance of choice obvious is that of military conscription. Not every
state imposes this obligation on its citizens and most states which
do, impose it only on their male citizens of a certain age group.
Moreover, liberal democracies permit conscientious objectors to
refuse military service without forcing them out of the country or
denaturalizing them. Even under these preconditions, I think that
resident foreigners have a stronger reason not to be drafted than
either native or naturalized citizens. U.S. law is rather unique in
making foreign residents liable to be drafted (in case that general
conscription were introduced). This seems to result from a biased
view on immigration that sees the choice of a country of residence
as already implying a decision for the rest of ones life and regards
naturalization as the natural outcome of the process of settlement.
If there is any obligation of citizenship which can be said to require
a conscious expression of consent, it must certainly be that to kill or
die in the defence of ones country. While under certain conditions of
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making
expatriation and
naturalization
symmetrical
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denizens
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emergency, conscription of native citizens may be justified by invoking their hypothetical rational consent without giving them an actual
choice, I believe that no such implication can be inferred from the
fact of residence and societal membership of foreigners.
Apart from this example, the main reason for insisting on the
importance of choice of membership in the polity is the following
one: When applied to migration, liberalisms emphasis on individual
rights and choice means that the long-term political target is to turn
all migration into voluntary movement, rather than to eliminate all
root causes of emigration. Enhancing the scope of choice between
different migration targets is one principle that can be derived from
this guideline. As I have argued above, it applies even to involuntary
forms of migration such as refugee migration. It would be inconsistent with this line of argument to deny immigrants the choice as to
whether they want to become nominal citizens of their country of
residence. The imperatives of inclusion and equality are not strong
enough to override the manifold individual reasons migrants may
have to refuse applying for naturalization. This is only so because
substantial and nominal citizenship need not be strictly tied to each
other. Resident foreigners can be included and enjoy equal rights
without and before naturalization as residential citizens or, in the
terminology revived by Tomas Hammar, as denizens (Hammar,
1990).
In spite of its emphasis on choice, this is not an altogether voluntaristic conception of citizenship. Inclusion primarily relates to
an objective criterion of societal membership and makes optional
naturalization only available to persons who have entered this range
just as voluntary expatriation is only offered to those who have
moved out of it. The same criterion also prevents that the toleration
of dual citizenship could lead to an accumulation of memberships
which no longer correspond to a social involvement of individuals in
the affairs of the polity whose members they are. Neither is mutual
consent replaced by unilateral individual choice. It is still the political community which grants naturalization and thereby expresses its
consent. What changes with the move from discretionary to optional
naturalization is the sequence of interaction. In the usual procedure,
the last word is said by the authorities of the receiving state after the
applicant has already documented her or his will and qualification.
In optional naturalization, the state first lays down the rules for eligibility and the final decision is then the applicants.
This still does not fully answer the question where the importance of the choice lies if it does not imply any consequences for the
legal status and rights of those who have to choose. I think that there
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are two different answers to this question and each of them seems
to me defensible from a liberal democratic point of view. The first
answer could be called a liberal-communitarian one. It would affirm
that in spite of reasons for differentiating certain obligations such
as military service between citizens and foreigners, there is indeed
no reason for differentiating citizenship rights. This means that in
addition to all the rights foreigners have already been granted in different countries, they ought to enjoy the full franchise as soon as they
satisfy the general conditions of residence. This total equalization of
rights need not deprive the status of nominal citizenship of any attraction and meaning. It would retain its symbolic value as a formal
expression of membership in the polity, whereas the others would be
only informal members. Immigrants could choose this status as an
expression of their commitment to their society of residence. Indeed,
we can assume that an equalization of rights before naturalization
will strengthen such feelings of commitment and compensate for
the decline in instrumental rationality of naturalization.25. As long
as a sufficient number of immigrants can be motivated to make a
voluntary choice in favour of naturalization, there is little reason to
abandon the nominal distinction between foreigners and citizens,
even though it might have turned into a largely symbolic one. One
might object that commitment of a purely symbolic nature is always
likely to assume a nationalist tinge. However, opting for naturalization under conditions where full rights can also be enjoyed without
taking this step would express a rather harmless kind of patriotic
pride in the achievements of a liberal democratic polity.
There may be reasonable disagreement about such a total dissociation of legal status and rights of citizenship. If the essence of
democratic legitimacy lies in the kinds of rights that it establishes for
citizens, should not admission to the polity be more than a merely
symbolic inclusion into the community whose process of democratic decision-making establishes and confirms the validity of these
rights? After all, individuals are actively involved in democratic legitimation as members of the polity rather than of society. A collective
constitutes itself as a polity distinct from society by institutionalizing
democratic deliberation at the highest level of sovereignty. Should
this not be reflected in making the suffrage at this level conditional
upon a decision to become a member of the polity for all those who
had previously been a member of a different polity? Again, I think
there are some drawbacks in this argument. The most important one
is that if the incentives for naturalization are not strong enough, a
large percentage of the population in societies of immigration might
remain permanently excluded from the most important mechanism
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of democratic legitimation. However, under ideal conditions of optional naturalization, there is little reason to fear such an outcome.
This solution, which we could call liberal-republican, would therefore be equally permissible as the liberal-communitarian one. In any
case, both solutions go far beyond present policies of inclusion in all
Western democracies. There is considerable scope for a simultaneous improvement of records along all three normative dimensions of
inclusion, equality and consent before one reaches the point where
tensions between them might manifest themselves as dilemmas.
Conclusions
conflicts
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guiding principles
Notes
* This contribution draws on arguments developed at more length in a
forthcoming book: Transnational Citizenship. Membership and Rights in
International Migration, Edward Elgar, Avebury, UK, 1994. It was first presented at a panel organized by Joseph Carens at the 90th Annual Meeting
of the American Political Science Association, 14 September in New York.
Amy Gutmans critical comments at the conference stimulated some clarifications in revising the paper. Credits are also due to Ulrike Davy for challenging me to elaborate the apparent contradictions between a strategy of
equalizing rights for foreign residents and citizens and one of making naturalization optional.
1 The last relics of gender discrimination in Western European systems of
franchise have been abolished with the recent introduction of full voting
rights for women in the Swiss canton Appenzell-Innerrhoden. The problem
of denaturalization of ethnic minorities is still acute in some newly democratized states of Central and Eastern Europe. In June, the Latvian parliament
adopted a citizenship law that would make 500,000 ethnic Russians who
have immigrated after 1940 stateless until the year 2000. (The Latvian presi-
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dent objects to the law which has not yet come into force.) In July, the Czech
republic turned 70,000 Roma into a stateless minority because they had not
applied in time for citizenship of the new state.
John Stuart Mill, for example, denounced the exclusion of women but defended a franchise limited to taxpayers and a system of plural votes for
citizens with a higher education (Mill, 1972, On Representative Government,
chapter 8).
As regarded by legal positivists (see de Groot, 1989: 10-17).
Joseph Carens has objected that [a]fter a while, the terms of admission become irrelevant (Carens, 1989: 44).
Article 34 of the Geneva Refugee Convention obliges states of asylum to
facilitate the integration and naturalization of refugees and to reduce the
costs of the procedure as far as possible. A number of signatory states take
this into account by reducing the required period of residence prior to the
naturalization of refugees.
In some Western democracies an option exists for those foreigners who are
not immigrants but have been born in the country, or for immigrants who
have married a citizen.
Canada and Australia are probably the two countries of immigration that
today come closest to this model of optional naturalization. The Canadian
Citizenship Act includes ordinary naturalization in a section under the title
The Right to Citizenship. Article 5 of the Act specifies that the Minister
shall grant citizenship to any person who meets the requirements whereas
the Minister may, in his discretion, waive on compassionate grounds some of
these requirements in favour of the applicant.
David Hendrickson points out that in a realist perspective [t]he acquisition
of nationality is a more momentuous step, and it would not be inconsistent
with this formulation to hold that the states discretion is much wider in
deciding upon membership and nationality than in rejecting admission to
visitors (p. 219).
A view which has been strongly criticized by Robert Dahl, who insists that
[t]he demos must include all adult members of the association except transients and persons proved to be mentally defective (Dahl, 1989: 129).
See de Groot, 1989: 12-13.
This has been an unintended effect of eliminating gender discrimination
in citizenship laws. Until well after the Second World War, citizenship was
transmitted only by the father in most Western democracies. The mothers
membership became then only relevant if the child was born out of wedlock.
Apart from being subjected to territorial sovereignty these transients
(Robert Dahl) may certainly have rights towards their temporary host country but such rights are not based on their societal membership. They result
rather from a commitment to respect human rights when no significant
ties of membership are involved. This same kind of commitment opens the
boundaries of liberal polities to claims of refugees that their admission is a
matter of right rather than merely of generosity, clemency or expediency.
Claims to external ethnic membership can be based on a purely nationalist
line of argument that replaces the political concept of society with that of
a national community of descent and culture. In a liberal democratic view
membership requires ongoing social ties of interaction and communication
and/or dependence from a state for protection. Where neither is the case the
claims to national solidarity beyond borders become spurious.
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14 The German Aliens Act of 1990 has, for the first time recognized that young
foreigners who had to return to their parents country of origin enjoy a right
to re-immigration into Germany, i.e. a prerogative that has traditionally been
reserved for citizens only. However, beneficiaries are defined very narrowly
as those who have spent at least eight years in Germany and have visited
school there for six years, who have sufficient means of subsistence and who
apply for return between their 15th and 21st birthdays and within five years
after leaving Germany (Gesetz zur Neuregelung des Auslnderrechts, 16).
15 Nozicks theory defends an atomistic individualism only at the level of states
but envisages the flourishing of a multiplicity of associational communities
within that framework (Nozick, 1974: chapter 10).
16 See, for example, Oldfield (1990) or van Gunsteren (1992).
17 The extreme interpretation of ius soli in the USA, which merely focuses on
territorial birth and attributes citizenship automatically even if a child is born
on board an aircraft flying over the territory, need not necessarily be seen as
a model for other countries of immigration. (For an interesting controversy
about the attribution of citizenship to native-born children of illegal immigrants see Schuck and Smith, 1985 and Carens, 1987.) For European states
that consider reforming their ius sanguinis laws, it would probably make
more sense to apply ius soli to native-born children under the condition that
one parent has been resident in the country for at least a short period of time.
The solution that seems most attractive to me would be to give alien parents
a choice, whether they want their children to acquire citizenship at birth and
to give the children themselves a second option at an age well before they
attain the age of majority. However, a third generation, i.e. children born in
the country of parents themselves born in the country, ought to be attributed
automatic citizenship. This is the rule of double ius soli which is, among others, established in French and Belgian law.
18 This criterion distinguishes migrants not only from nomads but also
from tourists who visit other countries without searching for a new home.
International tourism is a major consequence of the modern revolution in
transportation technology. It strongly affects the economy, ecology and culture of states but it raises no challenge for their definitions of membership.
In nomadic migration, societies move while individuals stay put within their
structure; in tourism, societies stay put while individuals move. In modern
migration the movement of individuals causes an expansion of the social
basis of membership.
19 As Mark Gibney does when he defends a liberal admission policy for refugees by attacking the U.S. immigration priority for relatives of citizens and
immigrants (Gibney, 1986).
20 I have tried to address this question in two other papers (Baubck, 1994a,
1994b).
21 See Marco Martiniellos contribution in this volume.
22 The third category of persons to whom the norm of inclusion may apply are
those who are neither citizens nor residents. For them there is little substantial equality. They may claim admission to the territory but not many other
rights which they could exercise beforehand.
23 See Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 12
of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
24 The classical statement on this point is Tocquevilles analysis of New England
township democracy (Tocqueville, 1954: chapter 5).
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References
Ackerman, Bruce A. (1980) Social Justice in the Liberal State. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
Arendt, Hannah (1958) The Human Condition. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Baubck, Rainer (1994a) Citizenship and Ethical Problems of
Immigration Control, in Robin Cohen (ed.) (1994) The Cambridge
Survey of World Migration. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Baubck, Rainer (1994b) Legitimate Immigration control, in
Adelman, Howard (ed,) Legitimate and Illegitimate Discrimination:
New Directions in Migration. Toronto: York Lanes Press and
UNESCO.
Carens, Joseph H. (1987b) Who Belongs? Theoretical and Legal
Questions about Birthright Citizenship in the United States, The
University of Toronto Law Journals 37: 413-443.
Carens, Joseph H. (1989) Membership and Morality, in Brubaker,
Rogers W. (ed.), op. cit.
de Groot, Gerard-Ren (1989) Staatsangehrigkeitsrecht im Wandel.
Eine rechtsvergleichende Studie ber Erwerbs- und Verlustgrnde der
Staatsangehrigkeit. Kln: Carl Heymans Verlag.
Dworkin, Ronald (1977) Taking Rights Seriously. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press.
Gellner, Ernest (1983) Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell.
Gibney, Mark (ed.) (1988) Open Borders? Closed Societies? New York:
Greenwood Press.
Hammar, Tomas (1990) Democracy and the Nation State. Aliens,
Denizens and Citizens in a World of International Migration.
Aldershot: Avebury.
Held, David (1991b) Democracy, the Nation-State and the Global
System, in Held, David (ed.), op. cit.
Held, David/McGrew, Anthony (1993) Globalization and the Liberal
Democratic State, Government and Opposition 28, no. 2.
Hendrickson, David C. (1992) Migration in Law and Ethics: A Realist
Perspective, in Barry, Brian/Goodin, Robert E. (eds), op. cit.
Hobbes, Thomas (1973) Leviathan. London: Everymans Library.
Hobsbawm, Eric (1990) Nations and Nationalism Since 1780.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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In the field of immigrant or ethnic entrepreneurship, several theoretical approaches have emerged. Some emphasise the cultural endowments of immigrants (such as a cultural inclination in certain groups towards risk-taking
behaviour), while others highlight racist or ethnic exclusion and blocked mobility in the mainstream labour market. Other approaches revolve around
issues of social embeddedness, arguing that individual entrepreneurs take
part in ethnically specific economic networks that facilitate their business operations. The economic geographer Robert Kloosterman, the criminologist
Joanne van der Leun and the sociologist Jan Rath have explored these complex interactions along with the array of regulatory structures that promote
certain economic activities while inhibiting others. This innovative approach
dubbed mixed embeddedness emphasises the importance of regulation
and market dynamics. It is more encompassing in that it links social relations and transactions to wider political and economic structures. Moreover,
it acknowledges the significance of immigrants concrete embeddedness in
social networks while understanding that their relations and transactions
are more abstractly embedded in wider economic and political-institutional
structures.
Immigrant entrepreneurs and advanced urban economies
The impact of immigrants has very noticeably changed the outlook
of larger Dutch cities in the last quarter of this century. Beginning
with the crowds in the streets, by now this demographic shift has also
manifested itself in the rising number of immigrant entrepreneurs.
Because of this, the four largest Dutch cities (Amsterdam, Rotterdam,
The Hague and Utrecht) have not only acquired a distinctly more cosmopolitan outlook (Rath and Kloosterman, 1998b), but have also be-
cosmopolitan
outlook
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mixed
embeddedness
come more like other advanced urban economies, such as New York,
Los Angeles, London, Paris and Marseilles, where immigrants and
immigrant entrepreneurs are a prominent presence as well (BodyGendrot and Ma Mung, 1992; Barrett et al., 1996; Huermann and
Oswald, 1997). These immigrant entrepreneurs are affecting cities in
numerous and sometimes quite unexpected ways, as, for example, by revitalizing formerly derelict shopping streets, by introducing
new products and new marketing strategies (Rath and Kloosterman,
1998a), by fostering the emergence of new spatial forms of social
cohesion (see, for example, Tarrius and Praldi, 1995; Simon, 1997),
by opening up trade links between faraway areas that were hitherto
unconnected through so-called transnational communities (Tarrius,
1992; Portes and Stepick, 1993; Portes, 1995b; Guarnizo, 1996;
Faist, 1997; Wallace, 1997; The Economist, 1998) and by posing challenges to the existing regulatory framework through being engaged
in informal economic activities (Kloosterman et al., 1998). As for the
latter, contemporary urban economic sociological studies suggest
that immigrants and especially immigrant entrepreneurs play a pivotal role in these informal economic activities. According to Portes
and Sassen-Koob (1987: 48), immigrant communities have provided
much of the requisite labor for these activities, have frequently supplied sites for their development, and have furnished the entrepreneurial drive to initiate them.
Below, we explore the role of immigrant entrepreneurs in informal activities. We will show that the socio-economic position of
immigrant entrepreneurs and, consequently, also their prospects
with respect to upward social mobility can only properly be understood by taking into account not only their embeddedness in social
networks of immigrants but also their embeddedness in the socioeconomic and politico-institutional environment of the country of
settlement. We therefore propose the use of a concept mixed embeddedness, which encompasses both sides of embeddedness to analyse
processes of insertion of immigrant entrepreneurs. Complex configurations of mixed embeddedness enable immigrant businesses to
survive partly by facilitating informal economic activities in segments where indigenous firms, as a rule, cannot.
With the rising number of immigrants and, more particularly, of
immigrant entrepreneurs in Dutch cities, the issue arises of whether
the small shop run by an immigrant is a step up on the avenue of social mobility or whether it is located on a dead-end street. Exploring
these forms of mixed embeddedness among immigrant entrepreneurs in concrete Dutch metropolitan milieus will eventually allow
us to assess to what extent immigrant entrepreneurship in conjunc-
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opportunity
structure
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Amsterdam
4000
Rotterdam
3000
Den Haag
2000
Utrecht
1000
0
1989
1991
1993
1995
1997
uneven distribution
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specific economic
activities
Wholesale
20
Retail
15
Restaurants
10
Utrecht
The
Hague
Rotterdam
Amsterdam
These are not only economic activities that may cater for an ethnic
demand (ethnic foodstuffs, specific clothing), but also sectors where
businesses may be started with, in principle, relatively small outlays
of capital and limited educational qualifications. Our research findings show that immigrants gravitate to businesses at the lower end of
the market (Kloosterman et al., 1997; Rath, 1998b; 1999a).
Low barriers of entry is one side of the coin, fierce competition
the obvious flip side in these highly accessible economic activities.
Survival, therefore, is generally difficult and profits can be very low
and in many cases even non-existent. The survival of immigrant
businesses in these cut-throat markets depends to some extent on
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five observations
Informal production encompasses those activities aimed at producing a positive effect on income (for the person executing the activities
and/or for the person receiving the results), for which the terms of
legislation and regulations (planning requirements, social security
legislation, collective labour agreements, and the like) applicable
to the activities are not being met (Renooy, 1990: 24). Portes and
Sassen-Koob (1987: 31) explain that although this definition encompasses criminal activities, the term is customarily reserved for such
activities as those in the food, clothing, and housing industries that
are not intrinsically illegal but in which the production and exchange
escape legal regulation. The informal economy is thus conceived as
a process of income generation rather than a characteristic of an individual (if only because a moonlighter may have an entirely legal job
at another time of the day). The decisive characteristic of the informal economy which distinguishes it from the formal economy is the
lack of governmental control (Renooy, 1990: 25).
Although a useful definition, five observations have to be made.
Firstly, this definition is wholly contingent on the regulatory context and this may differ from time to time and from place to place.
What is informal in one place may be completely legal in another. Prostitution, for instance, is completely illegal in a number of
American states but (partly or entirely) legal in other states such as
Nevada or in countries like the Netherlands. Moreover, specific regulatory contexts may even create distinct informal economic activities.
By establishing monopolies for the sale of cigarettes, the Italian government inadvertently, one presumes also created the somewhat
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implications
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Mixed embeddedness
Embeddedness has become a crucial concept in explaining the success of entrepreneurs in general and that of immigrants in particular
(Granovetter, 1985; Granovetter and Swedberg, 1992; Portes, 1995a;
Waldinger, 1995; 1996; Rath, 1999b), in the latter case especially with
respect to informal economic activities as they take place outside the
regular framework (Epstein, 1994; Roberts, 1994). Embeddedness,
however, tends to be mainly used in a rather one-sided way, referring
almost exclusively to the social and cultural characteristics of groups
that are conceived a priori to consist almost solely of co-ethnics.
Using embeddedness in this circumscribed way, neglects the wider
economic and institutional context in which immigrants are inevitably also inserted or embedded (cf. Cassarino, 1997; Rath, 1997;
1999b; Rath and Kloosterman, 1998a). We therefore propose to use
the more comprehensive concept of mixed embeddedness a concept that is much closer to the original meaning of embeddedness as
intended by Polanyi (1957) encompassing the crucial interplay between the social, economic and institutional contexts (Kloosterman
et al., 1998). In this view, the rise of immigrant entrepreneurship is,
theoretically, primarily located at the intersection of changes in sociocultural frameworks on the one side and transformation processes in
(urban) economies on the other. The interplay between these two
different sets of changes takes place within a larger, dynamic framework of institutions on neighbourhood, city, national or economic
sector level. As such, relevant research into immigrant entrepreneurship (and its relationship to informal economic activities) has to be
located at the crossroads of several disciplines (cf. Granovetter, 1994:
453; Martinelli, 1994: 487; Rath and Kloosterman, 1999).
The exact shape of the opportunity structure with respect to openings for businesses that require only small outlays of capital and relatively few educational qualifications constitutes a crucial component
in this mixed embeddedness. Market conditions determine to a very
large extent in which segments these kinds of openings occur. These
conditions have to be taken into account to explain (immigrant) entrepreneurship. Markets and economic trends themselves, however,
are embedded and enmeshed in institutions (cf. Esping-Andersen,
1990; 1996). Institutions such as the welfare system, the organization of markets, the framework of rules and regulations together
with their enforcement, housing policies (impacting on the residential distribution of immigrants) and also business associations and
specific business practices which regulate particular markets significantly affect opportunity structures at national, sector and local lev-
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low-end opportunity
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low levels of
ethnic concentration
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illegal butchers
openings are created by vacancy-chain processes of markets in neighbourhoods where indigenous butchers quit the business. In the case
of Islamic butchers, the vacancies are, however, only part of the story.
Islamic butchers cater for a group-specific demand by selling hlal
meat. Islamic dietary laws prescribe Muslims to refrain from eating pork and animals that have not been slaughtered according to
the Islamic rite. These products are considered unclean (haram) and
therefore strictly taboo.
Consequently, the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Islamic
immigrants, particularly immigrants from Turkey and Morocco,
from the 1960s onwards has had a substantial impact on the market for meat in the Netherlands. In the early 1960s, when the first
Turkish and Moroccan guestworkers arrived, hlal meat was obtainable virtually nowhere. This was, of course, due to the then extremely
small size of the market, but also to the fact that there were legal
impediments to Islamic slaughtering. Jews, long-term citizens in the
Netherlands, had already obtained special statutory arrangements for
slaughtering but these did not apply to Muslims. In order to meet
the demand for hlal meat, immigrants from Turkey and Morocco
slaughtered animals illegally. These illegal butchers got caught every
now and then and were fined under the Law on Economic Criminal
Offences.
According to Bakker and Tap (1985: 37), the first Islamic butchers set up shop in the late 1960s. They started without the proper
permits and in accommodation that hardly resembled that of regular
butchers. The demand for hlal meat rose steadily, however, and in
the 1970s a few dozen Islamic butchers were already running their
businesses. It was not until 1975, that a small number of butchers received temporary official permission to slaughter animals according
to the Islamic rite. This interim ruling was replaced two years later
by a more definitive regulation when the Ministry of Public Health
and Environmental Protection altered the Ministerial Order on Meat
Inspection (Vleeskeuringsbesluit) (Bakker and Tap, 1985: 36; Rath et
al., 1996).
In 1985, the total number of Islamic butchers amounted to
224, 138 of which were in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and
Utrecht. Today, the number of Islamic butchers officially stands at
340. However, according to the Commodity Board for Cattle, Meat
and Eggs (Produktschap voor Vee, Vlees en Eieren) there are actually
more than 500 butchers, as some Islamic butchers work on the sly
(de Volkskrant, 8 March 1996). Some slaughterhouses supply private
customers too, while meat is also obtainable (informally) from coffee
shops and mosques.
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limited
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Who starts a butcher or greengrocers where four others are perishing? I do not understand how they can make a living, really I dont.
But I do know three businessmen who are nearly bankrupt (quoted
in de Volkskrant, 4 June 1995).
This saturation of the market has led to high turnovers and a relatively short average life span of Islamic butcher shops (Bakker and
Tap, 1985: 82). Most do not exist for more than three or four years.
Operating in saturated markets, Islamic butchers are clearly constrained on the demand side. They do possess, however, certain
competitive advantages with respect to their production costs in
comparison to indigenous Dutch butchers. Firstly, Islamic butchers can make use of many more parts of a body of an animal than
their Dutch counterparts who mostly only sell legs and haunches.
Secondly, they can keep a smaller range of meat and related products
and they also invest much less money in their presentation and their
shop interior. The Trading Association of Butchers (Bedrijfschap
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relational
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Slagersbedrijf) a key institution in the field promoting the interests of butchers voices the opinion that the shop fittings, the range
of products and the marketing strategy are rather unusual, messy
and old-fashioned. Thirdly, they accept smaller profit margins than
Dutch butchers do.
Faced with stiff competition, Islamic butchers in many cases revert to cutting costs by paying workers off the books, by saving on
investments, or by selling products that are allegedly not in their line
of business like bread and other foodstuffs. They also cut corners by
insufficiently observing the Code of Hygiene for Islamic Butchers
(Groeneveld-Yayci, 1996). In particular, butchers reduce labour
costs, firstly, by only employing assistants during peak hours, especially on Friday afternoon. These predominantly male assistants
females are rarely to be found behind the counter, they do mostly
back-office tasks are generally recruited from their own group of
relatives and friends of co-ethnics and are in many cases employed
on an informal basis. Sometimes families enter into an agreement to
assist each other (Bakker and Tap, 1985: 110-12). The rewards can be
in financial terms, but also payment in kind or in terms of strengthening social relationships. The shop assistant, for instance, may be
allowed to bring foodstuffs home, learn the tricks of the trade as an
apprentice or invest in his social relations with his dad or uncle. The
butcher, for his part, gets the opportunity to invest in social relations
with people that might be beneficial to his enterprise either as potential employees, clients or suppliers. This constitutes a clear case of
Portes relational embeddedness (Portes, 1995a).
These informal economic activities are not only enabled by social networks based on trust, but also by management practices that
contribute to obscuring what is going on in these butcher shops.
There are reports that financial management is in many cases totally unsound. Financial reserves are practically non-existent, partly due to the cut-throat competition, but also due to the inefficient
way of price-fixing. A (Turkish) counsellor working for the Trading
Association of Butchers commented that those people lack the necessary know-how in the field and just mess around with the meat.
They:
havent a clue about bookkeeping.... A kilo of minced meat for which
they themselves paid six guilders is sold in the shop for eight guilders. They seem to forget completely that they have to pay taxes, levies and rent (quoted in de Volkskrant, 8 March 1996).
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In the corporatist and highly regulated Dutch economy, every butcher is legally obliged to register at the Chamber of Commerce and the
Trading Association of Butchers and is also required to have proper
professional qualifications. Exemption from the legal requirements
regarding professional skills can be granted if the applicant supplies
a need that otherwise cannot be filled. Such exemptions have often
been granted. Initially, it was assumed that butchers were eligible
to exemption if catering to less than 1000 Islamic inhabitants in a
neighbourhood. In the meantime, this threshold has been raised to
2000 inhabitants for the first butcher in an area, 3000 for the second
one, 5000 for the third one and so forth.2
Butchers-to-be mostly do sign up at the Chamber of Commerce.
However, many of them do not have the proper professional qualifications, according to the Trading Association of Butchers. Due to
communication difficulties, inadequate counselling and the immigrants poor insight into the highly opaque Dutch bureaucracy, many
forget to apply for an exemption, making their enterprise informal outright. This also excludes them from support by the Trading
Association of Butchers. The Chambers of Commerce are not authorized to close a shop down, while the Economic Control Service
has given its priorities to other matters and does not take firm action
(anymore). De facto, Dutch authorities tend to turn a blind eye to this
kind of informal economic production by immigrant entrepreneurs.
Butchers can qualify for proper professional qualifications after
following courses at centres of the Butchers Vocational Training
(Slagers Vakopleiding SVO). Not all of the Islamic butchers who are
aware of this are willing or able to leave their (informal) shop for
these courses. In addition, for many candidates who did follow these
courses, the exam proved to be too difficult. The Dutch language
appeared to be an insurmountable obstacle and the same could be
said for the questions on pork (Tunderman, 1987: 23). In 1975, the
exam was replaced by a professional test on the Mohammedan rite.3
In the late 1980s, the Trading Association of Butchers announced
that it would provide training specific to immigrants (Tunderman,
1987: 24), but it was not until 1993 that the training really proceeded.
Since then the special policy regarding Islamic butchers including
the right to obtain an exemption from the legal requirements has
entered a new stage. The changes add up to a policy that is supposedly more strict on these matters, although it is still possible to apply
for an exemption if the entrepreneur supplies a need that otherwise
cannot be filled. An Islamic butcher is now eligible to exemption if
the owner enrols in the Butchers Vocational Training and passes
its exam and if the manager receives the Training on Commercial
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different forms
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Conclusions
informal economic
activities
An increasing number of immigrants from non-industrialized countries are starting businesses in advanced urban economies. Lacking
both in financial and human capital, many of these fledgling entrepreneurs can only set up shop in specific segments of these urban
economies that allow for small-scale, labour-intensive, mainly lowskill production. In the Netherlands, with its extensive welfare system and its relatively high minimum wage, these kinds of openings
primarily occur in wholesale, retail and restaurants.
To survive in these mostly saturated markets, many (immigrant)
entrepreneurs cut corners by engaging in informal economic activities. This informal economic production can only take place on a
more permanent basis if a framework of trust exists. This trust can
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a social process
Notes
* This research project is part of Working on the Fringes: Immigrant
Businesses, Economic Integration and Informal Practices, a thematic
European network for exchange of knowledge and experiences. This international network, coordinated by Jan Rath and Robert Kloosterman and funded
by the European Commission under the Fourth Framework, involves both
international comparison and collaboration with regard to research on immigrant entrepreneurs in Austria, Britain, France, Germany, Israel, Italy
and the Netherlands.
1 This relationship between the share of the immigrant population and the
ratio of immigrant business start-ups and indigenous business start-ups was
found to be statistically significant across all neighbourhoods in Amsterdam
and Rotterdam (excluding the centres). By using this ratio, other neighbourhood characteristics that may influence the number of business start-ups
in general (such as the availability of cheap business accommodation) were
eliminated and the focus was solely on the number of firms set up by immigrant entrepreneurs relative to those started by indigenous entrepreneurs
(see Kloosterman and Van der Leun, 1999).
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2 See Handboek Minderheden (1994: 8). Recently it was decided that the SocialEconomic Council had to grant exemptions, but the Trading Association of
Butchers was still unfamiliar with its policy (see Groeneveld-Yayci, 1996).
3 There too, a separate set of regulations was drawn up, which was approved in
1977 by the Ministry of Economic Affairs (see Bakker and Tap, 1985: bijlage
III).
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The mosaic pattern: cohabitation between
ethnic groups in Belleville, Paris
Patrick Simon
In the early 1990s, the demographer Patrick Simon studied the multiethnic
neighbourhood of Belleville, Paris. He analysed how different social groups
live together to constitute a complex network of relations organised around
cultural associations, community services or economic niches. Simon
showed how the various concrete forms of ethnic cohabitation at the local
level cannot be adequately captured by integration models e.g. assimilation, multiculturalism that always refer to the nation. Neither can this reality be understood in bipolar terms such as whites versus blacks. In a local
context, the various social and ethnic groups need to negotiate their position
vis--vis the others and, in doing so, they follow a rationale that is not necessarily compatible with national integration models. The division of urban,
political and symbolic space may, paradoxically, promote a certain degree
of social cohesion, provided that specific conditions be met for a sharing of
these divided spaces.
The image of Paris as a cosmopolitan city is as old as Paris itself
is. However, only in the 1920s and 1930s did Paris earn its reputation of being a writers city, an international republic of artists, to
quote Alejo Carpentier. It became a centre of attraction for the intelligentsia worldwide.1 After a period of decline, Paris has once again
become a centre of convergence for the worlds elite, a global city
where international executives and financiers run the global economy and redistribute the worlds resources. The City of Light owes its
cosmopolitan nature not only to its cultural and artistic aura, or to
its role in economic exchanges and technological innovation. It also,
and maybe even especially, owes it to the fact that from the end of the
nineteenth century onwards, immigrants from foreign countries and
from the provinces began to flow in massively, fostering an unprecedented economic and demographic boom.
As in all the other international metropolises, immigrants arriv-
a global city
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patrick simon
ing in Paris were sorted and oriented towards different parts of the
segmented city. Throughout the twentieth century, Paris has consistently been a centre of attraction and integration. The 1901 census
shows that, at the time, a little over 9 per cent of the population was
of foreign origin and 56 per cent had been born in the provinces.
In 1990, over 25 per cent of the population of Paris were of foreign
origin. Since 1982, the proportion of immigrants, which had risen
sharply between 1954 and 1975 (from 6 to 14 per cent), has not much
changed. As the presence of immigrants in the city increased, two
main transformations occurred. First, the origins of the migrants
changed as new waves of immigration followed in the wake of those
of the 1920s and 1930s. And second, the citys functional reorganization modified their distribution in space (Guillon, 1996). One can
identify a succession process according to the classical model established by the urban ecologists of the Chicago school. The Italians,
Belgians and Poles who came in the 1920s were followed in the
1950s and 1960s by Algerian, Portuguese and Spanish immigrants.
Thus emerged the ethnic neighbourhoods, as they are now called,
and as a result, the immigrants became highly visible in the city.
The aim of this chapter, however, is not to provide a detailed list
of Pariss immigrant neighbourhoods, but to study their multiethnic
aspects.2 One of the most striking characteristics of Pariss ethnic
neighbourhoods is that they bring together people of many different
origins. In addition to ethnic diversity, there is also a certain amount
of social diversity. Indeed, the social and symbolic value of neighbourhoods with high immigrant concentration has changed since the
1970s. Gentrification has led many middle- and upper-class households to move to immigrant and working-class neighbourhoods. For
these reasons, the bipolar model, such as the whites versus blacks
model, does not really apply to the patterns of segregation and cohabitation observed in Paris. We must imagine a complex network
of relations involving many different groups that are more or less
organized around cultural associations, community services or economic niches, and often circumscribed within a specific area. The
various integration models assimilation, multiculturalism, pluralism, melting-pot whose context of reference is always the nation,
can thus be re-examined and contrasted with actual local situations
of ethnic cohabitation. Indeed, by analysing situations from a local
point of view, one can avoid the political implications of an analysis
of social interactions carried out at the national level. By looking at a
neighbourhood, we need not be concerned by questions of nationality and citizenship, which are of crucial importance in France. Their
importance there results from the historical significance of the nation as a political concept in the organization of French society.
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In a local context, social and ethnic groups negotiate their position with their own rationale, which often differs from the national
integration model. To quote de Certeau (1986), theirs is a pedagogy
of diversity. We study inter-ethnic situations to analyse the conditions for the creation of new sociopolitical contracts and in particular shed light on the internal transformations which occur within
a dominant group as a result of the presence of other groups (de
Certeau, 1986: 790-1). To illustrate this point, we have chosen to look
at ethnic and class relationships in a formerly working-class neighbourhood of Paris, the Belleville quarter, which has become today an
emblematic place for several ethnic groups. Our approach is to study
the system of regulation of ethnic differences by examining how urban, political, symbolic space is shared between different groups that
play an active role on the local scene. We will show how this system,
by ensuring a certain degree of social cohesion, promotes the integration of the inhabitants into the city, if not into the nation.
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patrick simon
during the Paris Commune, this working-class identity was emphasized: the actions of revolutionaries from Belleville gave the neighbourhood the reputation of a hotbed of rebellion, a reputation it has
practically never lost since (Merriman, 1994; Jacquemet, 1984). As a
result, Belleville became a socially isolated area with a strong sense
of its own identity. In the 1920s, Armenians, Greeks and Polish Jews
began to move in. At this time, Belleville became the social and political centre of the Yiddish and Armenian communities. Stores, workshops, cafs, places of religious worship or assembly, political newspapers, Zionist, Bundist or communist discussion groups, common
interest groups, Jewish or Armenian trade unions formed a dense
and dynamic network of community organizations (Roland, 1962).
During the 1950s, the neighbourhoods Yiddish period slowly
became history, while a new era of immigration dawned with the
arrival of massive contingents from Algeria; also came the Tunisian
Jews fleeing North Africa in the throes of decolonization. This new
wave marked the beginning of Bellevilles North African period. At
the same time, the neighbourhoods social composition was changing as French workers, who previously lived in insalubrious housing,
moved to the new public housing buildings at the citys outskirts, or
to the suburbs. Immigrants from the transit housing projects or other forms of temporary housing then replaced them and, as a result,
the insalubrious housing stock remained permanently occupied.
Contrary to what is commonly thought, the departure of French residents was not caused by the arrival of immigrants; instead, the latters arrival was made possible by the departure of French residents
and the resulting vacancies. Between 1954 and 1982, in a context
where the overall density of the neighbourhood dropped considerably, the population of French citizens fell to one-half of what it had
been (from 45,263 to 24,654), whereas the number of foreigners
doubled (from 4696 to 9470). The diversity of origins is quite impressive. In 1990, the major groups were Algerians (15 per cent of
immigrants), Tunisians (15 per cent), sub-Saharan Africans (9 per
cent), Moroccans (8 per cent) and former Yugoslavs (7 per cent).
Asians, Turks and Sri Lankans complete the picture of Belleville as a
global village (Simon, 1993).
Added to the diversity of ethnic origins, there has been a recent increase in the variety of socio-professional statuses. Whereas in 1954
the neighbourhood was essentially working class, the professional
profile of the working population is now changing. The gentrification process began in 1980, after the partial renovation of several old
buildings and the launching of urban renewal programmes. Middleand upper-class households moved into new apartment buildings
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and into existing buildings that were still in good condition; the numerous new public housing programmes in renovated areas also
attracted new residents. The working-class population fell from 59
per cent in 1954 to 31 per cent in 1990, whereas the proportion of
liberal and upper-level professionals increased from 4 per cent to 13
per cent.
Over a period of 30 years, from 1955 to approximately 1985, the
neighbourhood underwent several population changes. The pace
of these transformations was relatively swift, a fact that partially explains why the recently arrived populations were able to take over
the areas public space with such ease. Indeed, according to the paradigm of Elias and Scotson (1965), established residents strongly
resist the efforts of new residents, or outsiders, to penetrate the various spheres of local power. In most cases, the transfer of power from
one group to the other occurs over a long period of time. However,
in the case of Belleville, the massive departure of part of the population led to the disappearance of traditional forms of neighbourhood
organization; the loss of original structures made it easier for the
newcomers to take over. This situation occurs quite frequently in
run-down neighbourhoods, before they are renovated (Coing, 1966).
Due to the departure of a portion of the established population
and the ageing of another portion, many small businesses and artisan workshops closed and a large share of the quarters economic infrastructure was left vacant. Since, due to the neighbourhoods bad
reputation, real estate prices were extremely low, commercial leases
became available to people who in normal circumstances would not
have been able to afford them. At the same time, immigrants began
to purchase property in rundown apartment buildings. The fact that
the native population of Belleville lost interest in the neighbourhoods public social life is apparent today in the surprising visibility of
several ethnic groups. North African Muslims and Jews, Asians and
to a lesser extent Africans can be observed mainly in the local businesses and in the public space. Linked to territorialization strategies,
each group has created highly structured enclaves to serve its own
needs; they represent the organizational basis of ethnic cohabitation.
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swift population
changes
A fragmented area
Though Belleville as a whole ranks quite low in the hierarchy of
Parisian neighbourhoods, it is far from being socially and ethnically
homogeneous. At the local level, one can observe the same inequalities in the distribution of social or ethnic groups as in the city overall
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patrick simon
and as in its different parts. Thus, the middle and upper classes live
in the high-quality apartment buildings of Belleville heights, whereas the working classes and lower level staff live in the nether part
of the neighbourhood, in rundown buildings awaiting demolition.
Between 1954 and 1982, the areas social geography changed as the
demolition programmes progressed. As a result of the demolitions,
the affordable housing space available to immigrants became scarcer, while the latters numbers increased. This led to the crowding
of many people into a small area, almost reminiscent of a ghetto,
unmarked by material boundaries but in fact strictly circumscribed,
owing to the pressure of the housing market.
Immigrants ended up all living in the same buildings because
they used family and community networks whose market was limited. Usually, upon their arrival, Algerian immigrants temporarily
settled in cheap hotels whose managers came from the same district
as they did (Sayad, 1977). Later on, when their families joined them,
they moved to neighbouring flats. A few years later, African immigrants followed the same itinerary, though the starting points were
hostels for migrant workers instead of cheap hotels. Community
networks also played an important role in helping immigrants from
former Yugoslavia or Portugal settle into vacant apartments with
their families. The Tunisian Jews were helped not only by family
and friends but also by community associations. The Unified Jewish
Social Fund3 helped refugees who had had to flee Tunisia during the
political crises the country was going through after independence. A
strategy consisting of channelling the poorest fringe of immigrants
towards Belleville apparently led to the emergence of a Tunisian
Jewish ghetto (Simon and Tapia, 1998). Finally, the Asians moved
into the renovated stock. The latters strategy involved property investments thanks to collective funding. Furthermore, special aid programmes also entitled Asian refugees to public housing space.
Despite these channelized migration flows, as B. Thompson
(1983) calls them, buildings are never wholly occupied by a single ethnic group. The distribution of apartments among immigrant groups
reflects their diversity, except in the case of hostels and cheap hotels.
Thus, at this level, the only really active type of segregation is social
segregation. Housing status is determined by income: there are no
upper-level professionals living in rundown buildings. Conversely,
very few members of the working class can afford to live in renovated
buildings with amenities, even if these buildings belong to the public
housing stock. From one building to the next, the difference in rent
can range from one to ten! Insalubrious buildings thus house immigrants of all origins, and their only native neighbours are working
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identity markers
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in Paris and entrenches their presence in the area even if most have
moved. Thus, Jewish clients who live elsewhere come to shop in local
stores. Before religious feasts, as many as 55 per cent of the stores
clients come from other neighbourhoods or from the suburbs.4 The
commercial infrastructure is an extremely important factor in a communitys visibility: not only do ethnic stores mark the neighbourhood with their presence, but they also make the community seem
larger than it actually is.
On the other half of the Boulevard de Belleville is the Arab city; its
restaurants and grocery stores look very much like those of the Jewish
sector, except that the butcher shops are no longer kosher but halal.
Mosques have replaced the synagogues and Muslim skullcaps the
Jewish kippas. The cheap Kabyle hotels of the 1950s have gone; they
have been replaced by a profusion of stores mainly centred on food
distribution. This shopping area, which spreads from Mnilmontant
to the Pre Lachaise cemetery, includes bazaars, cafs, restaurants,
travel agencies, secondhand clothing stores, import-export offices,
grocery stores, butcher shops and fruit and vegetable stores. In addition to these ordinary commercial activities, a centre of Muslim activity has developed near the Couronnes metro station. Two mosques
have been opened there, along with several religious bookshops. In
this area, meat sold as strictly halal is under very strict control. Kepel
(1984: 190ff.) calls this neighbourhood Pariss Islamic quarter. It
is controlled by the Tabligh, who are members of the international
movement jamaat al tabligh (faith and religious practice).
In the Muslim sector, except on market days, far fewer women
than men are seen on the streets. The men gather in small tight-knit
groups in the central square where Bellevilles market stands are set
up twice a week. These groups are often extremely dense, with very
little space left unoccupied. The presence of North African Muslims
is most noticeable during Ramadan, in which the whole neighbourhood becomes involved. Social control reaches its highest point during this period when a Muslim, or a person considered as such, cannot be seen drinking or smoking during the day; if he does, more or
less aggressively voiced reprobation will force him to stop. However,
Muslims are not the only people concerned with Ramadan: the entire
Belleville neighbourhood cannot help but participate in preparations
for the feast. Vendors set up shop along the boulevard pavement and
sell flat bread, herbs, fruit and sour milk. Shops held by Muslims
add special Ramadan products to their usual display. Even Jewish
shopkeepers stock up on fruit and drink for the occasion.
North African Muslims and Jews have a lot in common, and this
is particularly evident when one looks at their economic activities.
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Cohabitation models
Now that the framework for our analysis has been established, we can
revert to our initial question: how does integration work in Belleville?
The restriction of certain ethnic groups to a circumscribed territory, the public display and even the exacerbation of ones specificity,
whether religious (Islamic fundamentalism or Jewish orthodoxy) or
cultural, are in contradiction with the French model of integration.
According to this model, integration is an individual process enabling
immigrants to participate in the activities of mainstream society on
condition they accept its rules and that the society in turn is prepared
to integrate the immigrants.7 This process is based on a strict distinction between private and public spheres. In the private sphere,
cultural specificities can be maintained if they do not contradict the
fundamental values of the Republic. In the public sphere, however,
one must remain neutral or, in other words, ones behaviour must
be in conformity with the norms of mainstream society.
What is the situation in Belleville? Here, cultural differences, instead of being downplayed, are emphasized and play an important
role in the definition of relations between the various ethnic groups.
Far from being neutral, public space is the object of competition for
control over it; but instead of being a cause for social disorder, this
competition ensures social stability. Ever since the French working
class ceased to be the dominant group in the area, no other group has
been able to impose its norms of values on the others. The concept
of normative behaviour is no longer relevant, and has been replaced
by a much more general attitude based on tolerance and respect of
proprieties. Social order in Belleville8 is based first and foremost on
a charter of practices devoid of ethnic or cultural references. To use
a popular clich in studies on integration, Bellevilles social order is
universalist in both spirit and practice.
The coexistence of these groups within a circumscribed area has
led to a division of the neighbourhood into small plots. To describe
the spatial organization of the groups living in Belleville, the most accurate image is that of a mosaic, separate and closed-in worlds which
exist side by side but do not mix, to quote R.E. Park (1925). Each urban segment has its own local colour and the atmosphere can differ
completely from one street to the next. Each area has its users who
feel at home in its atmosphere and contribute, by their presence, to
spreading it. These microenvironments, in which urban functions,
users and specific practices are combined, are undoubtedly quasicommunities (Gans, 1962). The division of space must not be interpreted as a sign of hostility between the different groups. Indeed, it
integration
microenvironments
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is the only way these groups can use the city while maintaining their
own specificity. Without such borders, ethnic groups could not keep
the distance necessary for them to be able to live together. At the
same time, thanks to these borders, which are constantly shifting, a
group can define itself in opposition to the others, as Fredrik Barth
(1969), whose book has become a work of reference, has pointed out.
As competition for space is high, conflicts can only be regulated
if compensation is provided to those groups that are not present on
the public scene. If one considers the city according to three important aspects urban, political and symbolic the sharing of space
requires that a considerable number of elements be taken into account. Thus, added to the issue of concrete urban space, there is the
neighbourhoods history and collective memory, and in parallel, the
political forces and the associations that control the terms of this division: three distinct yet interlinked spheres of action, whose collective
actors may differ. If an actor ceases to participate at one level, his
participation may increase at another.
imagined
community
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nativity factory
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regulation of
differences
patrick simon
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Notes
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1 Cf. Hemingways celebration of Paris in Paris est une fte, quoted in Ory
(1994).
2 This approach owes a great deal to the pioneer (in France) research work
carried out by V. de Rudder, M. Guillon and I. Taboada-Leonetti. They focused on multiethnic cohabitation in several neighbourhoods of Paris (the
Choisy neighbourhood in the thirteenth arrondissement, the Aligre and Lot
Chalon neighbourhoods, and the wealthy neighbourhoods of the sixteenth
arrondissement). Summing up the teams approach, Taboada-Leonetti (1989)
writes: Our aim was to carry out empirical studies to show how people manage their differences in an ad hoc manner, depending on the issues at stake
and the circumstances, and how they produce collective identities which can
vary from one situation to the next without necessarily generating social crises, social dysfunction or ethnic identity crises.
3 Unified Jewish Social Fund: this is the main source of funding supporting
the various Jewish cultural, social and community institutions in France.
4 Survey conducted in front of shops in Belleville for a study on economic
activity in the lower Belleville area (see Fayman and Simon, 1991).
5 The religious revival, which has affected the Jewish community in France,
was also felt in Belleville. Today, most kosher stores close on the Sabbath.
6 A detailed map of Asian businesses in Belleville can be found in Ma Mung
and Simon (1990: 99). However, this map dates back to 1985 and the neighbourhoods business infrastructure has changed considerably since then.
More recent information is available in Live (1993).
7 This formulation is a condensed synthesis of the definitions of integration as
given by two official sources; the Commission de la Nationalit (1988) and
the Haut conseil lintgration (1991).
8 The notion of local social order refers to the one G. Suttles formulated
about a slum in Chicago. Even though those who live there have been rejected by mainstream society as people with disreputable characteristics,
slums are not disorganized (Suttles, 1968). Social order is interpreted here
as a system of rules, norms and values making it possible for different social
groups, which are interdependent yet reject each other, to live together. In
Belleville, where residents belong to very different ethnic or social groups,
the neighbourhood stands for a reference. Since all these groups live in the
same area, to get along, they must develop a common code of behaviour for
the neighbourhood.
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hassan bousetta
immigrant
labour force
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Belgium were granted access to various social and civil rights, but
their political rights were restricted.1 They were, in effect, excluded
from electoral participation. An important exception to this rule occurred when the Dutch, Irish and Scandinavian governments gave
foreigners the franchise at the local level. Unlike their counterparts
in France, Germany and Belgium, immigrants in these countries
were allowed active electoral participation (the right to vote and be
elected) at the local level. In terms of political analysis, this was
and still is a significant factor because immigrant communities in
Belgium, Germany and France have never represented a significant
electoral force.2
For a number of reasons, the sociopolitical participation of immigrant ethnic minorities is an important and worthwhile subject
of study for the political sociology of liberal democratic societies. In
recent years, it has become a bit more multicultural, multiethnic and
multi-religious. Withol de Wenden and Hargreaves (1993: 2-3) identify three reasons for the continuing significance of immigrant sociopolitical activism. First, are the memories of alternative means of
political participation open to disenfranchized immigrant communities, such as strikes, hunger strikes and marches? Second, consultative institutions have been established in many countries where, as
foreigners, immigrants are not entitled to full political rights. Third,
immigrants have, to varying degrees, been granted access to nationality in their receiving countries. This option, which opens the door to
full citizenship, has had particular relevance for the second and third
generation, particularly in countries that have traditionally based
their naturalization procedures on jus soli.3 A fourth reason for studying the sociopolitical involvement of immigrants is because the binding relationship between nationality and citizenship, at least in its
political dimension, has over the last 20 years been seriously thrown
into question. Citizenship of the European Union and foreigners
experiences of enfranchisement at the local level are instances of a
decoupling of citizenship and nationality, the main consequence of
which is to open the door towards granting some political rights to
non-nationals.
These elements indicate that, over the past 20 years, the situation in northwestern immigrant receiving European countries, such
as the Netherlands, Belgium and France, has changed qualitatively.
Immigrants and their supporters have gained some important victories. Whereas migrant workers and their families were left with practically no access to mainstream political institutions in the 1970s,
most immigrant receiving European countries have now established
a number of procedures and institutions to increase their political
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significance of
immigrant
socio-political
activism
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institutions and
policies
hassan bousetta
participation and representation. Though some convergence is observable, the nature and scope of these channels of participation differ from one country to another (Layton Henry, 1990). Nevertheless,
there are now a number of formal channels through which immigrants can articulate their political demands.
These institutional developments have influenced methods of
theorizing immigrants political inclusion. Breaking away from culturalist interpretations of immigrants sociopolitical behaviour, recent literature has paid increasing attention to the role and influence
of institutions and policies. It has been argued, for instance, that both
the nature and impact of immigrant political participation predominantly depend on the political context they confront (Ireland, 1994).
This approach leads to a crucial point for European comparative research, for it holds that most of the variations that can be identified
across national boundaries are more dependent on the specificities of
the domestic political context than on the deliberate strategic choices
of minority groups.
Without going deeper into the complexities of the theoretical debate, a cautious interpretation of the actual role of institutions and
policies is called for to avoid turning the proper role of immigrants
into that of a passive agent determined by structural political and institutional factors. Any attempt to influence politics and to gain more
access to the political process necessarily implies the mobilization
of collective actors. The organizational basis of immigrant political
action should therefore be taken as a focal point in studying immigrant participatory patterns. Before discussing this in relation to the
Moroccan experiences in three cities, a clarification of two related
concepts of particular relevance to the problmatique is proposed in
the next section, namely the concepts of ethnic mobilization and of
ethnic minority associationism.
Ethnic mobilization and ethnic minority associationism
As suggested earlier, several channels to political participation are
open to ethnic minorities. In the three countries central to this analysis, social scientists have pointed out the importance of the liberalization of foreigners rights of association to the political participatory
opportunities available to immigrant communities (Layton Henry,
1990). The setting up of independent associations has been a major
development for immigrant communities denied all the attributes of
citizenship of the majority. It has opened a door for them to organize
their own sociopolitical interests in institutions independent both of
the country of origin and of the host countrys various solidarity organizations. Ethnic minority associational life has in many instances
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ethnic mobilization
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weak mobilization
Lige
In 1996, the Moroccan community of Lige numbered 5270 individuals, most of who had come as immigrant workers or student
migrants. This community included numerous organizations displaying diverse profiles. Moroccan ethnic associations in Lige are
structured along a number of well-established cleavages, including
gender, age, ideological orientation towards the country of origin,
ideological orientation towards the country of residence, religion
or secularism and regional identities (Berbers versus non-Berbers).
Though the Moroccan communitys formal organizational structure
in Lige does not reveal much variation in comparison with the two
other cities, one can contend that this community is weakly mobilized in the formal political field. It has also failed to establish a
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coherent political movement in the face of deteriorating socioeconomic conditions. A good illustration of this is the absence of any
significant involvement in electoral politics by Moroccans of Belgian
nationality.6 The relationship between the Moroccan community in
Lige and local political parties is a chapter that still has to be written.
Another indication is that Moroccan ethnic associations are clearly
under-represented in local inter-organizational networks mobilized
around immigration/integration issues. A range of multiethnic and
Belgian solidarity organizations, such as human rights associations
and antiracist groups, dominate the mobilized actors. The ideological fragmentation of these organizations may partly explain the
Moroccans under-representation. Many solidarity organizations are
either affiliated to a specific segment of Belgiums rather pillar-like
society, such as the Christian or socialist movement, or are close to
alternative political parties such as Ecolo, the green party in Frenchspeaking Belgium.
To explain this situation, it is necessary to go beyond normative
judgements about the capacity of leaders to articulate the demands
of their community. More interestingly, the point is to analyse the
interaction between the internal and institutional factors that shaped
the sociopolitical trajectory of the Moroccan community in Lige.
The most important obstacles that Moroccans, like other smaller ethnic and religious minorities, have repeatedly confronted in Lige is
a shared consensus among the political elite of the majority about
the normative meaning of integration. So far, the dominant assimilationist ideological framework has impeded the emergence of alternative ways of representing ethnic minorities either in the formal
political process or in the implementation of public policies. To some
extent, one could contend that this has resulted in the reproduction
of immigrants powerlessness through a systematic non-politicization and non-specific decision-making. In comparison with the three
other case studies, the absence of a specifically local policy theorizing
on integration issues is evident.
In 1973, Lige had, however, experienced a pioneering initiative
with the establishment of a consultative institution. This consultative council, the CCILg (Conseil consultatif des Immigrs de la Ville
de Lige), was for a long time the only formal institution where immigrant minority communities could articulate their political demands. Like many peer consultative bodies, the CCILg has steadily
confronted a number of difficulties in its communication with the
local council and has never managed to increase its power within
local politics (see Martiniello, 1992). The CCILg stopped its work in
1991 and the new municipal authorities, elected in 1994, have ten-
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ties in the public sphere, others have opposed and mobilized to keep
their religious space immune from public concern. The El Itissam
mosque has undoubtedly gone furthest in the first strategy, while
the El Mouahidin mosque has traditionally opted for the second one.
The El Iman mosque, a stronghold of Moroccan consular agents and
of the friendship societies of Moroccan merchants and workers (amicales), has on the other hand relied on forms of ethnic lobbying based
on individual networks among the local political elite. These amicales
have also had two representatives elected after the CCILgs elections
of 1984.
Islamic associations in Lige enter the public political arena not
only over local matters, such as a request for Islamic cemeteries9
and the organization of educational activities, but over national issues such as the representation of Islam according to the Belgian
law of 1974 (see Panafit, 1997). The Islamic association El Itissam is
at the forefront of this claim and has developed a strategy of vertical
integration (at both national and regional levels) with Brussels-based
Islamic groups. Unlike the secular left wing, Islamic groups have not
participated in regular political relays within the local political arena
and have only managed to find occasional access to the policy process
on issues of direct concern to them.
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national issues
Lille
The 6260 Moroccans in Lille represent the most important group
of non-nationals. Apart from a small minority who acquired French
citizenship, first-generation Moroccan immigrants have had no access whatsoever to the electoral process. Their status as non-nationals has denied them access to the most formal political arena. The
first significant developments in terms of electoral political participation appeared with the political emergence of the second generation. In Lille, the most recent municipal elections confirmed the
slow and uneasy emergence of second-generation individuals in the
political arena. In 1989, three candidates from North African youth
organizations were put forward by the socialist party. One of them, a
co-founder of Les Craignos, was elected and appointed the mayors
delegate for citizenship and human rights. In 1995, several North
African candidates ran again for a seat in the local council. Among
them, two well-known figures in second-generation North African
associational life and a social worker of Moroccan origin have been
successful.10
Before the second generation started to organize politically and to
set up its associations in Lille, first-generation Moroccans had been
less quiescent than Beur historiography has sometimes tended to
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suggest. In Lille, as in other European cities, the Moroccan government became involved early on in setting up collective infrastructures for Moroccan migrants. Setting up a federation of amicales in
the north was here again the Moroccan regimes pivotal instrument
for strategy of control. The role of Moroccan diplomats in this process of community organization and control was never clearer than
in the 1986 conflict when Moroccan miners of the northern French
coalfield opposed the Charbonnages de France. After a long strike
led by a group of Moroccan miners from the French trade union
CGT (Confderation gnrale du Travail), 3600 Moroccan miners
were unfairly dismissed after an agreement was reached between
the Moroccan embassy and their employer, the Charbonnages de
France (for more details, see Sanguinetti 1991: 75-8). Although many
Moroccan miners were forced to return to Morocco, the struggle for
their social and economic benefits is still going on today. In 1987, the
former Moroccan leaders of the CGT who remained in France founded an independent association (Association des Mineurs Marocains
du Nord) and joined the national federation of the Association des
Travailleurs Marocains en France (ATMF).
Parallel with the first-generation community organizations the
second generation, most often headed by young Algerians, has
emerged in the sociopolitical field at both local and national levels.
As Bouamama recalls, the mobilization of the second generation and
the setting up of associations started to become a central issue in Lille
with the first nationwide Marches des Beurs of 1983 (Bouamama,
1989). Texture and Les Craignos are two important associations that
were founded in this period. The setting up of a large number of
smaller associations, most often youth associations involved at a
neighbourhood level, has recently followed their pioneering work in
the city of Lille. While Les Craignos has set up a federation of neighbourhoods youth associations, the Fdration des Associations des
Jeunes de Quartier (FAJQ), Texture has supported the foundation of
a multiethnic immigrant womens association called Femmes dici et
dailleurs.
In Lille, as in Lige and Utrecht, in recent years there has been a
strong development of Islamic associations. The Lille Sud mosque is
at the forefront of the mobilization of North African Muslims in the
north. Its activities are strikingly similar to those of the El Itissam
association in Lige. Vertical integration with regional Islamic associations and Paris-based federations, mobilization on educational
matters, and the provision of services and activities to the second
generation are some of the issues with which the Lille Sud mosque
is engaged.
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There are two interesting points about the nature of North African
political incorporation.
First, there seems to be a strong generational divide between firstand second-generation collective action. Whereas the first generation
relied mostly on ethnic mobilization within trade unions, independent associations and mosques, the second generation tends more
towards universalistic political inclusion. This has given rise to some
interesting debates among members of North African associations
in Lille. Texture has promoted the idea of intergenerational solidarity within the migrant population and has sought to distance itself
from narrow forms of ethnic mobilization. In 1989, for instance, it
sponsored an electoral list purportedly composed of an aggregate of
candidates from migrant communities and socially excluded populations. The mobilizations of France Plus and Espace Intgration are
further examples of ethnic mobilizations not necessarily fitting the
nature and profile of the organizations in question. In Lille and in
the north of France more generally, these two organizations have
developed a discursive strategy of republican integration (namely
assimilation) into French society, while at the same time activating
ethnic boundaries as a basis for political bargaining. This apparent
contradiction has been widely discussed in the French literature; it is
what Vincent Geisser (1997) tentatively identified as the emergence
of a republican ethnicity. Unlike Texture, which has deliberately
avoided grounding sociopolitical activism in ethnic identifications,
the latter are interesting examples of ethnic mobilization being embedded in discursive strategic use of an assimilationist vocabulary.
Second, the so-called town policy (la politique de la ville), which
has been implemented as a partnership between national government, regions and municipalities, has provided a number of professional opportunities to individuals formerly involved in immigrant
associational life. This policy has created and sustained a demand for
leadership within impoverished immigrant neighbourhoods. One
can speak here of the institutional production of an immigrant associational life of proximity. The seamy side of the story, however,
is that it has increased control over the practices and ideologies of
second-generation activists, while weakening the autonomous political action of civil society (Bouamama, 1989).
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Utrecht
The Moroccan population in Utrecht consists of 13,595 individuals.
Unlike their counterparts in Lille and Lige, Moroccans in Utrecht
have been enfranchized for local elections since 1986. The Moroccan
community has also been identified as a specific target group for the
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Conclusion
This comparative overview of three case studies has taught us some
important lessons about patterns and forms of immigrant political
incorporation. We have observed sociopolitical participation in mainstream political institutions, ethnic mobilization and less politically
significant internal community dynamics. The minority response
the Moroccan communities exemplified revealed the importance of
ethnic mobilization within independent ethnic and religious associations, the deployment of civic, youth, gender and neighbourhood
mobilization, as well as the involvement of minority candidates in
mainstream party politics.
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ties in the three societies. In other words, while the nature of immigrants inclusion has diversified, the impact of immigrants mobilization on a wide number of issues of collective importance has
remained extremely weak. The collective position of Moroccans in
areas such as education, employment or housing in the three countries, remains an issue of serious concern and the same holds true
for the legal position of Moroccan women. Although Miller (1981)
was partly right in saying immigrants and their offspring are neither
voiceless nor powerless, the reality seems to fall short of his optimistic view of foreign workers as an emerging political force. One must
conclude that the social, political and economic emancipation of ethnic minority groups is still heavily dependent on the implementation
of liberal political agendas from the majorities. The experience that
Moroccans share with other ethnic minorities in northwest Europe
leads to another more general conclusion. Although their demographic share is massively increasing within European urban populations, this has not yet been reflected in the most formal political
institutions in which, collectively, they remain under-represented.
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Notes
1 One should, however, call for cautious use of the classical Marshallian
distinction of citizenship rights in three spheres: civic, social and political
(Marshall, 1950). In many circumstances, political activities are not dependent on the possession of formal political rights. The civil and social rights
open to immigrants play in many cases as a legal juridical protection to their
extra-parliamentary political activities (see also Miller, 1981: 15-20).
2 On this particular point, the situation for foreign communities in continental Europe is substantially different from that in Britain, where foreign residents who are citizens of Commonwealth countries are fully enfranchized.
3 Withol de Wenden and Hargreaves (1993: 2) rightly note that this option has
always been more than a theoretical possibility for foreign residents even in
countries implementing jus sanguinis-types of naturalization regulations.
4 There are some notable exceptions to the rule, including among others de
Graaf (1986); de Graaf, Penninx, Stoov (1988) and Van der Valk (1996).
5 Use is made in this research of a qualitative methodology based on the selection of three urban sites of empirical work in three different countries.
The three urban contexts were chosen in the three countries with the largest Moroccan emigrant communities. Among the 1.1 million Moroccan emigrants settled in Europe, almost half are permanent residents in France,
Belgium and the Netherlands. I have selected three cities that attracted significant numbers of immigrant workers in the period of massive immigration from the Mediteranean (1959-74). It should also be mentioned that they
are university cities, which is a relevant consideration given that the migration of Moroccan students towards European universities has played an important role in the sociopolitical organization of these communities.
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The proliferation of integration studies in Europe is, according to the sociologist and philosopher Adrian Favell, part and parcel of a wider nationstate-society paradigm. Those who work within this paradigm see the nation
state as the principal organising unit of society. Moreover, they see society
as a bounded, functional whole. The state achieves this by creating policies
and institutions. Favell has doubts about whether this nation-state-society
paradigm is still sufficiently appropriate for understanding the evolving relationship between immigrants and their host context. This article is a strong
plea for research that goes beyond such crude and fairly static entities such
as nation-states.
Despite its somewhat old-fashioned, functionalist air, integration
is still the most popular way of conceptualizing the developing relationship between old European nation-states and their growing
non-European, ethnic immigrant populations. It is also widely used
to frame the advocacy of political means for dealing with the consequences of immigration in the post-World War II period. Many similar, difficult-to-define concepts can be used to describe the process of
social change that occurs when immigrants are integrated into their
new host society. But none occurs with the frequency or all-encompassing scope of the idea of integration across such a broad range of
West European countries. This fact continues to decisively structure
policy research and policy debate on these subjects in Europe.
The wide and varied ordinary language usages of the term are
linked to a deeper association of the concept with a longstanding
intellectual paradigm at the root of modern western societys conception of itself. This paradigm roots applied social policy thinking
in the idea of the nation-state as the principal organizing unit of
society, with all the epistemological assumptions and political constraints that this term implies. By using the term, writers continue
integration
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long-term
consequences
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nation-building
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employees or service providers, or they can be integrated into complex inter-community relations at, say, city or district level. Looked
at from a bottom-up perspective where the integration of society
as a whole is not assumed as the end goal of interaction between
ethnically diverse groups multicultural relations can be seen to take
all kinds of organized and semi-organized forms. These may not at
all be encompassed by the top-down, organized structures typical
of state thinking on the subject, such as policy frameworks, official
channels of participation, or legally circumscribed rights, restrictions
and entitlements. Multiculturalism as a descriptive state-of-affairs,
in this sense, could be the product of something that never had anything to do with the multicultural policies or institutions of the
state. However as historical theorists of the state would remind us
with their vivid terminology the state has always constituted itself
in the way it imposes formal structures and institutionalizes social
relations via a systematic embracing, caging and/or penetrating
of society (Torpey, 2000). This logic of incorporation has invariably
in recent history taken a dominant form of collective social power (to
borrow the terms of Mann, 1993) that seeks to encompass, contain
and bind together the states domination of society, and all the varied
market or community relations inside it. This form is the modern
nation state. And, as soon as we begin to think of integration as a collective societal goal which can be achieved through the systematic intervention of collective political agency, we inevitably begin to invoke
the nation-state in the production of a different, caged and bounded
version of multicultural social relations.
It is very difficult, then, to make much sense of the term integration in practical, applied terms, without bringing back in the nationstate, at least in the European political context. This is not only because the term gets monopolized by nationally rooted policy makers
who, I will suggest, typically link their ideas about integration and
their measures for achieving it even when they are multicultural
in inspiration to historical concerns with nation-building. As I will
also go on to explain, it is equally because of a range of epistemological constraints imposed by the practical operationalization of integration as a framework for applied research, whether targeted at
questions of policy or at generating knowledge through survey-based
studies of immigrants and ethnic minorities.
Looking across Western Europe in the broadest possible way, it is
clear that integration has emerged as the most widely used general
concept for describing the target of post-immigration policies. This
is not to say that every political figure or intellectual in every country likes or uses the term. The synthetic, cross-national pronounce-
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practical
significance
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practical
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solutions
Unlike in America, academic research on immigrants and integration in Europe is still dominantly structured by its explicit or implicit
links to the knowledge demands of specific policy agendas and political discussions in different national contexts (on these, see Favell,
2001). In Europe, the overlap and interpenetration of research and
policy making is pervasive at national and, increasingly, international level. Academics are co-opted into politicized roles either through
the direct shaping of the research agenda by public and institutional
funding opportunities to do applied work; by the invitation to take
on the role of public intellectual in media or government work; or
by their activist involvement as campaigners, in which their work
is used to articulate political positions. This involvement clearly is
linked to societys functional need for someone to express political
agency, with academics contributing through their research to the
construction of both social problems (as they are perceived) and their
solution. Insofar as their work also often serves to think for the
state, it also helps underwrite dominant nation-building ideologies.
Such a role has its costs. The involvement of researchers in activism
or the policy process can also diminish the intellectual autonomy and
viability of independent academic research outside of more instrumentalized uses.
European nations are obviously at different stages of development
in their internal debates, but in most cases academic thinking is now
moving beyond purely denunciatory work on the negative consequences of immigration (such as studies of racism) into the conceptualization of practical integration solutions and trajectories of multicultural social change. For example, in Britain, the popular sub-field
of more critical anti-racist, Marxist and post-Marxist writers (such as
the cultural studies writers inspired by Stuart Hall) whose work
tended to focus on condemning the racism of state institutions and
celebrating the resistance of immigrant cultures have themselves
found there is a limit to what can be done with such arguments.
More recently, they have begun to more consciously contribute to
debates about multicultural citizenship, in relation to mainstream
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national models
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academics in this field for money from the Targeted Social and
Economic Research (TSER) programme on exclusion was a national models-based study led by well-known national figures Friedrich
Heckmann and Dominique Schnapper that explicitly structured its
investigations around the idea that immigration and ethnic relations
in each country are determined by classic policy models rooted in
political cultural differences between France, Germany, Britain and
so on (Heckmann and Schnapper, 2003). A models-based approach
of this kind will often itself reproduce the ideological fictions each
nation has of its own and others immigration politics. Schnapper
and associates duly found that minorities and majorities do indeed
talk about the issues in each country in ways that follow the distinct
national ideologies. But little or no self-reflexive effort was made to ask
how these nation-sustaining ideas about distinct national models
have themselves been created and sustained by politicians, the media
and the policy academics themselves in each country, precisely in
order to foreclose the possibility that external international or transnational influences might begin to affect domestic minority issues
and policy considerations.
Practical institutional imperatives also dictate that the policy study
packages and presents its findings in a narrowly targeted way, which
naturally curtails many of the more interesting lines of enquiry. This
has been well-understood by one of the more influential NGOs in this
field in Brussels the Migration Policy Group who have been involved in two of the most wide ranging funded surveys on integration
policies across European society (Vermeulen, 1997; MPG, 1996). In
the latter, the societal integration project, they set up roundtables
in around twenty countries, and listened to the expert opinions of
policy makers and policy intellectuals, generating a mass of material about how policy makers talk about the same issues in different
places. However, in the end the slim report of highlights and recommendations boiled all this down to a reaffirmation that convergence
was the source of future norms on citizenship and integration across
Europe. Being limited to the typical state-centric talk and self-justification of policy makers, it was unable to offer any genuine comparative evaluation. Moreover, the freedom of reflection of such a project
is naturally cut down by the expectations of the sponsors who lay
down the lines of research. By definition, such comparative policy
studies produce findings which reinforce the state-centred, top-down
formulations familiar at national level. The one difference here as
a product of a supra-national European initiative = is that the conclusions about the inevitability of convergence underline a familiar EU
strategy to focus, not on national exceptionality or uniqueness (as do
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national level studies) but rather on the narrowing of national differences. In other words, as we might expect given the sponsors involved, these arguments work to narrow down the freedom of agency
of individual states, hence their sovereignty. Convergent citizenship
criteria become like convergent criteria for monetary union.
To really be able to answer the evaluatory question of which
nation-states are doing better on integration than others, we would
need some kind of integration index: a convertible scale which enabled us to read off across European societies degrees of social segregation in housing, success in schooling or employment, differences
in resistance of cultural behaviour, persistence of racist attitudes,
relative social mobility, or whatever is argued to be the best set of
objective measures. These indicators would then have to be linked to
the existence, or the success and failure, of specific national policies
or institutions. The inevitable impulse to cross-national evaluation
of state policy is not only exceedingly difficult to do, given the crossnational data constraints I will go on to discuss. It also imposes as an
assumption an untenable automatic correlation between success on
the index and the effectiveness of state policies having achieved their
goals by shaping or influencing the behaviour of groups and individuals. This assumption itself is a state-reinforcing one, penalizing
any society which is less structured by state intervention, regardless
of how well integrated groups or individuals may in fact be.
The one way this kind of approach works is as a comparative
shaming strategy directed towards states with less extensive formal
rights and entitlements for migrants than others. The most extensive survey of this kind was a six nation Austrian study which did
just this, in order to shame the Austrian government into better migration policy and anti-discrimination measures (inar et al., 1995;
Waldrauch and Hofinger, 1997; Waldrauch, 2001). The extensively
documented study broke down all formal rights and entitlements of
non-nationals across various European states, rating each one between 0 and 1 as an index to barriers to integration. By definition,
the approach foresees a state-centred, state-organized solution to integration, and cannot capture any forms of multiculturalism which
are the outcome of more laissez-faire style approaches. We end up
with the very common conclusion that highly state-organized societies, such as Sweden or the Netherlands, do it best. Yet these are also
highly unified national societies, who put high demands of linguistic
and cultural assimilation on their inhabitants (something to which
the index is blind). They are also societies racked with dilemmas of
informal economy, and high degrees of social segregation among
their immigrant population. Current discussions on immigration in
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narrative of nation-building. No matter how insulated the methodology, the broader national policy definition of integration as a social
process impacts upon the production of categories and numbers elicited from survey results.
Counting only non-nationals as the immigrant population is still
the base-line norm across nearly all European countries except Britain,
which has a famously idiosyncratic form of ethnic self-identification
in its census. Most comparative tables offer figures for non-nationals
by nationality, which works up to point in countries where original
nationality remains a distinguishing factor (as, say, in Germany, Italy
or Spain; although it runs into problems in Germany, for example,
in counting the three million Aussiedler from Eastern Europe). This
method is clearly a criterion of declining usefulness, however, as increasing numbers of second and third generation immigrant children in fact accede to full national citizenship; it can indeed be simply a crude measure of administrative exclusion. Naturalization rates
over time are a second set of figures, which trace the absorption of
immigrants over shorter, given periods of time. Other countries may
also offer figures which count those people who identify older family
members born outside of the country. From this, a great deal can be
extrapolated into second and third generation, but a country such as
France still maintains barriers for ideological reasons to researchers
using this information, which means that some naturalized second
or third generation are lost to studies once they leave the immigrant
household.
A strong moral prohibition, meanwhile, exists on the classification of people by race or religion across Europe. There is little more
distasteful to continental Europeans than anything with a whiff of
former Nazi racial classifications, or indeed the common practice
in multinational empires such as the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia to
brand people permanently on their interior passports with an ethnic
nationality (see Brubaker, 1995). However, a more racially heterogeneous population such as the Portuguese avoids these racial classifications for rather different reasons, to do with the cosmopolitan
colonial conception of the nation. In Belgium, you are classified by
language according to political records after you vote, religion after
you choose university. Here, however, the census is banned by law
to answer such questions up front. In the Netherlands, meanwhile,
there is no national census at all, after a libertarian public revolt in
the 1970s. Ethnic statistics here have to be reconstructed from local city and police records or special ministry surveys, something
that has contributed significantly to the sense of unease about the
numbers of undocumented residents in the country. Other coun-
racial classification
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tries, however, such as Denmark and Britain which in other respects have very different census methods are prepared under certain circumstances to make available census data to track specified
(anonymous) individuals over time between censuses, in order, for
example, to analyze spatial mobility or rates of political participation
(see Togeby, 1999; Fielding, 1995). Such a babel of census information is a difficult starting point. In talking about integration, who are
we talking about: legally resident foreigners, immigrants, illegal/
undocumented residents, third-country nationals, ethnic groups,
racial minorities, new or naturalized citizens, or simply formally
undistinguishable nationals with a different de facto cultural history
or skin colour?
The narrow definition of immigrants as resident non-nationals
has the virtue of avoiding the integration issue entirely. It offers the
normative panacea of equating citizenship with full integration, an
idea which has long reassured French republicans on the virtues
of a cosmopolitan type of nationhood. A normative dogma such as
this makes no sociological sense, of course, once anyone is willing
to admit that host populations and migrants alike will continue to
informally discriminate themselves and each other regardless of
which passport they are holding. Once some outsiders become insiders, however, their formal categorization (or recognition, in more
affirmative terms) itself becomes a part of the integration process.
Whether or not they are separated off for official monitoring purposes, and how and where they can be placed on some path towards
full integration, becomes a crucial part of the integrative process itself, not least because the separation from ones original nationality
may also be a coercive state enforced act (see Simon, 1997). There is
a profound moral truth in the French refusal to actually recognize
any French citizen of non-national ethnic origin as such in official
statistics, because the recognition itself can indeed be a form of inequality or discrimination. The power of naming does indeed count
for something. The French refusal is also a dramatic statement of the
nation-states continued prerogative to nationalize a new citizen as
indivisibly French. Yet, on the other hand, no policy can be devised
for systematic integration of foreign-origin groups until the nationstate begins to collectively recognize and classify minorities of ethnic
origin, with special claims targeted policies, resources, legal allowances, etc that follow from this (this is the central problematic of
the influential work of Kymlicka, 1995).
There is another side of the classificatory separation, however.
Integration cannot be conceived, identified, let alone measured as
degrees of inequality and so on, until a control group representa-
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tive of the national population has been specified. But this raises the
question: we are talking about integration into what? Here, the logic
of classification becomes even more slippery. Are they the indigenous population (de souche in French), but if so, what length of
time constitutes roots; are they defined culturally, by their family
origins, by their length of residence; are they, rather, simply to be
identified as the majority white or European population; or, are we
in fact speaking of some representative sample or statistical mean of
the citizenry as a whole, including all those new and culturally exotic
recent additions? Moreover, as Michael Banton points out (2001),
it makes little sense to measure the integration of an immigrant or
ethnic minority population, until we have some precise measurement of how well the majority population is integrated as a nation.
Whatever method is chosen however the state chooses to classify,
count and control its population or define those who are in and those
who are out will again amount to a pre-determined national sampling frame, that is very closely linked to the ideological concept of
nationhood present. Behind this, of course, lies the normative commitment to integration as societal end-goal, the underlying assumption that holds the nation-state-society unit together. Researchers
who thus set out to objectively measure integration, without taking
into account how much the nation-state unit has already determined
the very quantitative tools they use, will fail to see how much the
bounds of what they can discover have already been pre-set for them.
If so, they are working no less to underwrite the predominance of the
nation-state optic, than policy studies researchers who accept without
challenge nation-state centred definitions of universal citizenship
or cosmopolitan multiculturalism.
On the whole, however, progressive minded commentators
across Europe do not challenge this conceptual recuperation of their
very tools of research by a nation-state centred vision of integration.
The majority, rather, has been content to push a different, conciliatory line, that squares the circle between the reality of ongoing nation-building efforts and the contrasting idealism of cosmopolitan
multiculturalism. They argue that European nations have become,
or are becoming, countries of immigration. Such arguments have
been very much present in those countries whose right wing refuses
to recognize the reality of continued immigration and settlement at
all. Among those promoting this happier version of Europes immigrant future, the coercive weight of ever-present nation-building
processes is thus lightened by the claim that the integration of immigrants in Europe can be equated with what happens to immigrants
in Australia, Canada or the US. The normative inspiration is clear
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can model bereft of evidence for these claims. For how else could the
sociological integration of different cultural groups in France in fact
be measured? A study which reintroduced some sub-classification
of the population by ethnicity was, in other words, needed to show
that ethnicity in fact did not matter. The nation-sustaining argument
about integration was in a sense generating its own contradictions,
that would then need resolution by a new scientific approach. This,
then, was the background to the ambitious study by INED, headed by
Michle Tribalat, that still represents the state-of-the-art in integration research in France (Tribalat, 1995; Tribalat et al., 1996). Sample
ethnic groups of different national origin tracked down by ethnographic investigation, using the census only indirectly were compared to a control group of non-immigrant origin French on questions of cultural behaviour, language use, housing concentration,
political participation, and so on. The strongly French socialization
of most groups observed the Turkish and Chinese being the two
outliers in fact offered strong evidence for continued assimilation
in France, as Tribalat preferred to call it. The mere introduction of
ethnicity into the survey, however, brought desperately controversial
public reactions from other commentators, such as Herv Le Bras
(1998); and this despite the fact that it led to such conventionally
French results.
Systematic cross-ethnic comparative work is much more highly
developed in Germany, which has strong national surveys of data by
national-origin available, such as the socioeconomic panel commissioned annually by the Deutsches Institut fr Wirtschaft, which provides data on ethnicity, language, identity questions and participation (an example of such work being Diehl et al., 1999). Progressive
researchers here are even more sensitive to the de-categorization of
foreigners and the positive idea of Germany as a country of immigration. There have been advantages to such research in the fact it
has had to be diverted away from the ideologically dominated discussions on citizenship and naturalization, where progress has been
more difficult. German research is thus more likely to concentrate
on conceptualizing integration in technical socioeconomic terms:
in terms of participation in the welfare state, and in differences between federal or city level contexts. One consequence is the possibility of internal comparisons of integration geographically within the
nation, something of which there is no trace in France and Britain.
German research, however, does not escape the pervasively nationcentred frame which dominates its political debates. Negative evidence of non-integration such as ethnic concentration or the failure of second and third generations to speak German tends to get
Germany: strong
national-origin data
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constructed as evidence of segregation or marginalization, in contrast with more successful state-centred integration or assimilation.
These closed typologies of immigrant trajectories which reinforce
the idea of full national integration as the ideal can be found in
research going on in all kinds of countries (Nauck and Schnpflug,
1997; see also the closed scheme of claims-making laid out as an
introduction by Koopmans and Statham, 2000).
In Britain, meanwhile, the ethnic self-identification question in
its census is clearly out of sync with its European neighbours. It indicates a conceptual history that has always looked for its normative
inspiration to American race relations of the 1960s, and has always
defined Britain more narrowly as a country of postcolonial immigration only. For all the masses of data provided about the select group
of post-colonial racial and national groups recognized in the census,
the framework has come to have serious limitations over time. The
categories themselves have become highly politicized, putting into
practice a variable geometry that has sought to respond to the emerging demands of new and increasingly diverse migrant groups who
recognize that the census categories are a fundamental source of recognition, as well as legal coverage and public funding. Basic black
and white distinctions, for example, have now fallen away into a
broader recognition of Asian groups. Other new migrants in Britain,
however, find themselves lost between the generic white and other
boxes. Indeed, with Jewish and Irish anti-discrimination campaigners forcing open the pandoras box of whiteness (the all important
control group) in the census of 2001, it is quite likely that the sharp
minority ethnic groupings that have been the core and inspiration
of British race research may in future begin to crumble.
Obviously, the sources of minority data, and the qualitative evidence it also provides about nuances in ethnic self-identification,
have created a boon for identities type work in Britain, much of it
now pursued under the banner of new ethnicities. There are numerous studies in which individuals are ethnographically studied
playing with or resisting (unsurprisingly) their given ethnic minority category (Back, 1995; Anthias and Yuval-Davis, 1993; Modood et
al., 1994). Such work can often be an ideal vehicle for articulating
ethnic voices themselves. But structural work about the social mobility of such groups is hampered by the crude comparison forced by
the data between racially designated ethnic groups and the generic
white block of the host population; this, inevitably it seems, leads
research to claim ethnic success as rooted in minority group solidarity, but ethnic failure as rooted in majority group racial discrimination. In this frame, too, there is no way of assessing the continued
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impact of nation-building assimilation via evidence on cultural behaviour, etc on ethnic groups, despite the self-evident Britishness
of many of these well-established minority groups. Nor is it easy in
this frame to cross-check for class, gender or regional factors, particularly if these might lead to the declining salience of race-based
explanations. In some of the best recent work on social mobility and
ethnic identities, transnational behaviour and sources of social success are still surprisingly downplayed against the interpretation that
ethnic minority success is further proof of vibrant British multiculturalism (Modood et al., 1997). Britain celebrates with some pride
its longstanding role in Europe as the leading country of post-war
immigration; yet has until very recently refused officially to see itself
as a country of new immigration. Within this paradoxical picture,
well-integrated and recognized ethnic minorities have a status and
advantage denied to the many other new migrant groups now found
in the country.
In the nation-state centred version of integration research in the
larger European countries, there is something odd about the fact
that the status and success of immigrants gets measured entirely in
terms of a social mobility relative to norms of integration into the
nation-society, or average national social mobility paths; yet it is increasingly normal to think of elites in the same country becoming
increasingly transnational in their roles, networks and trajectories.
The exclusive destiny of full integration into host nation states may
however not be the norm for immigrants in the future. Already, in
other smaller European nations, a rather different picture is emerging. New migration countries such as Italy, Spain, and Portugal are
actually going through the process of formulating their own uncertain national conceptions of integration at a very different historical moment compared to larger nations who continue to offer their
models. As well as being countries that are more geographically exposed to migration, they are, moreover, countries with weaker state
penetration of society or the market. In these less structured situations, the normative imperative of full national integration begins
to lessen, if new non-nation-centred structures of social integration
begin to emerge. A similar consequence follows from research on integration into a non-unified or multi-levelled state such as Belgium.
In seeking to avoid the inevitability of nation-state centred visions of
integration apparently forced on research by the kind of data available and the kind of concepts we work with, studying these smaller
or newer integration scenarios may indeed offer a way forward out of
the current paradigm.
non-nation-centred
structures of social
integration
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informal sources
of power
The clear message from the critical survey of current integration research in Europe offered here is that better research would be research that sets out to be more autonomous academically, and more
thoroughly comparative in its intent. Academics need to escape their
role of underwriting nation-building efforts directed towards small
immigrant populations that have provoked a renewed symbolic effort
to imagine (inclusive) western nation-state cultures. A much higher
degree of self-consciousness is needed about the way contextual factors determine the intellectual content of research itself.
How might this be done? I will conclude with a discussion of
some of the newer insights provided by the way scholars of transnationalism have approached the problem (e.g., Portes, 1996; Basch et
al., 1994; Smith and Guarnizo, 1998). Scholars of transnationalism
have sought for exactly the kinds of reasons I spell out in this paper
to expunge integration from their terms of research. By definition,
they do not wish to be underwriting the nation-state in a world which
they see as increasingly transnational or global. Methodologically,
too, their bottom up, ethnographic drive suits a style of work which
draws large conclusions from the study of cases likely to be seen as
exceptional, or indeed deviant from the conventional integration-focused perspective. For sure, it is this too which may account for the
often excessively celebratory tone of transnational studies. Seeking a
new kind of liberation, some studies fall into the longstanding problem that has distorted much radical ethnic and racial studies: the
transfer of sympathy for the experiences, difficulties, and sometimes
plight of migrants and ethnic minorities, into visions of these groups
as some sort of heroic new proletariat. Although the search for a
new world and the slogan globalization from below is the rather
romantic packaging chosen in the work of Portes, Castells et al., this
should not deflect us from the key insights of their work. Its major advance has been the empirical uncovering of trans-state, transnation economic and cultural networks of transactions (and protean
forms of social organization) among new and developing migrant
groups. These networks are clearly generating sources of collective
social power outside of territorial state structures familiar from our
conventional understanding of the world of nations. Whereas Portes
principally recognizes the source of transnational power as the global
market, others might point to Islam or Hispanic culture, or indeed
informal (illegal) sources of these same powers (see Cohen, 1997;
Phizacklea, 1998).
The other crucial aspect of Portess work, however, is its insistence
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assimilation
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mal or informal terms) by the state. The somewhat anarchical multiculturalism of some European cities now points towards a new type
of multi-ethnic culture in Europe, rather different to the multicultural citizenship shaped by integrating nation-states. It is not egalitarian, it is not anchored in rights, and it is certainly not conflict free;
but it is, for better or for worse, much less disciplined by the nationbuilding pressures hidden in top-down policies of integration.
Interestingly, however, even this kind of multicultural challenge
to dominant European nation-state-centred cultures tends to still be
anchored in deterritorialized nationalities: the persistence of important political and social links with the homeland, as both a concrete
and symbolic reference. This fact which is certainly the case with
Turks and Moroccans in Europe indicates a limit to these forms
of transnationalism outside of their European context. Viewed from
here they are not really transnational at all, but rather examples of deterritorialized nation-state building, familiar perhaps from the older
diasporic histories of countries like Ireland, Italy or Greece. What
there is precious little evidence of across Europe is the kind of radical diasporic multicultural forms, beloved of British cultural studies writers: the black Atlantic diaspora or black Asian pan-ethnic
groups (see Gilroy, 1987; Brah, 1993; Hall, 1988). Such diasporas
would indeed constitute a more radical challenge to the present day
international system, still fixed upon relations between nation-states
in the western and developing world to the south and east. But their
absence betrays just how British these writers in fact are; reflecting
in their archetypal radical responses to frustrations encountered in
the ethnic categories of the liberal multicultural race relations framework the everyday activist struggles of British race politics.
As these overwhelmingly national sources for transnational ideas
suggest, we should be wary of seeing transnationalism as an end
to the integration paradigm. Rather, transnationalism in Europe has
to be seen as a growing empirical exception to the familiar nationcentred pattern of integration across the continent. This remains
the dominant focus for policy actors and migrant activists alike.
Transnationalism points towards the new sources of power accessed
by migrant groups when they begin to organize themselves and their
activities in ways not already organized for them by an integrating
nation-state. By setting these forms against the continuity of nationstate centred patterns of integration, we may be able to understand
how and why new spaces in the empire of the state are beginning
to develop. What transnationalists should not do is leap beyond this
into claims of an emerging international or global structure, in which
all these nation-state challenging phenomena add up to a new global
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nation-state-society
Notes
1 Published in The multicultural challenge, Comparative Social Research, 22,
2003, pp. 13-42, reprinted with permission from Elsevier Ltd.
2 A more extended discussion and survey can be found in Favell (2001).
Responding to this piece, Banton (2001) dismisses the use of integration
a treacherous mathematical metaphor in any sociological studies on the
subject. His vision is to purify sociological research on ethnic and race relations of these pervasive ordinary language concepts. Though a valid scientific
response to the dilemma of using such terms, it forecloses the possibility in
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our research of reflexively accounting for why such terms are so predominant in policy discussions and academic research alike. See also related discussions in Bommes (1998) and Wimmer and Glick Schiller (2002).
3 The number of quasi-academic policy studies on integration funded by such
organizations in recent years has been remarkable. The Council of Europes
Committee on Migration has produced a number of reports on gender and
religious issues, labour markets, and social and political participation, as well
as an outstanding conceptual framework for research by Baubck (1994).
The ILO has pursued work on integration in labour markets (Doomernik
1998), and the OSCE has been linking minority rights and integration.
Among NGOs in Brussels, there is the highly active Migration Policy Group,
who have produced major cross-national studies of policies and policy thinking on integration (MPG 1996; Vermeulen 1997). Finally, charitable transatlantic organizations have also joined the trend. The Carnegie Endowments
massively ambitious Comparative Citizenship Project identified political
and social integration as two key areas of concern (Aleinikoff and Klusmeyer,
2002), and the Canadian-led Metropolis project focused on migrants in cities has sponsored several major studies (i.e., Cross and Waldinger, 1997;
Vertovec, 1997). These various studies are some of the most ambitious comparative international projects to be found. Here, I mention but a sample.
4 For example, there was the creation by the left wing government of Italy in
1999 of a Commissione per lintegrazione under the leadership of political
sociologist Giovanna Zincone. This was explicitly intended to counter the increasingly salient use of negative anti-immigration rhetoric by Berlusconis
right wing coalition. In Denmark, again under pressure from the right, the
government passed an Act on the Integration of Aliens in Denmark in July
1998, followed by much public discussion and further reports on continuing integration problems. In Austria, the turn to integration (see Waldrauch
and Hofinger, 1997) has been formulated by the opposition as a response to
specifically exclusionary government attitudes.
5 In the report of the Commission on Multi-Ethnic Britain (2000), which
involved some of these more radical commentators alongside more mainstream figures, integration was the organizing concept that dared not speak
its name. However, the Commissions chair, Bhikhu Parekh, has frequently
written about the concept in his own work (Parekh, 2000).
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References
Alba, R. and Nee, V. (1997), Rethinking Assimilation Theory for
a New Era of Immigration, International Migration Review, 31
(Winter), pp. 826-74.
Aleinikoff, A. and Klusmeyer, D. (2002), Citizenship Policies for an
Age of Migration, Carnegie Endowment, Washington, DC.
Alibhai-Brown, Y. (2000), Who Do We Think We Are? Penguin,
London.
Alund, A. and Schierup, C-U. (1991), Paradoxes of Multiculturalism,
Avebury, Aldershot.
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Part III
Conceptual issues
marge tekst
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In 1969, the anthropologist Fredrik Barth published a collection of groundbreaking essays entitled Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization
of Cultural Difference. This collection criticised the orthodoxy of the time that
conceived of ethnic groups as tribes or people who are able to maintain their
individual cultural traits despite the ignorance of their neighbours. It is in
geographical and social isolation that one can find ethnic groups in their purity. Barth argued convincingly against the suggestion that splendid isolation
is the critical factor in sustaining cultural diversity. He took the innovative position that ethnic identity is basically a social identity that emerges in interaction with others. Ethnic groups are categories of ascription and identification
taken on by the actors themselves, having the capacity to organise interaction between people. To observe these processes the focus of investigation
should be shifted from separate groups internal constitutions and histories
to ethnic boundaries and boundary maintenance.
This collection of essays addresses itself in the problems of ethnic
groups and their persistence. This is a theme of great, but neglected,
importance to social anthropology. Practically all anthropological reasoning rests on the premise that cultural variation is discontinuous:
that there are aggregates of people who essentially share a common
culture, and interconnected differences that distinguish each such
discrete culture from all others. Since culture is nothing but a way
to describe human behaviour, it would follow that there are discrete
groups of people, i.e. ethnic units, to correspond to each culture. The
differences between cultures, and their historic boundaries and connections, have been given much attention; the constitution of ethnic groups, and the nature of the boundaries between them, have
not been correspondingly investigated. Social anthropologists have
largely avoided these problems by using a highly abstracted concept
of society to represent the encompassing social system within which
ethnic group
boundaries
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fredrik barth
smaller, concrete groups and units may be analysed. But this leaves
untouched the empirical characteristics and boundaries of ethnic
groups, and the important theoretical issues which an investigation
of them raises.
Though the nave assumption that each tribe and people has
maintained its culture through a bellicose ignorance of its neighbours is no longer entertained, the simplistic view that geographical
and social isolation have been the critical factors in sustaining cultural diversity persists. An empirical investigation of the character of
ethnic boundaries, as documented in the following essays, produces
two discoveries which are hardly unexpected, but which demonstrate
the inadequacy of this view. First, it is clear that boundaries persist
despite a flow of personnel across them. In other words, categorical
ethnic distinctions do not depend on an absence of mobility, contact and information, but do entail social processes of exclusion and
incorporation whereby discrete categories are maintained despite
changing participation and membership in the course of individual
life histories. Secondly, one finds that stable, persisting, and often
vitality important social relations are maintained across such boundaries, and are frequently based precisely on the dichotomized ethnic
statuses. In other words, ethnic distinctions do not depend on an
absence of social interaction and acceptance, but are quite to the contrary often the very foundations on which embracing social systems
are built. Interaction in such a social system does not lead to its liquidation through change and acculturation; cultural differences can
persist despite inter-ethnic contact and interdependence.
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General approach
There is clearly an important field here in need of rethinking. What
is required is a combined theoretical and empirical attack: we need to
investigate closely the empirical facts of a variety of cases, and fit our
concepts to these empirical facts so that they elucidate them as simply and adequately as possible, and allow us to explore their implications. In the following essays, each author takes up a case with which
he is intimately familiar from his own fieldwork, and tries to apply a
common set of concepts to its analysis. The main theoretical departure consists of several interconnected parts. First, we give primary
emphasis to the fact that ethnic groups are categories of ascription
and identification by the actors themselves, and thus have the characteristic of organizing interaction between people. We attempt to
relate other characteristics of ethnic groups to this primary feature.
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fredrik barth
implications
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fredrik barth
the effects of ecologic circumstances on behaviour with those of cultural tradition, but which makes it possible to separate these factors
and investigate the non-ecological cultural and social components
creating diversity.
ethnic ascription
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social boundaries
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persisting cultural
differences
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playing the same game, and this means that there is between them
a potential for diversification and expansion of their social relationship to cover eventually all different sectors and domains of activity.
On the other hand, a dichotomization of others as strangers, as members of another ethnic group, implies a recognition of limitations on
shared understandings, differences in criteria for judgement of value
and performance, and a restriction of interaction to sectors of assumed common understanding and mutual interest.
This makes it possible to understand one final form of boundary
maintenance whereby cultural units and boundaries persist. Entailed
in ethnic boundary maintenance are also situations of social contact
between persons of different cultures: ethnic groups only persist as
significant units if they imply marked difference in behaviour, i.e.
persisting cultural differences. Yet where persons of different culture
interact, one would expect these differences to be reduced, since interaction both requires and generates a congruence of codes and values in other words, a similarity or community of culture (cf. Barth
1966, for my argumentation on this point). Thus the persistence
of ethnic groups in contact implies not only criteria and signals for
identification, but also a structuring of interaction which allows the
persistence of cultural differences. The organizational feature which,
I would argue, must be general for all inter-ethnic relations is a systematic set of rules governing inter-ethnic social encounters. In an
organized social life, what can be made relevant to interaction in any
particular social situation is prescribed (Goffman 1959). If people
agree about these prescriptions, their agreement on codes and values
need not extend beyond that which is relevant to the social situations in which they interact. Stable inter-ethnic relations presuppose
such a structuring of interaction: a set of prescriptions governing
situations of contact, and allowing for articulation in some sectors
or domains of activity, and a set of proscriptions on social situations
preventing inter-ethnic interaction in other sectors, and thus insulating parts of the cultures from confrontation and modification.
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variety of
poly-ethnic systems
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basic requirements
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complementarity
Ecologic perspective
Such interdependences can partly be analysed from the point of view
of cultural ecology, and the sectors of activity where other populations with other cultures articulate may be thought of as niches to
which the group is adapted. This ecologic interdependence may take
several different forms, for which one may construct a rough typology. Where two or more ethnic groups are in contact, their adaptations may entail the following forms:
ecologic
interdependence
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mixed situations
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(1) They may occupy clearly distinct niches in the natural environment and be in minimal competition for resources. In this case
their interdependence will be limited despite co-residence in the
area, and the articulation will tend to be mainly through trade,
and perhaps in a ceremonial-ritual sector.
(2) They may monopolize separate territories, in which case they are
in competition for resources and their articulation will involve
politics along the border, and possibly other sectors.
(3) They may provide important goods and services for each other,
i.e. occupy reciprocal and therefore different niches but in close
interdependence. If they do not articulate very closely in the political sector, this entails a classical symbiotic situation and a variety of possible fields of articulation. If they also compete and
accommodate through differential monopolization of the means
of production, this entails a close political and economic articulation, with open possibilities for other forms of interdependence
as well.
These alternatives refer to stable situations. But very commonly, one
will also find a fourth main form: where two or more interspersed
groups are in fact in at least partial competition within the same
niche. With time one would expect one such group to displace the
other, or an accommodation involving an increasing complementarity and interdependence to develop.
From the anthropological literature one can doubtless think of
type cases for most of these situations. However, if one looks carefully at most empirical cases, one will find fairly mixed situations
obtaining, and only quite gross simplifications can reduce them to
simple types. I have tried elsewhere (Barth 1964b) to illustrate this
for an area of Baluchistan, and expect that it is generally true that an
ethnic group, on the different boundaries of its distribution and in
its different accommodations, exhibits several of these forms in its
relations to other groups.
Demographic perspective
These variables, however, only go part of the way in describing the
adaptation of a group. While showing the qualitative (and ideally
quantitative) structure of the niches occupied by a group, one cannot ignore the problems of number and balance in its adaptation.
Whenever a population is dependent on its exploitation of a niche
in nature, this implies an upper limit on the size it may attain corresponding to the carrying capacity of that niche; and any stable adapta-
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tion entails a control on population size. If, on the other hand, two
populations are ecologically interdependent, as two ethnic groups in
a symbiotic relationship, this means that any variation in the size of
one must have important effects on the other. In the analysis of any
poly-ethnic system for which we assert any degree of time depth, we
must therefore be able to explain the processes whereby the sizes
of the interdependent ethnic groups are balanced. The demographic
balances involved are thus quite complex, since a groups adaptation
to a niche in nature is affected by its absolute size, while a groups
adaptation to a niche constituted by another ethnic group is affected
by its relative size.
The demographic problems in an analysis of ethnic inter-relations
in a region thus centre on the forms of recruitment to ethnic groups
and the question of how, if at all, their rates are sensitive to pressures
on the different niches which each group exploits. These factors are
highly critical for the stability of any poly-ethnic system, and it might
look as if any population change would prove destructive. This does
not necessarily seem to follow, as documented e.g. in the essay by
Siverts (pp. 101 ff.), but in most situations the poly-ethnic systems we
observe do entail quite complex processes of population movement
and adjustment. It becomes clear that a number of factors other than
human fertility and mortality affect the balance of numbers. From
the point of view of any one territory, there are the factors of individual and group movements: emigration that relieves pressure, immigration that maintains one or several co-resident groups as outpost
settlements of larger population reservoirs elsewhere. Migration and
conquest play an intermittent role in redistributing populations and
changing their relations. But the most interesting and often critical
role is played by another set of processes that effect changes of the
identity of individuals and groups. After all, the human material that
is organized in an ethnic group is not immutable, and though the
social mechanisms discussed so far tend to maintain dichotomies
and boundaries, they do not imply stasis for the human material
they organize: boundaries may persist despite what may figuratively
be called the osmosis of personnel through them.
This perspective leads to an important clarification of the conditions for complex poly-ethnic systems. Though the emergence and
persistence of such systems would seem to depend on a relatively
high stability in the cultural features associated with ethnic groups
i.e. a high degree or rigidity in the interactional boundaries they
do not imply a similar rigidity in the patterns of recruitment or ascription to ethnic groups: on the contrary, the ethnic inter-relations
that we observe frequently entail a variety of processes which effect
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fredrik barth
changes in individual and group identity and modify the other demographic factors that obtain in the situation. Examples of stable and
persisting ethnic boundaries that are crossed by a flow of personnel
are clearly far more common than the ethnographic literature would
lead us to believe. Different processes of such crossing are exemplified in these essays, and the conditions which cause them are shown
to be various. We may look briefly at some of them.
The Yao described by Kandre (1967b) are one of the many hill peoples
on the southern fringe of the Chinese area. The Yao are organized for
productive purposes in extended family households, aligned in clans
and in villages. Household leadership is very clear, while community and region are autochthonously acephalous, and variously tied to
poly-ethnic political domains. Identity and distinctions are expressed
in complex ritual idioms, prominently involving ancestor worship.
Yet this group shows the drastic incorporation rate of 10% non-Yao
becoming Yao in each generation (Kandre 1967a: 594). Change of
membership takes place individually, mostly with children, where
it involves purchase of the person by a Yao houseleader, adoption to
kinship status, and full ritual assimilation. Occasionally, change of
ethnic membership is also achieved by men through uxorilocal marriage; Chinese men are the acceptable parties to such arrangements.
The conditions for this form of assimilation are clearly twofold:
first, the presence of cultural mechanisms to implement the incorporation, including ideas of obligations to ancestors, compensation by
payment, etc., and secondly, the incentive of obvious advantages to
the assimilating household and leader. These have to do with the role
of households as productive units and agro-managerial techniques
that imply an optimal size of 6-8 working persons, and the pattern of
intra-community competition between household leaders in the field
of wealth and influence.
Movements across the southern and northern boundaries of the
Pathan area (cf. pp. 123 ff.) illustrate quite other forms and conditions. Southern Pathans become Baluch and not vice versa; this
transformation can take place with individuals but more readily with
whole households or small groups of households: it involves loss of
position in the rigid genealogical and territorial segmentary system
of Pathans and incorporation through clientage contract into the hierarchical, centralized system of the Baluch. Acceptance in the receiving group is conditional on the ambition and opportunism of
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torical situations. In cases where it does not happen we see the organizing and canalizing effects of ethnic distinctions. To explore the
factors responsible for the difference, let us first look at the specific
explanations for the changes of identity that have been advanced in
the examples discussed above.
In the case of Pathan borderlands, influence and security in the
segmentary and anarchic societies of this region derive from a mans
previous actions, or rather from the respect that he obtains from these
acts as judged by accepted standards of evaluation. The main fora for
exhibiting Pathan virtues are the tribal council, and stages for the
display of hospitality. But the villager in Kohistan has a standard of
living where the hospitality he can provide can hardly compete with
that of the conquered serfs of neighbouring Pathans, while the client
of a Baluch leader cannot speak in any tribal council. To maintain
Pathan identity in these situations, to declare oneself in the running
as a competitor by Pathan value standards, is to condemn oneself
in advance to utter failure in performance. By assuming Kohistani
or Baluch identity, however, a man may, by the same performance,
score quite high on the scales that then become relevant. The incentives to a change in identity are thus inherent in the change in circumstances.
Different circumstances obviously favour different performances.
Since ethnic identity is associated with a culturally specific set of value standards, it follows that there are circumstances where such an
identity can be moderately successfully realized, and limits beyond
which such success is precluded. I will argue that ethnic identities
will not be retained beyond these limits, because allegiance to basic
value standards will not be sustained where ones own comparative
performance is utterly inadequate.3 The two components in this relative measure of success are, first, the performance of others and, secondly, the alternatives open to oneself. I am not making an appeal
to ecologic adaptation. Ecologic feasibility, and fitness in relation to
the natural environment, matter only in so far as they set a limit in
terms of sheer physical survival, which is very rarely approached by
ethnic groups. What matters is how well the others, with whom one
interacts and to whom one is compared, manage to perform, and
what alternative identities and sets of standards are available to the
individual.
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productive resources
The boundary-maintaining factors in the Fur are not immediately illuminated by this argument. Haaland (pp. 65 f.) discusses the evaluation of the nomads life by Fur standards and finds the balance between advantages and disadvantages inconclusive. To ascertain the
comparability of this case, we need to look more generally at all the
factors that affect the behaviour in question. The materials derive
from grossly different ethnographic contexts and so a number of factors are varied simultaneously.
The individuals relation to productive resources stands out as the
significant contrast between the two regions. In the Middle East, the
means of production are conventionally held as private or corporate,
defined and transferable property. A man can obtain them through a
specific and restricted transaction, such as purchase or lease; even in
conquest the rights that are obtained are standard, delimited rights.
In Darfur, on the other hand, as in much of the Sudanic belt, the prevailing conventions are different. Land for cultivation is allocated, as
needed, to members of a local community. The distinction between
owner and cultivator, so important in the social structure of most
Middle Eastern communities, cannot be made because ownership
does not involve separable, absolute, and transferable rights. Access
to the means of production in a Fur village is therefore conditional
only on inclusion in the village community i.e. on Fur ethnic identity. Similarly, grazing rights are not allocated and monopolized, even
as between Baggara tribes. Though groups and tribes tend to use the
same routes and areas every year, and may at times try in an ad hoc
way to keep out others from an area they wish to use, they normally
intermix and have no defined and absolute prerogatives. Access to
grazing is thus an automatic aspect of practising husbandry, and entails being a Baggara.
The gross mechanisms of boundary maintenance in Darfur are
thus quite simple: a man has access to the critical means of production by virtue of practising a certain subsistence; this entails a whole
style of life, and all these characteristics are subsumed under the ethnic labels Fur and Baggara. In the Middle East, on the other hand,
men can obtain control over means of production through a transaction that does not involve their other activities; ethnic identity is then
not necessarily affected and this opens the way for diversification.
Thus nomad, peasant, and city dweller can belong to the same ethnic group in the Middle East; where ethnic boundaries persist they
depend on more subtle and specific mechanisms, mainly connected
with the unfeasibility of certain status and role combinations.
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hierarchy
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distribution of assets
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many and some showing few characteristics. Particularly where people change their identity, this creates ambiguity since ethnic membership is at once a question of source of origin as well as of current identity. Indeed, Haaland was taken out to see Fur who live in
nomad camps, and I have heard members of Baluch tribal sections
explain that they are really Pathan. What is then left of the boundary maintenance and the categorical dichotomy, when the actual distinctions are blurred in this way? Rather than despair at the failure
of typological schematism, one can legitimately note that people do
employ ethnic labels and that there are in many parts of the world
most spectacular differences whereby forms of behaviour cluster so
that whole actors tend to fall into such categories in terms of their
objective: behaviour. What is surprising is not the existence of some
actors that fall between these categories, and of some regions in the
world where whole persons do not tend to sort themselves out in this
way, but the fact that variations tend to cluster at all. We can then be
concerned not to perfect a typology, but to discover the processes that
bring about such clustering.
An alternative mode of approach in anthropology has been to dichotomize the ethnographic material in terms of ideal versus actual
or conceptual versus empirical, and then concentrate on the consistencies (the structure) of the ideal, conceptual part of the data,
employing some vague notion of norms and individual deviance to
account for the actual, statistical patterns. It is of course perfectly feasible to distinguish between a peoples model of their social system
and their aggregate pattern of pragmatic behaviour, and indeed quite
necessary not to confuse the two. But the fertile problems in social
anthropology are concerned with how the two are interconnected,
and it does not follow that this is best elucidated by dichotomizing
and confronting them as total systems. In these essays we have tried
to build the analysis on a lower level of interconnection between
status and behaviour. I would argue that peoples categories are for
acting, and are significantly affected by interaction rather than contemplation. In showing the connection between ethnic labels and the
maintenance of cultural diversity, I am therefore concerned primarily to show how, under varying circumstances, certain constellations
of categorization and value orientation have a self-fulfilling character, how others will tend to be falsified by experience, while others
again are incapable of consummation in interaction. Ethnic boundaries can emerge and persist only in the former situation, whereas
they should dissolve or be absent in the latter situations. With such
a feedback from peoples experiences to the categories they employ,
simple ethnic dichotomies can be retained, and their stereotyped
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anthropology
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fredrik barth
minorities
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fredrik barth
new elites
This is a very widespread process under present conditions as dependence on the products and institutions of industrial societies spreads
in all parts of the world. The important thing to recognize is that a
drastic reduction of cultural differences between ethnic groups does
not correlate in any simple way with a reduction in the organizational
relevance of ethnic identities, or a breakdown in boundary-maintaining processes. This is demonstrated in much of the case material.
We can best analyse the interconnection by looking at the agents
of change: what strategies are open and attractive to them, and what
are the organizational implications of different choices on their part?
The agents in this case are the persons normally referred to somewhat ethno-centrically as the new elites: the persons in the less industrialized groups with greater contact and more dependence on
the goods and organizations of industrialized societies. In their pur-
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basic strategies
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political
confrontation
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colonial regimes
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political regimes
fredrik barth
allows physical proximity and opportunities for contact between persons of different ethnic groups regardless of the absence of shared
understandings between them, and thus clearly removes one of the
constraints that normally operate on inter-ethnic relations. In such
situations, interaction can develop and proliferate indeed, only
those forms of interaction that are directly inhibited by other factors
will be absent and remain as sectors of non-articulation. Thus ethnic
boundaries in such situations represent a positive organization of social relations around differentiated and complementary values, and
cultural differences will tend to be reduced with time and approach
the required minimum.
In most political regimes, however, where there is less security
and people live under a greater threat of arbitrariness and violence
outside their primary community, the insecurity itself acts as a constraint on inter-ethnic contacts. In this situation, many forms of
interaction between members of different ethnic groups may fail
to develop, even though a potential complementarity of interests
obtains. Forms of interaction may be blocked because of a lack of
trust or a lack of opportunities to consummate transactions. What is
more, there are also internal sanctions in such communities which
tend to enhance overt conformity within and cultural differences
between communities. If a person is dependent for his security on
the voluntary and spontaneous support of his own community, selfidentification as a member of this community needs to be explicitly
expessed and confirmed: and any behaviour which is deviant from
the standard may be interpreted as a weakening of the identity, and
thereby of the bases of security. In such situations, fortuitous historical differences in culture between different communities will tend
to perpetuate themselves without any positive organizational basis:
many of the observable cultural differentiae may thus be of very limited relevance to the ethnic organization.
The processes whereby ethnic units maintain themselves are thus
clearly affected, but not fundamentally changed, by the variable of
regional security. This can also be shown by an inspection of the
cases analysed in these essays, which represent a fair range from the
colonial to the poly-centric, up to relatively anarchic situations. It is
important, however, to recognize that this background variable may
change very rapidly with time, and in the projection of long-range
processes this is a serious difficulty. Thus in the Fur case, we observe
a situation of externally maintained peace and very small-scale local
political activity, and can form a picture of inter-ethnic processes and
even rates in this setting. But we know that over the last few generations, the situation has varied from one of Baggara-Fur confrontation
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changes in cultural
differentiae
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fredrik barth
possible to construct phyletic lines in the more rigorous evolutionary sense. But from the analysis that has been argued here, it should
be possible to do so for ethnic groups, and thus in a sense for those
aspects of culture which have this organizational anchoring.
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Notes
1 The emphatic ideological denial of the primacy of ethnic identity (and rank)
which characterises the universal religions that have arisen in the Middle
East is understandable in this perspective, since practically any movement
for social or ethical reform in the poly-ethnic societies of that region would
clash with conventions and standards of ethnic character.
2 The difference between ethnic groups and social strata, which seems problematical at this stage of the argument, will be taken up below.
3 I am here concerned only with individual failure to maintain identity, where
most members do so successfully, and not with the broader questions of
cultural vitality and anomie.
4 As opposed to presumptive classification in passing social encounters I am
thinking of the person in his normal social context where others have a considerable amount of previous information about him, not of the possibilities
afforded occasionally for mispresenting ones identity towards strangers.
5 The condemned behaviour which gives pariah position to the gypsies is compound, but rests prominently on their wandering life, originally in contrast
to the serf bondage of Europe, later in their flagrant violation of puritan ethics of responsibility, toil and morality.
6 To my knowledge, Mitchells essay on the Kalda dance (Mitchell 1956) is the
first and still the most penetrating study on this topic.
04-03-10 15:57
The contribution of John Rex to the sociology of ethnic and race relations in
Britain, as well as throughout the Continent, is immense. Nowadays, we often
hear how ethnic and migration studies in Europe presents a lacuna: its lack
of connection with the development of general social and political theories.
In this article, first published under UNESCOs auspices in 1980 in a book
entitled Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism, Rex clarifies the specificity of the Weberian approach to sociology. He does this with intelligence and
sophistication, also identifying its particular contribution to the sociology of
race relations. By doing so, Rex links the sociology of race relations to general
sociological theory in a very rigorous way. This article illustrates the necessity
of such theoretically oriented work for the further development of ethnic and
migration studies.
It would be foolish to suggest that any one school of sociology held
a monopoly of wisdom in the field of race relations theory. Equally
it would be misleading to suggest that any of the great founders of
sociological theory in the nineteenth and early twentieth century had
dealt directly with the problem of race relations. Nonetheless Max
Weber is at least one of the founders of the discipline of sociology;
there is what one might call a specifically Weberian style of sociological thinking; and there can be little doubt that the scope of Webers
comparative studies, in terms of both time and place, make it inevitable that his work should throw at least an indirect light on the
structure of the relationships between racial and ethnic groups.
The following distinctions between schools of sociological thinking might perhaps be briefly made in order to clarify the specificity
of the Weberian approach to sociology. They distinguish it from the
tradition of French Positivism running from Comte to Durkheim
and from that of Marxism, which, although it is far more than a sociology, is an approach to the study of nature, culture and society
Weber
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the structure
of social action
john rex
which has considerable implications for sociology. They also distinguish the approach of Weber from that of a number of contemporary schools of sociology, some of which represent out-growths of
the Weberian approach, which emphasize certain implicit aspects
of Webers thought. Thus one has in modern sociology Positivist
Empiricism as represented in American sociology by such authors
as Lazarsfeld and Blalock, the highly systematic general theory of
Talcott Parsons commonly called Structural-Functionalism, and
the various reactions to these schools which may loosely be called
phenomenological, including the seminal work of Schutz, the trend
known as Symbolic Interactionism deriving from the work of Mead,
and the growing trend of Ethnomethodology. And while these are
schools from which Weberian sociology has to be distinguished in
America there are also distinctions to be made within European social
thought. There, a variety of approaches to human affairs have arisen
from the Phenomenology of Husserl, through the intermingling of
phenomenological themes with those of existentialism, through the
critique of the Logical Positivism of the Vienna Circle which culminates in the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School and later in the
more complex theories of Habermas, through the new development
of Structuralism in the social sciences deriving from the work of LeviStrauss, through the development of Orthodox Marxism within the
Communist movement and through the differing critiques of this
orthodoxy represented by the work of Lukacs, Gramsci, Althusser
and related writers.
I cannot hope to list systematically the differences of concept,
style and method which distinguish the work of Weber from these
trends taken one by one. But I may point to certain salient features of
Weberianism which in part indicate its concern with a core of problems common to all sociological endeavour and in part indicate the
specific restrictions which this approach places on the sociological
enterprise.
The common core of all sociology is to be found in its concern
with social relations and, underlying this, with social action. Talcott
Parsons in fact emphasized this in entitling his greatest book The
structure of social action and underlined the point when he published
The social system by saying that he would again have used the earlier
title if it had not been pre-empted by the earlier work.1 What this definition of sociologys core concern excludes is any kind of reductionism which reduces social facts to epiphenomena consequential upon
biological or psychological causes as well as any kind of reification
of social facts which suggests that they are things or that they are
to be seen as consequent upon the working of social systems. Such
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modern capitalist
order
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race relations
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thinking about the nature of sociology and the vocation of the sociologist is deeply impregnated with the philosophy of Kant. What
this means is that he recognizes the value of social science, but also
sees its limitations. Social science does not yield ultimate truth. It involves looking at the world of social structure in a quasi-phenomenal
way as organized in terms of humanly-imposed categories of action
and social relations, and in using our knowledge of structure as a
guide to practical action. But our findings about such structures have
no ontological significance as they are frequently thought to have by
writers in the Hegelian and Marxist traditions. It is also possible for
men appreciating, as the result of their sociological investigations,
the intractability of the social world to evaluate that world, to make
their own judgements about it and, indeed, guided by freely-formed
value judgements, to select certain limited ranges of determinate social reality for investigation in order that they might be better controlled. It is his awareness both of the intractability of an increasingly
organized and bureaucratized world as well as his belief in the inescapable moral responsibility of men for their actions that produces in
Weber a stance of intellectual heroism quite unlike that to be found
in any other sociology. In particular, it is opposed to any post-Kantian tendency which asserts either the union of science and ethics
in ontology, or the irrelevance or impropriety of value judgements
about the findings of social science. Weber would not be at home,
therefore, either with those Hegelian Marxists who insist upon the
unity of the observed world and the observing subject, or with modern Positivist Empiricism which accords reality only to statements
capable of being verified or disproved.
All this may seem a far cry from the study of race relations. Yet
it is precisely Webers stands on these issues which makes his sociology so relevant to the problems of understanding race relations
today. For while Weber did make some empirical contribution to the
analysis of structures closely connected with race relations problems,
the most important point to notice about the relevance of his work to
the study of race relations is that he shows us that while it is possible
to follow through long chains of causality in our study of ethnic and
racial structures, it is also possible to evaluate those structures and
to suggest points at which the institutionalized actions which underly structures may most effectively be altered so as to bring about
a different social outcome. This is a point which was grasped lucidly
and simply by Gunnar Myrdal in his study of North American race
relations. Myrdal saw that, as a sociologist, he would be saying not
merely that such-and-such was the case, but that is was necessarily
the case, and that this kind of assertion imperiously posed the question Necessary from what (or whose) point of view?3
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Economy and
society
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closure of
relationships
Marx
john rex
simply that, while race or ethnicity taken by itself is a weak structuring bond within the economy, when there is need for a group to close
a social relationship and, thereby, also access to economic opportunities, race in the sense of difference of perceived physical appearance
is one, but only one, possible basis for the exclusion of individuals
from the closed relationship.
The closure of relationships is the crucial factor for Weber.
Human beings normally close relationships in order to ensure economic opportunities for an in-group at the expense of an out-group.
Closure of relationships in this way is the most fundamental category of economic sociology and is prior to appropriation, which is the
basis of property rights. Thus it is clear that race relations or ethnic
group relations may have a crucial function for economic life and
the making available of a group for exploitation. But race and ethnicity need not necessarily be salient in this way, the only functional
necessity of the economic system being the division of a society into
closed property-owning groups and those who do not have access to
the same opportunities as the property-owners for the acquisition
of utilities. Here, Weber is obviously very close to Marx, and clearly
transcends the simple nationalism which might be read into his writings on East Germany.
A good illustration of Webers economic or, in a loose sense,
Marxist interpretation of ethnic difference and segregation is to be
found in his remarks on intermarriage between black and white in
the United States. Thus he tells us:
Serious research on the sexual attraction and repulsion between different ethnic groups is only incipient, but there is not the slightest
doubt that racial factors, that means common descent, influence the
incidence of sexual relations and of marriage, sometimes decisively.
However the existence of several million mulattoes in the United
States speaks clearly against the assumption of a natural antipathy, even among quite different races. Apart from the laws against
biracial marriage in the Southern States, sexual relations are now
abhorred by both sides, but this development began only with emancipation and resulted from the Negroes demand for equal civil right.
Hence this abhorrence on the part of Whites is socially determined
by the previously sketched tendency toward the monopolization of
social power and honour, a tendency which happens in this case to
be linked to race.6
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These passages make it clear that Weber shares with liberals on the
race question, as he does with Marxists, the belief that racial or ethnic
exclusiveness is not effective as an intractable force in itself in creating racial separation and conflict. And with Marxists he would be
predisposed to look for its origin in the attempt to close off economic
opportunities by one group as against another.
It by no means follows from this that even the most intense forms
of closure and exploitation of the excluded, as in the case of slavery,
necessarily and always lead to racial exclusiveness and conflict. This
is clear from Webers extended discussion of slavery in the ancient
world8 which he sees as an important and distinctive institution so
far as the working of the economy is concerned but not, as in the
North American case, leading to the closure of relationships on racial
grounds.
The question of slavery is so closely related to that of race relations in contemporary sociology, however, that it is necessary to see
what Weber has to say about this institution and its relationship to
the mode of production. The most important question here is that
of the relationship between slavery and capitalism. Marx, it will be
remembered, had characterized the ancient mode of production as
being based upon slavery, just as the feudal mode was based upon
serfdom, and the capitalist mode upon free wage-labour. What then
was Webers attitude to the question of the existence of capitalism in
the ancient world, to the compatibility of slavery with such capitalism
as existed and the relationship between both slavery and capitalism
and the closure of social relationships?
The basis of Webers position on capitalism in the ancient world
is that it existed as a possible mode of want provision but that it was
not the typical mode. Capitalism did exist, but there was no capitalist
system.
Perhaps the most crucial distinction of all in Webers systematic
sociology is the distinction between oikos and capitalist enterprise.
slavery
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The term oikos is taken over by Weber from Rodbertus and Karl
Bucher. It refers for Weber to an ideal type of provisioning and of
production within a closed group where all production, or nearly all
of it, is for consumption within the group and in which the provision
of needs is normally arranged within the group. The enterprise on
the other hand is directed towards some kind of commercial transaction and involves the counting of funds before and after a project
with a view to profit.
In the ancient world capitalism as a system resting upon capitalist enterprises never finally gained the upper hand over the oikos
economy. As Weber says in his Agrarverhltnisse im Altertum such a
system excludes:
All manorial charges levied in rural areas on subject groups like the
various tributes rents, dues and services extracted from peasants
in the early Middle Ages... neither the land owned nor the people
subjected can be regarded as capital; title to both depended not on
purchase in the open market but on traditional ties.
adventurer
capitalism
In one way or another all of these forms of capitalist investment involve high risk and the possible use of force. They are non-peaceful
forms which Weber sometimes describes as adventurer capitalism
or booty capitalism. They never involve the systematic and continuous use of labour in a rationally-planned enterprise with a view to
making profit through market opportunities.11
Thus there is an important difference between the typology of
modes of production suggested by Weber and that suggested by Marx.
For Marx the economy of the ancient world rests upon slavery and
hence represents a non-capitalist mode of production. For Weber, on
the other hand, it is possible to suggest that there are certain areas of
activity which take a capitalist form, and that this form of capitalism
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capitalism and
slavery linked
L.M. Hartmann observed that in antiquity slavery was necessary because of the burden of army service which was borne by citizens.
That is in part correct... However it is also true that such a generalization cannot explain that which is characteristic of Roman society, the
development of large plantations worked by slaves, nor indeed can
one deduce from it the necessity of slavery. The situation demanded
that yeoman citizens be able to leave their lands to serve the State in
politics and war and this need could have been met by other forms of
unfree labour: serfdom, share-cropping, helotry and so on.12
And argues that the actual emergence of slave plantations was the
consequence of a particular social and class situation which emerged
after the defeat of the Gracchi. As to the inefficiency of slavery Weber
tells us that:
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when low sales cause suspension of production not only does capital
invested in slaves bring no interest as is true of capital invested in
machines but also slaves literally eat up additional amounts. The
result is to slow down capital turnover and capital formation.13
free labour
For Weber, therefore, even though the slave plantation was a characteristic form of ancient capitalist enterprise, it was not compatible
with the logic of the more advanced and systematic form of capitalism which emerged in Europe. Precisely in so far as the modern capitalist mode of production gained the ascendancy, slavery was likely to
be superseded by free labour.
So far as plantations are concerned, Weber did in his last lectures
see them as essentially a capitalist phenomenon.15 The characteristic agricultural unit in most societies is the manor in which serfs
hold their land subject to their paying dues to a lord. When such
a unit begins to respond to market forces and production switches
primarily to the market, the manor is likely to undergo two forms of
development. Either the land is divided up between individual farmers who keep stock or raise crops for sale while the landlord farms
rent (this is what Weber calls an estate system), or the workforce is
deprived of all freedom and put to work in labour-intensive forms of
horticultural production. Mining, which may originally be organized
to provide precious metals for the lords treasury, or to be yielded
up to the lords monopoly of external trade, may undergo a parallel
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Calvinist teaching
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the Americas
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social institution
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different plantation
systems
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efficiency
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shorter-term
contract labour
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It is clear from these examples that one cannot discuss the colonial societies established by the European powers in terms of a slave
and a post-slave period. And one is compelled to ask, as Weber did,
whether the most significant aspect of the problem is the existence of
slavery, since slavery is one means of achieving ends which may also
be achieved through a variety of alternative forms of unfree labour.
Nevertheless, there is a problem of very great importance to the history of race relations which arises from slave emancipation.
It should be noticed that, thus far, I have not discussed racism as
an element in economic situations. Weber himself finds it possible
to discuss similar problems in the ancient world by referring only to
the distinction between closed and open social relationships. Thus,
a group which monopolizes any type of economic opportunity by excluding outsiders tends to find some rationalization and justification
of its actions by drawing attention to certain observable characteristics of the excluded group. But since Weber is so much concerned
with the central problem for him of the rationalization of capitalist
individualism in Calvinism, he has little to say about the kind of ideologies which might justify the exploitation of one group by another.
The striking thing indeed about his account of Roman plantation
slavery is that he does not see the system as justified in terms of any
elaborate ideology about racial or any other group difference.
Was it then the case that slavery and other harsh forms of political
oppression and economic exploitation existed in the Roman Empire
without the phenomenon of racism making an appearance, but that
slavery in the modern period was associated from the first with racism? This is by no means an easy question to answer and the lines of
the debate are often very confused indeed. Much depends upon what
is meant by racism.
It should be clear that nearly every group in modern times which
was engaged in colonial conquest and exploitation found justification
for its practice in abusive accounts of the exploited group. Charles
Boxer, for example, has demonstrated24 that, however much the
Portuguese might be Latin and Catholic, their settlers are on record,
in Church as well as secular contexts, as abusing the native people of
the Portuguese Empire. From such evidence many liberal scholars
over-react by saying that one colonialist is much the same as another
and that, whatever their culture and religion, they are all in the end
not merely exploiters and oppressors but racists. Against this, one has
to set the long record of influential clerics, particularly in the Spanish
territories, arguing against the exploitation through enslavement of
the native peoples of America.
There can be little doubt that in the period of slavery and other
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racism
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relation to property
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basis of inequality provided by slavery, as well as by legal estate systems, breaks down. In this situation everyone is theoretically equal,
but a new status structure emerges in which race or colour is a crucial indicator of a mans position. Even if it is at odds with the actual
social relations of production prevailing in the new social order such
a system will have some influence. But frequently, the status system
and the economic order move into line when the society as a whole
is deeply dependent upon production for the market, because highstatus, lightly-coloured people tend to close off economic opportunities to those lower down the scale and because money, education,
and economic position are all said to whiten the individual who
possesses them. Moreover, since post-emancipation society is often
economically stagnant, the status order may be the main structuring
fact in the social order. In Barbados shortly before independence, for
example, over-all stagnation and poverty were coupled, particularly
among whiter, higher-status people, with a continuous preoccupation with matters of coulour and status.
Weber would certainly have had much to say about the structure
of colonial societies had he turned his attention to them because,
although he shared with Marx an interest in social class (which he
saw as a matter of groups with common or differentiated interests
in a market situation), he supplemented this with a theory of status groups, differentiated in terms of styles of life and a consequent
differential apportionment of honour.25 He also envisaged the possibility that a status group distinguished by its specific life-style
might come to exercise hegemony over the society as a whole. Thus
the Mandarins had imposed their way of life on ancient China, the
Brahmins on India and the bourgeoisie (considered here as a status
group rather than a class) on Western European society. He would
therefore have had no difficulty in understanding a situation in which
an ethnic group achieved hegemony. He might only have added to
this a Marxian type of scepticism, suggesting that the claim made in
terms of style of life was, in part at least, a cover for the closure of
economic opportunities.
Weber might, it is true, have had more difficulty in understanding
a social order in which there was not so much status domination by
a particular group as a status grading of individuals. Oliver Cromwell
Cox makes a useful contribution here in distinguishing what using
the term in a peculiar sense he calls social class as distinct from
caste, estate and political class.26 For Cox, this social class is a conceptual system in terms of which individuals rate themselves against
others rather than a closed form of social grouping.
So far, however, the focus in dealing with colonial societies in
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pluralism
john rex
which race relations problems emerge has been a narrow one. I have
dealt basically with the relationship between exploiting owners, coming to the colony from the metropolis, and the exploited workers or
peasants, who are either colonial natives or imported slaves, together
with those who have some relationship of descent with either of these
two groups. This much can be comprehended in terms of a fairly
simple model of an economic order, coupled with a status system
which, in essence, has two poles. One of these is represented by the
group of owners coming from the metropolis. The other is that of the
major group of workers, slaves or peasants of colonial or imported
origin. But few societies are as simple as this, because pluralism can
be found among the exploited as well as among the colonialists, and
there are other groups who have no ethnic and economic affiliation
with either colonizers or colonized.
First, one should notice the pluralism which comes from the division between workers in plantations, mines and factories on the
one hand, and peasants on the other. Some societies are dominantly
plantation societies and some are predominantly peasant societies,
but in the former there are likely to be a minority of peasants, and in
the latter a minority of workers in plantations, mines and factories.
Very often the minority and the majority will be ethnically distinct. In
a society which offers little scope for independent subsistence farming, peasants will either be forced into being migrant labourers in
plantations or towns, or they will be pushed to the margins of the
society to carry on their segregated way of life in conditions which are
ultimately insupportable. On the other hand, in societies in which
there is a predominantly peasant population, urban industrial work
and mining, as well as work on occasional plantations, may be carried on by specially imported workers or by ethnic minorities. In
both of these cases we have ethnic and occupational differentiation
combined with differences in status.
The second extremely important alternative is that in which slaves
of one race or ethnicity are replaced by indentured workers from another. In this case, cultural pluralism amongst the working people of
the colony coexists with an ambiguity as to the relative status of the
two groups. Guyana, for example, is what some think to be the classic
case of a plural society, in which there are both Indians descended
from indentured workers, and the descendants of African slaves. It
is true, of course, that because of their differing history, these groups
have their own distinct sets of domestic institutions and that they do
not therefore amalgamate culturally, and it is also true that it is hard
to place the two groups in terms of status in a horizontal sense, since
one enjoys the advantage of having been recruited on theoretically
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less arduous terms, but the other group has now very largely left the
plantation for the town and is culturally closer to the ruling group.
This is an important type of intergroup situation in many colonial
territories, and it is sometimes complicated by the fact that one of the
two colonial groups is in a permanent majority (this is not the case in
Guyana).
M.G. Smith has used the model of this particular intergroup relationship as a general model for colonial societies in the Caribbean
and in Africa.27 He argues that it is usually better to conceive colonial
societies as plural rather than as horizontally stratified, that the different plural segments have no institution in common save the political one, and that the society as a whole is held together by the control of the political institution by one segment. This theory is by no
means accepted here, since we have made it clear that there are both
status orders and economic systems which bind groups and individuals
in colonial societies together, and that what we are dealing with here is
pluralism amongst the exploited workers and their descendants only.
Nevertheless there are circumstances in which such groups contend
for political power, when the political domination of the colonialists
is withdrawn, and the struggle may not merely be two-sided, as in
Guyana. It may have three sides, as in Malaya, or conceivably even
more. In these circumstances, it may well be that a struggle for power becomes the central structuring theme in the post-colonial world.
But it would be misleading, even in these cases where such an ethnic
political struggle is evident, and still more so in others where it is not,
to underestimate the binding force of economic institutions which
are by no means necessarily displaced with the coming of political
independence. What Smith seems to have done, at least in his earlier
writing, is to over-emphasize the importance of one structuring feature of one kind of society and suggest that it is the basis for a general
theory.
Divisions among the exploited workers, such as those we have
been discussing, are by no means the only other structuring features
of ethnically-plural colonial societies, for such societies quite commonly also include a number of other elements. The most important
of these are the pariah traders and the settlers, though we should also
give some consideration to two other groups from the metropolis,
namely, the missionaries and the governmental administrators who
remain, to some extent, culturally and socially as well as functionally
separate from other colonialists. Such distinctions would fit naturally
into a Weberian sociology of the colonies, since Weber recognized
that functional differentiation, not necessarily of a simple economic
kind, did in fact generate what he loosely called class struggles in the
Roman Republic and the Roman Empire.
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cultural unity
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monopolization
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composite entities
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metropolitan
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Marxism
john rex
he turned his attention to the theory of capitalist crisis, Marx did not
adequately return to the problem of the structuration of classes. It is
certainly true of neo-Marxist sociology of development that it fails to
deal adequately with this theory. If any consideration is given to the
question of the social formations which will lead to the overthrow of
capitalism, the assumption appears to be that the process of capitalist exploitation in the Third World will go on until the world system
of capitalism is ended by the action of the urban industrial working
class in the most advanced countries.
Now, there are some respects in which Weberian sociology is
lacking when it comes to the study of the economics of imperialism. Weber writes as an economic historian and sociologist rather
than as a political economist, with the result that his ideas on the
accumulation of capital, the search for raw materials, the process of
capital export, and so on, can only be gleaned from remarks which
he makes en passant about particular historical episodes. In these he
seems to adopt a quite cynical practical Marxism, taking as the main
assumption that men seek profit and booty where they can. On the
other hand, what is striking about Webers work on the ancient world
is that he describes these processes of conquest and capitalism as being far more inhuman than those which occur in circumstances of
advanced capitalism. The key to his thinking here lies in the notions
of non-peaceful adventurer and booty capitalism.
On the level of the study of social structure rather than that of
political economy, these ideas are of some importance. The economic
institutions which arose in the course of European imperialism involved not simply logical and necessary developments arising out of
the capitalist system but a regression to the economic forms of booty capitalism which Weber had studied in the Roman Empire. The
Marxian tendency to see these institutions as mercantilist, feudal, or
in some other way at odds with capitalism, misses the point here. The
crude processes of conquest and exploitation in Latin America, Africa
and Asia are capitalist processes, but they belong as structures under the heading of booty capitalism. Characteristically, the major economic institution for colonial development is the chartered company
which permits it to gather the revenue within a territory, to govern it,
and to pursue monopolistic trading activities within it. This involves
a licence to use force against the population, and to find labour for
economic enterprises, not through the labour market, but by some
non-peaceful means. This is a high-risk capitalism, as Weber pointed
out, but it is also a capitalism which is capable of unrestrained exploitation. Thus Elkins is essentially right when he speaks of NorthAmerican slave plantations as working according to the dynamics of
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racist movements
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Notes
1 Parsons, T. The social system, London, Tavistock, 1952, p. ix.
2 See e.g.: Levi-Strauss, C. The scope of anthropology. London, Jonathan Cape,
1967.
3 Myrdal, G. Value in social theory. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958.
Chapter VII.
4 See: Bendix, R. Max Weber: an intellectual portrait. London, Heinemann,
1962; Weber, M. Economy and society. Vol. I. New York, Bedminster Press,
1968 (Introduction by G. Roth); Gerth, H.; Mills, C.W. From Max Weber.
London, Oxford University Press, 1946. p. 363-95.
5 Weber, M. op. cit. p. 339-97.
6 Ibid. p. 375-86.
7 Ibid., p. 341-2.
8 See especially: Weber, M. The agrarian sociology of ancient civilizations.
London, New Left Book, 1976. p. 53-60.
9 Ibid., p. 49.
10 Ibid., p. 51.
11 Weber, M. Economy and society. op. cit. p. 164-5. See also: Weber, M. General
economic history. New York, Collier Books, Macmillan.
12 Weber, M. The agrarian sociology... op. cit. p. 319.
13 Ibid., p. 53.
14 Ibid., p. 54.
15 Weber, M. General economic history. op. cit.
16 A good introduction to this debate with a select bibliography is to be found
in: Foner, Laura; Genovese, E.D. Slavery in the New World. Englewood
Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1969.
17 Genovese, E.D. The world the slaveholders made. London, Allen Lane, 1969
(especially Chapters 1-2). Surprisingly Genovese sees Webers particular
contribution as lying in his study of ideological factors, ignoring the direct
contribution which he made to the analysis of the institution of plantation
slavery.
18 Fogel, R.W.; Engermann, S.L. Time on the Cross. Boston, Little, 1974. (2
vols.).
19 Pares, R. A West Indian fortune. London, Longmans, 1950.
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04-03-10 15:57
Contextualizing feminism:
gender, ethnic and class divisions
Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis
Introduction
Sisterhood is powerful. Sisterhood can also be misleading unless
contextualized. Black, minority and migrant women have been on
the whole invisible within the feminist movement in Britain and
within the literature on womens or feminist studies.
This paper attempts to explore the issue of the interrelationship
of ethnic and gender divisions.1 Not only is such an attempt long
overdue theoretically but it also raises political issues which must be
central to feminist struggle.
Our analysis serves to problematize the notion of sisterhood and
the implicit feminist assumption that there exists a commonality of
interests and/or goals amongst all women. Rather we argue that ev-
Sisterhood
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the black
feminist movement
ery feminist struggle has a specific ethnic (as well as class) context.
Although the notion of the ethnic will be considered later in the
paper we note here that for us it primarily relates to the exclusionary/
inclusionary boundaries of collectivities formed round the notion of
a common origin.2 The ethnic context of feminist struggles has
been systematically ignored (except in relation to various minorities,
especially black) and we suggest this has helped to perpetuate both
political and theoretical inadequacies within feminist and socialist
analyses.
The black feminist movement has grown partly as a response to
the invisibility of black women and to the racism of the white feminist
movement. Recently several books have appeared, mostly American
which discuss black women and feminism. Bell Hooks puts her case
against white feminism clearly when she states:
In much of the literature written by white women on the woman
question from the nineteenth century to the present day, authors
will refer to white men but use the word woman when they really
mean white woman. Concurrently, the term blacks is often made
synonymous with black men (1981: 140).
In addition she points out that there has been a constant comparison
of the plight of women and blacks working with these racist/sexist
assumptions and which has diverted attention from the specificity
of the oppression of black women. We share this critique of white
feminism which is found within the black feminist movement in
Britain also. However we want to broaden out the frame of reference
of the existing debate. Within black feminism the most dominant approach defines black women as suffering from the triple oppression
of race, gender and class. This approach is inadequate, however, both
theoretically and politically. Race, gender and class cannot be tagged
on to each other mechanically for, as concrete social relations, they
are enmeshed in each other and the particular intersections involved
produce specific effects. The need for the study of the intersection
of these divisions has been recognized recently by black feminists.3
We also suggest, however, that the issue of the interrelationship
of the different social divisions cannot focus only on black versus
white womens position. This has the theoretical effect of singling
out racism as applicable only to black women and focusses then on
the colour rather than on the structural location of ethnic groups as
determinants of their social relations. In addition an exclusive focus
on racism fails to address the diversity of ethnic experiences which
derive from other factors like economic or political position. The no-
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ethnic divisions
Marxism
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class
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fails to note the differentiation within the ethnic or migrant category, both in terms of ethnicity and gender and in terms of economic,
political and ideological location. In addition this reduction to class
can only present gender and ethnic identities as some form of falseconsciousness as illusionary. For example some attempts to theorize ethnicity have seen it as a form of incipient class consciousness
whose essential project develops into that of class.6 (Interestingly
the notion of women as a class is mostly systematically presented by
Delphy (1977) from a radical-feminist position.)
The marxist theorization of the state, ranging from the classical
marxisttradition of Engels, Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg to more recent developments (instrumental, coordinator functional and state
derivation approaches) presents a different problem for the analysis
of ethnic divisions.7
Marxist theories of the state have tended to identify the boundaries of the national collectivity with that of the relations of production.
This is found in Marxs own assumption concerning the overlapping
of the boundary between civil and political society. In Marxs words
In the state the whole civil society of an epoch is epitomized. For
Marxists, on the whole, the rise of the nation-state is actively bounded by the relations of production and conditions of class conflict. For
example the classical analysis of Engels of the emergence of the state
depicts it as a result of societys entanglement in insoluble class antagonisms (Engels, 1972). Thus marxist analyses have been sensitive
to differential access to power of different classes but not to other
forms of differential access based on gender or ethnic, national or
racial divisions.8 These assumptions are not seriously challenged by
the various recent marxist theorizations of the state.
Our view is that it is not sufficient to assert as Schermerhorn
(1970) does that each nation-state in the modern world contains subsections or sub-systems. It is also the case that in almost all social
formations there are sections of the population that are to varying degrees excluded from political participation and representation. This
exclusion operates at least partially in a different manner from the
exclusion of classes of the dominant national or ethnic group. For
example, the new Nationality Bill in Britain presents exclusion not
on the basis of class (as does legislation concerning private property
for example) but on the basis of ethnicity and gender.
A further problem within some marxist literature is the suggestion that internal ethnic divisions are ideological in the sense of false
or non-real. The attempt to theorize a distinction between historical
(i.e. real) and non-historical (i.e. non-real) nations assumed that if an
ethnic minority was able to obtain a separate and independent state,
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exclusion
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three divisions
then it was based on a real and historical origin and other minorities
were non-historical and only ideological.9
All three divisions have an organizational, experiential and representational form, are historically produced and therefore changeable,
are affected by and affect each other and the economic, political and
ideological relations in which they are inserted. Relations of power
are usually found within each division and thus often the existence of
dominant and subordinate partners. They are all therefore framed in
relation to each other within relations of domination. They may thus
involve political mobilization, exclusion from particular resources
and struggles over them, claims to political representation and the
formation of concrete interests and goals which may shift over time.
It is not a question therefore of one being more real than the others
or a question of which is the most important. However it is clear that
the three divisions prioritize different spheres of social relations and
will have different effects which it may be possible to specify in concrete analysis. However we suggest that each division exists within
the context of the others and that any concrete analysis has to take
this into account.
Firstly, we shall briefly comment on these divisions, clarifying the
sense in which we use them and noting some of the main differences
amongst them. Secondly, we shall begin to situate them in relation
to each other in the spheres of employment and reproduction, two
central areas of feminist analyses. We shall particularly note the links
between gender and ethnic divisions since this has rarely been considered.
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gender divisions
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ethnicity
collectivities or communities. This will involve exclusionary/inclusionary boundaries which form the collectivity. In other words although the constructs are ideological, they involve real material practices and therefore origins and effects. Whether the boundaries are
those of a tribe, a nation or a linguistic or cultural minority, they will
tend to focus themselves around the myth of common origin (whether biological, cultural or historical). Although sometimes there will
be other means of joining the collectivity than being born into it (like
religious conversion or naturalization), group membership is considered as the natural right of being born into it. The salience of the
collectivity and the social relations involved can vary greatly.
Ethnicity is not only a question of ethnic identity. This latter does
not exhaust the category of the ethnic nor does it necessarily occur. Ethnicity may be constructed outside the group by the material
conditions of the group and its social representation by other groups.
However in practice ethnic identity and often solidarity may occur
either as a pre-requisite for the group or as an effect of its material, political or ideological placement. In addition ethnicity involves
struggle, negotiation and the use of ethnic resources for the countering of disadvantages or perpetuation of advantages. Conditions of
reproduction of the ethnic group as well as its transformation are
related to the divisions of gender and class. For example, class homogeneity within the ethnic group will produce a greater cohesion of
interests and goals.
The concept of ethnicity has too often been identified in Britain
with the Ethnic School tradition which tends to concentrate on issues
of culture or identity and has come under a great deal of justified attack for ignoring racism and the structural disadvantages of minority
ethnic groups.11 However our use of the term ethnicity has as a central
element exclusion/inclusion practices and the relations of power of
dominance/subordination that are aspects of these. Majority groups
possess an ethnicity as well as minority groups. Ethnicity and racism
share both the categories of exclusion and power but racism is a specific form of exclusion. Racist discourse posits an essential biological determination to culture but its referent may be any group that
has been socially constructed as having a different origin, whether
cultural, biological or historical. It can be Jewish, black, foreign,
migrant, minority. In other words any group that has been located
in ethnic terms can be subjected to racism as a form of exclusion.
The Racist category is more deterministic than the mere ethnic
category.
Concerning the difference between ethnic and national groups, it
is often a question of the different goals and achievements of the col-
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lectivity. The nationalist project is more strictly political for its claims
will necessarily include rights to separate political representation
or to territory (as in the case of Palestinians and Jews in Israel and
Turkish-Cypriots and Greek-Cypriots in Cyprus).
We consider that gender and ethnic divisions particularly are underpinned by a notion of a natural relation. In gender divisions it is
found in the positing of necessary social effects to sexual difference
and biological reproduction and in ethnic divisions by assumptions
concerning the natural boundaries of collectivities or the naturalness of culture. In capitalist societies like Britain very often the natural ideological elements of gender and ethnic divisions are used to
naturalize unequal class divisions. Gender and ethnic divisions are
used as legitimizors in two major ways.
In patriarchal white societies it is perceived as natural that men
will occupy a higher economic position in the labour market than
women and white people than black people. For example notions
of womens sexual difference (more submissive, feminine, intuitive, expressive, dextrous) and their essential mothering role are
used and are often manipulated for economically justifying (explaining) womens position (at times by women themselves). Racism and
ethnicity also have a role in justifying the economic/class subordination of black people. For example arguments about the cultural
choices of ethnic groups and racial stereotypes about Asian men
(money-seeking) and Afro-Caribbean men (work idle) are used to
account for their economic position. The second way in which the
natural elements of gender and ethnic divisions are used is as rallying points for political struggle against class inequality as well as
gender and ethnic inequalities. This is the case in most anti-imperialist struggles where notions of national identity are used. The black
power movement has often used racial/ethnic identification partly
as a counter to existing racial stereotypes and oppressions (for example in black nationalism the identification with Africa and in black
power the black is beautiful rhetoric and more recently, culturalist
and religious revivals such as Rastafarianism). As regards gender,
feminists have used womens nature as a rallying point, particularly
with reference to the positive values of womens culture and nature.
However, using ethnic and gender categories in this way as rallying
points for political mobilization in class-related struggles can present
a problem for class unity.
As well as ethnic and gender divisions being used for class goals,
class divisions can provide the material conditions for ethnic and
gender groups, for these will give unequal access to economic resources. State practices may exclude class, ethnic and gender group-
a natural relation
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way in which the boundary of ethnicity depends on gender. The definition of membership within the ethnic group often depends on performing gender attributes correctly. Both identity and institutional
arrangements of ethnic groups incorporate gender roles and specify
appropriate relations between sexes such as, for example, who can
marry them. A Greek-Cypriot girl of the second generation is regarded as Kypraia usually when she conforms to rules about sexually appropriate behaviour otherwise she becomes excluded. The
definition of boundaries is far from being an internal practice alone.
If we consider racial stereotypes we can see the centrality of gender
roles; for example stereotypes about the dominant Asian father and
the dominant black mother, or stereotypes about black men and
women as sexual studs. These all indicate the reliance on gender
attributes for specifying ethnic difference. We want to briefly suggest
some more specific links between ethnic and gender divisions in employment and reproduction.
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Employment
The internal gender divisions of an ethnic group will also affect the
participation of men and women of the group in the labour market. Men and women of a specific ethnic group will tend to hold
particular but different positions in the labour market; for example
Afro-Caribbean men in the construction industry and on the buses,
Afro-Caribbean women as service workers in manufacturing and as
nurses, Asian men in textile firms and Asian women as outworkers in small-scale dress-making factories. A sexually differentiated
labour market will structure the placement of subjects according to
sex but ethnic divisions will determine their subordination within
them so, for example, black and white women may both be subordinate within a sexually differentiated labour market but black women
will be subordinated to white women within this.
We would suggest that within western societies, gender divisions
are more important for women than ethnic divisions in terms of labour market subordination. In employment terms, migrant or ethnic
women are usually closer to the female population as a whole than to
ethnic men in the type of wage-labour performed. Black and migrant
women are already so disadvantaged by their gender in employment
that it is difficult to show the effects of ethnic discrimination for
them. When examining the position of ethnic minority men in the
labour market, the effect of their ethnic position is much more visible. This may lead to a situation where for example Afro-Caribbean
a sexually and
ethnically
differentiated
labour market
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or Asian women have at times had greater ease in finding employment as cheap labour in womens work, whether it be nursing,
assembly-line or clerical work than the men.
But the interrelationship between ethnic and gender divisions in
employment goes beyond the mere differentiation in employment
of ethnic subjects according to their gender. This additional dimension however is even less stressed in the literature on ethnic and
race relations. The economic and social advancement of a migrant
group may depend partly on the possibility of using the household
and in particular the women within it as a labour resource. The extent to which migrant ethnic men have become incorporated into
wider social production and the form this takes may also depend on
the use of migrant womens labour overall. Men from different migrant/ethnic groups have been incorporated differently economically. Afro-Caribbean men for example are in the vanguard of British
industry in large-scale production (Hall et al, 1978:349). Asian and
Cypriot men on the other hand have had a greater tendency to go
into small-scale entrepreneurial concerns and into the service sector
of the economy. In particular, entrepreneurial concerns both within
the formal and hidden economy depend on the exploitation of female
wage-labour and in particular on kinship and migrant labour. Ethnic
and familial bonds serve to allow the even greater exploitation of female labour (Anthias, 1983). The different form of the family and
gender ideologies may partly explain the differences between AfroCaribbean employment patterns and those of Asians and Cypriots.
Reproduction
gender, ethnic and
class divisions
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Women not only reproduce the future human and labour power
and the future citizens of the state but also ethnic and national collectivities. As in other aspects of the gender division of labour, the
ethnic and class position of women will affect their role in the reproduction process. Questions concerning who can actually reproduce
the collectivity and under what conditions are often important here.
Such things as the legitimacy of marriage, the appropriate religious
conviction and so on are often preconditions for the legitimate reproduction of the nation or collectivity. The actual degree and form of
control exercised by men of ethnic collectivities over their women can
vary. In the Muslim world for example and in Britain under the old
nationality law, the ethnic, religious or national position of women
was immaterial. In other cases, like in the Jewish case, the mothers
origin is the most important one in delineating the boundaries of the
collectivity, and this determined the reproduction of the Jewish nation (Yuval-Davis, 1980). This clearly does not mean such women
have greater freedom but only that they are subject to a different set
of controls.
As in other areas, the links between gender divisions and ethnic
divisions can be and often are subject to the intervention of the state.
For example, in Israel even secular people have to marry with a religious ceremony and according to traditional religious rules, in order
for their marriage to be recognized by law. In the most extreme cases, the way the collectivity is constituted by state legislation virtually
prevents inter-marriage between collectivities. In Egypt, for instance,
while a Christian man can convert to Islam, Muslim women are prevent from marrying Christian Copts if they do, they are no longer
part of the Muslim community nor are they recognized as part of the
Christian community and they virtually lose their legal status. The
state may treat women from dominant and subordinate ethnic collectivities differently. For example, the new nationality law in Britain
has given autonomous national reproduction rights to white British
women, while totally witholding them from many others, mostly
black women.
This differential treatment does not relate only to ideological or
legal control of reproduction. The infamous contraceptive injection
Depo-Provera has been given in Britain and elsewhere virtually exclusively to black and very poor women, and a study found more birth
control leaflets in family planning clinics in Asian languages than
in English (see Brent Community Council, 1981). In Israel, Jewish
families (under the label of being relatives of Israeli soldiers) receive higher child allowances than Arab ones, as part of an elaborate
policy of encouraging Jewish population growth and discouraging
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political tool
Political Implications
As mentioned in the introduction to this paper, our interest in the
subject is far from being merely academic. It originates from our
own frustration in trying to find a political milieu in which ethnic
divisions will be seen as an essential consideration, rather than as
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black feminism
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feminist struggles
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context
Notes
Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis lecture in Sociology at Thames
Polytechnic, London. They are currently engaged on a research project on ethnic and gender divisions in Greenwich and Woolwich,
Southeast London.
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1 Our analysis in this paper has benefitted much from discussions with
and feedback from our colleagues in the Sociology Division at Thames
Polytechnic who are working with us on the Ethnic and Gender Division
Project and we would like to thank them all. We should also like to thank
all those who participated in the Gender and Ethnic Divisions seminars arranged by the Sociology Division. Additionally we would like to thank the Sex
and Class Group of the CSE, and the Feminist Review Collective, especially
Annie Whitehead and Lesley Caldwell, for their insightful comments after
reading the first draft of our paper.
2 The term ethnic and ethnicity have come under a great deal of attack recently for mystifying racist social relations. However, as we argue later, we
do not use these concepts within a mainstream sociological tradition. For a
critique of these terms see for example E. Lawrence (1982).
3 In a series of seminars organized by the Thames Polytechnic Sociology
Division on Gender and Ethnic Divisions, Valerie Amos, Pratibha Parmar
and Amina Mama all presented analyses that stressed the importance of
studying the way in which the fusion of ethnic, gender and class divisions
for black women gave a specificity to their oppression.
4 For the problems of theorizing gender divisions using a marxist framework
see H. Hartmann (1979). For problems of theorizing race in Marxism see
particularly J. Gabriel and G. Ben-Tovim (1978).
5 See V. Beechey (1977) for an attempt to apply the concept to women. See S.
Castles and G. Kosack (1972) for an analysis of migrants as a reserve army.
For a critique of such attempts see F. Anthias (1980).
6 For critical reviews of this position see J. Kahn (1981) and J.S. Saul (1979).
7 For a review of marxist theories of the State see Bob Jessop (1982).
8 Socialist-feminist analysis of course is an exception to this. For example see
the work of E. Wilson (1977).
9 For example H.B. Davis (1973:31) states Engels was using the theory of historyless peoples according to which peoples that have never formed a state
in the past cannot be expected to form a viable state in the future.
10 This approach is found for example in Z. Eisenstein (1979).
11 For a critique see J. Bourne and A. Sivanandan (1980).
12 See M. Mackintosh (1981), F. Edholm et al. (1977) and N. Yuval-Davis (1982).
References
ANTHIAS, F. (1980) Women and the Reserve Army of Labour
Capital & Class No. 10.
ANTHIAS, F. (1983) Sexual Divisions and Ethnic Adaptation in
PHIZACKLEA (1983).
BARRETT, M. (1980) Womens Oppression Today London: Verso.
BARRETT, M. and McINTOSH, M. (1982) The Anti-social Family
London: Verso.
BEECHEY, V. (1977) Some Notes on Female Wage Labour in the
Capitalist Mode of Production Capital & Class No. 3.
BOURNE, J. and SIVANANDAN, A. (1980) Cheerleaders and
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1. Introduction
It is a commonplace that the reliance of Marxist theory on the pivotal
concepts of mode of production and class, along with the preoccupation with general models of historical development, has precluded
Marxists from making a significant contribution to the study of racial
and ethnic divisions within capitalist society.1 The relative absence of
a substantive discussion of these questions within the texts of classical Marxism seems to add weight to the assertion made by Frank
Parkin that, as a form of social analysis, Marxism is incapable of dealing with such divisions short of subsuming them under more general social relations (production- or class-based) or treating them as a
kind of superstructural phenomenon (Parkin 1979a and b).
Parkin
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an inadequately
theorised concept
john solomos
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unified set of
dogmas
As a statement in support of the thesis that it is impossible to combine a Marxist analytic framework with a serious analysis of racial
and/or ethnic divisions this passage suffers from several problems.
First, it takes only a limited degree of knowledge about recent Marxist
debates to see that Parkins main assertion, that the explanatory power of the concept of mode of production depends on an indifference
to the role of social actors, is contradicted by the vast body of literature (on class, the state, the labour process and political economy)
which has attempted to argue the centrality of human agency to any
rounded Marxist explanatory model.3 More than this, the thrust of recent Marxist writings on class and the state has been informed by the
need to take on board the insights derived from feminism, and this
has further broadened the parameters of what Parkin calls the conceptual storehouse of political economy (Sargent 1981, Gilroy 1982).
More fundamentally, perhaps, there is little to support Parkins
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Cox
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john solomos
three models
CCCS
Within the broad spectrum of recent Marxist or Marxisant approaches to race, class and the state it is possible to detect a wide variety
of theoretical models, historical analyses and political arguments.
Even though using similar theoretical reference points, either to
classic texts by Marx and Engels or to the works of more contemporary Marxist thinkers such as Nicos Poulantzas, a number of fairly
distinct schools of thought have emerged over the last decade. Each
of these schools lays a claim to the work of Marx, either as a source
of inspiration or more directly as a general theoretical framework
within which any analysis of racism in capitalist society must be located. The complexity of recent debates cannot be adequately analysed within the limits of this paper, but for heuristic purposes I shall
discuss three important models that constitute various dimensions
of recent Marxist debates on race, class and the state: the relative autonomy model, the autonomy model and the migrant labour model.5
There can be no question here of attempting a general survey of all
the literature that could be classified as falling into these models.
Rather the limited objective of this paper is to raise some theoretical
problems concerning all three approaches and to make some suggestions for an alternative formulation.
(a) Relative autonomy model
Within the last decade, one of the most important and influential
redefinitions of the Marxist analysis of race and racism has been
developed by a number of studies originating from the Birmingham
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS).6 The works
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which have emanated from CCCS over this period are heterogeneous
in approach, substantive issues and political inclination but are unified through a common concern with developing an analysis of racism which fully accepts its relative autonomy from class-based social
relations and its historical specificity in relation to the laws of motion of capitalist development. Although it would be unwise to label
this body of work as a school of thought with a coherent and fully
worked out framework of analysis, there does seem to be some justification in Brittan and Maynards view (1984) that there is a distinct
CCCS approach to such issues as racism, sexism and more generally
intra-class divisions. Moreover, the theoretical and political controversy which surrounded the publication of The Empire Strikes Back in
1982 has resulted in a number of critical articles which question both
the theoretical and the political linkages between recent CCCS texts
and Marxism (Young 1983, Miles 1984a).
The origins of the Centres concern with racism can be dated
back to the early 1970s, when a number of research students and
its then Director, Stuart Hall, became involved in a project which
was concerned with explaining the development of moral panics
about the involvement of young blacks in a specific form of street
crime, namely mugging.7 The context of this study was the environment of cities such as Birmingham, where sizeable black communities had grown up and established their own specific community,
cultural and political practices. This in turn led to the development
of ideological and political responses from within local communities,
from the local state and its agencies and from the institutions of the
central state. The research carried out by the CCCS team, which was
eventually published in 1978 as Policing the Crisis (Hall et al. 1978),
took as its central concerns the processes by which race came to be
defined as a social problem and the construction of race as a political issue which required state intervention from both the central and
the local state. There is no space here to discuss the rich and complex
analysis which Hall and his associates developed of this period or the
subsequent discussion of these issues by other authors.8 Suffice it to
say that the concrete historical analysis on which Policing the Crisis is
based provided a materialist basis for what has subsequently become
known as the CCCS approach to race and class and has continued
to exert a deep influence on the work of younger researchers at the
Centre. This is best exemplified by the jointly produced volume of
the CCCS Race and Politics Group, The Empire Strikes Back: Race and
Racism in 70s Britain (1982).
Before moving on to discuss the more recent work of the Centre,
however, it is important to understand the core concepts developed
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The Empire
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Rex
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While conceding the criticisms made by Rex (1973, 1983c) and others
of a simplistic Marxist analysis of racism, Hall wants also to argue
that a more critical and multi-dimensional materialist analysis of the
phenomenon is possible.
In establishing this possibility he himself suggests three principles as the starting point for a critical Marxist analysis of racism.
First, he rejects the idea that racism is a general feature of all human
societies, arguing that what actually exist are historically specific racisms. Though there may be features common to all racially structured
societies, it is necessary to understand what produces these features
in each specific historical situation before one can develop a comparative analysis of racism. The second principle is that, although racism cannot be reduced to other social relations, one cannot explain
racism in abstraction from them. Racism has a relative autonomy
from other relations, whether they be economic, political or ideological. This relative autonomy means that there is no one-way correspondence between racism and specific economic or other forms of social relations. Third, Hall criticises a dichotomous view of race and
class, arguing that in a racially structured society it is impossible
to understand them through discrete modes of analysis. Race has
a concrete impact on the class consciousness and organisation of all
classes and class factions. But class in turn has a reciprocal relationship with race, and it is the articulation between the two which is
crucial, not their separateness (Hall 1980b, pp. 336-42).
Halls own writings on this subject have been fairly limited and
programmatic so far, and have moved little beyond the three prin-
critical multidimensional
materialist analysis
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three divergencies
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class struggle
The class character of black struggles is not a result of the fact that
blacks are predominantly proletarian, though this is true. It is established in the fact that their struggles for civil rights, freedom from
state harassment, or as waged workers, are instances of the process
by which the working class is constituted politically, organised in
politics. (Gilroy 1982, p. 302)
Referring specifically to those excluded from employment, particularly the young black unemployed, he posits that there may be
various types of struggles which mobilise them politically, not all of
which bear a direct relationship to objective conditions. It follows
that the privileged place of economic classes in the Marxist theory of
history is not to be equated with an a priori assertion of their political
primacy in every historical moment (Gilroy 1982, p. 303).
It is also of some relevance to note, in relation to the above point,
that The Empire Strikes Back includes some of the most sustained
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absence of
political economy
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cal strategies to be effective rather than symbolic (Gabriel and BenTovim 1979, Ben-Tovim et al. 1981a).
Contrary to the bulk of recent Marxist writings on racism, which
take capitalist social relations and class relations as a starting point,
Gabriel and Ben-Tovim argue that racism can best be understood
as the product of contemporary and historical struggles which are
by no means reducible to wider sets of economic or social relations.
This leads them to take as their starting point the various struggles,
local and national, political and ideological, which go into the social
construction of race in specific situations (Gabriel and Ben-Tovim
1978). Yet it would be too simplistic to see their position as one which
holds that racism is not in some way related to wider social relations.
A number of their papers on anti-racist struggles do in fact show how
wider structural constraints do play a role in limiting the effectiveness of such struggles (e.g. Ben-Tovim et al. 1981a). What they do
argue, however, is that there is no way of determining what these
limits are, outside of specific struggles and historical situations.
The consequences of this position are that there is no a priori reason to see racism as the product of class or economic relations, and
that the only way to overcome the traditional dilemma in relation to
the base/superstructure model is to eschew any attempt to analyse
racism outside of its own ideological conditions of existence (Gabriel
and Ben-Tovim 1978). In opposition to the preoccupation of the
CCCS studies with the linkages between race and class, and more
concretely with the articulation between capitalist crisis and the development of racism, Gabriel and Ben-Tovim suggest that the starting point of a Marxist analysis should be the ideological and political
practices which work autonomously to produce racism. Rejecting all
forms of reductionism they argue that:
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ideological and
political practices
In this view, the ideological level is primary, since it is only after the
ideological production of racist ideologies that they intervene at the
level of the economy and of political practice. In effect, Gabriel and
Ben-Tovim attempt to push beyond the constraints of the relative autonomy model by questioning the viability of any attempt to situate
race in terms of class. The autonomy of racism lies precisely in its
irreducibility to any other set of social relations, since any attempt to
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racist politics
john solomos
account for racism in terms of external relations entails a reductionist argument (Ben-Tovim et al., this volume).
Moving a step beyond this formal critique of reductionist
Marxism, supporters of the autonomy model would also argue that
their analysis provides a more relevant guide to the complex political
realities of racist politics and anti-racist struggles (Ben-Tovim et al.
1981a). Starting from the position that the state as an institution is
not monolithic but the site of constant struggles, compromises and
administrative decisions, they argue that the most important task of
research on race is to highlight the political and ideological context
in which anti-racist struggles occur. Referring to the need for struggles to change institutionalised racism as a long march through the
institutions, with the overall objective of bringing about positive
and democratically based political and policy changes to secure the
elimination of racial discrimination and disadvantage (p. 178), they
question the usefulness of the notion of relative autonomy when confronted with the complexity of political struggles against racism.
This last point is important in understanding the coherence of
the analysis developed by Gabriel and Ben-Tovim, since they selfconsciously see their theoretical work as linking up with political
practice. There is no space here to discuss the detailed and rich analysis they have made of the political context of anti-racist struggles
in Liverpool and Wolverhampton. Suffice it to say that the development of their approach, from the early formal critique of traditional
Marxist views of race and class to their more recent preoccupation
with the local politics and racism, reflects their actual political involvement in anti-racist politics.
Another way of making this point is that although they would
agree with Hall that race and class form part of a complex dialectical relation in contemporary capitalism, they would question the
usefulness of interpreting this relationship in terms of the relative
autonomy of racism. Ultimately they see a contradiction in arguing
that racist ideologies have a certain autonomy from material relations, while also holding on to the principle that it is these relations
which determine in the last instance the degree of autonomy. More
fundamentally, they seem to be arguing that even the work of Hall
and his associates, with its explicit disavowal of determinism, supports an implicit base/superstructure model.
Given their insistence on the irreducibility of race to class, and
the political conclusions they draw from this position, it may not
be surprising that Gabriel and Ben-Tovim do not spend much time
discussing the degree of determinancy which state power and class
relations have in relation to racial structuration. Their version of the
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the political
economy of
migrant labour
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racial categorisation
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construction which requires explanation; (b) that the object of analysis should be the process of racialisation or racial categorisation,
which takes place within the context of specific economic, political
and ideological relations.
In rejecting the descriptive or analytical value of race as a concept Miles and Phizacklea insist on the importance of racism, and
the discriminatory practices which it produces, as the crucial factor
in the formation of what they call a racialised fraction of the working class, and of other classes (Phizacklea and Miles 1980, Miles
1984a, pp. 229-30). This has been interpreted as a way of reiterating
the role of class determination as opposed to race, or the use of
an economistic version of Marxism to analyse the position of black
workers in Britain (Gilroy 1982). In addition, it has been argued that
the emphasis that Miles and Phizacklea put on class as opposed to
race serves to underplay the role that black struggles play in unifying people who ostensibly occupy different class positions (Parmar
1982).
In rejecting these criticisms Miles has recently attempted to clarify the starting point of his work, and its relationship to the work of
CCCS and Gabriel and Ben-Tovim (Miles 1984a). Rejecting the view
that his work, along with that of Annie Phizacklea, asserts the primacy of class over race, he goes on to argue that his model is grounded
in the notion that internal and external class relations are shaped by
a complex totality of economic, political and ideological processes.
As regards the role of racism in this complex totality he develops a
definition of racialisation which differentiates between the economic
and the political/ideological determinants. Miles explains:
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redefinition of
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silence on
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implications
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Marxist theory
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This reconceptualisation of the class-race dialectic is certainly awkward, and represents a programmatic statement rather than a fully
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historically defined
conditions
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three propositions
john solomos
of the theoretical problems confronting a Marxist analysis of racism. What follows are some tentative suggestions about how to build
upon and move beyond the parameters of recent debates.
It is not my intention to develop a fully fledged alternative framework for dealing with the issues raised in the previous discussion.
Rather, the limited objective here is to draw out some of the implications of the criticisms made above for a critical analysis of the
dialectic of race, class and state. I want to concentrate, particularly,
on the problems which arise in trying to utilise a Marxist analytic
framework for explaining racism, by outlining a conceptual model
which holds that: (a) there is no problem of race relations which can
be thought of separately from the structural (economic, political and
ideological) features of capitalist society; (b) there can be no general
Marxist theory of racism, since each historical situation needs to be
analysed in its own specificity; and (c) racial and ethnic divisions
cannot be reduced to or seen as completely determined by the structural contradictions of capitalist societies.
In broad outline these three propositions are meant to establish
the interconnectedness of racism with wider social relations, while
allowing for a degree of autonomy and discontinuity. This in itself
does not take us very far in establishing the actual nature of discontinuities in an empirical sense, and indeed this is perhaps impossible
without comparative and national studies of different kinds of racism. But it seems to me to be important that the three propositions
remain interlinked, because short of this it is only possible to achieve
a one-dimensional analysis of racism and not the dialectical and dynamic approach which Bonacich (1980) rightly identifies as the basic
feature of Marxist approaches to race.
Nevertheless, it should be clear from the above discussion that all
three propositions are essentially contested among Marxists. While
propositions (b) and (c) can be said to have a wide currency in one
form or another, there is much dispute about (a), whether at a macrolevel or through specific debates about the relationship of race and
class. Gabriel and Ben-Tovim would dispute the relevance of point
(a) in relation to a concrete analysis of racist ideologies. The problem
remains, however, that economic and social conditions do play a role
in structuring racism as an ideology and as a set of practices in specific institutions. If this is accepted, and to some extent even Gabriel
and Ben-Tovim accept that there are limits on the effectiveness of
struggles against racism, then the question arises of how one conceptualises the relationship between ideologies and social structures.
Is it simply a question of an eclectic combination of autonomous levels in a specific situation? Or do economic, political and ideological
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the complexity of
determinism
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john solomos
5. Conclusion
This paper has tried to locate the position of race in Marxist discourse
and to assess the adequacy of the various theoretical approaches to
its study in capitalist societies. While much of the recent literature
written from the various perspectives analysed above hardly merits
the designation of a Marxist theory of race and ethnic relations, it
clearly represents a large and growing body of work. I have tried to
argue that Marxist theories of race are heterogeneous in approach,
though it can be argued that they are unified through a common
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concern with (a) the material and ideological basis of racism and
racial oppression, however it may be defined, and (b) the role that
racism plays in structuring the entire social, political and economic
structures of societies. In other words, the basic level of agreement
between the various Marxist approaches is that they accept that there
is no race relations problem as such, that there is no problem of racism which can be thought of as separate from the structural features
of capitalist society.
Equally important, however, are the differences in approach
which have become evident over the last decade within the broad
spectrum of Marxist writings on racism. It is in this context that
we can best appreciate the studies discussed above. Whatever their
theoretical deficiencies and analytic weaknesses, the overall effect of
Marxist contributions in this area has been to redefine the problem of
race in capitalist society in a way that makes theoretical and political
debate more open and challenging. They have focused attention on
the history and contemporary reality of racism in capitalist society,
and its complex economic, political and ideological preconditions.
By questioning the adequacy of both traditional Marxist and nonMarxist treatments of racism, and by emphasising the need for linking theoretical analysis to anti-racist politics, these studies have in
their different ways helped reinstate the idea that racism is no mere
epiphenomenon but a social construct resulting from the complex
social relationships and economic and political structures of capitalist societies (Hall et al. 1980, Freedman 1983-4, Miles 1984a).
But the interest of these studies is not restricted to the field of
Marxist theory and politics. For the problems with which they have
been grappling occur in similar forms in non-Marxist social and
political theory. For although the basic starting point of Marxist approaches to this question may be said to differ markedly from the
various non-Marxist approaches, there can be little doubt that many
of the substantive analytical problems are actually quite similar. This
is not to say that the specific theoretical and analytical divergences
between the two sets of approaches are not important, for they clearly
are. What is at issue, however, is the adequacy of the explanations
they offer about the role of racism in contemporary capitalist societies, the role of the state in reproducing or countering racist practices,
and the adequacy of the political conclusions they draw about how
to overcome racism. Because the Marxist approaches have focused
on the social relations that produce and reproduce racism, they have
touched upon issues which are of concern to non-Marxist theorists,
namely the origins of racist ideologies and institutions and the role
of political power relations. In so doing, recent Marxist analyses may
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redefine problem
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john solomos
well open up possibilities for broadening out the debates about race,
class and the state in potentially fruitful directions.
Perhaps in the long run this will be seen as one of the main
achievements of recent Marxist debates on racism. The kinds of
question which they raise about theory and anti-racist politics open
up the possibility for reflective discussions of the role of racism in
contemporary societies and the strategies for overcoming it. The
theoretical and political selfconsciousness which the approaches discussed above show are a fundamental challenge to both traditional
Marxism and rival problematics within the social sciences, and one
which deserves to be taken up across a variety of disciplines. In addition, however, they have provided an extra impetus to attempts to
link academic research to questions of practice, particularly in relation to political struggles against racism. In so doing they have posed
questions beyond the limits of traditional Marxist class analysis and
have pointed to the need for a deeper analysis of non-class forms of
domination.
If this brief sketch of the content of recent Marxist debates on
race, class and the state is accurate, there are many questions about
the specificity of racism which have been inadequately theorised.
But recent debates have at least opened up the possibility of a more
dynamic and accessible Marxist contribution to the analysis of racism. Whether this possibility is realised depends on the success of
attempts to broaden the horizons of current Marxian conceptions of
the dynamics of advanced capitalism. Along with gender, racism remains one of the key axes on which this reconceptualisation has to
take place, both at the level of theory and at that of practice.
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Notes
1 Apart from the work of Parkin, which is discussed below, see Forsythe 1979,
Stone 1977, Bonacich 1980, Brotz 1983, Banton 1983.
2 It is not possible to discuss these issues specifically in the context of this
paper, but valuable and provocative overviews of all of them can be found in
Wright 1980, Sargent 1981, Resnick and Wolff 1982 and Cottrell 1984.
3 The dialectic of agency and structure in Marxist thinking is usefully discussed in Gintis and Bowles (1981), where it is argued that there are usually
two opposing tendencies in Marxist writing, one based on a commitment
to structural determination and another committed to a notion of practice.
They themselves suggest a resolution in terms of a unified conception of
structure and practice.
4 A useful and challenging discussion of the political context of their analysis
can be found in Jessop 1982. But see also Meiksins Wood 1983.
5 This threefold classification is imposed and reflects an assessment of the
main tendency in each body of work. There are no doubt other models which
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Racism, migration and the state in Western
Europe: a case for comparative analysis*
Frank Bovenkerk, Robert Miles and Gilles Verbunt
In the 1980s, the criminologist Frank Bovenkerk and the sociologists Robert
Miles and Gilles Verbunt embarked on an ambitious project. They sought to
compare post-war migration to Western Europe and the political and ideological responses that this migration elicited. The project was undertaken by
developing a theoretical framework that was broad enough to encompass the
historical specificity of and between particular cases, while still permitting a general explanation that was sensitive to the specificity and variation.
Bovenkerk, Miles and Verbunts framework revolves around the formation of
the nation state and highlights the states role in the reproduction of the nation as imagined community. These processes, they suggest, are embedded
in a more universal process of the regulation of scarcity. Critical here are the
inclusion and exclusion of people from the hierarchy of political, economic
and ideological positions in the nationstate.
Introduction
Given the still vivid memory of the holocaust, and following a long
period of affluence and relative social order after the Second World
War, it was widely believed within Western Europe during the 1960s
and 1970s that racism, and related ideologies, had been permanently
eliminated. But to the surprise of many, the race myth (in old or
new forms) has gained renewed support. It is being suggested once
more that the origin of long-standing and emergent economic and
cultural problems lies in the presence of groups who do not belong
to the nation-state by virtue of biological, social and/or cultural characteristics that they are thought to possess inherently. Although the
complex of ideas is spread more widely, they have found formal political expression in all countries of Western Europe in different ways
and at different times.
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Taking the example of the far-right political agitation and the resurgence of neo-fascist groups, these were first evident in Britain and
Switzerland (National Front, the Schwarzenbach referendum) in the
1960s, other countries such as Holland and France (Centrumpartij,
Front National) followed in the 1970s, and last have been Belgium
and the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1980s (Vlaams Blok,
Republikaner). Immigrants, or more accurately, certain categories
of immigrants, have become the main targets of the hostility either
generated or fostered by this agitation and these political organisations. Our primary interest in this paper is with the interrelationship between the common appearance of this hostility and agitation
throughout Western Europe and the differentiation in the mode and
timing of expression in the constituent countries. Further, it provides an outline agenda for research.
a variety of
anti-immigrant
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MacDonald 1987). The first political concerns in France were expressed publicly in the late 1960s, but the debate on immigration
control and, more generally, the politicisation of the migrant presence, did not begin until the early 1970s (Freeman 1979; Verbunt
1985). In the Netherlands, following the expression of public and
political concern over political terrorism during the mid-1970s by a
small Moluccan group, the introduction of an extensive social policy
programme for minorities was legitimated by an accompanying
decision to seriously curtail further immigration in the early 1980s
(Groenendijk 1988).
There are also differences in the progress of increasing electoral support for right-wing and neo-fascist political parties. Racist
voting recently increased significantly in the Federal Republic of
Germany and in Belgium, but seems to have declined or stabilised
so far in England and France following its growth in the 1970s and
early 1980s respectively (e.g. Fielding 1981; Ogden 1987). It has reemerged in the late 1980s, after apparent dormancy, in Switzerland
and the Netherlands (e.g. Donselaar and Praag 1983). Also marked
is the difference in the penetration of political racism into the formal
political system and, especially significant is the variety of ways in
which the major established and governing political parties have reacted, ranging from rejection to the incorporation of anti-immigrant
themes in their agitation and propaganda.
The generality of the phenomenon suggests common causes and
we believe that, in so far as there are, they are to be found in important changes within the capitalist mode of production and in political
strategies to respond to and reverse the economic crises of the early
1970s. But the extent of diversity is equally impressive: the specific
relationship between economic, political and ideological dynamics
clearly varies from one country to another. It follows that arguments
which advance a simple, linear determination in which racism or
other forms of anti-immigrant sentiment are explained as a functional product of a particular economic development such as the economic crisis (Castles and Kosack 1973) have, at best, only a limited
utility. Because there is considerable variation in the nature, extent
and pace of the politicisation of the migrant presence, an explanation must also be historically specific if one wishes to grasp both the
complex whole and the nature of the reaction in each country.
This paper constitutes a first, preliminary step in effecting this
task. We begin to construct a theoretical framework on the foundation of a set of assumptions which are transhistorical, but in order
to offer explanations which take account of historical specificity. The
Marxist tradition, characterised by historical materialism, has been
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historical
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specificity
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state responses
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state intervention
migration and capital flows, our interest lies in analysing the interrelationship between two political and ideological processes. These are,
first, the manner in which processes of migration and consequent
settlement of a significant proportion of migrants within Western
Europe have been structured by direct and active state intervention.
Second, we examine the extent to which the nature and content of
the political and ideological reaction to migration and settlement has
also been shaped by state involvement.
It should be emphasised that neither the process of migration,
nor theories of migration, are the object of our study here. We focus
on state reactions to migration and, in terms of methodology, the
stimulus to state intervention is considered to be sufficiently similar
to be conceived of as constant. This procedure is warranted on the
level of abstraction that we have identified. Thus, although owners
of capital and company management may originate from quite different countries (United States of America, Canada, Japan etc.), they
belong to the same class of migration by virtue of their function in
the spatial restructuring of production relations.
For example, colonial migrants to Britain originate mainly from
the British Caribbean, the Indian sub-continent and East African
countries; those who came to the Netherlands left Indonesia and the
Dutch Caribbean; French colonial immigrants originated from North
Africa and the French Caribbean. Although their migration histories may differ, all these groups took part in a migration movement
that has been closely linked to the decolonisation process and that
has depended upon special political links with the mother country.
Those who have come as migrant labourers proper have responded
to labour shortages that have been produced by a certain state in
the post-war accumulation process. They may come from Turkey,
Eastern Europe or Italy etc., but they also belong to a same migration
class of workers. Finally, political refugees who have gained access
in small numbers in the three countries under study tend to originate from the same background. All three countries have migrants
from, for example, Hungary, Vietnam, Chile and Sri Lanka. It should
be clear that these four categories need not be mutually exclusive
(for instance, both Britain and France have imported migrant labour
from their colonies) but they can be analytically separated in so far as
they constitute distinct categories to which the state has reacted in all
three instances.
We use the concept of state to refer to an institutional complex
which comprises minimally government, bureaucratic administration, judiciary, police and military forces. These collectively claim and
use power to structure a particular ensemble of economic, social and
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state power
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immigration
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this legislation was not so much motivated by worries about unrestricted immigration as it was by concern about the revolutionary
events throughout Europe in 1848 and the failure of revolutionary
movements in Germany and the Netherlands in 1918 (Swart 1978;
Lucassen and Penninx 1985).
The first measures in France date from 1893 (Withol de Wenden
1988: 24-28). They were intended to register the number of foreigners resident in France, and their places of work and residence, in
order to provide protection for native French workers. Controls over
entry into France were institutionalised in 1906. It should be noted
that, during this period, private companies, especially those involved
in mining and metal production, determined and organised immigration rather than the government. Direct state intervention began
in 1914, and thereafter immigration was promoted in order to compensate for the loss of the male work force in the First World War.
These brief remarks on the history of immigration controls provide a preliminary illustration of the reasons why we have chosen to
place so much emphasis upon state intervention. Given that, since
the seventeenth century, the world has been increasingly divided spatially into nation-states where, since the nineteenth century, these
separate populations have been constructed legally and ideologically
by the legal categories of nationality and citizenship (Plender 1988:
4-6, 9), states constitute the institutions which regulate international
spatial movements of people. Citizens of other nation-states are prevented, permitted or encouraged to cross national boundaries as a
result of decisions by governments exercising political sovereignty
within specified territories. Moreover, it is within the jurisdiction of
the states that conditions of continued residence (or return) of those
who are not citizens are determined.
All this highlights the gatekeeper role of the state. This role has
become increasingly significant as capitalist expansion has taken as
one of its forms the export of industrial capital which has, in turn,
intensified the longer-term development of an international labour
market. This has been facilitated by technical development, which
has helped to create the possibility of fast and efficient long-distance
transport, and by the increasing awareness of enormous differences
in wealth and compliance with human rights which has motivated
people to seek refuge in other lands and continents. Both processes
have been overdetermined by the development of worldwide communication systems.
Second, the economic and social circumstances of the population
living within the boundary of the nation are no less determined by
state decisions. Education, housing, welfare and other aspects of re-
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the collective
consumption role
A theoretical background
Against this background, we proceed to sketch a transhistorical
theoretical framework which will lead us to a preliminary agenda
of comparative research. The general processes will be deducted on
the basis of political economy theory and a related conception of the
nation-state.
The reproduction of all forms of social organisation depends
upon, first, production of the means of human existence and, second, the maintenance of mechanisms to regulate (relative and ab-
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inclusion and
exclusion
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class formation
and reproduction
The positions in the structure are established by the mode of production (although the mode of production is not a natural given but the
result of previous class struggles). The process of social distribution
is characterised by inclusionary and exclusionary dimensions.
For example, with respect to the hierarchy of positions within the
proletariat, the outcome of the distribution process depends not only
upon which positions are available in what quantity (e.g. determined
by the circumstances of the labour market) but also upon individual capacities such as physical strength, linguistic skills and the way
in which individuals have been prepared for these positions by, for
example, the institutions of the family and the educational system.
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There are, in other words, many dimensions of human differentiation (both real and imagined) which serve as pre-selectors or criteria
of pre-emption, or which mediate between human potentials and access to positions and resources.
The complex processes of class formation and reproduction within the capitalist mode of production are based on these processes
of inclusion and exclusion. And while they do not encompass the
totality of inclusionary and exclusionary processes, they do constitute
the foundation upon which all others rest. This is because social life
is only possible if human material needs are met, and this requires
some process of production (of food, shelter etc.): the social relations
which are organised in the process of establishing and reproducing a
system of production are therefore prior to and so constitutive of (but
do not necessarily determine) all other social relations. Furthermore,
the additional dimensions and consequences of inclusion and exclusion cannot be detached absolutely from the collectivities of class because those who are their object are not thereby displaced from the
occupation of any position relative to the means of production.
Nevertheless, there are other dimensions of human differentiation that have been signified in the allocation of people to structural
positions relative to production in the context of scarcity. Sexual difference is one and a gendered division of labour (understood in relation to waged labour but also in relation to unpaid domestic labour) is
one of its results. Phenotypical characteristics (often signified by the
idea of race which is a central element in discourse within Europe,
North America, Australia and South Africa) are also widely signified
to both exclude certain groups of people from access to wage labour
positions when these have been scarce, and to include other groups
of people when recruiting in situations of labour shortage. This racialisation of the process of class formation gives rise to a racialised
labour market (Miles 1989). Other aspects of human differentiation
include age, physical capacity, subculture or way of life, religion, and
language, all of which are associated with segregation on the labour
market. Some of these properties are valued positively, others negatively.
What is true for the labour market holds for access to all other
scarce resources, including those of a political and ideological character (e.g. citizenship, access to the media, protection against physical
attack, the issue of residence permits). The allocation or distribution
process comprises the totality of human decisions on access to scarce
resources that are based on varying combinations of evaluated properties within a given social context. Within these combinations, in
which not all dimensions of evaluation need to be present, some of
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differentiation
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nationalisation
them override others. A particular distribution process can be characterised by the hierarchy of properties that have been weighted.
Class formation (in association with processes of gendering, racialisation and other forms of differentiation and exclusion) within
the capitalist mode of production has occurred historically within
distinctive spatial and political units that are called nation-states.
Within these, certain cultural characteristics (e.g. a specific language,
legal system, religion) have been constructed and signified by the
dominant class as universal attributes of the nation. This ideological process implies the establishment of criteria which serve as a further measure of inclusion and exclusion, that is, as a measure of
belonging to the nation.
From the late eighteenth century, these cultural characteristics
have been interpreted as given and natural. Moreover, certain biological characteristics have been typified as indicators of the existence of the nation. Both serve to constitute an imagined community
(Anderson 1983), whereby a specific collection of people that normally would not know each other personally nevertheless believe that
they share a common identity, and therefore a common heritage and
future. Hence, members of all social classes, including the proletariat, within a territorial boundary tend to consider themselves as sharing something essential with each other. This sense of identification
has been reinforced by the foundation of forms of political representation, the creation of citizenship and a complex of state institutions,
such as schools, that educate all those defined as belonging to the
nation. We refer to this as a process of nationalisation in the sense
explicated by Nairn (1988: 281).
The creation of national identity around specific characteristics
serves not only as an inclusionary process within the nation-state.
It defines by implication Others inside and outside the nation-state.
Thus, the boundaries of the nation-state have been marked not only
by the specific form given to state institutions, but also by the signification by the dominant class of cultural symbols which exclude those
with a different cultural profile. It follows that competition between
each national bourgeoisie was not only economic but also cultural in
form for each believed that it was the agent of a distinct and superior civilisation. The formation of nation-states is therefore the consequence of a combination of ideological signification and struggles
by culturally specific dominant classes to gain and retain access to
scarce resources within a defined space by representing certain characteristics as signifying a collective interest.
It follows that the nation-state has a political and ideological reality which is dependent upon an international process of inclusion
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exclusionary acts
Conclusion
Within each of the Western European nation-states, it has been publicly recognised to varying degrees that the post-1945 experience of
migration has been paralleled by the expression of hostility and resistance which has commonly taken a racist form. Furthermore, social scientists of various disciplinary backgrounds have recognised
the importance and value of a comparative analysis of these migrations and their political and ideological consequences, and there is
now an escalating literature devoted to such research. Elsewhere, we
have critically evaluated an important part of this body of literature,
concluding that the comparative method employed in most cases
has been significantly flawed (Bovenkerk, Miles and Verbunt 1990).
Adequate comparative analysis presumes a conceptual framework
which is formulated at a level of generality which encompasses the
historical specificity of, and variation between, particular instances,
yet which permits a general explanation which is sensitive to that
specificity and variation. The general theoretical approach outlined
above, and the illustrative research agenda, are offered in the light of
this critique and objective.
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This paper is the momentary outcome of a discussion that has continued for
a period of more than three years and that has involved the present authors,
a group of young researchers and established scholars in three countries. Its
aim is to formulate a design for an ambitious comparative research project
based on insights grounded in political economy theory. Whilst bearing sole
responsibility for the content of this paper, the authors wish to acknowledge
the assistance of Paula Cleary, Moustapha Diop, Han Entzinger, Marjan
van Hunnik, Francien Keers, Jan Rath, Marel Rietman, John Schuster and
Jeanne Singer-Kerel who have at various stages participated in a series of
seminars in Utrecht and Paris at which the arguments set out here were
discussed.
References
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This article was part of an ongoing debate on the nature of racism. The sociologists Robert Miles and Vic Satzewich positioned themselves against the
more vulgar Marxist, functionalist explanations of racism. According to their
explanations, racism is not an independent phenomenon, but the product of
the divide-and-rule policy of the bourgeoisie and its agent the state. Miles
and Satzewich argued, however, that racism did not originate as a conspiracy
by capitalists. The ruling class gained no benefit from conflicts within the
working class. Neither the capitalists nor the state had an interest in stirring up working-class racism. According to Miles and Satzewich, the working class was fragmented long before there was any immigration. They also
opposed the assumption that the development of racism had been linear, as
racism is a far from homogeneous phenomenon.
Introduction
In these new times, it has become de riguer to undertake a re-examination of the theories that Marxists have been using to analyse
contemporary capitalism, its laws of motion and its future development. Certainly, there has been a major reorganization of the capitalist accumulation process over the past decade or more and that this
has had significant implications for, inter alia, international migration flows. The general assumption is that, with the ending of the
expansionary boom in the early 1970s, the era of large-scale labour
migration from the periphery to the centre of the world economic
system also terminated (e.g. Salt 1987: 241). If this assumption were
to be correct, it might be concluded that there is no longer any object
for a theory of the interplay between capitalism and migration.
But is the assumption correct? There are commonsense and anecdotal reasons to question not only the assumption that labour migra-
capitalism and
migration
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transfer of mass
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tion has ceased but also the assumption that the only migration flows
that occur are composed of persons seeking to sell their labour power
for a wage. For example, during the 1980s, the British government
has had to respond to the attempt on the part of refugees from Sri
Lanka to seek asylum in Britain and with a continuing movement of
refugees from Vietnam to Hong Kong, one of Britains last remaining colonies. And political events in China in 1989 raised again the
question of why it is that UK passport holders in Hong Kong do not
have the right to migrate and settle in Britain.
To take another recent example, during the 1980s, there have
been large-scale movements of population from East Germany,
Poland and the Soviet Union into West Germany, movements supported and encouraged by the West German state which simultaneously sought to deny entry to political refugees from Sri Lanka on the
grounds that the boat is already too full. This evidence points not
only to the continuing reality of international migration flows as an
empirical phenomenon but also to a qualitative theoretical problem.
Because these refugee migrations do not have their origin, at least
not in any direct form, in the capital accumulation process, then they
cannot be conceptualized within theories of migration which prioritize that process as the determinant force.
There is also academic evidence to consider. The postmodern
world capitalist system is characterized by the domination of multinational companies and a new international division of labour. And,
as theorists of the latter have emphasized (e.g. Frbel et al. 1980),
mass commodity production has not ceased, but rather has to a significant degree been relocated in Export Processing Zones in the peripheries of the world economic system. And, as Sassen (1988) has
shown, this process of capital export has stimulated a new phase of
migration and proletarianization within those peripheries as well as
to the United States.
This leads us to suggest that the European experience of the
nineteenth century has not so much been overtaken by a new epoch but is being extended to spatial locations which previously escaped the interplay of migration and proletarianization (cf. Warren
1980). Indeed, the partial transfer of mass commodity production to
these new spatial locations is a crucial precondition for the processes
that the postmodernists constantly refer to. For example, new information technologies and the computer age could not exist without
the nimble fingers of migrant and recently proletarianized Third
World women assembling micro-processors (Lim 1978, Safa 1981).
The brave new world of Western Europe is therefore dependent
upon the continuation elsewhere of the separation of the direct pro-
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ducer from the means of production and their spatial mobility to find
a capitalist wishing to purchase and exploit labour power for a wage.
There is also a hidden side to these processes. Discussion of the
export of capital often takes on a reified character if it focuses only
upon the movement of sums of money. As Marx constantly reiterated, the concept of capital refers not so much to a thing but to a social relation (e.g. 1976: 932) between two classes which is mediated
by things. Consequently, the export of capital involves not only the
movement of money but also the agents of capital, understood to refer to both those who own and control capital directly and those who
manage in various ways the use of capital. There has been an undue
silence about the migration of such people within Marxist and nonMarxist theories of migration, a silence which becomes even more
inappropriate in the context of the increasing mobility of capital within the world capitalist system.
Hence, the intention of this paper is to offer some critical reflections on the development of a Marxist theory of migration. However,
our objective is not to formulate a new postmodern theory of migration. Rather, we argue that the apparent difficulties facing political economy explanations of migration when interpreting recent
evidence of migration flows arise largely from their inadequacies in
explaining migration in pre-postmodern capitalism.
Marxist theory
of migration
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labour migration
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political and
ideological
determinants
restrictions were also motivated by political and ideological considerations. The repeated renewal of labour contracts and the accompanying process of family reunification, without corresponding increases
in state expenditure on services in demand by foreign-born workers
and their families, meant increasing immigrant competition for
education, housing, health and social services with the indigenous
population. The competition for scarce resources resulted in increasing conflicts between the foreign-born and indigenous populations,
and constituted a threat to the social order of the labour importing
nation states. Furthermore, foreign workers were becoming increasingly militant both politically and on the shop-floor. Their presence
became defined as a threat to the long term stability of the social order, and limits were placed on the scope for their use as a docile and
manipulable labour force (Castles et al. 1984: 30).
The restrictions imposed on migration, then, signalled the emergence of a set of qualitatively new political priorities and concerns on
the part of the respective states. Whereas prior to 1973, the state and
capital both defined foreign-born labour in strictly economic terms,
its value lying in its relative cheapness and in its contribution to
industrial production, after 1973 political and ideological considerations about the future stability of the nation state pushed these
strictly economic factors into the background (Castles et al 1984: 2932). The central assertion therefore is that state intervention and the
expression of political and ideological concern were evident only after the migration was underway.
In the remainder of the paper, we shall argue that this theoretical approach, because of its economism, has been blind to the significance of the political and ideological determinants of migration
flows and of the significance of the migration of not only skilled nonmanual labour but also of the owners of capital and their agents.
Moreover, it ignores the considerable evidence of the states concern
about the political and ideological implications of migration long
before the economic crisis of 1973/74. It is ironic that this error in
Castles work mirrors a feature of a great deal of non-Marxist writing on the history of migration to Britain in so far as it asserts that
the period before 1962 was an age of innocence, a period of laissez-faire, wherein the state played no role in relation to migration
flows (Deakin 1970: 47; Carter, Harris and Joshi 1987: 335; Miles and
Solomos 1987: 88-9).
Consequently, when viewed from the perspective of the late 1980s,
what has changed in the period since the late 1940s has been relative
rather than absolute in character. That is to say, there is nothing new
about refugee migrations or about the migration of the bourgeoisie
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refugee migrations
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Tripartite
Conference in
Potsdam
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100) but it had regained its pre-war level by 1950, and by 1956, it was
twice the 1936 level. Gross National Product increased from $23.1
billion in 1950 to $52.6 billion in 1958 and industrial production
tripled between 1949 and 1959. Integral to this successful expansion
of capitalism was an increase in the labour force from 13.6 million
persons in 1949 to 19.6 million in 1959 while unemployment fell
from 8.8 per cent of manpower in 1949 to 1 per cent in 1959. A
key component of this increased labour force consisted of the migrant population of German origin which was transferred or expelled
from Eastern and south-eastern Europe in the course of redrawing
the boundaries of nation states and negotiating respective spheres of
influence between Western and Eastern political blocs (Schechtman
1962: 315-7; Marrus 1985:330-1).
But it was not only the migration of expellees and refugees from
Eastern Europe that added to the population and the labour force
of West Germany. In addition, in the post-war Cold War period,
there was a continuing migration of refugees from Eastern Europe,
and especially East Germany, into West Germany. This movement of
population was composed largely of people who emigrated illegally
or in violation of government policy rather than of people formally
expelled from the territory in which they were living. After 1948, this
refugee migration to the West became increasingly difficult with the
formation of Communist governments in Eastern Europe and with
the subsequent sealing of the borders, although the peculiar situation of Berlin continued to permit relatively easy access to the West
for those who lived in the Eastern sector of the city or who could
enter that sector.
In 1949, formal procedures for granting political asylum were established in West Germany, permitting a more precise enumeration
of the flow of refugees into the country. In 1950, 197,000 people
entered West Germany as refugees, the figures for the following
three years being 165,000, 182,000 and 331,000 respectively. By
1952, there were nearly 200,000 anti-Communist refugees living
in various camps and centres in Berlin and West Germany. This
exodus continued for a decade more from 1951, during which time
approximately 3.5 million people entered West Germany from East
Germany. This migration was finally terminated in 1961 with the
building of the Berlin Wall (Marrus 1985: 354-5; Esser and Korte
1985: 169; Bade 1987: 151).
A similar relationship between refugee migration and the expansion of the national labour force can be found in the work of the
International Refugee Organization (IRO). The IRO was established
by the United Nations in December 1946 to organize the repatria-
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political asylum
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refugee resettlement
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But the silence about the migration of refugees within and into
Europe is not the only silence within the political economy of migration. It also fails to acknowledge the migration of skilled non-manual labour and of capitalists. Assessing the scale and significance of
these migrations within Western Europe since 1945 is difficult because of the limited academic attention devoted to the phenomenon
and of the absence of adequate official statistics. Both factors reflect
a broader determinant. These migration flows are accepted as part
of the normal and necessary working of the capitalist economy and
are therefore not considered worthy of identification within the political system as being the source of alleged political and ideological
problems for the indigenous population. Because such migrations
have not been identified by leading politicians and by sections of the
working class as problematic, there is no problem to document and,
therefore, no need to investigate the occurrence, scale and determinants of such migrations.
Throughout Western Europe since 1945, there has been a close
relationship between the migration of semi- and unskilled labourers seeking to enter manual wage labour and the movement of indigenous labour into a variety of semi- and highly skilled non-manual jobs, especially in the tertiary or service sector of the economy
(Bhning 1984). Thus, this specific migration has served to fill positions in the hierarchy of wage labour vacated by indigenous workers
as a result of the availability of better paid jobs, or jobs involving
more attractive work and/or conditions. But this form of internal occupational mobility has not been sufficient to ensure that all salaried,
non-manual positions in tile economy have been filled by indigenous
labour.
First, in the age of the transnational company, staff are transferred from one branch to another in a different part of the world
as an alternative to the recruitment and employment of indigenous
labour, partly in order to create a career structure for non-manual,
salaried staff and partly to obviate local labour shortages of highly
skilled non-manual labour. Second, there is an international labour
market for various forms of highly specialized, skilled non-manual
labour. In situations of scarcity, such labour can be highly mobile
in response to high salaries offered in different parts of the world,
especially where the training of such labour is very expensive and/
or where it is only required for relatively short periods of time (as
for example in the case of oil exploration). In these latter circumstances, the recruitment of non-manual workers from outside the
nation-state as a form of migrant labour might be chosen as the most
suitable solution to the need to recruit skilled non-manual labour.
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internal
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multinational firms
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Export Processing
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Britain
The other category, those given leave to enter Britain for business
purposes, includes two groups of people who unfortunately (but sig-
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nificantly) are not separately aggregated. The first are those who enter Britain to undertake self-employment or to establish a business,
or to join or take over an existing business. As with the work permit
system, there is a long history to the development of the regulations
governing the entry of people seeking to establish themselves as capitalists. The most recent, important changes occurred in 1980, as a result of which those currently seeking to enter Britain for the purpose
of self-employment or to establish, to join or to take over a business
must have a minimum investment of 150,000 and must demonstrate that this investment will create new, full-time employment for
persons already settled in Britain. The intention of these conditions
is to prevent the entry of petit bourgeois capitalists (especially from
the Indian subcontinent and Cyprus) intending to establish small
shops, restaurants and manufacturing activities dependent on family
labour (Macdonald 1987: 204).
The second group includes those people who are engaged on a
temporary business visit. The criteria employed by immigration officials to permit entry for such purposes are probably detailed in the
Immigration Rules which are not published. One assumes that a
large proportion of those permitted entry are capitalists or company
managers and technical staff (including sales staff) who are engaged
on official company business and who may stay for a few days or
weeks (but perhaps months) at the most. How many become permanent settlers is impossible to determine from these statistics alone.
Again, when assessing the significance of the scale of this migration
into Britain, it should be noted that the statistics exclude nationals of
EEC countries.
Table 1 shows that the number of aliens (including Commonwealth
citizens) granted entry to Britain for business purposes has almost
doubled between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s, and that, during the 1980s, the British state has permitted around or in excess of
three-quarters of a million of aliens to enter Britain annually for such
purposes. If numbers really are a crucial indicator of the problematic
consequences of a migrant presence, this is a figure that we might
have expected to generate considerable political alarm and controversy within Britain. The fact that it has not done so, along with the
fact that academic interest in migration on such a scale has been very
limited, is therefore highly significant.
The silence about these migrations within the writing of Castles
and other Marxist theorists is puzzling because, in principle, an
explanation for them can be found with reference to the capital accumulation process. The increasing concentration and centralization of capital within the world economic system is associated with
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political alarm
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capital export, and hence with the increased mobility of the owners
and agents of capital. Perhaps the explanation for the silence is to
be found in the fact that a research focus on such migrations seems
more likely to reveal privilege rather than exploitation, although this
is not an especially good reason to ignore processes which are integral to our understanding of the expansion of the capitalist mode of
production on a world scale. Yet, even if we were to explore such a
theoretical explanation, it would leave unanalysed the mediating role
of the state in all international migration flows.
autonomous state
In the previous section of the paper, we have identified certain migrations which have been ignored and/or which cannot be easily explained by a capital accumulation theory of migration. We now turn
to an evaluation of Castles claim that, in post-1945 Europe, the state
was an absent force in relation to the pre-1973 development of migration flows. We criticize this interpretation and highlight the central
and partially autonomous role of the state in the regulation of post1945 migration flows by considering migration to Britain between
1945 and the early 1950s (Isaac 1954). These migration flows were
composed largely of people from the Irish Republic, from Poland,
from the Baltic states, and from the Ukraine, although there were
also small movements of people from north west Europe. Hereafter,
we ignore the migration of people from the Republic of Ireland
because, by virtue of defining citizens of the Republic as in effect
British citizens, the state was not able to control this migration. But
these other populations, by virtue of being defined in law as aliens,
were subject to state regulation on entry and after taking up residence in Britain (Miles 1989b).
The British state intervened in several ways to structure these migrations. First, because the migrants were aliens, the state necessarily provided the political/legal framework for members of the Polish
armed forces and their dependents to remain and settle in Britain,
and for Displaced Persons to enter Britain (Miles and Solomos 1987:
85-6). Second, the state actively recruited and screened the Displaced
Persons, not only to identify war criminals and fascist sympathisers, but also to ensure that they would be productive workers.
Representatives of the Ministry of Labour handpicked those granted permission to enter Britain from amongst those who volunteered
with preference going to men of labouring type who are hardy and
of good physical standard... and those prepared to leave behind their
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displaced persons
enables the Department [of Labour] both to put these foreign workers into specific jobs and to keep them in those jobs. The sanction
that lies at hand to guard against noncompliance with these landing
conditions is deportation of the workers concerned to the Displaced
Persons camps in Europe, and this sanction has from the very beginning proved to be an extremely effective one. Besides being kept out
of inessential industries, European Volunteer Workers who have
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been brought into this country could not for any length of time remain unemployed at public expense.
recruitment
These restrictions were not however permanent: in 1951, the government lifted all conditions of the sale of their labour power once the
individual had been resident in Britain for three years (Kay and Miles
1988: 229-30).
The decision to impose these conditions reveals a dialectic of economic, political and ideological rationality. In part, the British state
sought to ensure that specific industries which were short of labour
had a guaranteed workforce for at least three years. But it was also
the case that their formal legal status as aliens facilitated the states
decision to constitute these migrants as a form of unfree wage labour
(Freeman and Spencer 1980: 63-4). In other words, it was politically
possible to deny certain basic rights to non-citizens, a denial that was
very difficult to legitimate in the case of migrants who were British
citizens.
European refugees had been exhausted as a source of labour before the end of the 1940s but the demand for labour remained high.
British employers continued to rely on Irish labour, along with a
limited recruitment under contract from elsewhere in Europe, especially Italy (Miles and Phizacklea 1984: 24; Duffield 1988: 11-14)
but they were unable to fill all the emergent vacancies from these
sources. This was the key domestic economic determinant of the
increased migration from British colonial and ex-colonial societies
which began in the late 1940s and which expanded during the 1950s,
although it was facilitated by the legal status of such people as British
citizens. Unlike with the migrations considered above, the state was,
with one exception, not directly involved in recruitment. Rather, in
the context of a long tradition of emigration from the Caribbean (e.g.
Thomas-Hope 1986; Petras 1988), this migration was largely spontaneous and took the form of an informal chain migration, although
some employers did recruit labour directly in Barbados (Sivanandan
1982: 102; Layton-Henry 1984: 23).
Although the state did not actively recruit labour on a significant
scale in the 1950s, it was not an absent force (Carter, Harris and
Joshi 1987). The state in fact intervened in two important ways. First,
the absence of state-organized recruitment of labour from the colonies and ex-colonies was in itself a form of intervention. The decision
not to recruit such labour was a conscious decision which racialized
the migrants in such a way that they were deemed unacceptable.
According to a prominent civil servant (cited in Joshi and Carter
1984: 59):
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Second, between 1948 and the mid-1950s, the British state intervened directly in the process of colonial and ex-colonial migration
using various covert administrative measures, some illegal (Carter,
Harris and Joshi 1987: 336-7). The measures varied according to the
Commonwealth or colonial status of the potential entrants. In the
case of the West Indies, for example, Carter, Harris and Joshi have
documented that (1987: 336):
Governors were asked to tamper with shipping lists and schedules to
place migrant workers at the back of the queue; to cordon off ports
to prevent passport-holding stowaways from boarding ships and to
delay the issue of passports to migrants. This last measure was also
adopted by India and Pakistan where the ... Governments refused
passports if migrants had no firm prospect of establishing themselves. Police reports were carried out at the request of the Home
Office to establish the basis of these prospects.
Commonwealth
Immigrants
Act of 1962
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wished to stay here and take their chance. If there were any assurance
that these people could in fact be sent away when they had served
their purpose, this proposition might be less unacceptable.
state intervention
In addition, the state did not actively recruit in the Caribbean and
other colonial and ex-colonial formations because of its concern over
the creation of a race relations problem in Britain (Carter, Harris
and Joshi 1987: 345). State officials, along with the media and sections of the working class, constructed the imagined community
which constituted the English/British nation in terms of the idea
of race (Miles 1987a: 38-40). Coloured people were defined as an
alien race whose presence constituted a threat to the British way of
life.
In the light of all this evidence, what Castles et al. identify as the
beginning of the period of the British states intervention in the process of migration, the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962, was
really the formal culmination of a process of state intervention (and
racialisation) which began soon after the end of the war. The state
did not restrict colonial and ex-colonial migration through a formally
codified and publically visible immigration policy, in part because of
an apparent continued commitment to the idea of a free and equal
Commonwealth of nation-states. Similarly, the British state intervened in the process of migration through the recruitment, control
and provision of settlement assistance to Eastern European refugees,
practices which suggest that from the British states point of view,
not all of those people who were born outside of the spatial boundaries of the British nation-state were defined as equally suitable sources
of wage labour.
More generally, comparative research on post-1945 migration to
Europe reveals important differences in the form and consequences
of state intervention to regulate migration flows (e.g. Freeman 1979;
Edye 1987). One of the more general conclusions to emerge from
these studies is that the state has not acted consistently in an instrumentalist fashion, seeking to serve only the interests of capital. This
is in part because there is no single interest of capital in relation to
labour migration and, in part, because the partially autonomous existence of the state is grounded in the necessity to mediate not only the
competing demands of different fractions of capital but also to guarantee the political and ideological conditions for the reproduction of
the capitalist mode of production within a given national territory.
For example, there was conflict between Die Bundesvereinigung
der Deutschen Arbeitgeberverbaede (BDA), the West German employers federation, and the German state from the early 1970s. When
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nationality
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Conclusion
The tradition of the political economy or migration, as represented
in the work of Castles and his various collaborators, and despite its
real strengths, has failed to highlight and explain certain significant
international migrations, and to adequately specify the significance
of the role of the state in organizing and regulating international migration flows since 1945. Thus, insofar as there is reason to believe
that the migration of refugees, of skilled non-manual labour and of
the bourgeoisie itself will continue during the epoch of postmodern
capitalism, we need to elaborate upon, in order to develop, this theoretical tradition, not only to explain the present and the future, but
also the past.
In order to do this, it is necessary to highlight the role of both the
nation as a spatial and political unit, and of the state as an institutional complex in the analysis of international migration processes
(Miles 1987b: 181-6). In this respect, we reinforce the point made by
Zolberg that (1983a: 4):
it is the political organisation of contemporary world space into mutually exclusive and legally sovereign territorial states which delineates the specificity of international migration as a distinctive process
and hence as an object of theoretical reflection.
historical
articulation
But in so doing, we do not abstract political relations from economic and political relations in the way that he appears to do. This is
because the rise of the nation state was dialectically related to the
emergence of the capitalist mode of production, a mode of production that had profound implications for spatial mobility as a result of
the new social relations of production. We therefore seek to explain
international migration flows in relation to the historical articulation
between the process of capital accumulation and the reproduction of
the nation state, an articulation which is mediated by the state, the
role of which is to guarantee the reproduction of the dominant mode
of production and, hence, the nation state itself.
In this context, refugee migrations appear far less anomalous. If,
following Zolberg, such migrations result from the historical process
of nation-state formation (l983b: 30), then that is a process mediated by the emergence of the world economic system as structured
by the capitalist mode of production. Furthermore, it is mediated by
the interventions of national states as they seek to, in turn, mediate
the articulation between the reproduction of the mode of production
and the nation-state which provides the political and spatial context
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for the interrelated activities of capital and labour. This is well illustrated by the example previously cited of the migrations of Kenyan
and Ugandan Asians to Britain, both of which resulted from a process of nation-state formation after decolonization in the context
of the promotion of capitalist development by means of, inter alia,
Africanization. And the process of nation-state formation is still far
from complete in Africa, not to mention the Middle East, Southern
Africa and the Indian subcontinent. all spatial contexts which generate large refugee migrations.
But the articulations and mediations referred to can be, in specific
conjunctures. even more precise in advancing the interests of capital.
The massive movements of refugees within Europe immediately after the Second World War arose not only from the consequences of
fascism, but also from the processes of redrawing the boundaries of
nation-states and of giving a new political content to nation-state formation in Eastern Europe. Yet the resolution of the problem of stateless populations resident within Western Europe was to a significant
degree facilitated by the new phase of capitalist accumulation that
was launched in the late 1940s, a process that required significant
additions to the size of the national labour forces. In this conjuncture, a large proportion of a relatively surplus (refugee) population
was constituted in the realm of political relations, and drawn into the
nation states of Western Europe in order to fill vacant positions in
the hierarchy of wage labour (Kay and Miles 1988: 231). The concept
of refugee-worker is helpful in conceptualizing this process (Kay and
Miles 1988: 215). Thus, what is new about the refugee crisis of the
1980s is not its existence per se, but rather that the scope for this new
surplus population to be drawn into the capitalist world economy is,
comparatively, considerably constrained.
A further context in which to examine the articulation and mediation of the capitalist mode of production. the nation-state as a spatialpolitical structure and the state as an institutional complex, is the
interplay of different international migration flows. A more accurate
comprehension of these migrations would focus not only on the migration of semi- and unskilled manual labourers from the periphery
to the centre of the world economy, but also upon the migration of
skilled managers, technicians and professionals within the centre
and from the centre to the periphery. Arguably, the latter has become more important than the former in the past fifteen years, at
least in Europe, in the light of the fact that the export of capital has
to a significant extent replaced the import of manual labour. Such
a focus returns us centrally to the task of analysing the process of
capital accumulation on a world scale, not in order to understand the
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racism
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italists and their various agents. Thus, alongside the cultural transformations initiated by, for example, the increased Muslim presence
in Western Europe, we might also begin to consider the transformations of Western European nation states that constitute the processes
of Americanization and Japanization.
To cite a single example, Western European city centres have been
transformed by, inter alia, the establishment of a range of fast food
outlets. Both the companies themselves, and the commodity that
they supply, constitute a major cultural transformation about which
there is a comparative silence in comparison with, for example, agitation against the appearance of a mosque. Thus, the reasons why
certain cultural transformations consequent upon certain migrations
become the object of racist agitation while others consequent upon
other migrations are ignored is an important academic and political
question which leads us to consider both the nature of racism and
the role of the state in its reproduction. And as a prelude to such a
study, we need first to undertake an analysis of the migration of the
bourgeoisie and its agents to assess the material foundation for these
hidden cultural transformations.
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hidden cultural
transformations
Note
1 This is a revised version of a paper prepared for a conference on Racism and
the Post-Modern City held at the University of Warwick, 29-31 March 1989.
We acknowledge the useful comments by conference participants and by the
Editors of Economy and Society but we take full responsibility for this draft.
References
Bachu, P. (1985) Twice Migrants: East African Sikh Settlers in Britain,
London: Tavistock.
Bade, K.J. (1987) Transatlantic Emigration and Continental
Immigration: the German Experience Past and Present, in K.J.
Bade (ed.), Population, Labour and Migration in 19th and 20th
Century Germany, Leamington Spa: Berg.
Beijer, G.J. (1969) Modern Patterns of International Migratory
Movements, in J.A. Jackson (ed.), Migration, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Bhning, R. (1984) Studies in International Labour Migration, London:
Macmillan.
Bolaria, S. (1984) On the Study of Race Relations, in J. Fry (ed.),
Contradictions in Canadian Society, Toronto: J. Wiley & Sons.
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Class racism
Etienne Balibar
In the 1980s, the concept of racism was high on the academic agenda. The
philosopher Etienne Balibar published extensively on the issue. At that time,
many others treated this concept in a one-dimensional, monocausal sense.
They argued that racism was intrinsically rooted in the colonial project, often
starting from the assumption that the only or anyway, the most important
racism is that with black people as its object. Balibar was one of the first to
demonstrate how the problematisation of some categories of non-black natives e.g. the labouring classes or the dangerous classes has remarkable congruence with those of some categories of blacks. By showing that
particular sections of the (native, white) working class can also be victims
of racism class racism in this case it became clear that the history of
colonialism is not a sufficiently adequate starting point for theoretical discussion about the nature and significance of racism in Europe. In the same vein,
Balibar gave suggestions for a new theoretical approach to racism.
Academic analyses of racism, though according chief importance to
the study of racist theories, none the less argue that sociological racism is a popular phenomenon. Given this supposition, the development of racism within the working class (which, to committed socialists and communists, seems counter to the natural order of things)
comes to be seen as the effect of a tendency allegedly inherent in
the masses. Institutional racism finds itself projected into the very
construction of that psycho-sociological category that is the masses.
We must therefore attempt to analyse the process of displacement
which, moving from classes to masses, presents these latter both as
the privileged subjects of racism and its favoured objects.
Can one say that a social class, by its situation and its ideology
(not to mention its identity), is predisposed to racist attitudes and behaviour? This question has mainly been debated in connection with
the rise of Nazism, first speculatively and then later by taking vari-
sociological racism
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etienne balibar
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heterogeneity
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antagonistic social
functions
etienne balibar
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race
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new racism
etienne balibar
the Jews, the hereditary definition of the raza (and the corresponding procedures for establishing who could be accorded a certificate
of purity) serves in effect both to isolate an internal aristocracy and
to confer upon the whole of the Spanish people a fictive nobility, to
make it a people of masters at the point when, by terror, genocide,
slavery and enforced Christianization, it was conquering and dominating the largest of the colonial empires. In this exemplary line of
development, class racism was already transformed into nationalist
racism, though it did not, in the process, disappear.8
What is, however, much more decisive for the matter in hand
is the overturning of values we see occurring from the first half of
the nineteenth century onwards. Aristocratic racism (the prototype
of what analysts today call self-referential racism, which begins by
elevating the group which controls the discourse to the status of a
race hence the importance of its imperialist legacy in the colonial
context: however lowly their origins and no matter how vulgar their
interests or their manners, the British in India and the French in
Africa would all see themselves as members of a modern nobility) is
already indirectly related to the primitive accumulation of capital, if
only by its function in the colonizing nations. The industrial revolution, at the same time as it creates specifically capitalist relations of
production, gives rise to the new racism of the bourgeois era (historically speaking, the first neoracism): the one which has as its target
the proletariat in its dual status as exploited population (one might
even say super-exploited, before the beginnings of the social state)
and politically threatening population.
Louis Chevalier has described the relevant network of significations in detail.9 It is at this point, with regard to the race of labourers that the notion of race becomes detached from its historicotheological connotations to enter the field of equivalences between
sociology, psychology, imaginary biology and the pathology of the
social body. The reader will recognize here the obsessive themes of
police/detective, medical and philanthropic literature, and hence of
literature in general (of which it is one of the fundamental dramatic
mechanisms and one of the political keys of social realism). For the
first time those aspects typical of every procedure of racialization of
a social group right down to our own day are condensed in a single
discourse: material and spiritual poverty, criminality, congenital vice
(alcoholism, drugs), physical and moral defects, dirtiness, sexual
promiscuity and the specific diseases which threaten humanity with
degeneracy. And there is a characteristic oscillation in the presentation of these themes: either the workers themselves constitute a
degenerate race or it is their presence and contact with them or in-
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institutional
racialization of
manual labour
etienne balibar
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Like all violence, this is inseparable from a resistance and also from
a sense of guilt. The quantity of normal work can only be recognized and extracted from the workers body retrospectively, once its
limits have been fixed by struggle: the rule is overexploitation, the
tendential destruction of the organism (which will be metaphorized
as degeneracy) and, at the very least, excess in the repression of the
intellectual functions involved in work. This is an unbearable process
for the worker, but one which is no more acceptable, without ideological and phantasmatic elaboration, for the workers masters: the
fact that there are body-men means that there are men without bodies.
That the body-men are men with fragmented and mutilated bodies
(if only by their separation from intelligence) means that the individuals of each of these types have to be equipped with a superbody,
and that sport and ostentatious virility have to be developed, if the
threat hanging over the human race is to be fended off13
Only this historical situation, these specific social relations make
it possible fully to understand the process of aestheticization (and
therefore of sexualization, in fetishist mode) of the body which characterizes all the variants of modern racism, by giving rise either to
the stigmatization of the physical marks of racial inferiority or to
the idealization of the human type of the superior race. They cast
light upon the true meaning of the recourse to biology in the history
of racist theories, which has nothing whatever to do with the influence of scientific discoveries, but is, rather, a metaphor for and
an idealization of the somatic phantasm. Academic biology, and
many other theoretical discourses, can fulfil this function, provided
they are articulated to the visibility of the body, its ways of being and
behaving, its limbs and its emblematic organs. We should here, in
accordance with the hypotheses formulated elsewhere regarding
neo-racism and its link with the recent ways in which intellectual
labour has been broken down into isolated operations, extend the investigation by describing the somatization of intellectual capacities,
and hence their racialization, a process visible everywhere from the
instrumentalization of IQ to the aestheticization of the executive as
decision maker, intellectual and athlete.14
But there is yet another determining aspect in the constitution of
class racism. The working class is a population that is both heterogeneous and fluctuating, its boundaries being by definition imprecise, since they depend on ceaseless transformations of the labour
process and movements of capital. Unlike aristocratic castes, or even
the leading fractions of the bourgeoisie, it is not a social caste. What
class racism (and, a fortiori, nationalist class racism, as in the case of
immigrants) tends to produce is, however, the equivalent of a caste
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anthroponomic
practices
etienne balibar
closure at least for one part of the working class. More precisely, it
is maximum possible closure where social mobility is concerned,
combined with maximum possible openness as regards the flows of
proletarianization.
Let us put things another way. The logic of capitalist accumulation involves two contradictory aspects here: on the one hand, mobilizing or permanently de-stabilizing the conditions of life and work,
in such a way as to ensure competition on the labour market, draw
new labour power continually from the industrial reserve army and
maintain a relative over-population; on the other hand, stabilizing
collectivities of workers over long periods (over several generations),
to educate them for work and bond them to companies (and also
to bring into play the mechanism of correspondence between a paternalist political hegemony and a worker familialism). On the one
hand, class condition, which relates purely to the wage relation, has
nothing to do with antecedents or descendants; ultimately, even the
notion of class belonging is devoid of any practical meaning; all that
counts is class situation, hic et nunc. On the other hand, at least a section of the workers have to be the sons of workers, a social heredity has
to be created.15 But with this, in practice, the capacities for resistance
and organization also increase.
It was in response to these contradictory demands that the demographic and immigration policies and policies of urban segregation, which were set in place both by employers and the state from
the middle of the nineteenth century onwards policies which D.
Bertaux has termed anthroponomic practicesl6 were born. These
have two sides to them: a paternalistic aspect (itself closely connected
to nationalist propaganda) and a disciplinary aspect, an aspect of social warfare against the savage masses and an aspect of civilizing
(in all senses of the term) these same masses. This dual nature we
can still see perfectly illustrated today in the combined social and
police approach to the suburbs and ghettos. It is not by chance that
the current racist complex grafts itself on to the population problem
(with its series of connotations: birth rate, depopulation and overpopulation, interbreeding, urbanization, social housing, public
health, unemployment) and focuses preferentially on the question of
the second generation of what are here improperly called immigrants
with the object of finding out whether they will carry on as the previous generation (the immigrant workers properly so-called) the
danger being that they will develop a much greater degree of social
combativeness, combining class demands with cultural demands; or
whether they will add to the number of declassed individuals, occupying an unstable position between subproletarianization and exit
04-03-10 15:58
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from the working class. This is the main issue for class racism, both
for the dominant class and for the popular classes themselves: to
mark with generic signs populations which are collectively destined
for capitalist exploitation or which have to be held in reserve for
it at the very moment when the economic process is tearing them
away from the direct control of the system (or, quite simply, by mass
unemployment, is rendering the previous controls inoperative). The
problem is to keep in their place, from generation to generation,
those who have no fixed place; and for this, it is necessary that they
have a genealogy. And also to unify in the imaginary the contradictory imperatives of nomadism and social heredity, the domestication
of generations and the disqualification of resistances.
If these remarks are well founded, then they may throw some
light on what are themselves the contradictory aspects of what I shall
not hesitate to call the self-racialization of the working class. There
is here a whole spectrum of social experiences and ideological forms
we might mention: from the organization of collectivities of workers
around symbols of ethnic or national origin to the way in which a
certain workerism, centred on criteria of class origins (and, consequently, on the institution of the working-class family, on the bond
which only the family establishes between the individual and his
class) and the over-valorization of work (and, consequently, the virility which it alone confers), reproduces, within the ambit of class
consciousness, some part of the set of representations of the race
of workers.17 Admittedly, the radical forms of workerism, at least in
France, were produced more by intellectuals and political apparatuses
aiming to represent the working class (from Proudhon down to the
Communist Party) than by the workers themselves. The fact remains
that they correspond to a tendency on the part of the working class to
form itself into a closed body, to preserve gains that have been made
and traditions of struggle and to turn back against bourgeois society
the signifiers of class racism. It is from this reactive origin that the
ambivalence characterizing workerism derives: the desire to escape
from the condition of exploitation and the rejection of the contempt
to which it is subject. Absolutely nowhere is this ambivalence more
evident than in its relation to nationalism and to xenophobia. To the
extent that in practice they reject official nationalism (when they do
reject it), the workers produce in outline a political alternative to the
perversion of class struggles. To the extent, however, that they project on to foreigners their fears and resentment, despair and defiance,
it is not only that they are fighting competition; in addition, and much
more profoundly, they are trying to escape their own exploitation.
It is a hatred of themselves, as proletarians in so far as they are in
self-racialization of
the working class
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reciprocal
determination
etienne balibar
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etienne balibar
04-03-10 15:58
This article is about the social process of assimilation and the spatial pattern
of concentration and dispersal. Ethnic concentrations are often associated
with segregation and regarded as a barrier for integration. The geographer
Ceri Peach, however, argues that this common-sense take on spatial concentration is rooted in the early American literature on segregation. Peach gives
a critical review of this theoretical literature, arguing that it fails to make a
clear distinction between the ghetto and the ethnic enclave and presents
an alternative model for understanding spatial concentration. He also presents clear definitions and concrete operationalisations for the concepts of
the ghetto and the enclave, and discusses their theoretical implications.
This article is a good example of the kind of scholarship that does not take
common-sense notions for granted, but critically questions theoretical and
methodological issues.
This chapter examines the reasons behind the political fear of ethnic
concentrations. It asks the question: is segregation always bad? It examines how a confusion of terminology in the early American analysis of ethnic and racial segregation has produced a malignant effect
on the literature, politics and policies affecting the ways in which
minorities are accommodated in west European cities.
The paper is, in a way, a piece of intellectual archaeology, but
it has a potent message for our current understanding of segregation and policies of minority accommodation. The key point is that
there is a major difference between the ghetto and the ethnic enclave. However, American sociology for a long time failed to make
this distinction and, worse still, linked the ghetto to the enclave to
the suburb as the first of three spatial stages on the inevitable process
of ethnic assimilation. The problem of intellectual archaeology is to
separate (1) theory and methodology on the one hand from (2) models and application on the other. The theory and methodology devel-
segregation
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assimilation
ceri peach
oped in the literature are correct; the model of application has been
far too restrictive. The truth of the matter is that there are two basic
models of minority incorporation: the assimilationist (melting pot)
and the multiculturalist (mosaic). The enclave is part of the assimilationist model; the ghetto is confined to the multiculturalist model.
Multiculturalism is a necessary condition for the ghetto, but it is not
a sufficient condition.
The central theory in the study of the spatial patterns of ethnic
residential segregation is that there is a direct relationship between
the social process of assimilation and the spatial pattern of dispersal
(Park 1926; Duncan & Lieberson 1959; Peach 1975; Massey 1984).
This view is, I believe, correct. The problem is that assimilation is not
the only model for ethnic accommodation and integration.
However, taking the theory first, seventy five years ago, Robert
Park argued:
It is because social relations are so frequently and so inevitably correlated with spatial relations; because physical distances, so frequently are, or seem to be, the indexes of social distances, that statistics
have any meaning whatsoever for sociology (Park 1926: 18).
04-03-10 15:58
583
fine. Books were written on the topic (for example, Gordon 1964).
However, Lieberson (1963) provides us with a helpful definition: assimilation has taken place when it is no longer possible to predict
anything about an individual or a group on the basis of their ethnic
origins than it is for any member of the population as a whole.
Operationalization meant taking multidimensional comparisons
of the minority population in relation to the target of the core society. Structural assimilation, or the large scale entry into prime group
(close friendship circles) of the core society was regarded by Gordon
as the key step (Gordon 1964: 81). Thereafter, intermarriage and other identificational changes were seen by Gordon to follow inevitably.
Thus operationally, assimilation was treated as a multi-dimensional
phenomenon and its progress was measured by examining longitudinal change of its many variables (Gordon 1964). Acquisition of the
English language, socio-economic status, out-marriage, citizenship
were some of the variables examined.
Segregation also proved problematic to operationalize, largely because of the different ways in which it was conceptualized (Peach
1981). Residential segregation is also a multidimensional phenomenon. A large number of different techniques, differing not only in
mathematical formula but in conceptualization of segregation itself have been suggested (Peach 1981). Massey and Denton (1993)
have suggested a battery of five measures to measure what they have
termed the hyper segregation of African Americans. However, a review paper by Duncan and Duncan (1955) effectively concentrated
most subsequent work on the Index of Dissimilarity (id). id measures the percentage of a population which would have to shift its
area of residence in order to replicate the distribution of the population with which it is being compared. id is a measure of unevenness with similar characteristics and values to the economists Gini
Index. Liebersons P* (Lieberson 1981), a measure of isolation, has
also come into more general use since the 1980s. Unlike id it is an
asymmetric measure. It recognizes that the degree of exposure of a
small group to a large group is different from the exposure of the
large group to the small group. Unlike id its use has tended to be
descriptive rather than analytical in correlation regressions.
multidimensionality
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social interaction
ceri peach
to speak English. They also showed that high degrees of out-marriage correlated with low levels of segregation (Duncan & Lieberson
1959; Lieberson 1963: 156-158). Their argument was taken further
by Peach (1980a; 1980b) who demonstrated that Kennedys (1944;
1952) triple melting pot (Protestants, Catholics and Jews) in New
Haven, Connecticut, did not exist. The Irish Poles and Italians in the
supposed Catholic melting pot were all highly segregated from each
other. Intermarriage rates between these groups were lower than
statistically expected while Irish intermarriage with the (Protestant)
British, Germans and Scandinavians, from whom they had low levels of segregation, were higher than statistically expected. Residential
segregation was the clearest predictor of group intermarriage.
Thus, residential mixing was hypothesized as the key to social interaction. If residential mixing is limited to ones own ethnic group,
then the values and taken-for-granted nature of the groups beliefs
will be reinforced. If mixing takes place with outsiders, then takenfor-granted values, language and expected marriage partner choice is
likely to become modified. Residential mixing is a necessary but not
sufficient condition for social interaction. However, where residential mixing takes place, it is likely to promote social interaction.
The hypothesis formed itself into what we may conceive of as a
simple three stage cycle. The first generation of immigrants clustered
together in high concentrations and high segregation in the central
city. There they were unassimilated, few spoke English; overwhelmingly they married their own ethnic group. The second generation
moved a little away from their inner city port of entry; they were less
segregated; a higher proportion spoke English; a greater proportion
married out. The third generation suburbanized, spoke English and
intermarried fully. They were assimilated.
04-03-10 15:58
585
argues for the disappearance of difference either through conforming to a dominant structure (as in Anglo conformism) or through
merging (as in the melting pot). Integration or plurality or multiculturalism means accommodation while maintaining a separate identity. Integration is often economic while maintaining social closure.
The two models will thus be expected to produce different spatial outcomes. Assimilation requires spatial diffusion. The minority and majority become socially and residentially intermixed.
Multiculturalism or integration (as opposed to assimilation) posits
a plural society in which social encapsulation and residential concentrations and separation, through higher degrees of segregation,
remain.
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imposition
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586
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differentiation
ceri peach
They did not distinguish between the assimilationist and the pluralistic models. They did not distinguish between the ghetto and the
enclave. The ghetto and the immigrant colony were conceptualized
as interchangeable terms.
The Chinatowns, the Little Sicilians, and the other so-called ghettos with which students of urban life are familiar are special types
of a more general species of natural area which the conditions and
tendencies of city life inevitably produce (...) the keener, the more energetic and the more ambitious very soon emerge from their ghettos
and immigrant colonies and move into an area of second immigrant
settlement, or perhaps into a cosmopolitan area in which the members of several immigrant and racial groups live side by side (Park
1926: 9).
Worse still, not only did the Chicago School fail to distinguish between the ghetto and the enclave, but it believed that the ghetto was
a stage within the melting pot model. It saw the ghetto as the first
stage of three generational progression of (1) ghetto, (2) enclave, (3)
suburb. In this fundamental misunderstanding the Chicago School
falsified the ethnic history of long settled groups, misunderstood the
processes affecting African Americans and mis-forecast their future
in American cities.
For the Chicago School, the terms ghetto and enclave were
not problematized. Furthermore, it was assumed that the outward
movement of minority ethnic populations away from the inner city
equated to dispersal. A series of researchers in the lower foothills
of the Chicago School busied themselves demonstrating the unstoppable outward diffusion of minority groups from their inner city segregated ports of entry to their inevitable suburban diffusion (Cressey
1938; Ford 1950; Kiang 1968). However, while they demonstrated
the progressive shift of the center of gravity of ethnic groups away
from the cbd over time, in the case of African Americans, outward
movement did not always equate to dispersal. The ghetto moved out
with them like the tongue of a glacier.
Diagrammatically, Figure 1 shows the outward movement of the
centre of gravity of the ethnic populations of Chicago, over time,
from the cbd. The diagram also shows the decrease in the degree
of concentration as the suburbanizing process continues. The expected relationship between segregation, measured by the index of
dissimilarity and assimilation is shown in Figure 2. The combined
relationship between outward movement, decreasing segregation
and increasing assimilation is represented in Figure 3.
04-03-10 15:58
587
However, for the African American population, the level of segregation remained obstinately fixed on the high side of the assimilation
diagram, even when the center of gravity of the group showed movement away from the central city (Figure 4).
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universal validity
The Negro migrant to the city will, without question, follow the
same pattern of mobility blazed by the successive waves of immigrants who settled our central cities. Just as the immigrant underwent a process of Americanization the immigrant Negro is undergoing a process of urbanization. The Negro is already rising and
will continue to rise on the social-economic scale as measured by
education, occupation, income and the amenities of urban existence.
Furthermore, the Negro, in time, will diffuse through the metropolitan area and occupy outlying suburban as well as central city areas
(Hauser 1958: 65).
This view was deeply mistaken. It equated upward mobility with spatial diffusion. It regarded the process of ghetto formation and dispersal as the same as the three generation process of other immigrant
groups. It regarded time as the independent variable for ghetto dissolution. It was wrong on all counts.
In reality, the African American ghetto was different in kind from
the ethnic enclave of the European and other ethnics. Parks casual
equation of Chinatowns, Little Sicilys and other so-called ghettos
with the black ghetto (Park 1926: 9) was deeply flawed. The black
ghetto was dually segregated; nearly all urban African Americans
lived in such areas; almost the whole population in such areas was
black. The enclaves, on the other hand, were dually dilute. Only a minority of ethnic lived in areas which were associated with them. Very
rarely did they form even a majority of the population of what were
04-03-10 15:58
588
ceri peach
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41
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43
Percent
60
56
52
48
44
40
36
32
28
24
20
16
12
8
4
0
60
56
52
48
44
40
36
32
28
24
20
16
12
8
4
0
Percent
Percent
60
56
52
48
44
40
36
32
28
24
20
16
12
8
4
0
1890
1940
Percent
Percent
60
56
52
48
44
40
36
32
28
24
20
16
12
8
4
0
60
56
52
48
44
40
36
32
28
24
20
16
12
8
4
0
Percent
60
56
52
48
44
40
36
32
28
24
20
16
12
8
4
0
04-03-10 15:58
589
Start
assimilation model
Finish
100
High Segregation
Non Assimilation
0
Low Segregation
Total Assimilation
1950
1960
(45)
(38)
1990
(19)
100
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590
ceri peach
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2
3
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100
% ethinic group
First
generation
INNER CITY
Ch
ang
eo
ver
tim
e
Second
generation
Third
generation
SUBURB
0
Distance from centre
o
Change ver time
Second
50 generation
First 70
generation
30 Third
generation
100
0
Degree of segregation, index of dissimilarity
High segregtion
Low segregtion
Non-assimilation
High assimilation
Non-English-speaking
English-speaking
High in-marriage
Low in-marriage
Wearing of traditional dress
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591
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1930 (76)
1980 (80)
1990 (85)
1970 (92)
100
Table 1
Group
Groups
City
Population
Groups
Ghetto
Population
Total
Percentage
Ghetto
of group
Population Ghettoized
Groups
percentage
Ghetto
Population
Irish
169,568
4,993
14,595
2.9
33.8
German
377,975
53,821
169,649
14.2
31.7
Swedish
140,913
21,581
88,749
15.3
24.3
Russian
169,736
63,416
149,208
37.4
42.5
Czech
122,089
53,301
169,550
43.7
31.4
Italian
181,861
90,407
195,736
49.7
46.2
Polish
401,316
248,024
457,146
61.0
54.3
Negro
233,903
216,846
266,051
92.7
81.5
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592
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ceri peach
Black Population
living in such tracts
100%
111,804
8.4
99% or more
381,347
28.7
90% or more
884,725
66.5
50% or more
1,087,600
81.7
30% or more
1,163,969
87.5
Total Black
Population
1,330,636
Source: Based on data from GeoLytics Census cd +Maps us Census 1990 data
the ghetto-enclave
link
If one compares the Chicago situation in 1930 and 1990 with London
in 1991 (Table 3) the difference in kind rather than degree between
the situation of blacks in the US and Britain is vividly illustrated.
The column heading Percentage of Group Ghettoized simply copies Philpotts category, but refers to the proportion of a group living
in areas arbitrarily defined as those where they form 30% + of an
enumeration district (block).
By failing to distinguish between the ghetto and the ethnic enclave, the two distinct phenomena were linked together as the first
two stages of the three generational model: ghetto enclave suburb. From here it was an easy step to envisage groups occupying
these three positions as occupying places on an escalator. Those at
the bottom of the staircase, in the ghetto, were new arrivals; those
at the top, in the suburbs had been on the staircase longest and had
reached their destination. Those who were half way up had previously been at the bottom and were now on their way to the top.
From this conceptualization, it became easy to see time/space
substitutions in the three generational model. If, for the sake of argument, the Irish were suburbanized and the Poles were still in an
enclave and the African Americans in the ghetto, then it became possible to argue that a generation previously, the Irish were in the enclave and two generations ago, they were in the ghetto. The AfricanAmericans and the Poles were envisaged as representing the first
two stages of the Irish past. In the same way, the contemporarily
suburbanized Irish, predicted the Polish future in the next generation and the African American future in two generations. This, af-
04-03-10 15:58
593
ter all was what Hauser (1958) was predicting. However, while the
Polish/Irish time/space substitution was correct, the Irish future did
not exist for the black population. Nor did the contemporaneously
ghettoized black situation represent the Irish past. No other group
had experienced the hyper segregation of the African Americans.
Table 3 Ghettoization of ethnic groups at
London, 30% cutoff
Group
Groups
Groups
Total
City
Ghetto
Ghetto
Population Population Population
Non-white
1,346,119
Black
Caribbean
Black African
Black Other
721,873
1,589,476
290,968
7,755
22,545
163,635
3,176
8,899
level in Greater
ed
Percentage
Groups
of group
percentage
Ghettoized Ghetto
Population
53.6
45.4
2.6
34.4
2.0
35.6
80,613
347,091
88,887
202,135
25.6
44.0
Pakistani
87,816
1,182
3,359
1.4
35.2
Bangladeshi
85,738
28,280
55,500
33.0
51.0
Chinese
56,579
38
111
0.0
34.2
Other Asian
112,807
176
572
0.2
30.8
Other Other
120,872
209
530
0.2
39.4
Irish born
256,470
1023
2,574
0.4
39.8
Indian
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43
Negroes in Cities
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segregation
by income
ceri peach
been high in the past and had remained high. Hausers comforting
expectation of decreasing segregation with time was a delusion.
The Taeubers also dealt a death blow to another American dream.
This was that economic progress would dissolve racial segregation.
Using Liebersons (1963) technique of indirect standardization, they
calculated how segregated the black population of Chicago would be
from whites, if income differences were the only variable affecting
their distribution. This is achieved by applying the percentage that
African Americans form of each income band in the city population to
the appropriate number of person in each income band in each tract
in the city. For example, if blacks formed 10% of the middle income
group in Chicago, then 10% of the middle income group would be
expected to be black, wherever the middle income group lived and so
forth. Having calculated the expected distribution of black and white
in the city, the degree of segregation between the two groups could be
calculated and compared with the observed level of segregation. On
this basis, the observed level of segregation in Chicago in 1960 was
83 and the expected index was 10. In other words, only 10/83 or 12%
of the observed level of segregation could be attributed to differences
in income (Taeuber & Taeuber 1964). Blacks were segregated from
whites because black, not because they were poorer than whites.
Subsequent work by Massey and Denton (1993: 86) showed
that the intervening years since Taeuber and Taeubers work (pace
William Julius Wilson 1978) had not produced a decline in the significance of race. Massey and Denton demonstrated that irrespective of
income level, poor black were segregated from poor whites, middle
income blacks from middle income whites and rich blacks from rich
whites by the same massive amounts, with indexes over 80 almost
without exception (Table 4).
Table 4 Segregation by income in thirty metropolitan areas with the
largest black populations, 1970-1980
Income Category
Metropolitan area
Northern areas
Boston
85.1
83.9
89.1
Buffalo
85.2
80.0
90.0
Chicago
91.1
85.8
86.3
Cincinnati
81.7
70.9
74.2
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595
Table 4
Continued
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43
Income Category
Metropolitan area
Cleveland
91.6
87.1
86.4
Columbus
80.3
74.6
83.4
Detroit
88.6
85.0
86.4
Gary-Hammond-E.Chicago
90.6
89.5
90.9
Indianapolis
80.8
76.6
80.0
Kansas City
86.1
79.3
84.2
85.4
79.8
78.9
Milwaukee
91.3
87.9
86.3
New York
86.2
81.2
78.6
Newark
85.8
79.0
77.5
Philadelphia
84.9
78.6
81.9
Pittsburgh
82.1
80.6
87.9
St. Louis
87.3
78.4
83.2
San Francisco-Oakland
79.9
73.7
72.1
Average
85.8
80.7
83.2
Atlanta
82.2
77.3
78.2
Baltimore
82.4
72.3
76.8
Birmingham
46.1
40.8
45.2
Dallas-Ft. Worth
83.1
74.4
82.4
Greensboro-Winston Salem
63.2
55.1
70.8
Houston
73.8
65.5
72.7
Memphis
73.8
66.8
69.8
Miami
81.6
78.4
76.5
New Orleans
75.8
63.1
77.8
Norfolk-Virginia Beach
70.1
63.3
72.4
Tampa-St. Petersburg
81.8
76.0
85.7
Washington, D.C.
79.2
67.0
65.4
Average
74.4
66.7
72.8
Southern Areas
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ceri peach
Ethnic Enclave
Positive
Enforced
Voluntary
Expanding
Residual
Real
Symbolic
Threatening
Touristic
Permanent
Temporary
negative
discrimination
04-03-10 15:58
597
as a surrogate for Jewish origin (Lieberson & Waters 1988: 10-11) but
of course not all Jews were of Russian origin nor were all of Russian
origin Jewish. Nathan Kantrowitz (1969) hinted at segregation as a
viable strategy for groups that wished to maintain their ethnic identity, but in a fairly oblique way, arguing only that decreases in the level
of European segregation in American cities should not be expected
to continue for ever.
However, while US government identified the Jewish population as
a religious rather than ethnic group and therefore desisted the census
from enumerating them, the Canadian census harbored no such delicacy. The Canadian census counts the Jewish population as both a religious and as an ethnic group. The levels of Jewish residential segregation in Canadian cities is markedly high (Table 6). In terms of the Index
of Dissimilarity, Jewish segregation is as high as African American segregation in American cities. In Toronto and Montreal, which in 1991
contained the two largest concentrations of the Jewish population of
Canada, the ids were 75 and 82 respectively. The Canadian Jewish population is extremely successful on a socio-economic scale and although
anti Semitism exists in Canada, there is no indication that the levels
of Jewish segregation noted in the table are not the result of positive
wishes for association (Darroch & Marston 1972; Hiebert 1995).
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40
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43
Index of
Dissimilarity
Jewish id
Jewish %
Pop
Jewish
Pop
Total Pop
Toronto
Montreal
Vancouver
Winnipeg
Calgary
75.0
81.9
56.8
71.6
58.2
3.0
2.46
0.68
1.84
114,735
76,780
10,930
11,980
3,893,046
3,127,242
1,602,502
652,364
0.56
4,240
754,033
Perhaps, even more interesting about the Jewish patterns of segregation is the suggestion that it has come about accompanied not only
by upward social mobility but by suburbanization as well.
However, the high indices of dissimilarity for the Jewish population
in Toronto and Montreal are similar to those for African Americans
south of the border, the Jewish population lives in enclaves rather
than ghettos on the black model. The highest percentage that the religious Jewish population formed of any Toronto tract was 70% in 1991
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Europe
ceri peach
and only 2% of the population lived there. Only a third of the Jewish
population lived in areas in which they formed a majority of the tract
population and all of these tracts held a mixed (i.e. non Jewish) population as well (Table 7). In Montreal, the highest percentage which
the Jewish religious population formed of any tract was 90%. Like
Toronto, a third of the Montreal religious Jewish population lived in
tracts where they formed a majority of the population.
In London, although we do not have ethnic census data, it is apparent from other sources that the Jewish population which originally settled in the working class East End at the end of the nineteenth century,
suburbanized, notably to the north western outer fringes of the city
during the twentieth century, but remained concentrated (Newman
1985; Waterman & Kosmin 1986a, 1986b). Such patterns of ethnic
pluralism may be referred to as relocating enclaves (see Figure 5)
There is also evidence from European experience that some affluent minority ethnic populations manifest high levels of segregation.
Glebes work on the Japanese in Dusseldorf (1986) and Whites work
on the Japanese in London (1998) both indicate ids in the seventies.
These groups differ, of course from settled minorities in that they
are largely composed of sojourners who are seconded by their firms
for a period of years. Such concentrations may be thought of as parachuted communities (see Figure 5).
On the other hand, there is considerable evidence that levels of
segregation in European cities do not approach the levels observed
for African Americans and that the European experience is closer to
the ethnic enclave model than to the ghetto (Amersfoort 1974, 1978,
1980, 1982, 1987; Amersfoort & Cortie 1973, 1994; Friedrichs 1998;
Giffinger 1998; Kempen & zekren 1998; Kempen & Van Weesep
1998; Kesteloot & Cortie 1998; Musterd et al. 1998).
Table 7 Percentage of the Religious Jewish Population of Toronto
living in tracts where they formed a given percentage of the
population
Jewish percentage
of tract population
70+
Jewish population
living in such tracts
3,135
2.1
60-69
20,470
13.5
50-59
29,300
19.4
40-49
14,955
9.9
Toronto
151,115
100.0 *
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599
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ceri peach
brick-in-the-pond
model
The United States has had an unparalleled, successful history of assimilating minorities. Buoyed by this success, the theorization of this
process has been cast into a single model, which I have characterized as the three generational model. However, it has ignored the
multicultural or plural model and worse still, tried to make this essentially contrasting model part of the assimilation model itself. Put
crudely, the assimilation model is a brick-in-the-pond model. The
group starts concentrated, segregated and unassimilated in the inner
city; it speaks a foreign language; it marries its own kind; it is unassimilated. The second generation ripples out a little, mixes more with
the charter group, learns English and begins to marry out. The third
generation replicates the socioeconomic structure of the population
as a whole; it speak English; it is highly intermarried; it is suburbanized and assimilated.
The theory states that there is a direct relationship between the
degree of residential, spatial segregation and the degree of social distance: high spatial segregation, high social distance between groups;
low segregation, low social distance (and high degree of social interaction, marriage et cetera).
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43
single model
argument
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43
Britain
ceri peach
of the Jewish population lived in Jewish areas, nor was the population of Jewish areas all Jewish. Both the African American and the
Jewish populations were following plural rather than assimilatory
models. The assimilation model was not the only one.
If we look at the contemporary experience of Britain, we can see
both the plural and the assimilatory models in existence. The Black
Caribbean population has followed the assimilatory trajectory. Its
levels of segregation in London have fallen, census by census since
1961. The areas of greatest concentration have experienced the greatest losses of Caribbean population. The movement has followed
the classic pattern of outward movement from the center towards
the periphery. However, when we look at the Indian, Pakistani and
Bangladeshi populations, changes in population have tended to reinforce rather than reduce existing areas of concentration.
Both the assimilation and the multicultural models equate dispersal, diffusion and low segregation with assimilation. However, the
dominant model of the Chicago School considered the assimilation
model to be the only one and considered its process to be inevitable.
It recognized the existence of the ghetto, but did not distinguish it
from the enclave. It conceptualized the ghetto as the first stage of the
sequence of the three generational model. It incorporated its very
antithesis as part of the model itself.
The failure to distinguish between the ghetto and the enclave
has had a pernicious effect on the understanding of ethnic areas in
American cities. First, it has conceptualized the ghetto as a temporary
phenomenon. In reality the ghetto has become permanent. Secondly,
it envisioned socio-economic improvement as the mechanism for
the dissolution of the ghetto; in reality, rich African Americans are
as segregated from rich whites as poor blacks are from poor whites.
Economic differences are not unimportant but they do not explain
black segregation. Thirdly, it encouraged academics to identify the
ghetto as a product of wealth difference rather than race (Harvey
1973: 120-152; Wacquant 1997; Peach 1998). Fourthly it has falsified
our view of ethnic history in the United States by envisioning a ghettoized past for the early years of all groups; it has led to the assumption that Irish, Italian and other ethnic enclaves were homogeneously
made up of the Irish, Italians or whatever. They never were. Fifthly it
encouraged the belief that the African American ghetto would dissolve in a natural and inevitable way. Sixthly, it encouraged the
belief that all segregation was bad and negatively superimposed on
groups. In reality, for those groups who choose it and for whom it is
not enforced, concentration has many benefits. However, we need to
be able to recognize the difference between the chosen enclave and
the enforced ghetto.
04-03-10 15:58
603
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List of Sources
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list of sources
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list of sources
611
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17 Favell, A. (2003), Integration and nations: The nation-state and
research on immigrants in Western Europe, Comparative Social
Research 22: 13-42.
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43
Index
A
Ackerman, B. A., 278
Africa, 7, 26, 50, 65, 78, 82, 122, 203,
204, 216, 452, 457, 462, 477, 541,
559, 572
Africanization, 544, 559
African Island of Runion, 26
Agrarverhltnisse in Altertum, 444
Alba, R. D., 240, 376
Albania, 112, 123
Alger, C., 98
Algeria, 48, 89, 97, 342, 459
Algiers, 485
Alibhai-Brown, Y., 376, 379
Aliens Act of 1905, 524
Aliens Act of 1973, 524
Althusser, L., 438, 493
Althusserian Marxism, 496
Alund, A., 380
Amendement 14th 1868, 225, 226
America/Americas the, 14, 68, 100, 111,
203, 210, 267, 378, 438, 448, 450,
451, 453
Americanization, 561, 587
Amersfoort, H. van, 183, 598
Amicales, 366
Amsterdam, 143, 145, 148-152, 159, 315,
318, 326
Amsterdam Treaty, 150, 154, 158
Ancient Greece, 458
Andall, J., 125
Anderson, B., 350, 530
Anderson, P., 493, 508, 524
Antarctica, 284
Anthias, F., 124, 238, 392, 469, 480
Antwerp, 395
Anwar, M., 117
Appadurai, A., 95, 96, 99-101
Arab Gulf, 103
Arendt, H., 279, 300
Aristide, J. B., 100
Aristotle, 279
Asia, 7, 26, 49, 50, 216, 432, 462, 541
Asia-Pacific, 104
Assam, 452
Assimilation Model, 589
Associatie Marokkaanse Migranten
Utrecht (AMMU), 366
Association de Mineurs Marocains du
Nord, 364
Association de Travailleurs Marocains
en France (ATMF), 364
Atlanta, 595
Atlantic, 220
Atlas of International Migration, 116
Australia, 36, 295, 389, 390, 529, 546
Austria, 25, 46, 149, 272, 284, 372, 376,
546
Autonomy model, 494, 500, 511
B
Bachelard, G., 9
Bachu, P., 544
Back, L., 392
Baden-Wrttemberg, 29
Baetsen, P., 327
Baggara, 421, 422, 424, 425
Bagley, C., 195
Bakker, E. S. J., 326-328
Balibar, E., 266, 567
Baltic states, 552
Baltimore, 595
Baluch tribe, 422
Baluchistan, 418
Bamyeh, M. A., 91
Banfield, E., 87
Bangladesh, 112, 121, 199
Banton, M., 389, 493
Barbados, 455, 554
Barcelona, 128
Barkan, E., 262
Barker, M., 268
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614
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26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
index
Bosnia, 103
Bosscher, A., 152
Boston, 594
Bouamama, S., 364, 365
Boulevard de Belleville, 345, 346, 348
Bourdieu, P., 9, 73, 143, 156, 168
Bousetta, H., 355, 380, 395
Bovenkerk, F., 517, 521, 533
Box, C., 453
Boyd, M., 65
Brah, A., 396
Brandt, W., 34
Bras, H. le, 391
Brass, P., 239, 241
Breckenridge, C., 95, 96
Brent, 209
Brent Community Council, 481
Breton, R., 250
Britain, 25-30, 33, 34, 36, 46, 47, 49-51,
57, 103, 104, 187, 202, 204, 206209, 216, 220, 224, 225, 322, 372,
375, 376, 378, 379, 381, 383, 387,
388, 391-393, 437, 465, 469, 470,
472, 473, 476, 477, 481-483, 485,
498, 505, 507-509, 512, 517, 521,
522, 524, 531, 538, 539, 541, 542,
544, 546, 550-554, 556, 559, 592,
602
Brittan, A., 490, 495
BBC (Britisch Broadcasting
Corporation), 201, 207
British Caribbean, 191, 522
British Commission for Racial Equality,
154
British Unions, 37
Brochman, G., 59
Brouwer, J. W. de, 148
Brown, R., 439
Brubaker, W. R., 215, 379, 387, 390, 532
Bruinsma, F., 322
Brussels, 128, 145, 153, 155, 157, 241,
248, 375, 381, 395
Bucher, K., 444
Budapest process, 149
Buffalo, 594
Buller, H., 128
Bundesvereinigung der Deutschen
Arbeitgeberverbaede (BDA), 556,
557
Burawoy, M., 490, 508, 512, 540
Burgers, J., 367
Burgers Report, 367
Burgess, E., 353
04-03-10 15:58
index
Burt, R. S., 66
Butcher Vocational Training, 329, 330
C
Caces, F., 85
Calgary, 597
Callovi, G., 152
Calvinism, 448, 453
Campani, G., 124
Canada, 7, 103, 202, 215, 216, 221, 226,
227, 389, 522, 546, 597
Cape Verdeans, 125
Capital, 472
Carby, H., 500
Carchedi, G., 492, 498
Carens, J., 216, 228, 229, 233
Caribbean/Caribbean Islands, 26, 68,
89, 191, 216, 225, 457, 541, 544,
554, 556
Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace or Metropolis, 375
Carpentier, A., 339
Carter, B., 518, 542, 554-556
Carter, T., 205
Cassarino, J. P., 323
Caste, Class and Race, 492
Castells, M., 92-94, 96, 98, 100, 320,
394, 492, 498
Castilianization, 571
Castles, S., 7, 21, 104, 114, 115, 375, 379,
519, 539-543, 546, 551, 552, 555, 556,
558
Catholicism, 448, 460, 571
CBD (Central Business District), 586
Census in France 1968, 29
Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek
(CBS), 317, 318
Central Africa, 459
Central European Initiative, 149
Centre of working-class culture, 499
Centre for Contemporary Cultural
Studies (CCCS), 490, 494-496,
498, 499, 501, 505-507, 509, 526
Centrum Partij, 518
Certeau de, M., 341
Ceylon, 452
Chairs of Committees, 205
Chamber of Commerce, 329, 330
Chambers, I., 118
Charbonnages de France, 364
Chevalier, L., 572
Chicago, 583, 586, 588, 589, 591, 592,
594
615
1
2
3
4
5
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7
8
9
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43
04-03-10 15:58
616
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40
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43
index
Denton, N., 583, 585, 594, 595
Department of Education and Sciences
survey, 210
Depo-Provera, 481
Deschouwer, K., 386
Detroit, 595
Deutsche Institut fr Wirtschaft, 391
Deutscher Hotel-und
Gaststaettenverband (DEHOGA),
557
Deutsche Volksunions, 270
DGB (Confederation of German Trade
Unions), 38, 272
Dicken, P., 96
Diehl, C., 386, 391
Di Rupo, E., 249
Displaces Persons camp, 546, 552, 553
Disraeli, B. 573
Dissanayake, W., 95
Dobson, J., 133
Donselaar, J., 519
Douglas, J. D., 206
Dublin agreement, 149
Dublin Convention 1990, 145
Durkheim, E., 437, 439
Dutch Caribbean, 522
Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs,
325
Dutch National Bureau against Racism,
154
Duchet, M., 570
Duffield, M., 554
Duncan, O.D. 582-584
Dusseldorf, 598
Dworkin, R., 300
E
East Africa, 452, 458, 459, 544
East Amsterdam, 395
East Europe/Eastern Europe, 23, 47, 48,
125, 216, 226, 277, 387, 522, 543,
545, 559
East Germany, 26, 47, 272, 441, 442,
538, 545
East Indies, 184
Ecolo, 361
Ecomienda, 450
Economic and Social Research Council
(ESRC), 91, 102, 104
Economic Control Service, 329, 330
Economic crisis of 1973/1974, 542
Economist, The, 97, 322
Economy and society, 441, 450
04-03-10 15:58
index
Ecuador, 103
Edholm, F., 480
Edmonston, B., 376
Edye, D., 556, 557
Egypt, 97, 481
Eidheim, H., 429, 430
Elias, N., 343, 351
Elkins, S., 462
El Salvador, 100
Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism
in 70s Britain, The, 495, 496, 498500, 506, 507
Employment and Social Affairs DG, 153
Engbersen, G., 320, 395
Engels, F., 22, 24, 473, 494
Engermann, S. L., 451
England, 221, 224, 273, 519
Epstein, R. A., 323
Equal Treatment Directive, 154
Erasmus, 127
Erasmus exchanges, 126
Erikson, R., 386
Eritrea, 103
Escriva, A., 125
Espace Intgration, 364
Esping-Andersen, G., 323
Esser, H., 62, 376, 386, 545
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 13, 91, 92,
200, 237
Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The
Social Organization of Cultural
Differences, 407
Ethnic School, 476
Ethnomethodology, 438
Europe, 7, 8, 10, 13-16, 26, 33, 45, 47,
50, 68, 70, 78, 91, 103, 104, 111, 112,
114, 119-122, 124, 125, 128, 129, 131133, 142, 144, 145, 151-153, 215, 217,
220, 221, 230, 243, 259, 260, 263,
265, 267, 270, 271, 289, 355, 369,
371, 372, 375-381, 383, 384, 386, 387,
389, 390, 393-397, 437, 446, 447,
460, 463, 469, 472, 521, 525, 529,
532, 544, 546-548, 553, 554, 559
European Commission, 126, 150, 153,
156
European Commissions Seventh
Framework Programme, 13
European Community (EC), 45, 142,
148, 149, 244, 247, 260
European Consortium for Sociological
Research, 386
European Council/Council of Europe,
298, 375, 379
617
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
04-03-10 15:58
618
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
index
Status of Immigrants in Europe,
275
Front National, 270, 271, 518
Fur case, 421, 434
Furnivall, J. S., 190, 414
G
Gabriel, J., 490, 493, 494, 500-503,
505, 507, 509-511
Gans, H., 250, 349
Garbage can model, 141, 144, 147
Gardner, R. W., 64
Gary-Hammond-E.Chicago, 595
Gatekeeper role, 525
Geddes, A., 132, 153-155
Geisser, V., 365
Gellner, E., 267, 293, 294, 376
General Agreement on Trade in
Services (GATS), 157
Geneva, 38, 128
Geneva Convention, 68
Genovese, E. D., 490, 492
German Democratic Republic, 48
German Federal Republic, 34
German Foreigners Law of 1965, 33
German Marshall Fund, 216
German Reich, 24
Germany, 24, 25, 27-34, 36, 38, 39, 46,
47, 49-51, 57, 60, 89, 103, 116, 126,
144, 146-150, 156, 216, 219, 222,
270, 272, 284, 288, 303, 357, 360,
372, 375, 380, 381, 387, 391, 441,
525, 543, 544, 546, 557, 588
German Social Democratic movement,
464
Ghetto model/American Ghetto Model,
585, 599
Giddens, A., 377
Giffinger, R., 598
Gilbertson, G. A., 80
Gillespie, M., 96
Gilroy, P., 95, 206, 379, 396, 491, 499,
505, 511
Gini Index, 583
Giullaumin, C., 570
Gjessing, G., 411
Glazer, N., 15
Glebe, G., 598
Glick-Schiller, N., 89, 92, 94, 100, 115
Global Political Networks, 103
Goa, 68
Goffman, E., 414
Golbert, R., 132
04-03-10 15:58
index
Goldring, L., 86, 100, 101
Goldthorpe, J., 386
Gordon, M. M., 193, 583
Gouldner, A. W., 74
Gramsci, A., 438, 492
Granovetter, M. S., 80, 83, 323
Great Britain, 65, 102, 302
Great Depression, 55
Greece, 7, 47, 50, 117, 123, 149, 199,
263, 396, 574
Green, D. P., 500
Greensboro-Winston Salem, 595
Groenendijk, K., 519
Groeneveld-Yayci, A., 328
Gross National Product, 545
Guarnizo, L. E., 92, 94, 97, 101, 316,
394
Guillon, M., 340
Guiraudon, V., 141, 147
Gulf War, 122
Gupta, A., 93
Gurak, D. T., 80
Guyana, 452, 456-458
H
Haaland, G., 421, 424, 425
Habermas, J., 73, 438
Hague The, 315, 318, 326
Hailbronner, K., 216, 228
Haiti, 89, 100
Halder, J., 155
Hall, S., 95, 129, 378, 396, 480, 490,
495-499, 502, 507-509, 513, 526
Hammar, T., 45, 59, 216, 229, 306,
356, 379
Handboek Minderheden, 330
Handsworth, 204
Handsworth Harambee organization,
204
Hannerz, U., 92, 100, 102
Hansen, R., 380
Hargreaves, A. G., 357
Harris, C., 542, 553-556
Harris, J. R., 111
Harris, M., 185, 186
Hart-Celler Act 1965, 226
Hartmann, 445
Harvey, D., 602
Hatton, T. J., 68
Hauser, P., 587, 593
Haussmann, G. E., 341
Huermann, H., 316
Haut Conseil lIntgration, 375
619
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
04-03-10 15:58
620
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
index
Jansen, S., 132
Japan, 522
Japanization, 561
Jeffcoate, R., 507
Jenkins, R., 375
Jenkins, S., 360
Jessop, B., 508
Joly, D., 360
Jones, B., 144
Jong de, G. F., 62
Jong de, W., 352
Joppke, C., 380
Joshi, S., 518, 542, 554-556
Journal of Ethnic and Migration
Studies, 13
Jura, 303
Justice and Home Affairs (JHA), 148,
151
K
Kaldor, M., 99
Kandre, P., 420
Kansas City, 595
Kant, I., 440
Kantrowitz, N., 597
Kastoryano, R., 153
Kay, D., 543, 546, 553, 554, 559
Keane, J., 524
Kearney, M., 100
Kelsen, H., 168, 169
Kempen, R. Van., 598
Kennedy, P., 377
Kenya, 544
Kepel, G., 346
Kerneis, P., 157
Kesteloot, C., 248, 395, 598
Keyes, C., 240
Keynsian economics/Keynesian
Economic Theory, 23, 55
Kiang, Y. -C., 586
Kibbutz, 485
Kimble, J., 484
Kindelberger, C., 541
King, R., 96, 111, 117, 121, 122, 129, 130
Kingdon, J., 144, 154
Kleivan, H., 432
Kloosterman, R., 315, 316, 318, 319, 323,
324, 332, 395
KnowNothings, 226
Knutsson, K. E., 425
Kockel, U., 121, 128
Kohistan, 421
Kohl, H. 147
04-03-10 15:58
index
KMAN (Komitee Marokkaanse
Arbeiders in Nederland), 366
Koopmans, R., 392
Korte, H., 545
Kosack, G., 21, 519, 539-541, 543
Koser, K., 122, 125, 130
Kosmin, B. A., 598
Kraal, K., 9
Kriesberg, L., 98, 99
Kritz, M. M., 60
Kymlicka, W., 373, 388
Kypraia, 479
K4 committee, 148, 151
L
Labour Party, 201
Laczko, F., 122
Lamy, P., 157
Landolt, P., 92, 94, 101
Lapeyronnie, D., 15
Latifundia, 441, 450
Latin America, 7, 47, 49, 78, 459, 462
Lavenex, S., 151
Law and order role, 526
Law on Economic Criminal Offences,
326
Layton-Henry, Z., 532, 553-555
Lazaridis, G., 123, 124, 125
Lazarsfeld, P. F., 438
Leach, M., 425
Leagues, 272
Lebanon, 482, 484
Lee, E. S., 61, 111
Lenin, V., 23, 24, 473
Lemon, A. 585
Le Pen, J. M., 222
Lessinger, J., 97
Lesthaege, R., 386
Leun van der, J., 315, 318, 324, 332
Lever-Tracy, C., 540
Levi-Strauss, C., 268, 351, 438, 439
Lewis, B., 347
Lieberson, S., 582-584, 594, 597
Liebersons P, 583
Liechtenstein, 49
Lige, 355, 360-365, 367, 368
Lier van, R. A. J., 190-192
Light, I., 317
Lijphart, A.,193, 194
Lille, 363-365, 368
Lille Sud mosque, 364
Lim, L. Y. C., 538
Limburg, 249
621
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
Lisbon Agenda, 8
Little Sicily, 587
Live, Y.S. 347
Liverpool, 502
Lloyd, C., 15
Lobkowicz, W. de, 148
Locke, J., 290, 291, 293, 302, 304
Lodge, D., 131
Logical Positivism, 438
London, 29, 128, 209, 316, 383, 550,
592, 598, 600, 602
Lord, C, 150
Lorenzo, P., 11, 12
Los Angeles, 7, 316
Los Angeles-Long Beach, 595
Lucassen, J., 525
Lukacs, G., 438
Lukes, S., 237, 243
Lutz, H., 122, 125, 130
Luxemburg, 49
Luxemburg, R., 473
Lyon, 30
M
Maastricht, 148, 153
Maastricht Treaty 1992, 298
MacDonald, I., 519, 524, 550, 551
Madrid, 8, 116
Magobunje, A. L., 65
Mahler, S. J., 100
Mahnig, H., 375
Majorca, 129
Malaya, 452, 457
Malaysia, 458
Ma Mung, E., 316, 324
Mann, M., 374
Mangrove case, 33
Marable, M., 490
March, J., 141, 142, 144, 147
Marches de Beurs 1983, 364
Marcinelle mine, 247
Marcus, G. E., 101
Marquez, G. G., 201
Marrus, M. R., 543-546
Marseille, 316
Marshall, D., 83
Marshall, T. H., 186, 187
Marston, W. G., 597
Martin, P., 7, 97
Martinelli, A., 317, 323
Martiniello, M., 7, 15, 237, 243, 247249, 361
Marx, K., 22, 24, 239, 439, 442-445,
04-03-10 15:58
622
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
index
Ministry of Labour, 552
Ministry of Public Health and
Environmental Protection, 326
Minorities in European Cities, 355
Minorities in the New World, 185
Mitchell, K., 97, 99, 101
Modood, T., 201, 386, 392, 393
Molyneux, M., 484
Montreal, 597, 598
Moravcsik, A., 150
Morelli, A., 247
Morley, D., 96
Morocco, 47, 121, 195, 326
Mouahidin mosque, El, 363
Moynihan, D., 15
Musterd, S., 325, 598
Myrdal, G., 85, 251, 440
N
Nagel, J., 359
Nairn, T., 530
Narroll, R., 407
Natal, 452, 458
National Association of Asian Probation
Staff, 210
National Association of Local
Government Officers (NALGO),
205
National Front, 518
Nationality Bill, 473
National Union of Moroccan Students
(UNEM), 362
Nauck, B., 392
Nazism, 570
Near East, 50
Nee, V., 376
Nelli, H. S., 250
Netherlands, 7, 46, 47, 49-51, 57, 65,
126, 144, 183, 303, 315, 317-321, 324326, 330-332, 355, 356, 360, 366,
372, 376, 382, 387, 518, 519, 521,
522, 524, 525, 531
Neuchtel, 303
Nevada, 320
Newark, 595
New Community, 201
New Left Review, 21
New Haven, 584
New Jerusalem, 459
Newman, D., 598
New Opportunities for Research
Funding Co-operation in Europe
network (NORFACE), 13
04-03-10 15:58
623
index
New Orleans, 595
New World, 11
New World Order post-1989, 119
New York/New York City, 7, 80, 81, 87,
89, 316, 595
New York Chinatown model, 600
New Zealand, 302
Nikolinakos, M., 490
Noiriel, G., 10, 390
Nonini, D. M., 95, 98, 101
Non-Governmental Organizations
(NGOs), 69, 142, 143, 145, 153-155,
157, 158, 375, 381
Non-resident Indians (NRIs), 97
North Africa, 27, 49, 60, 216, 342, 346,
522
North America, 7, 104, 215, 217, 220,
230, 289, 529
Northern Ireland, 151, 192
Norfolk-Virginia Beach, 595
Northern Norway, 430
Northwest Europe, 111, 552
Norway, 25, 46, 223, 303
Nozick, R., 291
O
Office of Population and Censuses
Surveys (OPCS), 209, 210
Ogden, P., 519
gelman, N., 234
Oikos economy, 444
Oil crisis of 1973, 9
Olsen, J., 141, 142, 144, 147
Olzak, S., 359
Omvedt, G., 484
ONeill, O., 297
Ong, A., 95, 98, 101
Opel, 30
OReilly, K., 128
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD), 130, 317
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), 149,
375
OECD-SOPEMI report, 386
Oriol, M., 10, 14
Orthodox Marxism, 438
Oswald, I., 316
Ottoman Empire, 353
Oude Westen, Het, 352
Overseas Departments, 26
Oxford University, 102
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
04-03-10 15:58
624
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
index
Renooy, P. H., 320
Republic of Ireland, 151, 518, 552
Republikaner, 518
Resnick, S. A., 512
Revue europenne des migrations internationales, 13
Rex, J., 184, 191, 359, 360, 375, 437, 493,
496, 497, 506, 512
Rhode, B., 121, 125
Ribas Mateos, N., 124, 130
Richardson, J., 154
Roberts, B., 320, 323
Robins, K., 96
Robinson, C., 498
Rodbertus, K., 444
Rokkan, S., 186
Roland, C. 342
Roman Catholic Church, 250
Roman Empire, 441, 453, 457, 460, 462
Roman Republic, 445, 457
Rome, 116, 128, 247, 250
Romeo and Juliet, 249
Rose, E. J. B., 187, 375
Rosenstein, C., 317
Ross, G., 141, 157
Rotterdam, 315, 318, 322, 326, 352
Rousseau, J. J., 279, 293
Rudder de, A., 345
Rue de Belleville, 347, 348
Rueschemeyer, D., 523
Ruggie, J., 147
Ruhr, 29, 221
Rush Portuguesa decision 27 March
1990, 156
Ruzza, C., 153
Rwanda, 297
S
Sabbath, 347
Safa, H. I., 538
Safran, W., 93
Sahlins, M. D., 75
Salt, J., 122, 125, 131, 537, 548-550
San Fransisco, 600
San Fransisco-Oakland, 595
Sanguinetti, A., 364
Sargent, T. J., 491
Sassen, A., 319
Sassen, S., 538
Sassen-Koob, S., 316, 320, 541
Satzewich, V., 537
Savona, E. U., 94
Sayad, A., 10-12, 165, 344
04-03-10 15:58
index
Sayer, D., 520
Segal, S., 464
Sensenbrenner, J., 320
Schechtman, J. B., 544, 545
Schengen, 143, 144, 149-151, 158, 159
Schengen agreement 1985, 146, 149,
152
Schengen Implementation Agreement
(SIA), 146, 147
Schengen Information System, 145, 147
Schengenland, 116, 119
Schermerhorn, R. A., 196, 200, 239,
473
Schierup, C.-U., 380, 383
Schmidtt, C., 281
Schnapper, D., 379, 381
Schoenenberg, A., 360
Schnpflug, U., 392
Schuck, P., 216, 229, 230
Schumpeter, J., 282, 292
Schuster, J., 321
Schutz, A., 438
Schwarzenbach Initiative, 35
Schwarzenbach Referendum, 518
Scotland, 224, 273
Scotson, J. L., 343, 351
Scott, J. C., 71
Seattle, 157
Second World War/World War II, 24,
26, 68, 195, 249, 254, 262, 263,
284, 517, 559
Segal, A., 116
Senegal, 112
Seville, 159
Seville 2002 summit, 142, 159
Shah, N. M., 82
Sheffer, G., 93
Shell, 125
Shohat, E., 96
Shuttleworth, I., 121
Sicily, 27
Sieys, A., 221
Silj, A., 124
Simmel, G., 439
Simon, P., 316, 339, 342, 344, 388
Simpson, G. E., 184, 190, 197
Simpson Senator, 233
Sinization, 421
Sivanandan, A., 490, 492, 498, 509,
554
Siverts, H., 419
Sjaastad, L. A., 111
Sklair, L., 96, 97
625
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
04-03-10 15:58
626
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
index
Tillaart van den, H., 318, 319, 325
Tillie, J., 330, 395
Tilly, C., 66, 88
Time on the Cross, 451
Todaro, M. P., 111
Todd, E., 379
Tllyan, K., 93
Tonnies, F., 439
Toronto, 597, 598
Torpey, J., 374, 377
Toubon, J. C., 353
Touraine, A., 264
Trade Commission, 156, 157
TUC (Trades Union Congress), 37
Trading Association of Butchers, 327330, 332
Training on Commercial Practice, 329
Trnhardt, D., 130
Transnational Communities
Programme, 100, 104
Transnational corporations (TNCs),
96, 103
Transnational Household Strategies,
103
Transnational Religious Communities,
104
Transnational Social Movement
Organizations (TSMOs), 99
Trevi group 1970, 146
Tribalat, M., 386, 391
Trieste, 126
Trinidad, 89
Tripartite Conference, 544
Tunderman, B., 329
Tunisia, 344, 345
Turk, A., 146
Turkey, 27, 46, 47, 50, 82, 89, 145, 152,
195, 199, 224, 326, 522
Tyson, A., 155
U
Ueda, R., 302
Uganda, 544
Ugur, E., 148
Ukraine, 552
UN Commission on Crime Prevention,
149
UNESCO (United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural
Organisation), 437
UNHCR (United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees), 69
UNICE (Union of Industrial and
04-03-10 15:58
index
Employers Confederations of
Europe), 157
Unified Jewish Social Fund, 344
United Kingdom (UK), 9, 11, 89, 91,
114, 126, 127, 151, 203, 215, 225, 259,
273, 550
United Nations (UN), 28, 122, 284, 545
United Nations Convention on the
Reduction of Statelessness, 287
United States (US/USA), 7, 11, 14, 15,
71, 78, 79, 86, 89, 100, 117, 157,
192, 193, 202, 215, 216, 220, 221,
226, 227, 233, 301, 302, 324, 376,
377, 389, 390, 395, 442, 459, 465,
490, 522, 538, 544, 546, 592, 596,
600-602
United States Black Power Groups, 201
United States Department of Defense
(DoD), 94
United States Immigration and
Naturalization Service, 230
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
1948, 287
University of Utrecht, 367
Unterhalter, E., 484
Urry, J., 126, 131, 377
Utrecht, 315, 318, 326, 355, 364-368
V
Valenci, L., 353
Valk, I. van der, 366
Vancouver, 597, 600
Veenman, J., 386
Verbunt, G., 517, 519, 521, 533
Verein fur Sozialpolitik, 441
Vermeulen, H., 381
Verschueren, J., 376
Vertovec, S., 91, 93, 373
Vienna, 270
Vienna Circle, 438
Vienna Club, 149
Vienna Group, 149
Vietnam, 224, 485, 522, 538, 543
Visco, I., 132
Vlaams Blok, 254, 270, 518
Volkskrant de, 326-328
Volkswagen, 30
Voskamp, J., 327
W
Wacquant, L., 602
Waffen SS, 155
Wagley, C., 185, 186
627
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
Wakeman, F. E., 94
Waldinger, R., 320
Waldrauch, H., 382
Wales, 224
Wallerstein, I., 266
Wallonia, 249
Walton, J., 65
Walzer, M., 234, 301, 309
War of Independence, 225
Warnes, T., 129
Warren, B., 538
Washington, D. C., 595
Waterman, S., 598
Waters, M.C. 597
Weber, M., 241, 437-450, 453, 455, 457,
461-466
Weberianism, 438
Weesep, J. van., 598
Weil, P., 375, 380
Wentholt, R., 321
Werbner, P., 395
West German employers federation,
556
West German recession of 1966-67, 28
West Germany, 25, 27, 28, 47, 215, 222,
223, 233, 538, 544, 545
West Indies, 26, 47, 50, 555
West Midlands, 29
Western Europe/West Europe, 8, 21, 2326, 30-32, 34, 37-40, 48-50, 53, 122,
237, 282, 297, 371, 374, 517, 518,
521, 522, 524, 538-543, 547, 559, 561
White, P., 598
White, P. E., 96, 111
White Paper on Commonwealth
Immigration of 1965, 543
Wickens, E., 124
Wieviorka, M., 259, 260, 262, 264,
267, 269
Williams, A. M., 128, 129
Williams, E., 570
Williamson, J. G., 68
Williams, P., 94
Wilpert, C., 360
Wilson, E., 483
Wilson, R., 95
Wilson, W. J., 268, 594
Winn, N., 150
Winnipeg, 597
Wirth, L., 183-185, 189, 190, 196, 197
Withol de Wenden, C., 356, 357, 525
Wolff, R. D., 512
Wolpe, H., 490, 511
04-03-10 15:58
628
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
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12
13
14
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19
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26
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31
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39
40
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42
43
index
Wolverhampton, 502
Womens Committee of the Greater
London Council, 483
Wood, M. E., 511
Woods, R. I., 111
World Bank, 97
Wrench, J., 383
Wright, E. O., 492, 493, 508
Y
Yearbook of International
Organizations, 99
Yinger, J. M., 184, 190, 197
Young, J. 495
Yugoslavia, 27, 47, 50, 116, 344, 387
Yuval-Davis, N., 392, 469, 481
Z
Zee TV, 96
Zhou, M., 320
Zinn, D. L., 123
Zlotnik, H., 60
Znaniecki, F. W., 70, 71, 75, 87, 89
Zolberg, A. R., 68, 543, 558
Zontini, E., 125
Other
9/11, 8, 390
3/11, 8
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IMISCOE Research
Rinus Penninx, Maria Berger, Karen Kraal, Eds.
The Dynamics of International Migration and Settlement in Europe:
A State of the Art
2006 (ISBN 9789053568668)
(originally appearing in IMISCOE Joint Studies)
Leo Lucassen, David Feldman, Jochen Oltmer, Eds.
Paths of Integration: Migrants in Western Europe (1880-2004)
2006 (ISBN 9789053568835)
Rainer Baubck, Eva Ersbll, Kees Groenendijk, Harald Waldrauch, Eds.
Acquisition and Loss of Nationality: Policies and Trends in 15 European
Countries, Volume 1: Comparative Analyses
2006 (ISBN 9789053569207)
Rainer Baubck, Eva Ersbll, Kees Groenendijk, Harald Waldrauch, Eds.
Acquisition and Loss of Nationality: Policies and Trends in 15 European
Countries, Volume 2: Country Analyses
2006 (ISBN 9789053569214)
Rainer Baubck, Bernhard Perchinig, Wiebke Sievers, Eds.
Citizenship Policies in the New Europe
2007 (ISBN 9789053569221)
Veit Bader
Secularism or Democracy? Associational Governance of Religious
Diversity
2007 (ISBN 9789053569993)
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IMISCOE Reports
Rainer Baubck, Ed.
Migration and Citizenship: Legal Status, Rights and Political
Participation
2006 (ISBN 978905356888 0)
Michael Jandl, Ed.
Innovative Concepts for Alternative Migration Policies:
Ten Innovative Approaches to the Challenges of Migration in the 21st
Century
2007 (ISBN 9789053569900)
Jeroen Doomernik, Michael Jandl, Eds.
Modes of Migration Regulation and Control in Europe
2008 (ISBN 978 90 5356 689 3)
Michael Jandl, Christina Hollomey, Sandra Gendera, Anna Stepien,
Veronika Bilger
Migration and Irregular Work In Austria: A Case Study of the Structure
and Dynamics of Irregular Foreign Employment in Europe at the
Beginning of the 21st Century
2008 (ISBN 978 90 8964 053 6)
Heinz Fassmann, Ursula Reeger, Wiebke Sievers, Eds.
Statistics and Reality: Concepts and Measurements of Migration in
Europe
2009 (ISBN 978 90 8964 052 9)
Karen Kraal, Judith Roosblad, John Wrench, Eds.
Equal Opportunities and Ethnic Inequality in European Labour Markets
Discrimination, Gender and Policies of Diversity
2009 (ISBN 978 90 8964 126 7)
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IMISCOE Dissertations
Panos Arion Hatziprokopiou
Globalisation, Migration and Socio-Economic Change in Contemporary
Greece: Processes of Social Incorporation of Balkan Immigrants in
Thessaloniki
2006 (ISBN 9789053568736)
Floris Vermeulen
The Immigrant Organising Process: Turkish Organisations in
Amsterdam and Berlin and Surinamese Organisations in Amsterdam,
1960-2000
2006 (ISBN 9789053568750)
Anastasia Christou
Narratives of Place, Culture and Identity: Second-Generation
Greek-Americans Return Home
2006 (ISBN 978905356878 1)
Katja Rusinovic
Dynamic Entrepreneurship: First and Second-Generation Immigrant
Entrepreneurs in Dutch Cities
2006 (ISBN 97890 53569726)
Ilse van Liempt
Navigating Borders: Inside Perspectives on the Process of Human
Smuggling into the Netherlands
2007 (ISBN 978905356930 6)
Myriam Cherti
Paradoxes of Social Capital: A Multi-Generational Study of Moroccans
in London
2008 (ISBN 9789053560327)
Marc Helbling
Practising Citizenship and Heterogeneous Nationhood: Naturalisations
in Swiss Municipalities
2008 (ISBN 978 90 8964 034 5)
04-03-10 16:25
Jrme Jamin
Limaginaire du complot: Discours dextrme droite en France et
aux Etats-Unis
2009 (ISBN 978 90 8964 048 2)
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Nahikari Irastorza
Born Entrepreneurs? Immigrant Self-Employment in Spain
2010 (ISBN 978 90 8964 243 1)
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