Migration, Citizenship, and the European Welfare State: A European Dilemma (European Societies)

MIGRATION, CITIZENSHIP, AND THE EUROPEAN WELFARE STATE European Societies Series Editor: Colin Crouch Very few of th...

Author: Carl-Ulrik Schierup | Peo Hansen | Stephen Castles

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MIGRATION, CITIZENSHIP, AND THE EUROPEAN WELFARE STATE

European Societies Series Editor: Colin Crouch

Very few of the existing sociological texts which compare different European societies on specific topics are accessible to a broad range of scholars and students. The European Societies series will help fill this gap in the literature, and attempts to answer questions such as: Is there really such a thing as a ‘European model’ of society? Do the economic and political integration processes of the European Union also imply convergence in more general aspects of social life, like family or religious behaviour? What do the societies of Western Europe have in common with those further to the east? The series will cover the main social institutions, although not every author will cover the full range of European countries. As well as surveying existing knowledge in a way that will be useful to students, each book will also seek to contribute to our growing knowledge of what remains in many respects a sociologically unknown continent.

Other titles in the series: Social Change in Western Europe Colin Crouch European Cities Patrick Le Gale`s Religion in Modern Europe Grace Davie

Migration, Citizenship, and the European Welfare State A European Dilemma CARL-ULRIK SCHIERUP The National Institute for Working Life and Linko¨ping University, Sweden PEO HANSEN The National Institute for Working Life and Linko¨ping University, Sweden

STEPHEN CASTLES Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford

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3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß Carl-Ulrik Schierup, Peo Hansen, and Stephen Castles 2006 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn ISBN 0-19-828052-1 ISBN 0-19-928402-4 (Pbk.)

978-0-19-828052-1 978-0-19-928402-3 (Pbk.)

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

CONTENTS List of Figures

vi

List of Tables

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1 Understanding the Dual Crisis

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2 The ‘Migration Crisis’ and the Genesis of Europe’s New Diversity

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3 Migration, Citizenship, and the European Social Model

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4 Transatlantic Convergence or Transatlantic Split? Elements for a Comparative Framework

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5 Britain’s ‘Neo-American’ Trajectory

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6 Germany: Immigration and Social Exclusion in a Declining Welfare State

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7 Economic Miracle and Political Limbo: Italy and its ‘Extracommunitarians’

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8 ‘Paradise Lost’? Migration and the Changing Swedish Welfare State

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9 ‘Bloody Subcontracting’ in the Network Society: Migration and Post-Fordist Restructuring across the European Union

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10 What Creed in Europe?

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References

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Index

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LIST OF FIGURES 2.1 Annual migration into the EU 2.2 Foreign-born and foreign citizens in per cent of population in 20 OECD countries, 2002 4.1 Proportion of foreigners or foreign-born in total unemployment, relative to their share of the labour force, 2001–2 average 4.2 Labour market participation rate of foreigners by country or region of nationality, selected EU member states, 2002 5.1 Poverty rates in the EU, 1994 5.2 Unemployment rates, UK: by ethnic group and age, 2001–2 5.3 Self-employment, UK: by ethnic group 2001–2 7.1 Number of residence permits, 1992–2003 7.2 Total number of residence permits in Italy and per geographic region in 1993 and 2001 7.3 Young adults (25–29 years) living with their parents or in multigenerational families 7.4 Male and female employment rates in some European countries in 1994 7.5 Non-European Union legal migrant workers by region and economic sector, 1999 8.1 Reason for granting residence permits, 1980–2003 8.2 Age-standardized employment rates for foreign-born and native-born aged 16–64 according to gender, 1960–2000 8.3 Persons aged 16–64 under the Swedish poverty line (socialbidragsnormen) according to country of birth and length of residence 8.4 Total immigration and Swedish policy formation, 1946–2003

LIST OF TABLES 2.1 5.1 5.2 6.1 6.2

Migrant population in selected Western European countries, 1950–75 Population of the UK by ethnic group, April 2001 Immigration and race relations legislation in the UK since 1962 Germany’s foreign population, 2001 Economically active foreign residents by employment status, Germany, 2000 7.1 Number of immigrants with residence permits by 1 January 2003 and legalizations granted during 2003 under Law L.D. 195/2002 7.2 Women as a percentage of the total number of (registered) migrants and among migrants from single countries of emigration in 1996 8.1 Foreign-born residents by country of birth: Swedish-born with foreign-born parents (in ’000), 1960–2003

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ONE

Understanding the Dual Crisis

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N a so-called global age, economic growth appears no longer to promote social

inclusion, political consensus, or attachment to the values and principles of liberal democracy. By the turn of the millennium the advanced North Atlantic economies were performing in a remarkably efficient way, from the perspective of corporate business. But this neither stopped the growth of poverty and social inequality nor arrested the crisis of liberal democracy and citizenship. This contrasts starkly with Western Europe’s ‘three glorious decades’1 after the Second World War, when steady economic growth was linked to the development of welfare states and the strengthening of social citizenship. A major symptom of this predicament is the protracted crisis and restructuring of the modern welfare state, which became manifest in the mid-1970s and intensified during the 1980s and 1990s. These processes have brought incremental and permanent exclusion of substantial population groups from the established social rights of citizenship in liberal democratic states. This ‘great exclusion’ (Jordan 1996) signifies, as Ralf Dahrendorf (1985) put it, that national citizenship is becoming an exclusive rather than an inclusive status. In line with its definition in the European Union’s Poverty Programme from the early 1990s, ‘social exclusion’ denotes ‘the negation of citizenship’: that is, the substantial negation of the right and actual ability to participate as a ‘full member of the community’ (Marshall 1950), as sanctioned by the edifice of citizenship and the type of social contract on which the liberal democratic national welfare state has typically been founded (Dahrendorf 1985). Social exclusion has assumed a plethora of new forms in response to globalization, new technology, economic restructuring, and the emergence of new flexibility demands and regimes in working life (Burrows and Loader 1994; Crouch and Streeck 1997; Rhodes and Meńy 1998). The increased distress facing a permanently unemployed section of the population due to diminishing unemployment benefit schemes and shrinking social assistance, the growing category of the homeless, the feminization of poverty, the concentration of unemployment and poverty among the young, the concentration of the disadvantaged in segregated neighbourhoods, the expansion of low-salaried, so-called atypical jobs in deregulated or non-regulated sectors of the labour 1

Normally rendered in French ‘les trentes glorieuses’.

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market: these are only a few of many problems of the so-called new poverty that kept growing rather than receding in one of the world’s most powerful economic blocs during the last quarter of the twentieth century (Room, Lawson, and Laczko 1989; Teekens and Van Praag 1990). As depicted through the official policy idiom of ‘social exclusion’, this multiplex mise`re du monde2 is a shared contemporary concern of the European Union (EU). It has emerged alongside the growth of low-wage, informal urban enclave economies and the proliferation of ‘occupational ghettos’ (Feuchtwang 1982) on the margins of national labour market regulation and social security systems. It has been accompanied by urban unrest in socially polarized and segmented cities. Most contemporary practices of social exclusion are indisputably tinged by racialization or ethnification;3 practices and forms of exclusion which affect migrants and new ethnic minorities with their background in non-OECD countries in particular and which tend to be publicly rationalized and legitimized in ethnic, racial, and cultural terms. This helps, in effect, to engender and solidify a renegotiated social hierarchy across EU-Europe based on a combination of ‘racialized ethnicity’,4 class, and gender as a constituent of social stratification of growing importance. We therefore refer to these practices as ‘racialized exclusion’. We are referring here to all people of immigrant and ethnic minority background who become trapped in the fragmented occupational ghettos of casualized labour in the post-Fordist service industries and in deregulated municipal services. There are also the thousands of ‘European Others’, citizens of immigrant background subsisting on shrinking welfare in ethnically or racially segregated neighbourhoods in the big cities as the European welfare states go through deep processes of change and the dismantling of institutions and practices that were designed to sustain norms and policies of citizenship. There are the many categories of the working poor, from those dependent on 2 The title of a volume edited by Pierre Bourdieu (1993) exposing the multiplicity of contemporary forms of poverty and social exclusion in France. 3 The concept of ‘racialization’ has been particularly elaborated by Robert Miles (1989; 1993). The term ‘ethnification’ has been used as a concept of ideological and institutional practices which, contingent on political, economic, and cultural claims and relations of power, lead to the systematic, institutionally embedded exclusion of ethnic ˚ lund and Schierup 1991; Schierup 1993). Racialization might be a more minorities (A readily employable term within the British context given the particular historical and etymological anchoring and the still prevalent broad discourse on ‘race’ in the UK. In light of the generally very particular and narrow connotations of notions of ‘race’ and ‘racism’ outside the UK context, both historically and in current public and scientific discourse, racialization as a term perhaps cannot be transferred into common usage on the Continent. 4 A term used by, among others, Peter Kivisto (2002: 189) in the sense of discarding with ‘race as a category of analysis’ (Kivisto 2002: 18) while refocusing ‘our interpretive lenses by studying race as a ‘‘category of practice’’ ’. ‘An important part of this project’, Kivisto (2002: 18) suggests, ‘would involve the examination of racism as ideology, the racism of everyday life, institutional racism, and racialist social movements – all facets of the racialization of ethnicity’.


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‘workfare’ to those in the new ethnic ‘sweatshops’ produced by outsourcing and lean production strategies in the ‘network society’. Propelled by state policies designed to combat unemployment and lighten the burdens of the public welfare system, the widely hailed new category of ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’ has emerged, with long working hours and low remuneration but without adequate social protection; shops ‘full of dreams’(Collins et al. 1995) run by unpaid family labour; the so-called ‘new proletariat’ (bel Habib 2001), a term illustrating the hidden dynamics of post-Fordist restructuring. There are the armies of underpaid, non-protected and undocumented migrant workers on EU-Europe’s building sites and in agriculture, deprived of essential civil, political, and social rights, joined, as it were, by the ‘black’ housemaids from the global ‘south’ servicing middle-class homes and by the trafficked sexworking women on display in the red light districts of the metropolises. There are the new contract labourers, a substitute for the old guest workers, always kept at arm’s length from inclusion in national frameworks of citizenship. There are the asylum seekers of recent times, forced into detention camps or clandestine jobs, as conditions of protection and reception in the so-called ‘host countries’ deteriorate. These different categories of the excluded are found to various degrees in different member states of the EU. But they have everywhere become a common political concern and they are among the most conspicuous manifestations of the crisis of the welfare state in Western Europe. Intimately connected with the crisis of the welfare state and the permanency of multiple forms of racialized exclusion is a second main dimension of our current great transformation: the political and cultural crisis and transformation of the nation and established national identities. This lends to most current social struggles an indisputable character of cultural politics, expressed through idioms of ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘culture’, or ‘religious difference’. The most conspicuous manifestation of this crisis of the nation has been the upturn of new nationalist, racist-populist political movements centred on the ‘problem of immigration’. Social crisis and the breakdown of established identities and solidarities, focused on social rights of citizenship, have to varying degrees been exploited by the nostalgic and reactionary populism that proposes ‘cultural difference’ as the rationale for excluding all those who do not belong to ‘the Nation’. This culturally argued so-called new racism (Barker 1981) has been tacitly instrumentalized by political and institutional pragmatism (Collinson 1993). The fear of the ‘Muslim invasion’ has merged in the lore of nationalist-populist movements with a perceived threat towards established national identities represented by the ongoing supranational processes of integration within the Union, and is thus exacerbated. This has happened differently in each of the EU member states in line with its particular history, constitution, and political situation. At the turn of the millennium the alliance between Austria’s conservative ¨ rg Haider’s post-Fascist Freedom Party sent shock political establishment and Jo waves through the EU. But soon this sort of coalition should become a normal order of things. In autumn 2001 Pia Kjærsga˚rd’s openly racist Danish People’s

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Party (Dansk Folkeparti) enjoyed an astounding electoral success and gave conditional backing to a fiercely xenophobic government coalition of conservatives and liberals. In Italy the neoliberal Berlusconi government came to power in the same year in coalition with the racist-populist Lega Nord and the post-Fascist Alleanza Nazionale. In France Jean Marie Le Pen emerged as a threat to the political establishment in the presidential campaign of 2002, in spite of the fact—or maybe rather for the very reason—that the mainstream parties had already adopted essential ingredients belonging to the populist political manifesto of his defamed party, Front National. We can see similar trends, more or less explicit, right across the Union. This includes countries like the Netherlands, the UK, and Sweden, where policies of ‘multiculturalism’ or ‘diversity’ have for decades been more consistently promoted than in other parts of the EU, and which have been distinguished by legislation, national institutions, and actual practices targeted at combating racism and discrimination. Also in these countries mainstream political parties have adopted some of the most vote-winning messages invented by the new populist right; ideas which a few years back were considered beyond the pale. The changes in the political sphere connected with the new right populist upsurge may eventually jeopardize the whole project of European integration. The current tightening up of European regimes of immigration and asylum and of the societal incorporation of immigrants obviously reflects such concerns. The moral and political panic surrounding the whole issue of international migration is used, among other things, to justify the maintenance of barriers to free labour mobility, at least temporarily, between most of the ‘old’ member states of the EU-15 and the new (post-2004) European member states in the former Soviet sphere. This new-old ‘wall’—today meant to keep Eastern Europeans out rather than in—is supposed to protect regulated labour markets and welfare states in the West against wage and welfare ‘dumping’ or so-called welfare tourism.5 It is also supposed to stem the rise of new nationalist, racistpopulist political movements centred on the ‘problem of immigration’ and the associated alleged threat to the welfare and identity of state and nation. Simultaneously, however, influential employers, politicians, and civil servants continue repeatedly to voice the need for low- and high-skilled migrant labour as a short-term remedy for acute bottlenecks in the labour markets, but from a longer-term and wider perspective perceived as a necessary large-scale cure for Europe’s imminent ‘demographic deficit’.

A European Dilemma The complexity of this dual crisis (of the welfare state and the nation) presents the EU with a delicate dilemma centred on the racialization of social relations. 5 ¨ ran Persson, in connection with A term coined by the Swedish Prime Minister, Go political debates on the terms of accession for the new EU member states in 2004.


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It has important similarities with the American dilemma of race, class, and democracy described by the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal (1944). This emerging ‘European dilemma’ (see also Schierup 1995) can no longer be dealt with by recourse to the defensive strategies through which European governments have endeavoured to appease populist parties and movements; that is, by adopting increasingly restrictive immigration policies and asylum regimes in an apparent shift from policies of multiculturalism towards revamped assimilationist policies and practices in several countries, or by devising new ‘guest worker’ systems designed to keep the ‘problem’ away from the core institutions of society altogether. Faced with increasingly sizeable migrant populations and their offspring, with growing social tensions connected with the racialization of labour markets, society, and polity, and with the apparent likelihood of a persistent, large-scale, and economically motivated immigration from third countries, issues of discrimination and ethnic diversity have moved into the foreground. In the ongoing battle for the consolidation of European integration, an official rhetoric of citizenship and solidarity faces multiple and increasingly racialized processes of social exclusion of which the leading political elites are well aware. It expresses a serious dilemma. On the one hand, the very future of the European project of integration is dependent on the successful framing of new inclusive modes of citizenship and broad forms of social solidarity. On the other hand, taking this task seriously inevitably means confronting powerful political and economic interests. These interests are embedded in the structural features, power relations, and social and cultural life belonging to that ‘Great Transformation’ (Polanyi 1944) of new times, which we have habitually come to represent through the multifaceted catchword of ‘globalization’. An increasingly essential feature of this global transformation of contemporary capitalism is the growth of global migration. Characterizing the dilemma thus, we can conclude with Castells (1992: 7) that the EU must now ‘cope with its new global economic role while accommodating to a multi-ethnic society that emerges from the same roots that sustain the global economy’. Contemporary migratory movements are the result of, among other things, a continued (allegedly creative) destruction of economies and societies exposed to power constellations belonging to a new form of unequal global division of labour or produced by the ostensibly ‘ethnic’ wars and imperial so-called humanitarian interventions that this unequal global regime gives rise to (Schierup 1999b; Hardt and Negri 2000; Duffield 2001; Castles 2004). These global movements of economically and politically forced immigration gravitate towards the concentrations of capital and centres of management control in global cities and power blocs like the USA and the EU, where strongly voiced demands for new labour multiply alongside social exclusion internally and increasingly sophisticated, but inefficient, measures of immigration control externally. Following the shattering of the former strongly assimilating power of Fordist economic regimes (Grillo 2000) and ostensibly

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monistic national welfare states, immigration turns the member states of the EU into a novel type of multi-ethnic society. The resultant crisis of identity, citizenship, and established welfare regimes has motivated the urgent development of new local and supranational modes of governance, below and above the nation state (Geddes and Benington 2001), even though the nation state remains the focus of popular legitimacy and the prime foundation of political authority and democratic accountability. This configuration of the dilemma of migration, welfare, and citizenship of a still multinational and increasingly multiethnic United States of Europe in spem is indeed more complex than the American Dilemma of Myrdal’s time and also than the changing but still present racial dilemma of the USA of recent times (Hochschild 1984). Against the background of their unique histories, political philosophies, and institutional cultures, European states have followed a range of nationally unique paths in their approach to immigration. Unwilling to pay the social costs of effectively addressing the basic causes of ‘integration failure’, the different member states of the EU have adopted policies that tend to run, each in its unique historically path-dependent way, into the stalemate of ‘a de facto policy inactivity and laissez-faire’ (Favell 1998: 252). This is, as somewhat caustically expressed by Favell, coupled with ‘a great deal of grand and pretty theorising about citizenship and the political cultural ˚ lund origins of national community’. Nationally specific paradoxes emerge (A and Schierup 1991) as, notwithstanding their often contrasting ‘philosophies of integration’ (Favell 1998), they end up in their own versions of a deep ethnic dilemma (Glazer 1983) centred on the incremental social exclusion of immigrants and ethnic minorities. It is largely this deadlock at the national level that forms the background to the emergence of a wider ‘European Dilemma’ (Miller 1981; Schierup 1995; Favell 1998): a writing on the wall that threatens to shatter visions of citizenship and ‘social cohesion’ in the EU and poses a major challenge to the forging of a more open and inclusive multinational/multi-ethnic ‘social Europe’. The resultant ‘European Concert’—to recall a grand vision of Jacques Delors, former head of the European Commission—does at times resemble more a cacophony of discordant voices than a harmonious ‘symphony of civilisation’.6 As dealt with in detail in the following chapters, dynamics at the supranational level of the Union tend, in turn, to deepen the stalemate at the national level. But they may also offer new wider vistas, openings, and paths of action, at least if the EU’s celebrated directives and trans-national programmes at the turn of the millennium for combating racism, discrimination, and social exclusion are backed by genuine political will and by a reshaped institutional capacity to breach the gap between inclusive rhetoric and exclusive realpolitik. 6 The famous metaphor of Horace Kallen (1924), envisaging the making of an orchestrated ‘cultural pluralism’ in the USA a century ago.


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An Invigorating Paradox ‘There is a Negro Problem in the United States, and most Americans are aware of it’, Myrdal (1944: xlv) stated in the introduction to An American Dilemma. Myrdal takes his point of departure in the contradiction between a liberal ‘American creed’ professing values of equity and universal human rights and a deeply compromised social reality. It was a reality marked by white supremacy, rigid racial barriers, violence, and harassment. For African-Americans the USA of the 1940s was, surely, a world of socio-economic segregation, cultural stigma, and political exclusion. Myrdal’s basic idea was that powerful liberal elites in the USA at the time were well aware of, and indeed deeply concerned with, the racial inequality that disfigured American society. ‘The American Negro problem is a problem in the heart of the American’, he claimed (Myrdal 1944: xlvii). But to build a politics which would resolve ‘the Negro problem’ it was necessary, Myrdal maintained, to appeal to the common creed that all citizens of the USA regarded as theirs: to enforce political reform by appeal to the basic principles of equal opportunity and human dignity laid down in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. In choosing what he called ‘the American creed’ as the moral-political anchor for his work, Myrdal adopted the position of a general ‘humanistic universalism’ (Wallerstein 1991a:82) represented by the American Constitution and its emphasis on equality of opportunity and political democracy. His argument was that, paradoxically and notwithstanding the enormous gap between ‘creed’ and actual practice, values of democracy and equity proclaimed in the American constitution did appear to be shared by almost everybody, independent of race, region (North or South), and class: by the ‘oppressors’ as well as by the ‘oppressed’, as Myrdal put it. The American creed constituted the most general, and maybe the only, common denominator for the American nation, the nucleus of a shared public culture. That is (in line with the argument of Habermas (1994)) a ‘constitutional patriotism’, making possible the negotiation of compromises that would constitute the necessary basis for any reform project. This overall ‘creed’ represented widespread values with their roots in the European Enlightenment. But against this level of general values, Myrdal observed, stood many specific values, rooted in particular cultures, ethnic or racial groups, local communities, classes, and interest groups. The Myrdal dilemma is, from this perspective, nothing but a crucial restatement of Rousseau’s notion of the ‘conflict between the general and the particular wills’, or so Wallerstein (1991a: 83) argues in his treatment of the Myrdal legacy. It is, as such, a theme which, in terms of the conflict between universalism and particularism, has been repeatedly examined by critical academics concerned with issues of race, ethnicity, citizenship, and nation (Taylor 1992; Habermas 1994; ¨ ck and Rundell 1998). Silverman 1992; Tagueiff 1987; Highham 1993; Baubo

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Phrased in this general ethical-philosophical way—as a choice between pursuing the universalist promise of the ‘American Creed’ and continuing to give in to the particularist ethno-racist doctrines of much of white conservative America—the classical ‘American Dilemma’ facing the white US liberal elites of the 1940s, to whom Myrdal’s study was meant to appeal, represented most definitely an overall moral-political dilemma. However, Myrdal’s characterization of the dilemma can, in another and perhaps more robust sense, be seen as rooted not only in conflicting moral-political world views but equally in political and material exigency. This is, in fact, a continuous subtext that can be read throughout Myrdal’s work on the American ’Negro Problem’. The American creed was and is so much more than simply a creed. It has been the indispensable charter for one of the most remarkable undertakings of nation building and political integration in a complex multi-ethnic state (Habermas 1994): in a huge, immensely differentiated and rapidly changing society moulded by extensive and consecutive waves of immigration from all corners and cultures on earth. In fact the historical realism of this project appears, as noticed by John Higham (1993) in his critical exposition on ‘multiculturalism and universalism’ in the USA, to be rooted in what he calls the ‘invigorating paradox’ of the American universalistic tradition. ‘What was theoretically and potentially universal in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution’, he admits, ‘indeed soon came to be understood as the very lynchpin of identity. . . of a peculiar people’ (Highham 1993:198). However, ‘the coupling, in national icons’, Higham continues, of a ‘distinctively American bird of prey with a transnational symbol of freedom cannot be fully understood as a smokescreen or a delusion’. It reflects ‘the inescapable locatedness of any universalistic perspective’. This displays, more specifically, an enduring tension in American universalism ‘between closure and openness, between separateness and inclusion’. From the time of the American Revolution and Independence, ‘a principled way of managing this tension has been to extend the circle of those who are acknowledged as makers of an American nationality and to project each incremental addition as a promise of still wider inclusiveness’ (Highham 1993:198). It is this ’enduring tension’ in American universalism that constitutes one crucial fault line in the dilemma. The racial stigmatization, discrimination, and social exclusion represented by the so-called Negro problem contradicted the central values embodied in the universalistic political mythology of the USA and had indeed, by the 1940s, become a growing threat to the cohesion of the nation. However, continued white supremacy and oppression was challenged not only by growing African-American political awareness and organization. With the growing importance of black labour in expanding economic sectors, the continued preservation of, as Myrdal described it, a ‘caste’-like social order— supported by, among others, many white workers and unions—was starting to harm the interests of influential liberal business elites. This also signified seg-


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mentation and conflicts within business itself, reminiscent of earlier deep conflicts between North and South during the American history of race and class. Seen from the perspective of the ‘new economy’ of those days and the new society of the ‘New Deal’—that is, Fordist industrialism and an emerging American welfare state—if dominant white liberal elites continued hiding their heads in the sand they would jeopardize economic progress. But if they were to seize the dilemma by its horns they would provoke serious confrontations with numerous and still powerful white conservative interest groups and trigger serious political turbulence. For the ‘Negro problem’ represented a problem of the dominant relations of power in American society. This ‘problem’ could not be confined to the segregated spaces of America, where the ‘negroes’ lived—so Myrdal summarized his massive investigation for the Carnegie Foundation. The ‘Negro problem’ was essentially a ‘white problem’; ‘an integral part of, or a special phase of, the whole complex of problems in the larger American civilization’ (Myrdal 1944: liii). It existed because forces and conditions in American society as a whole made African-Americans a problem. It was a problem of American history and of the condition of the American economy and society; a problem historically produced and perpetuated by and in a society and a civilization where the actually existing day-to-day practices of the dominant political, legal, educational, and economic institutions were geared to serving traditionally vested white interests and a white ideological and political hegemony. Hence the other fault line of the dilemma was indeed a very tangible one, concerned with political economy, differentiated class interests, and established institutions. This intersection of the moral-political dimension of racism, concerns about social cohesion, and the importance of dealing with the ‘Negro problem’ was crucial for the exigency of setting in motion a large-scale economic and social transformation. It brings to mind the configuration of other major historical moments of social and economic transformation—such as the abolition of the British slave trade,7 the American civil war, and the fall of apartheid––in all of which the confrontation with the issue of ‘race’ was contingent on the interaction of moral politics, anxiety about social cohesion, and corporate interests concerned with structural barriers to economic change. It reveals that Myrdal’s adoption of the complex of beliefs that he named ‘the American creed’ as a value framework for research meant so much more than simply a humanitarian moral stand provoked by the indignation felt by a Swedish social democrat and social engineer confronted with the social inequality and horrid race relations in the USA of the 1940s.8 7 See, for example, Eric Williams’ (1944) discussion of British abolitionism, the successes of which, he argues, must be seen in the context of a major shift in British global commercial and industrial interests of the time. 8 For an interpretation of Myrdal along these lines, see Jackson (1990). See also Platt’s (1992) critical review of Walter A. Jackson’s book, Gunnar Myrdal and America’s Conscience.

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To speak of a current ‘European dilemma’ in the spirit of the Myrdal legacy presupposes, in consequence, that there is a genuinely common and shared dilemma extending across the EU as a whole—a dilemma involving clashes of values at different levels, general and particular, but all connected with vital stakes in the building of this emerging transnational community of nations and particular ethnic and other increasingly differentiated cultural and social identities. This presupposes, in turn, that there is some shared creed in Europe, some genuinely inclusive communal moral conviction to be invoked. To be a meaningful foundation for inquiry, such a presumed European creed must possess an ingrained quality of historical and path-dependent realism relating to vital European political traditions and institutions capable of gaining public legitimacy and inspiring social mobilization. It must also, in consequence, be capable of relating in realistic and complex ways to the multifarious transformation of the present, manifest in economic-technological change, novel forms of democratic governance and institutional frameworks, as well as new modes of culture and identity.

What Creed in Europe? Indeed, many Europeans like to think of their minor outgrowth from the Asian continent as the ‘birthplace of universal values and cultural patterns, hopefully to become shared by all and given worldwide consensus’ (Balbo 1993: 1). These qualities are commonly seen to be contained in the Enlightenment faith in liberal democracy and rights of citizenship. They include, Du Bois (1985 [1900]: 185) reminds us, the dimensions of social solidarity and social responsibility: These ideals differ in no respect from the ideals of that European civilization of which we all today form a part. And therefore our watchword today must be Social Solidarity, Social Responsibility.

This statement by one of the twentieth century’s great African-American intellectuals and political champions is important to remember when, in an age of the alleged ‘end of history’, democracy and rights of citizenship are becoming increasingly subsumed within the gospel of individual economic rationality, incarnated in the ever-present ‘market’. Du Bois was of course fully aware of the idiosyncratic political and cultural contingencies that colour the dominant interpretations of these allegedly universal European ideals and of the exclusionary social and institutional practices that limit their actual achievements. But he would not reject the possibility that their interpretation and the scope of their attainment could be modernized and thereby also universalized. In line with this—as in the lecture in Louisville, quoted above, which he gave to an audience of African-American educationalists at the dawn of the twentieth century—he urged the black population of the USA to take


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these values seriously, to embrace them politically, to fill them with substantial social and cultural meaning, and to actualize them through concerted action. After two world wars and today’s advance of an ethnically segmented Europe, and given that other tangible historical reality of European ‘cultural patterns’ like slave trading, colonialism, imperialism, racism, and genocide, the American Du Bois’ appeal to what he called ‘the spirit of modern Europe’ may, for some, appear naive, just as the European Myrdal’s appeal to the ‘American creed’ may. Later on, for sure, even Du Bois came to feel so deceived by white Eurocentric politics in the USA that he would advocate a markedly separate course for black struggles. Among Europeans, the philosopher Agnes Heller (1992: 20–21) voices succinctly the cynicism of the betrayed, and demonstrates with great clarity how people other than African-Americans or US ethnic activists would become disillusioned with actually existing Europeanness: [I]n modernity only those institutions can be stabilized that allow for accumulating political experience as well as for continuous appeals to greater social and political justice. . . . But apart from the technological version there is no longer a futureoriented social fantasy in the lands of Europe. Grand narratives of another, better future in politics, social questions, or anything else, are no longer forged there. Redemption is deemed undesirable, and sociopolitical progress ridiculed. . . . The old Europe resembles a corpse whose hair and nails, wealth, and cumulative knowledge are still growing, but the rest is dead.

But although a critical reception of the distinctive optimism expressed by a younger Du Bois concerning universalist appeals to social responsibility and solidarity in the name of Europeanness is certainly justified, it is still necessary to try to realize what happens if we conclude the analysis at this point. For intellectuals simply to stop there and announce, with Agnes Heller (1992: 2021), the death of what there ever was of a vision of a political democracy and of a creative social fantasy in the lands of Europe leads nowhere but to resignation or to libertine postmodern social fragmentation coupled with the actually existing universalism of a hegemonic ‘invisible hand’ (Naı¨r 1992). But it would also be to read the sentence of death for a project that is, after all, still openended. ‘Europeanness’ has indeed, argues Philip Schlesinger (1992b: 14) remained a ‘cultural battlefield’ where the continued ‘salience of national identity confutes the view that the grand narratives are passe´, and that there are no compelling tales of solidarity to tell’. Quite evidently, Schlesinger (1992b: 14) continues, ‘both the emergent nation-states of the old East, and the supranationalising European Community are heavily dependent upon convincing us that tales of solidarity within bounded communities are both plausible and desirable’. One trend in the search for a common European identity—most markedly represented by the visions and political practice of Jacques Delors (1992a; 1992b; Ross 1995)—emphasizes the necessity of including the mandate of social solidarity and responsibility within any idea and institutions for supranational integration that may be expected to enjoy public legitimacy.

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However, the EU still primarily constitutes one huge single transnational market for commodities, capital, labour, and entrepreneurship. This market is sheltered by the umbrella of a ramified technocratic-bureaucratic political and administrative apparatus. There is, so far, no powerful common social dimension. The proposed EU Constitutional Treaty offered no convincing charter pertaining to basic rights of social, civil, and political citizenship. There is, moreover, unlike in the USA, no positive historically rooted and common popular political ‘creed’ in the EU which goes beyond the individual nation states and on which the legitimacy of claims for such rights can be based (Shore and Black 1994). Finally, there are as yet (given the still weak status of democratic bodies like the European Parliament and the predominantly national basis of social movements and political parties) no broadly accessible and powerful democratic political institutions or agencies through which to struggle for their possible foundation at the supernational level. There is, as argued by E´tienne Balibar (1991), ‘no state in Europe’ in the established liberal democratic sense of the concept. So far, this has largely left the initiative in the contemporary battle over Europeanness to the European Commission and its political and administrative bodies. We may, in this sense, compare the present situation concerning the creation of supranationalizing institutions and a common European identity to the Italian Risorgimento or to the nineteenth-century Prussian efforts to build a unified and powerful German state from above, centralizing and remoulding the multifarious economic, social, and cultural landscapes of smaller pre-existing political communities. But, like these precedents in the state-formation process, contemporary Europeanists are faced with intricate dilemmas concerning the cultural and ideological sources of the common identity, political legitimacy, and social solidarity they seek to create. Like much of the conspicuous upsurge of nationalism in Europe today— from the ethnic-nationalist claims of new political elites in former Yugoslavia and other parts of post-Communist Europe to the nationalist-populist antiimmigration movements of Western Europe—various contemporary EU initiatives are boosting a nascent European cultural and political identity in exclusionary cultural or ethnic terms (Martiniello 1994; Hansen 2000a; Shore 2000). This is representative of a traditionalist or primordialist version of the definition of Europeanness. A ‘European creed’, in this version, is symbiotic with and tries to profit from the ethno-nationalist surge in the individual member states, and thus nourishes, rather than challenges, a divisive national chauvinism. It excludes by definition ‘numerous immigrants from the South and the East of the world already living in Europe, but also among those potential migrants who arrive in Europe as asylum seekers or of those already within the family reunification process’; one should be ‘above all preliminary ‘‘culturally European’’—to be allowed to profit from the relative economic European well-being . . . [an] ethno-racial conception of European


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society which could account for all the exclusionary practices suffered by the non-members of that European society’ (Martiniello 1994: 38). Other attempts to deal with today’s European dilemma are based on overtly universalist and modernist assumptions. From this point of view the cultural construction of Europe is perceived as related to a parallel process of economic reconstruction and backed by anti-discriminatory and anti-racist policies, and poses the problems of identity and citizenship within the context of a global understanding of the EU’s social problems, changing political predicaments, ¨ ck 1994; Schierup 1995, 2003; R. Hansen and multicultural character (Baubo 1998; Hansen 2000a; Balibar 2004; Castles 2004). This goes beyond the more usual bias of the extensive debate on citizenship which is a conspicuous feature of social science conferences all over Europe; a debate that tends to concentrate on fairly abstract discussions of the merits and drawbacks of legal-political ideal types, but which in general pays less attention to questions of social inequality, political-cum-economic power, and global change. What is needed are not reductive or simplifying models but, on the contrary, a debate and institutional practices that allow space for the complexity of our present situation. It is also from this perspective that Myrdal’s approach is still relevant. Its complex perspective—reconnecting issues of power, culture, and democracy with concerns of racial discrimination, and this together with matters of political economy and class—can still provide guidance to research on the dilemmas of ethnically composite societies and to political action.9 Seen from this position, a contemporary European creed must, by virtue and by necessity, be more elaborate and inclusive than the idea of Europe shared by most of today’s Europeanists following in the footsteps of Saint Simon, Dahrendorf, and Delors. It is nowhere near enough to plea for a transplantation of the essentials of an enlightened national bureaucratic welfare compact to a supranational level. There is real social distress within the EU, connected with a pronounced structurally and institutionally embedded racism. While still carrying the weight of European powers’ colonial history (Hansen 2002), contemporary European racism is contingent on North–South polarization, on a segmented and unequal global ‘division of labour’, and on the dualization of those large European cities which are the main targets for today’s many forms of (economically and politically) forced mass migration. An exclusionary ‘Commonwealth of Ethnocentrism’ (Schmid 1992) may prefer to detach itself from the distressing challenges represented by North–South tensions, the ‘globalization of poverty’ (Chossudovsky 1997), continuous immigration, and an exclusive ethnically divisive European society, as well as from the underlying political 9 Immanuel Wallerstein (1991a) provides an elucidating review of the Myrdal legacy, arguing for the important contemporary relevance of its complex and multi-disciplinary theory and method.

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and economic predicaments. But, in spite of increasingly restrictive measures of immigration control, many of the uprooted contemporary helots (Cohen 1987) of the South and the East will, also in the future, find their way to the metropolises of the EU. Excluding the voices of ethnic minorities from the political process and barring an increasingly substantial population of migrant origin from emerging post-national identities and rights of citizenship in the EU would inevitably become one of the important factors jeopardizing what many Europeans continue to see as the most essential long-term objective for European integration. This is to build an inclusive and multifaceted postnational political democracy in an age when the dual forces of globalism and localism have made new frameworks for political articulation and integration imperative. These new forms of democracy will, in turn, require new forms of social solidarity and social responsibility at a time when the nation states have become increasingly barred from carrying universalizing claims.

A Dilemma Within a Dilemma However, the EU continues, so Prue Chamberlayne (1997) argues, to pivot ‘uneasily on the central contradiction between economic and political goals— between adjustment to the economic imperatives of capitalism and global competition and the task of generating a new European identity based on a sufficiently potent and integrative notion of citizenship’. During the 1990s, the fracturing of the fault lines of this contradiction between economic exigency in market economic terms and a necessary commitment to social solidarity and social welfare became a central and increasingly politically explosive dilemma for the Union (Chamberlayne 1997:2; Williams 1991). This is manifested not only in public attitudes and in voting behaviour confirming support for a strong welfare state (Svallfors and Taylor-Gooby 1999), but also in strikes, demonstrations, and other public manifestations. The political elites of the Union would, indeed, have to pay a high cost if any serious commitment to develop the so-called social dimension of the EU should be abandoned. A one-sided emphasis on economic exigency at the expense of social solidarity would profoundly jeopardize the much propagated urgency of ‘social cohesion’ and political stability in the enormously heterogeneous multinational and multi-ethnic cultural conglomerate of Europe.10 Ultimately, even major corporate interests will depend on the overall objective of an integrated community. This contradiction in the EU’s current trajectory between capital-driven processes of integration on the one hand and the exigency of social redistribution on the other (Williams 1991) lies at the heart of a contemporary European dilemma of social solidarity versus corporate economic interest. Indeed, it resembles the basic contradiction which 10

For discussion of the issue of ‘social cohesion’ see, for example, Vertovec (1997).


15

represented the point of departure for, among others, T. H. Marshall’s (1950) thinking on the modern national welfare state, but also the logic behind Karl Polanyi’s (1944) sweeping analysis in The Great Transformation, as topical a work today as ever (Schierup 1999b; Hettne 2004). In the contemporary EU, the ethnic and ‘racial’ component of the dilemma has, at the same time, become more and more obvious as the ‘social dimension’ and the ‘immigrant problem’ have become increasingly tightly interrelated. As the most conspicuous forms of social inequality of our time tend to become articulated in terms of (immigrant) ‘culture’, ‘ethnicity’, and ‘race’, and as the ethnic division of our economies, cities, and societies intensifies, EU institutions become challenged by a contradiction similar to that which was revealed when the proper dimensions of the so-called Negro problem were laid bare for American liberal reformists by Myrdal in the USA of the 1940s. In the words of Immanuel Wallerstein (1991a: 92), ‘[f]rom the perspective of those who hold power’, solving and not solving the dilemma of racism are ‘equally unpleasant alternatives’. Today the prospects of the EU boosting its competitiveness in the context of globalization is seen by influential proponents of capital, major unions, liberal analysts, and politicians across the Union as premised on the long-term and large-scale import of immigrant labour. Politically powerful interests groups will, most probably, continue to have an interest in the immigration of menial labour and in an ethnically segmented labour market populated by ‘foreigners’ who are bereft of occupational choice and who are spatially and politically isolated. The racialized minorities of our time are socially and politically marginalized, but essential cogwheels serving the much-hailed flexibility of production and labour regimes and the new service economies characteristic of current processes of restructuring. Yet the emergence of a growing population of socially excluded minorities represents not only a ubiquitous blind spot in terms of a democratic self-understanding but a growing threat to ‘social cohesion’. Continued immigration has given the large cities of Western Europe a distinctive poly-ethnic character. Like North American cities, these poly-ethnic urban conglomerates—nodal points of the global economy with information technology (IT) as their dynamic force—have increasingly become ‘dual cities’ (Castells 1992). At one pole there is a cosmopolitan elite at the centre of the informational economy, living in continuous communication with all parts of the globe, economically, socially, and culturally. At the other is the ‘tribalism of local communities, retrenched in their spaces that they try to control as their last stand against the macro-forces that shape their lives out of their reach’ (Castells 1992: 17). These areas are marked by high unemployment and social marginalization, containing as they do labour reserves for a substantial new low-wage, largely de-unionized, service sector which represents the functionally necessary counterpart to the urban informational economy.

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During the 1980s and 1990s, the contemporary urban unrest which first became obvious in the UK in the 1980s has, contingent on this economic and social dualization, found different forms of expression in cities all across Europe. There are the disorganized urban so-called riots. There are the problems of drug abuse, the everyday criminalized violence, and the ongoing ‘neotribal’ warfare between rival gangs. But there are also alternative social movements mobilizing ethnically and racially defined minorities in protest against racial harassment, in defence of their local neighbourhoods or ethnic communities faced with discriminatory actions of local government. These movements also raise key issues of education, culture, employment, and rights of citizenship to the national agendas in different countries (Miller 1981; Gilroy ˚ lund 1996, 2003). But they are, in 1987; Rex and Drury 1994; Ireland 1994; A turn, often taken as a provocation by populist movements and parties and by a plethora of ‘neo-Nazi’ youth groups. There is indeed a growing consciousness concerning the articulation of this emerging dilemma of migration and racism with Europe’s overall dilemma of social cohesion and the market (Hansen 2001) among leading political elites. Following the Amsterdam Treaty in 1997, an impressive EU reform agenda has been developed. A new manifest anti-discrimination orientation has been turned into mandatory directives and large-scale transnational development programmes, which require member states to combat discrimination and social exclusion. But new actually emerging policy frameworks for positive action may in turn be jeopardized by the character of the wider normative and institutional frameworks upon which they are contingent, twisting in the process the moral-political premises of the overall dilemma. The shifting reference in EU political discourse of the concept of ‘social exclusion’ and its positively charged opposite of ‘social inclusion’ is an important indicator. At the beginning of the 1990s, an association of the meaning of the couplet ‘exclusion/inclusion’ with a broad conception of citizenship and social welfare was basic to the European Community’s programme on poverty and social exclusion. Here social inclusion was understood as preconditioned by civil, political, and, in particular, social rights of citizenship, sanctioned by the overall political compact of the welfare state. This also implied the reality of a substantial citizenship11 contingent on the existence or establishment of overall institutional and social conditions that would facilitate the actual exercise of these rights by exposed individuals and social groups, and thus their actual participation as full and equal members of society. Social exclusion was, conversely, seen as signifying exclusion from citizenship in the broad sense of blocking actual opportunities for individuals to exercise full and fundamental social, political, and civil rights in a liberal-democratic welfare society. But this original association of the couplet ‘exclusion/inclusion’ 11 We refer here to the habitual distinction between formal and substantial citizenship as defined and discussed by, among others, Castles (1994a).


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with a broad notion of substantial citizenship has been subsequently narrowed to the connotation of exclusion from or inclusion in paid work or selfemployment. This goes hand in hand with current tendencies to dismantle social rights of citizenship and with the aim of removing barriers to the establishment of ‘the market’ as the dominant form of regulating economy and society. The general movement is from one type of European political coalition and discourse to another; that is, from a conservative-social democratic coalition attempting to merge differential political concerns with ‘social order’ and ‘equality’, to a neocommunitarian–neoliberal coalition concerned with reconciling ‘social cohesion’ with ‘market efficiency’. Given the overrepresentation of immigrants and ethnic minorities in the lower ranks of the social hierarchy, it is in this context of changing conceptions of ‘social exclusion’ and the continuous hollowing out of social rights of citizenship that the prospects for the EU’s anti-discrimination policies must be analysed and assessed.

Outline of the Book ‘Citizenship’ remains, however, the prime moral-political watchword among policymakers and enlightened administrators across Europe, including the European Commission itself, as well as the privileged critical theoretical concept and analytical tool among scholars who approach contemporary issues of immigration, ethnicity, and race. The crisis of the nation state has spawned a search for new theories on ‘transnational’, ‘post-national’, ‘global’, or supra¨ ck 1994; Soysal 1994; national ‘European’ citizenship (Habermas 1994; Baubo Favell 1998; Held et al. 1999; Balibar 2004), to account for the challenges of the profound restructuring of economy and society embedded in globalization. Claims have been made that a widening post- or transnational space for the institutionalization of extended human rights or rights of citizenship offers fresh perspectives on persistent national ‘ethnic dilemmas’. These theories draw the force of their argument from new moral-political conditionality and institutional opportunities seen to be latently present in emerging forms of supra- or transnational integration. This is due to the opportunities they are perceived to offer for venturing beyond the ethnocentrism of traditional national regimes of citizenship and their distinctive politics of closure concerning immigrants and ethnic minorities. Nevertheless, when one takes note of the recent and, indeed, heightened interest in the relationship between the EU level and the problems and dilemmas addressed here, it is of utmost importance to remember that such a relationship has existed since the onset of European integration in the 1950s. Although the impact of the EU level has become more marked, visible, and subjected to public debate as a result of its expanding competence since the mid-1980s, matters concerning migration, citizenship rights, and identity (regional, national, racial, ethnic, or other) are, as such, in no way novel to

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the EU project. They should, rather, be seen as having had a crucial bearing on the very constitution and logic of European integration as it started in the aftermath of the Second World War. Of particular importance are the reiterated debacles of the efforts to equip the Community with a substantial ‘social dimension’. This has continued to impose important limitations on its capacity to actually implement proclaimed policies against racism and discrimination, specifically affecting the leeway for practising humane asylum policies and the actual potential to develop socially inclusive policies of immigration. What possible scenarios may we project? Will the result be a dual society on the contemporary neo-American (US) model, marked by unbounded fragmentation of social solidarity, with increasing masses of new poor controlled by police and prisons and with racialist policies instrumentalized to block social movements for change? Will the challenges of new immigration, social exclusion, urban crisis, and ethnic diversity continue to propel the retreat into defensive authoritarian-nationalist regimes seeking to conserve what remains of the traditional European welfare policies as ethnic preserves for entrenched national majorities? Or could we, conversely, discern in embryonic new flexible forms of governance a revived inclusive social compact, a ‘rainbow coalition’ across a ‘Europe of citizens’ which could include the increasing differentiation of identity, of tales of cultural belonging, and of political allegiance displayed in new–old ethnic, racial, or religious idioms? Might we even, as some project, beyond the Union’s present state of an ‘embedded neoliberalism’ (van Apeldoorn 2003), come to see the retreat of national and of Eurocentric hegemonies in favour of a grander regime of transnational or global citizenship; that is, a further crystallization of international norms, laws, institutions, and political sanctions embedding claims for diversity and social rights in a truly cosmopolitan framework? Could we imagine such an overarching cosmopolitan framework being matched by new forms of local democracy and social solidarity reintegrating socially polarized cities and sealed-off urban ghettoes? These and other imagined European scenarios or projections, which we encounter in current debates within the social sciences, are all enmeshed within developments at a global level, like explosive financial crises and deteriorating North–South relationships. But a central dynamic determinant remains in the politics and policies of national, supranational, and local polities belonging to the EU itself and in the kind of overall self-understanding of the European project that circumscribes them. In this aspect, the contemporary European dilemma is no different from its past or present American counterparts; but the primacy of political philosophy and moral values, and of scrutinizing the political responsibility or lack of concern reflected in actual choice and strategy, is often neglected in academic enquiry. Departing from these premises, the central issue, the heart of present dilemmas of race, class, and democracy, and the focus of this book, is whether a sustainable policy targeted at equal opportunities can actually succeed without the precondition that some form of a broad social compact on citizenship


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and social welfare is still valid in terms of normative political consensus and strong institutions beyond and complementary to the market. Chapter 2 surveys post-Second World War migratory trends and the formation of new ethnic minorities in Western Europe. Against this background Chapter 3 retrieves contingencies of EU policy development concerning matters of migrant integration, labour migration, and asylum on the threshold of the twenty-first century. A particular emphasis is placed on an analysis of the incongruous constitution of the EU and on the ambiguity of its new policies of migration, asylum, migrant ‘integration’, and anti-racism as expressed in the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997 and its aftermath. Indeed, since the problems addressed in this book are so intrinsically bound up with the historical as well as the current development of the EU, their solution, as well as their protracted aggravation, are equally bound up with the future trajectory taken by the EU. Or—in another formulation—with half a century of a European integration process that has effectively limited and, in some respects, even pre-empted ‘the problem-solving capacity of national political systems’ (Scharpf 1999) in areas of welfare, immigration, labour market policy, and macroeconomic policymaking it becomes increasingly important to assess and analyse the capacity, or perhaps incapacity, for problem-solving in these areas at the level of the EU. In Chapters 4–8 we move to a comparative perspective. Based on a synthesis of theoretical propositions within US research on ethnicity, race, gender, and class, and with insights from European comparative sociological studies on welfare regimes, we venture into in-depth analysis of national cases. A discussion of the UK, Germany, Italy, and Sweden reveals a complex interplay between path-dependent institutional strategies and multiple tendencies of convergence in the direction of a neo-American strategy of globalization and its characteristic forms of ‘advanced marginality’. Yet individual societies continue, in line with their particular welfare regimes, their institutionalized economic and political frameworks, and their particular modes of organization of civil society, to cope with forces of globalization as well as processes of racialized exclusion in importantly different ways and with importantly different results. While these country studies analyse the articulation of different modes of marginality and exclusion in particular countries, Chapter 9 focuses on one particular type of process of organizational change observed across a selection of countries. We discuss the so-called subcontracting so characteristic of new strategies of corporate economic management in the network society structuring new ethnic divisions of labour in different national settings. At this point it is also necessary to draw attention to what has not been covered in our discussion. We have not been able to cover all the immigration countries. In Western Europe we have paid little or no attention to France, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Ireland, all of which have had significant immigration and their own policies and approaches. Our account of Scandinavia has focused only on Sweden, and that of southern Europe chiefly on Italy. However, we believe that much of what is said about the

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cases discussed does apply to other immigration countries. More serious is the omission of the new immigration countries of eastern and central Europe. The end of the cold war has turned countries like Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary from mainly areas of emigration, first into transit countries for people moving to the west and then into new areas of entry and settlement. Since these countries have now joined the EU, their models of immigration and settlement are clearly important to our theme. However, to include them here has simply not been possible for reasons of time and space. In all of the member states of the EU, the relations between the declared ideals of citizenship and the actual exclusion of ethnic or racial ‘Others’ from civil, political, and social rights result in moral-political dilemmas. But the specific forms which these dilemmas take vary immensely among the member states, as do the political-ideological terms in which they are understood and the institutional policies through which they are dealt in day-to-day practice. This is related to different European societies’ historical paths of development as well as to the particular ways in which these paths are still guiding contemporary political struggles and compromises in the particular member states of the EU. It is, among other things, this powerful path dependence that, from a transatlantic perspective, makes the European Union’s dilemma still different from its US-American counterpart, despite a number of contemporary processes of convergence. But path dependence, as it relates to different historical traditions, philosophies, and institutionalized practices, is also what makes it particularly difficult to advance concerted and consistent approaches to the emerging overall dilemma that issues of immigration, ethnicity, and ‘race’ have today come to represent for the EU as a whole. In light of this, the concluding Chapter 10 reviews the overall predicaments of the European dilemma as the EU faces the double challenge of national-ethnic diversity and social crisis. We focus on the issue of European moral-political identity and the future of a multinational–multi-ethnic democracy, and ask which moral-political values and institutional strategies may actually guide the future integration of one of the world’s most powerful economic and political blocs.

TWO

The ‘Migration Crisis’ and the Genesis of Europe’s New Diversity

E

UROPE’S ‘migration crisis’ is generally perceived as starting around 1989 (Baldwin-Edwards and Schain 1994: 7). The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist states led to instability in central Europe and undermined many of the barriers that had kept population mobility in check. It was expected that ‘floods’ of millions of desperate migrants would ‘swamp’ West European welfare systems and drag down living standards (Thra¨nhardt 1996). But by the mid-1990s it was clear that the ‘invasion’ was not going to take place. East–West movements did increase, but they were mainly of members of ethnic minorities moving to ancestral ethnic so-called homelands, where they had a right to entry and citizenship: ethnic Germans (Aussiedler) to Germany (Thra¨nhardt 1996: 237; Levy 1999), Russian Jews to Israel, Bulgarian Turks to Turkey, and Pontian Greeks to Greece. Millions of people moved within and between the successor states of the former Soviet Union (UNHCR 1995: 24–5). Russia thus became a major country of immigration, with around two million ethnic Russians leaving or being displaced from the Baltic states, new central Asian states, and other parts of the former Soviet ¨ nz 1996: 206). Movements of Poles, Russians, and other East Union (Mu Europeans to Western Europe in search of work also increased, but never reached extreme levels. Nonetheless, the period at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s was a crucial turning point in European migration and ethnic community formation, above all in the way these events were perceived by both political elites and the general public. It also marked an upsurge in social scientific interest in the subject, with a sudden burgeoning of research projects, conferences, publications, and university courses. What were the new aspects of immigration that shaped perceptions and policies in the 1990s? The most immediate were the upsurge in asylum-seeker entries and irregular migration, which were seized upon by populist parties and the media to create a climate of panic. Asylum-seeker entries to European OECD countries peaked at 695,000 in 1992 in response to the Yugoslav civil

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The Migration Crisis

wars and then declined, but reached new peaks by the late 1990s. During the 1990s, substantial numbers of migrants also came from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia (while Latin America became a less significant source than it was in the era of the military regimes in the 1970s and 1980s). Economic transformation, political upheavals, ethnic conflicts, and environmental disasters all triggered migrations, whether of refugees, asylum seekers, or undocumented workers. The result was an evergreater diversity in the geographical, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds of migrant populations. By the turn of the millennium, immigration had become a key political issue throughout the EU. In the UK politicians and some sections of the media did their best to create a siege mentality. In the Netherlands undocumented immigration triggered the populist movement and party, Lijst Pim Fortuyn. In Denmark a liberal-conservative party rehearsed the earlier experience of Austria by forming a government by relying on the support of a populist party whose main aim was to put a stop to immigration. Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece (King and Lazaridis 2000), which had formed labour reserve countries for north-western Europe in the first decades after the Second World War, had now themselves become immigration countries. Most of this immigration was undocumented. In spite of these countries’ shorter histories of immigration, populist movements centred on immigration became politically influential, in particular in Italy, where the neoliberal government of Silvio Berlusconi came to power on the basis of alliances with the populist regional party Lega Nord and the post-fascist party Alleanza Nationale. By the mid-1990s new immigration areas were emerging in eastern and central Europe (Wallace and Stola 2001). Countries whose economies stabilized and started growing soonest— the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and the Baltic states—pulled in migrants from further east or from Asia and Africa. Some of the migrants were using these countries as transit routes to the EU member states, but many stayed on as undocumented migrants exploited in a large informal sector of the economy. European countries experienced new needs for both highly skilled and lowskilled workers. International labour markets for scarce skills in such areas as corporate management, IT, research and development, medicine, and the media led to the introduction of recruitment schemes and privileged entry rules for professionals. Low-skilled service workers were needed in areas unattractive to local workers, like catering, cleaning, housework, health services, the building industry, and garment manufacturing. Demographic factors—the decline in fertility and the increasing share of the population aged over 65— led to calls for recruitment of migrants for aged care work. Since governments generally did not want to admit low-skilled migrant workers, labour was more and more often provided by undocumented workers, asylum seekers, ethnic minority women, and youth. But new temporary ‘guest-worker’ schemes were also developed, first in Germany and subsequently in other EU member states.


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Weak legal status, ethnic discrimination, social exclusion processes, and gender bias all combined to produce a new reserve of racialized labour, which formed the bottom rung in an increasingly polarized workforce. But perhaps the most important shift of the 1990s was the increasing awareness that the migrations of the 1945–73 boom period, together with new migrations since the 1980s, were leading to large-scale settlement and ethnic community formation. This had been obvious to some observers for many years (e.g. Castles, Booth, and Wallace 1984). In certain countries (notably the UK, Sweden, and the Netherlands), official ‘multicultural’, ‘minority’, or ‘diversity’ policies were developed in the 1970s and 1980s. In other immigration countries official policies and popular ideologies were largely based on a politics of denial until the late 1990s. Politicians of the major parties continued to declare that Germany was ‘not a country of immigration’ until the federal election of 1998, when power was taken over by Social Democrats in coalition with Germany’s Green Party. But the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) continued to resist change (e.g. Green 2004) and accentuated a xenophobic and increasingly Islamophobic rhetoric. France still pursues its ‘Republican model’ of ‘insertion’ (Hollifield 2004), which effectively means cultural assimilation. Policymakers in Switzerland, Austria, and many newer immigration countries still do not officially recognize the reality of permanent settlement and community formation among immigrants and their descendents. But by the early 1990s, public authorities, social service agencies, civil society organizations, and large sections of the public had become well aware of the changes occurring in social and cultural life, and were beginning to respond in various ways—often positively and negatively at the same time, revealing the controversial and disruptive character of ‘immigration’. Often local governments and administrations were much more realistic, flexible, and far-sighted than official national ideological statements and policies (e.g. Favell 1998). In view of all of these factors, it is no exaggeration to say that 1989 was a major turning point, marking a shift in the character of migration and settlement in Europe as well as in the self-awareness of European societies, as we discuss at length in Chapter 3 on the EU. Since the 1990s ideologies of ethnically homogeneous national populations and monocultural identities have become unsustainable. It is the central argument of this book that this shift has coincided and been closely linked with a fundamental change in the character of welfare states and class relations in Europe. This has all happened simultaneously with globalization and regional integration, which bring into question the sovereignty and autonomy of the nation state. In this chapter we look at important turning points in the migratory process in order to understand how and why immigration and settlement took place, and to examine the policies and assumptions that underlay these important changes. Two previous turning points can be identified (although their exact

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timing varies among countries): the beginnings of post-Second World War migration (1945–50 in most Western European countries, but somewhat later in West Germany), and the stopping of labour recruitment (1973–4 in most cases, but considerably earlier in the UK), which set the scene for largely unexpected processes of settlement. The current period, starting about 2000, can also be seen as a significant turning point. It is characterized by a hesitant admission that Europe needs immigrants for both demographic and economic reasons, by a growing realization that border control alone cannot achieve effective migration realization, and by new (and often emotionally charged) discourses on security and identity. We discuss all these turning points here. We ask why settlement took place and describe the underlying assumptions on migration and ethnic and cultural differences that were built into the diverging national frameworks for the incorporation of migrants.

The Historical Context The second half of the twentieth century brought dramatic change in all aspects of social life. It was a period of decolonization as well as of major demographic and economic changes, which brought into question Europe’s historical pre-eminence in world affairs. The loss of vast overseas empires and the relative decline in international significance were perceived as threats to national identity in countries like the UK, France, and the Netherlands. Again, immigrants were a visible symbol, portrayed by the far right as colonized peoples ‘flooding in’ to take a sort of ‘historical revenge’ (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies 1982). The turbulent history of European nationalism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries left a legacy of racism and ethnocentrism, which provided an unpropitious climate for the reception of immigrants. The extreme case is Germany, where the Nazi regime had just attempted to physically eliminate its minorities. Now Germans found themselves unexpectedly confronted with new ones. In general, feelings of superiority to and suspicion of other peoples are deeply rooted in European culture (Goldberg 1993). But the devastating experience of Fascism had also led to a widespread desire to do away with war and racism (e.g. Le´vi-Strauss 1971 [1950]). Although the post-1945 migrations to Europe had many new features, they were not without historical precedents. All European nation states are the result of historical processes of incorporation of culturally distinct peoples, either through the territorial expansion of states or through flows of population across borders. Over long historical periods such experiences of conquest, absorption, and cultural assimilation helped shape ideas and policies dealing with minorities (Lequin 1988; Noiriel 1988; Brubaker 1992; Moch 1992). To some extent, it is possible to speak of distinct ‘national models’ for dealing with migrant incorporation in the various European nation states. Often these


25

models consisted of refined and modified versions of approaches adopted in the colonies of the major European powers. The welfare state has been a crucial factor in shaping responses to immigration and settlement (Jayasuria 1992; Faist 1993a, 1995a; Kloosterman 1994; Bommes 1995). In most west European countries, social safety nets were introduced between 1945 and the early 1970s, while similar measures came somewhat later in southern Europe. The aim was to eliminate the mass insecurity and poverty previously characteristic of industrial capitalism. These social evils were construed as the roots of the Fascist and Communist movements. Full employment, adequate working-class incomes, and a welfare safety net were seen as vital for maintaining the popular legitimacy of, and mass loyalty to, a liberal democratic political system. Moreover, Europe’s war economies had been based on a much greater involvement of the state in economic and social affairs, which, after 1945, led to nationalization of key industries and a high measure of market regulation. This social-Keynesian welfare model played a major part in post-war reconstruction and subsequent economic growth based on mass consumer demand and the concentration of production in the older industrial centres. From the early 1970s, however, the welfare state was challenged by the shift of investment strategies to a global level, with capital chasing the lowest production costs in new, low-wage industrial areas. The economic and financial regulatory model of the post-war period was displaced by a new emphasis on monetary policy, deregulation of markets, and global free trade, which suited the interests of transnational corporations. These changes were embodied in neoliberal ideology which was the basis for an attack on the welfare state, initially in the USA and the UK, and then more generally. They were made feasible by the new information technologies, the extension of global communication networks, and the development of economic infrastructure and qualified human capital resources in an increasing number of economic growth zones across the globe (Froebel, Henricks, and Kreye 1980; Castells 1996; Castles 2000). These changes in the welfare state will be discussed in more detail in subsequent chapters. However, here it is important to note their relevance to policies on the incorporation of immigrants into society. Again, the picture is not simple. Welfare policies can lead both to inclusion and to exclusion of immigrants. Where immigrants were citizens from the outset (such as colonial immigrants in the UK), welfare systems initially played a positive part in their incorporation into society. Where immigrants had a legal status that denied them normal welfare rights, they were excluded and marginalized. In such cases, immigrants either had severely limited mainstream welfare rights or were included in special immigrant welfare systems that generally afforded inferior entitlements and segregated services. Welfare policies could lead to closure in another way too: where immigrants did automatically obtain the right to welfare access, this may have motivated governments to prevent legal

26


immigration (Bommes and Halfmann 1998). An important background to this, during the 1980s and in particular the 1990s, was pressure from populist parties arguing that unemployed immigrants represented a burden on the welfare system that was seen to undermine the rights and privileges of national majorities (Schierup 1993).

Immigration and Settlement Since 1945 Western Europe as a Labour Magnet: 1945 to the 1970s In the immediate post–Second World War years, it was widely believed that Western Europe was ‘overpopulated’. In the aftermath of the Great Depression of the 1930s and the devastation of the war, millions of people sought to emigrate, mainly to North and South America and Oceania. At the same time, millions of ‘displaced persons’ forced out of their homes by the hostilities and forced labour recruitment, and then by the beginning of the cold war, had to be absorbed. Many of these were ethnic minorities returning to their socalled ancestral homelands. The most significant influx was of some 12 million people into West Germany from the former eastern areas of Germany annexed by the Soviet Union and Poland, and from the Soviet zone of Germany (the later German Democratic Republic). In addition, through the 1950s and 1960s, independence of former colonies led to an exodus of large numbers of former colonists and administrators, such as the ‘pieds noirs’ who migrated from Algeria to France, Dutch colonists and people of mixed ethnic background heading for the Netherlands from newly independent Indonesia, and British settlers bound for the UK from newly independent African, Asian, and Caribbean territories. Despite these population increases, economic growth was so buoyant that labour shortages began to appear by the 1950s.12 The response by employers and governments was to recruit migrant workers. This labour migration was of two main types. First, virtually all West European countries employed foreign workers. Some came of their own accord, but in many cases they were recruited as temporary labour (or ‘guest workers’). The legal and administrative arrangements varied (Castles and Kosack 1973). Some countries, like France, the UK, and Sweden, were relatively open to family reunion and long-term stay. Others, such as the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), Austria, and Switzerland, went to great lengths to prevent settlement, through ‘rotation’ of workers, that is, a constant circulation of short-term migrants. Germany established the most sophisticated guest worker system, with a high 12 Some economists argue that economic growth was actually in part due to the additional labour provided by the displaced persons. Thus, Germany’s ‘economic miracle’ was partly to be explained by the very large labour reserves available at the time. See Kindleberger (1967); Castles and Kosack (1973: 384–93).


27

degree of state control of the recruitment, working conditions, and rights of the migrants. Southern Europe, North Africa, Turkey, Finland, and Ireland served as labour reserves for the accumulation of capital and the building up of the extensive welfare states of the economically dominant areas of Europe during this period. Italy had been a major source of both overseas and intraEuropean migration since unification in 1861. In the 1950s Italy became for a while the main labour reserve for both Western Europe and Australia (e.g. Castles 1994b). Second, certain countries used labour from colonies or former colonies. Areas of origin included the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent for the UK, North and West Africa for France, and the Caribbean and Indonesia for the Netherlands. Generally there was no official recruitment: knowledge of work opportunities in the former metropolis, together with the legal right of entry, was sufficient to start migratory chains, which grew in volume in the 1950s. In the colonial period certain colonized peoples had been granted citizenship (or, in the British case, the status of ‘subjects’ of the Crown) as a form of ideological integration. This now facilitated the entry of much-needed labour, but it also meant that the colonial workers could bring in dependants and settle. By the 1960s, in the light of economic and political decline and growing community relations problems, the authorities of the three former colonial powers were having second thoughts, and introduced restrictive laws to stop immigration from former colonies. From then on, there was a convergence in status between guest workers and immigrants from former colonies. By 1970 there were over 12 million immigrants in Western Europe, and the process of ethnic minority formation had become irreversible (Castles, Booth, and Wallace 1984). But the 1973 oil crisis precipitated a reorientation of migration policies. All the old labour-importing countries of north-western Europe stopped recruitment between 1972 and 1974, except the UK, which had done so earlier due to economic stagnation and concerns about ‘race relations’. The subsequent recession of the mid-1970s was a major economic turning point, marking the beginning of the end of the Fordist system of industrial mass production in the old industrial countries. Labour inflows were being replaced by capital outflows to new industrial areas in the south. Large-scale immigration to Western Europe seemed to be over, merely a brief interruption to a long history of European emigration to the rest of the world. Governments expected guest workers to depart—a convenient way to export unemployment. But things turned out differently. Another type of immigration grew rapidly: family reunion; that is, the entry of spouses, children, and other relations of earlier migrants. Between 1974 and the mid-1980s immigrant groups that had come to Western Europe to work were demographically normalized (Castles, Booth, and Wallace 1984; Castles and Miller 2003). The old predominance of young men waned, new families were formed, and the original immigrants aged. The consciousness of many immigrants changed from that of temporary

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sojourners to that of permanent residents. Social, cultural, and political associations were established, and networks of ethnic businesses and services emerged. At the same time larger groups of refugees periodically entered Western Europe during the 1970s and early 1980s, connected with major political crisis and the subsequent repression of political opponents of authoritarian regimes. Immigrant families needed social infrastructure in the form of housing, schools, medical services, and other public amenities. Despite governmental reluctance to face up to settlement, educational authorities, social welfare agencies, and other local authorities began to respond to new needs and problems. The guest worker system was dead, even where this was not acknowledged officially. European policymakers reluctantly had to wake up to the unplanned emergence of the need to permanently incorporate millions of migrants into their social, political, and cultural institutions. This happened even in Germany, which had systematically endeavoured to avoid settlement. A complex conjunction of circumstances impeded any massive repatriation of migrants (as discussed in Chapter 6). Table 2.1 gives an idea of the increase in immigrant stocks in some of Western Europe’s main receiving countries from 1950 to 1975. As the notes to the table indicate, the differing definitions and categories for immigrants in various countries make it extremely hard to make statistical comparisons. The figures show how immigrant and minority populations grew and stabilized in these countries over the period. No comparable data are available for southern European countries since they were still emigration areas at this time. TABLE 2.1. Migrant populationa in selected Western European countries, 1950–75 (1,000 and per cent) (1) (2) (3) Migrant population

(4) Total population

Countries

1950

1960

1974

(1974)

Col. (3) as % of Col. (4)

Belgium France Germany (FRG) UK Netherlands Swedenb Switzerland

354 2,128 548 1,573 77 124 279

444 2,663 686 2,205 101 191 585

775 4,043 4,127 2,274 297 424 1,065

9,800 52,500 62,100 56,100 13,500 8,277 6,376

7.9 7.7 6.6 4.1 2.2 5.1 16.7

a Figures for all countries except the UK are for foreign residents. They exclude naturalized persons and immigrants from the Dutch and French colonies. UK data are Census figures for 1951, 1961, and 1971, and estimates for 1974. Data are for overseas-born persons and exclude children born to immigrants in the UK. b Figures for Sweden in column III and IV are for 1978.

Source: Castles, Booth, and Wallace (1984: 87–8) and Cohen (1987: 112), where detailed sources are given.


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The Diversification of Migration from the 1980s By the mid-1980s new forms of immigration were beginning to emerge. The southern European countries—the labour reserve for Western Europe, North America, and Australia for over a century, not to speak of the paramount importance of the Iberian Peninsula for immigration and settlement in South America—were experiencing a ‘migration transition’. Economic growth, combined with a sharp fall in birth rates, led to serious labour shortages (Corkill 2001; Muus 2000). Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece all became countries of immigration, using labour from Eastern Europe, North Africa, Latin America, and Asia for low-skilled jobs (King and Lazaridis 2000; Baldwin-Edwards and Arango 1999; Anthias and Lazaridis 1999). Most of the immigrants came without documents. This immigration had already started slowly in the beginning of the 1970s (Nikolinakos 1975), but now reached large proportions. It might be thought that countries with traditions of emigration would be more capable of dealing with immigration. Unfortunately, southern Europe offers no evidence for this. The political response was long marked by benign neglect and laissez-faire, the bureaucratic response was discriminatory, and racism became a major problem. There is a specific southern European model of immigration, King (2000) argues, which differs from the earlier experience of Western Europe. It ‘ . . . is based on the demand for cheap and flexible workers in secondary and informal labour markets, where low wages are imposed on migrants through their often illegal or semi-legal status and the lack of opportunities in their home countries. The workers are highly concentrated in certain segments or niches of the labour market . . . ’ (King 2000: 18). Moreover, this new migration is shaped by the trends to globalization, flexibilization, feminization, and ‘illegalization’ typical of the late twentieth century. Thus, it lacks the elements of regulation and welfare-state integration typical of some (but not all) earlier movements. (We discuss these southern European patterns further in Chapter 4 and the Italian case, in detail, in Chapter 7.) At the same time, migration to Western Europe accelerated once more, particularly after the dramatic political changes of 1989–91. The largest new influxes were of undocumented migrants, asylum seekers, and ethnic minority ‘returnees’ from the former Soviet Union, while family reunion remained significant. Often these new currents were in fact the continuation of existing migratory chains: for instance, when Germany stopped Turkish labour recruitment in 1973, it was replaced by family reunion entries, as well as asylum seekers and undocumented migrant workers. This points to the durability of migratory processes once under way, and helps account for the failure of official migration control strategies. Undocumented migrants (also known as ‘illegal’, ‘clandestine’, or ‘irregular’ migrants) are job seekers from less-developed areas in eastern and southeastern Europe, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia, willing to take

30


almost any job in the north. Many are young, and highly educated and skilled in their countries of origin, but likely to end up in unskilled, menial, and unregulated jobs in Europe (e.g. Reyneri and Baganha 1999). Their presence has given new impetus to the informal sector throughout Europe, and has been a major factor in the deregulation and social polarization of labour markets. This type of migration is stimulated by lack of opportunities in countries of origin, but responds foremost to demands for exploitable, ‘flexible’, and vulnerable workers in Europe’s economic growth zones. OECD countries have experienced a continuing rise in undocumented migration since the late 1990s. This followed a marked increase in undocumented movements around 1989. A further feature has been the ‘growth in trafficking of illegal migrants, which is now considered a form of organised crime similar to drug smuggling and prostitution’ (OECD 1999: 72). This criminalization of undocumented migration was one effect of growing political and media panics about population flows into Europe, which led to calls for tightly controlled borders. Similarly, influx of asylum seekers expanded in the early 1990s, not least in connection with the collapse of Yugoslavia and the subsequent Balkan wars. Indeed, it is hard to draw clear distinctions between the factors that drive refugees and undocumented workers to move. Both groups are motivated to migrate to Western Europe by the collapse of local economies, deteriorating institutional frameworks of government, growing legal insecurity, and the lack of human rights in the areas of origin (Schierup 1999a; Duffield 2001). As well, transnational networks facilitate their emigration and insertion into informal European labour markets, and income differentials as high as 20 to 1 between Western Europe and countries of the south and east exert a tremendous attraction, making the often high risks of migrating worth taking. The number of new asylum seekers in European OECD countries increased from 116,000 in 1981 to 695,000 in 1992. They came from Eastern Europe as well as from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Nearly two-thirds of them went to Germany, where annual entries increased from 49,000 in 1981 to 438,000 in 1992 (OECD 1995: 195). Between the early 1980s and 1995, some 5 million applications for refugee status were submitted in Western Europe (UNHCR 1995: 12). By the early 1990s this was being exploited by new populist movements, but also by traditional political parties, to create a panic about migration in Europe (Rydgren 2002; Hollifield 2004; Entzinger 2002). In fact, asylum-seeker entries fell sharply in 1993 and the following years. Nonetheless, the wars in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo led to new movements throughout the 1990s, while asylum seekers from countries in Asia and Africa also remained numerous. Such movements became a routine part of Europe’s immigration scene, and began to increase again by the end of the decade. In 1999 some 363,000 asylum seekers entered fourteen countries of the EU (excluding Luxembourg). By 2003 entries were again declining sharply, to a figure of 288,000, due to


31

3500 3000 Regular immigration of non-citizens 2500 Asylum seekers and refugees

2000

Ethnic Germans (Aussiedler, Germany only) Total

1500 1000 500 0 86 987 988 989 990 991 992 993 994 995 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

19

FIG. 2.1. Annual migration into the EU (in ’000) Source: Based on Faist (2000a: 246).

tightening asylum regimes. The UK became the most popular destination country; it received a peak of 103,000 in 2002, which was followed by a sharp fall to 61,000 in 2003 (UNHCR 2004;). To these figures should be added numerous German Aussiedler (397,000 in 1990 alone) and other national minority groups from the former Soviet union, who moved to their ethnic ‘homelands’ in Western Europe. These new immigration movements in Europe are indicated in Fig. 2.1. They had significant effects on European politics. One result was an upsurge in racist violence and extreme-right and populist-nationalist mobilization in the early 1990s. Right-wing politicians fomented a panic over immigration and alleged ‘Islamic fundamentalism’. This came to be perceived as a votewinning issue, and populist and inflammatory speeches created a climate in which ‘foreigners’ could be blamed for a range of economic and social problems (Schierup 1993, 1994). Neo-Nazi groups seized the opportunity to portray themselves as the defenders of Europe from alien hordes, legitimizing violence against asylum seekers, Roma, and other minorities. The stresses of reunification made Germans particularly susceptible to nationalist and racist discourses. The number of officially recorded so-called xenophobic crimes rose from 2,426 in 1991 to a peak of 6,721 in 1993, and then declined to 2,644 by 1998. However, there were nine racist murders in 1998—the highest recorded number since 1945 (BBA 1999: 55). The number of crimes also soon rose again, showing that there are no grounds for complacency. In any case,

32


the violence in Germany was no worse than that in the UK, France, Belgium, or Scandinavia. It simply attracted more attention, for historical reasons ¨ rgo and Witte 1993). The existence of openly racist political movements (Bjo became a constant feature of European societies (e.g. Baumgartl and Favell 1995). Another trend was the politicization of issues of asylum and border control. In Germany, after heated debates, Paragraph 16 of the Basic Law—a liberal post-war measure which had created a basic right to apply for refugee status in Germany—was amended in 1993 to restrict the right to asylum. By 1994 asylum-seeker entries had dropped to 127,000. Germany also introduced administrative measures designed to reduce the number of Aussiedler to 220,000 a year (Thra¨nhardt 1996: 237). Sweden tightened up entry rules: new asylum seekers dropped from 84,000 in 1992 to 19,000 in 1994, 13,000 in 1998 (OECD 1999: 263), and to 6,000 in 2003 (Migrationsverket 2004, and Chapter 10). Measures were taken to speed up processing of asylum claims, while intergovernmental agreements between EU countries sought to prevent applications to more than one country. The great majority of asylum applications were rejected. In 1993 the success rate was only about 4 per cent in Germany and around 10 per cent in Italy, Belgium, and Norway, but reached 28 per cent in France, yet dropped to 13 per cent in 2000 (Hollifield 2004: 195). However, many rejected applicants stayed on, with an uncertain legal status, since there were considerable legal and practical obstacles to deportation (OECD 1995: 121). The criminalization of undocumented migration noted above was reflected in an avalanche of new laws and police measures adopted by virtually all European countries to strengthen border control and to find and deport ‘illegals’ (see OECD 1999: 72–7). Most such measures were taken at the national level, but EU cooperation became increasingly significant. A succession of intergovernmental meetings was held to find ways of controlling migration. The most important measure was the Schengen Agreement, which was originally signed in 1985 but not implemented until 1995. The ‘Schengen states’—Germany, Belgium, Spain, France, Portugal, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands—began to dismantle border controls for people moving between these countries. At the same time, tougher control measures at the external borders of the ‘Schengen area’ were introduced. Effectively, the Agreement created a new class of ‘Schengen citizens’, to be added to the existing hierarchy of EU citizens, legal ‘third country’ residents, and undocumented immigrants. Schengen is emblematic of a general trend towards tighter control of entry to highly developed countries. In 1997 Italy, Austria, and Greece joined the Schengen Agreement—which was subsequently incorporated into the EU Treaty of Amsterdam (see Chapter 3)—and in 2001 the Nordic countries followed suit (Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland). Figure 2.2 shows the cumulative effect of the migrations of the last half century on the populations of twenty OECD immigration countries. The


33

25

Per cent

20 15 10 5

Foreign born

U ew Ca S Ze nad a a Au lan st d ra lia N

G It Sw erm aly iz an er y la nd

Fi

nl an Sp d Po a rtu in G gal re N ece o D rw en a m y Ire ark la nd Be UK lg N F ium et ra he nc rla e n Au ds sw stri ed a en

0

Foreign citizens

FIG. 2.2. Foreign-born and foreign citizens in per cent of population in 20 OECD countries, 2002. Note: For non-EU countries, data from 2000. For Italy, registered foreign citizens in 2003. Source: Integrationsverket (2003: 241, based on own estimates, OECD data, and EUROSTAT Labour Force Survey) and Cesareo (2004b, based on Istat).

data reveal the effect of diverging policies of incorporation, but also reflect national policies and prejudices. The great majority of foreign-born people in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy have remained foreign citizens due to these countries’ extremely restrictive naturalization policies. Because of this no separate data are available for the ‘foreign born’. The opposite is the case for the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, which have inclusive policies that provide most (legal) immigrants with quick access to citizenship. But European countries that, like Sweden and the Netherlands, have led the way with inclusive ‘multicultural’, ‘minority’, or ‘diversity’ policies, also demonstrate a high rate of naturalization among the foreign-born. Portugal has a large number of naturalized persons due to its ‘post-colonial’ relationship to its former empire. However, figures on the foreign-born leave out the many second-generation migrants, who may still be seen as belonging to ethnic minorities according to criteria of social exclusion or cultural diversity. Ideally, national statistical authorities should provide data on foreign citizens, on the foreign-born and on children of foreign parents. This is the practice in Australia and Canada, but in Europe only Sweden and the Netherlands appear to do so. We return to this topic in the country case studies later in the book.

34


Ambivalence and Disorientation in the Early Twenty-first Century Migration movements steadied for a while in the mid-1990s as a result of economic and political stabilization in Eastern Europe and a general tightening of rules on asylum and migration. But at the beginning of the new millennium, asylum and migration movements again increased. Moreover, they became much more prominent in the public consciousness. The politicization of migration, which had become prominent after the end of the cold war, took on new dimensions in the context of 9/11 and the ‘war on terror’. At the same time, Western European elites became conscious of trends towards declining fertility and population ageing, combined with growing demand for both highly skilled personnel and low-skilled workers. Generous asylum rules and procedures in Western Europe in general, and in West Germany in particular, had originally been instituted in the aftermath of the Second World War, and later continued to function as a weapon in the ideological struggle with the Soviet bloc. Their tightening up after the termination of the cold war and the imposition of increasingly restrictive measures also towards other forms of entry were largely the result of a mainstream political accommodation to the claims and political advances of nationalistpopulist movements. But at the same time, notwithstanding a persistently high degree of unemployment among resident immigrants and ethnic minorities across most of Western Europe, a new debate about the future need for immigrants was triggered by powerful interest groups in the ‘old’ (pre-2004) member states of the EU. Low fertility was leading to demographic decline and ¨ nz 1996). By the 1990s, fertility in Italy was down an ageing population (Mu to just over one child per woman, or half the level needed to replace the population (Thra¨nhardt 1996: 232). Similar extreme trends prevailed in other southern European countries (Corkill 2001), but worries about demographic decline were general across the EU (Muus 2000). Germany began to recruit new types of guest workers from Eastern Europe, often under conditions even more onerous than the old guest worker system (Rudolph 1996), a practice that has been adopted even in other member states and discussed as a model for the EU as a whole. Yet Eastern Europe offers no long-term demographic reserves (Fassmann, ¨ nz, and Klekowski von Koppenfels 2002): fertility is low and life expectMu ancy is actually declining in some areas due to environmental factors. The high fertility and young underemployed populations of North Africa, Turkey, and the Middle East appear to many Europeans as both a threat and a potential benefit. Who else will provide labour for the factories and building sites, or carers for the aged, if present trends continue? But continued large-scale immigration from these areas will require a serious confrontation with the Islamophobia that has been the main tenet of populist anti-immigration agitation since the beginning of the 1980s and especially since 2001.


35

Another important trend is the growing demand for highly skilled migrants in Europe. Highly skilled migration grew rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s, and is a key element of globalization (e.g. Rhode 1993). Much of the movement is fairly short-term (from a few months to one or two years) and involves interchange of personnel between the economies of Japan, the USA, and Western Europe. However, most skilled migration does not lead to permanent settlement (Findlay 1995: 515–21). Highly skilled temporary migrants are much sought after, even in countries where there is growing hostility to immigration of less-skilled people (e.g. Findlay 1995: 515–21). They are perceived as bringing economic benefits for the receiving countries, without creating social obligations for the national welfare systems. Highly skilled migrants include managers and professionals of all kinds: executives, accountants, IT experts, medical practitioners, engineers, and research and development staff. The growing significance of computers and the Internet has put a premium on IT skills, and several countries have identified severe shortages in this area. Migrant entrepreneurs are also seen as important for international linkages and technology transfer, and the governments of immigration countries compete to attract their capital and abilities (Mitchell 1993). The international exchange of students is closely linked to the globalization of skilled labour; and cooperation agreements between universities, like the EU’s Socrates Scheme, are designed to encourage such trends. Indeed, the EU’s common labour market is designed to encourage interchange of qualified personnel; but mobility within the Community is quite low. All this increases pressures for opening up borders to experts from third countries; most member states have introduced special entry regulations to facilitate skilled migration. For example, in 2000, the German government decided to heed repeated demands from industry to open its borders to some 20,000 foreign computer experts (Erlanger 2002), and in 2002 the Bundestag adopted clauses in its Immigration Act allowing for import of more ‘immigrants with needed skills’. These moves, however, set off an inflamed political debate and contributed to populist agitation on the immigration issue by the CDU during the 2002 election campaigns (Erlanger 2002; see further Chapter 6). Similar dilemmas and conflicts are reported from most other EU member states. Today, Western European opinion is thus deeply ambivalent about immigration, and often contradictory policy trends express both real conflicts and deep bewilderment. Business leaders and economists emphasize the need for future labour, both skilled and unskilled, as a necessary precondition for a country’s remaining competitive in the global economy. Parts of the professional urban middle classes appreciate cheap personal services generated by immigration and often welcome the consequent apparent ‘cultural diversity’, while others line up with the populist parties. Humanitarians fight to defend the right of asylum. Large sections of the population feel threatened by the way immigration is used in neoliberal approaches to undercut the welfare

36


state, stem the influence of trade unions, and undermine labour laws and collective bargaining. This is often linked to experiences of economic insecurity and social decline caused by globalization and industrial restructuring. Fears of immigration have become closely connected with political struggles surrounding change in national welfare states, their institutions, and their popular basis. By appealing to feelings of insecurity and using immigrants and asylum seekers as scapegoats, populist leaders have seized on immigration as an issue that can allow them to make inroads into the traditional constituencies of left or social-democratic parties (Schierup 1989, 1993; Bull and Gilbert 2001; Entzinger 2002). This politicization of immigration gives it a crucial significance in debates on the future of European societies.

The Dynamics of the Migratory Process The Globalization and Diversification of Migration The increasing politicization of migration is most conspicuously voiced in terms of the threat that immigration is alleged to represent to European societies through bringing in large numbers of people with a wide range of different ethnic, national, cultural, and religious backgrounds. In most Western European countries, foreign-born individuals now, as shown in Figure 2.2, make up 5–15 per cent of their total populations. These minorities are heavily concentrated in specific cities and neighbourhoods, where they influence social relations, welfare standards, lifestyles, and culture. Eastern European countries have smaller, but fast-growing, immigrant populations. In the early period of foreign-worker recruitment after 1945, most migrants came from neighbouring or fairly close countries: France, Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland recruited from Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece. Sweden recruited from neighbouring Finland. The exceptions were the post-colonial immigration from Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia to the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. Moreover, each immigration country tended to receive newcomers from a limited range of source countries: four or five countries generally accounted for the bulk. But from the late 1960s, as industrial countries competed for relatively scarce labour, recruitment spread to a larger number of countries and became truly globalized, affecting workers from Turkey, Yugoslavia, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Oceania. The immigrant population of each immigration country of Europe came to include people with a much wider range of national, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds than ever before. After the turning point of 1973–4, it was the immigrant workers from southern European countries (Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece) who tended to return to their countries of birth. This was connected with global and national economic restructuring and European integration processes, which


37

brought about important changes in southern Europe’s subordinated position in the wider international division of labour (e.g. Nikolinakos 1977). This provided new opportunities for the reintegration of returnees. By contrast, other migrant groups, like those from Turkey, Yugoslavia, North Africa, and Asia, were more likely to stay in Western Europe, since their former homelands offered little in the way of improved economic opportunities. Economic incentives provided by the French and German governments to encourage Turks and North Africans to repatriate had little effect. German attempts to make workers pool their savings to bring about industrial investment in Turkey were largely unsuccessful due to lack of the infrastructure and the economic climate needed for development (Dietzel 1971). Those who stayed brought in spouses and children from their homelands or established new families in Western Europe. A further boost to diversity came with the new migrations of the 1980s and 1990s: asylum seekers and undocumented workers came from almost every area of the former Soviet bloc, as well as from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. By the end of the twentieth century, most European countries hosted immigrants from a large variety of backgrounds.

Settlement and Ethnic Community Formation This challenged a dominant short-term reductionist view among governments and employers, who had, in most cases, first seen entrants purely as labour migrants who would contribute to labour market needs without having any social, political, or cultural effects. Moreover, they would stay for only a few years and would not bring their dependants. Thus, migrant workers were, generally, not seen as future members of society. This view seemed plausible at first sight, at least in Germany and Switzerland of the 1960s, with their rigid ‘guest worker’ rule and special ‘foreigners police’, designed to restrict the rights of workers to a minimum and to ensure regular ‘rotation’ (Castles and Kosack 1973). In other countries, such a view was less plausible. Belgium, for example, had organized foreign labour recruitment after 1945, yet allowed spontaneous entry from the early 1960s, and did not generally prevent family reunion. Sweden recruited foreign workers, but claimed at an early date that they were never guest workers and therefore had full rights to family reunion and longterm residence. France established a labour recruitment system in 1945, but permitted it to fall into disuse, allowing spontaneous entry of undocumented workers from Spain and Portugal. By the late 1960s, 80 per cent of workers were coming this way, and were able to ‘regularize’ their position once they had jobs. This led to fairly chaotic situations, especially with regard to labour market rights and housing: foreign workers often endured sub-standard workplaces and lived in dreadful conditions in hoˆtels meuble´s (lodging houses) and bidonvilles (shanty towns). Family reunion also became uncontrollable. This laissez-faire approach seems to have been deliberate: undocumented workers matched employer demands for a low-skilled, exploitable workforce, while

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some measure of settlement was seen as beneficial in view of France’s low birth rate (e.g. Granotier 1970; Weil 1991). The countries which recruited workers from former colonies—France, the UK, Belgium, and Netherlands—must also have been aware that such workers were likely to settle but seemed to believe in the power of their assimilationist policies. Such colonial workers were citizens of the ‘mother country’ and had the right to family reunion and permanent stay. The Netherlands followed an apparently successful assimilation policy, devised originally to incorporate Indo-Europeans forced to leave Indonesia at the time of independence. However, this policy was to prove far less effective with subsequent post-colonial groups such as the Moluccans and Surinamese. France allowed in North Africans and migrants from former French colonies in Sub-Saharan Africa, but seems to have been deeply suspicious of them. Official statements indicated that they were to be short-term labour providers, while European immigrants were preferred for demographic growth (e.g. Castles and Kosack 1973). Yet the legal framework gave the colonial migrants a definite right to settle. In the UK, it soon became apparent that early post-war Caribbean and Asian immigrants would stay. This led to official discussions on possible consequences of settlement. Fears for public order (following the 1958 Notting Hill race riots) and for social cohesion seem to have precipitated the decision to severely restrict immigration of workers through the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962. However, Britain’s economic stagnation also played a part in this decision. In 1973–4, when West European governments stopped labour recruitment and tried to expel migrants in order to ‘export unemployment’, they often achieved the opposite of what they wanted. Seeing the door to future mobility closed, migrants decided to stay on. This situation gave increasing importance to the informal networks developed by migrants as a way of coping with the difficulties of migration. Migrant networks are a way of accumulating and using cultural and social capital such as intimate knowledge of other countries, network-based capabilities for organizing travel, finding work, and adapting to a new situation (Faist 2000b: 195ff.). Informal networks are based on personal relationships, family and household linkages, friendship, community ties, and mutual help in economic and social matters. Such links provide vital resources for individuals and groups. Informal networks bind ‘migrants and non-migrants together in a complex web of social roles and interpersonal relationships’ (Boyd 1989: 639). These bonds are double-sided: they link migrants with non-migrants in their areas of origin, but also connect settlers with the majority populations of the immigration contexts in relationships of cooperation, competition, and conflict. Such networks are dynamic cultural responses which encourage ethnic community formation and are conducive to the maintenance of transnational family and group ties (Faist ¨ vell 2002). Closely related to such informal 2000b; Veiga 1999; Jordan and Du networks is the emergence of a ‘migration industry’ of labour recruiters, travel


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agents, advisers, informal credit providers, and fixers of various kinds. The key actors are informal pressure groups among employers, intimately connected with local administrations, who vie for cheap and flexible labour. On the basis of their historical experiences, European elites should have realized that immigration almost always leads to settlement of a substantial proportion of migrants and to processes of social, cultural, and political change. After all, immigration had played a key role in early processes of nation-building in nearly all Western countries. In North America and Oceania, myths of nation-building explicitly celebrate immigration and incorporation of settlers into the national community. In contrast, Western European countries have tended to write immigration out of their histories because it contradicted myths of national homogeneity (Noiriel 1988). In fact, internal and international migrations of workers, refugees, and settlers played an important part in industrialization and urban development everywhere (Moch 1992; Moch 1995). They have, historically, acted as powerful sources for political and cultural change. Once started, migratory movements often develop their own momentum and cannot easily be stopped or modified through government policies (Castles 1986, 2004). Hence, settlement and community formation followed inexorably from the dynamics of the migration process itself. Immigrants gradually turned into ethnic minorities. In the case of the post-1945 migrations, this took place in the context of structural factors which led to economic concentration at the lower levels of the labour market and spatial concentration in disadvantaged urban areas. Social divisions have been exacerbated by widespread practices of racism and discrimination and hostility to people of different ethnic backgrounds. These reactions gave impetus to the growth of informal community networks as well as political organization and interest representation among ethnic minorities at the local and the national levels (e.g. Miller 1978, 1981; Ireland 1994; Rex and Drury 1994; Pedersen 1999), and also, increasingly, at the supranational European level. The combination of changing economic and social conditions in both sending and receiving countries, powerful interests of employers (private as well as public), migrant networks, and the migration industry often appeared more powerful than the laws and institutions of national governments. This applied to the state apparatuses of northern Europe, but all the more so to the states of the new immigration countries of southern and central Europe. Here the influence of informal networks on local governments overrides formal democratic and institutional procedures to a greater extent than in the north. Powerful economic and political interest groups are able to manipulate local governments and the ways in which restrictive laws and regulations on migration and insertion into the labour market get interpreted and implemented or—more often—not implemented in daily practice (see also Chapter 7). Throughout Europe, long-term stay involved moving out of migrant hostels into affordable areas of cities and industrial towns. Immigrant neighbourhoods developed. These hardly ever had a majority population of a single

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immigrant group. Rather, they were areas of immigrant concentration, usually of a number of ethnic groups, where new cultural practices evolved, reshaping economic and social relations, and helping people to cope with changing social conditions. In such neighbourhoods, family reunion and family formation led inevitably to the birth of increasing numbers of children of immigrants—the ‘second generation’. Once these children began going to school in the receiving country and developed composite cultural identities ˚ lund 1997), return to the old country became less and less likely for the (A parents. A growing awareness of the long-term nature of their stay provided the motivation for building more acceptable ways of life in the country of settlement. This meant setting up places of worship, shops, professional services, clubs and associations, and increasingly influential political pressure groups. Informal networks and community formation were thus accompanied by, and merged with, more formal modes of organization. Migrants and new ethnic minorities began to act as interest groups towards administrations and political decision-makers.

Modes of Incorporation and Their Inefficacy The European immigrant countries adopted widely different approaches to managing the growing and long-term presence of immigrants and new ethnic minorities. Following national traditions, often developed through colonial practices, governments labelled their approaches ‘assimilation’, ‘integration’, or ‘insertion’. Here we use the term ‘modes of incorporation’ as a shorthand for the varying political-administrative frameworks or ‘policy regimes’. These encompass norms and processes whereby immigrants gain the rights, capabilities, and opportunities through which they participate in the various sub-systems of the societies in which they live (such as the labour market, the legal system, welfare, and political activity).13 Elsewhere (Castles 1995b, 1997; Castles and Miller 2003), we have discussed some of the huge literature on this subject, exposing diverging theoretical positions and controversies (e.g. Baubock 1994; Soysal 1994; Freeman 1995; Entzinger 2000; Koopmans and Statham 2000; Mahnig and Wimmer 2000) and we have stressed the need to frame examinations of immigrant incorporation in a holistic analysis of the changing social, economic, and political relationships in European societies. We have distinguished between three very general ideal types of incorporation processes across Europe: 13 We use the term ‘incorporation’ as more general and neutral than terms like ‘integration’, ‘assimilation’, and ‘insertion’, which are often used to refer to specific political approaches or policy models, and which are loaded with variable (depending on countries and their policy orientation) and highly ideological meaning. It should also be noted that incorporation does not necessarily mean inclusion into society on an equal basis with nationals.


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differential exclusion, assimilation, and multiculturalism (Castles 1995b, 2000). Here we only briefly summarize a few points. Differential exclusion (in Europe generally referring to the guestworker approach) means accepting immigrants only within strict functional and temporal limits: they are welcome as workers, but not as settlers; as individuals, but not as families or communities; as temporary sojourners, but not as long-term residents. In this model, immigrants are (in principle) incorporated into certain societal sub-systems such as the labour market and some aspects of the welfare system, but excluded from others such as political participation. Differential exclusion implies legal and administrative arrangements that enforce strict distinctions between temporary residents and citizens, and which make it very hard to move from one status to the other. In post-war Western Europe, the German Federal Republic can be seen as having adopted the epitome of the differential exclusion model in Europe. However, it has certain similarities with exclusivist forms of migrant incorporation in many other parts of the world. The former apartheid system of South Africa, with its ruthless circular temporary migrant labour system (between the black ‘Homelands’ and urban-industrial and mining areas) (e.g. Wolpe 1972), could be seen as a particularly excessive form of differential exclusion, just like the highly exclusivist temporary workers regimes in oil-producing states in the Persian Gulf like Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. One could also consider systematic use of undocumented labour as an extreme form of differential exclusion. Where states tacitly accept or even create ‘back doors’ and ‘side doors’ for irregular migrants, they are covertly exploiting the lack of rights and the vulnerability of these migrants. Such practices have, for example, long been important with regard to Mexican labour in the USA and are currently used in Japan (Mori 1997; Komai 2000), Malaysia (Jones 2000), and other Asian countries. They have, of late, become important in the Eastern European member states, which joined the EU in 2004. Several of these, like Poland and the Baltic states, are themselves emigration countries with large groups of temporary migrant workers (often undocumented) in Germany and other Western European countries (most of which still oppose opening their borders to the new member states). Among the old migration countries of north-western Europe, France, the Netherlands, and Germany have long exploited substantial groups of clandestine and exceedingly insecure temporary migrants. But in the ‘new’ immigration countries in southern Europe, this has until recently been the overwhelmingly predominant practice (Fakiolas 2000; Baldwin-Edwards and Arango 1999; Bagagna 1998; Corkill 2001). A growing southern European variety of nationalist-populist racism has become part of a cynical Catch-22 where immigrants are deemed unwanted because they are ‘illegal’, whereas their function as a low-wage heavily exploitable labour force for important sections of the economy is contingent on their being clandestine. As recounted by Theodoros Iosifides and Russell King (1999: 226–7), referring to the Greek case:

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Athens exemplifies the duplicitous view that Albanians and other immigrants can be exploited for their labour and paid the lowest wages possible, yet since they are illegal immigrants and ‘so should not be in Athens anyway’, their concentration in Spain in 2005 rejected spaces in sub-human living conditions is somehow justified. . . . Meanwhile, racism is becoming endemic and directed against virtually all non-Greeks.

Since the early 1980s, at the insistence of the northern European Schengen member states, consecutive so-called amnesties have been announced in southern European countries that have legalized the stay of hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants. These amnesties have seldom led to permanent resident permits or to substantial rights of citizenship, but often rather to a new precarious temporary status. As we discuss in detail in Chapter 7 on Italy, legalized migrants continue, after a short period, to relapse into a situation of non-legalized residence and irregular employment (Reyneri 1998b; Reyneri and Baganha 1999, 2001; Baldwin-Edwards and Fakiolas 1999; Calavita 2004; Sciortino 2004). Opaque and contingent legal and administrative practices have kept migrants in a state of long-term flux and insecurity between ‘illegality’ and temporary legalization. This has been instrumental in reproducing a highly flexible labour force, beyond state regulations and mainstream social welfare arrangements.14 For some firms and economic sectors, this provides an essential comparative advantage in global and inter-European competition (e.g. Mingione and Qassoli 2000). Yet, even in southern Europe, processes of family unification, settlement, and community formation are under way (e.g. Romaniszyn 1996; ISMU 2004: passim; Calavita 2004). They challenge the official common-sense philosophy concerning migration as well as prevalent administrative and management practices. Assimilation means accepting migrants as permanent settlers and inducing them to learn the national language and to take on the social and cultural practices of the receiving community. The basic underlying belief is that the descendants of the original immigrants will be indistinguishable from other members of the population, enjoying the same rights and obligations. Historically, French leaders consciously aimed to assimilate immigrants from Italy, Belgium, Poland, and other European countries, partly because France needed their labour, but also because it needed them as soldiers in the long struggle against Germany. Without immigration and assimilation, it was estimated that France’s population would have been only 35 million in the late 1980s instead of 50 million (Noiriel 1988: 308–18). When new migratory movements started after the Second World War, France and the UK urged assimilation on most groups up to the 1960s, as did several other European immigration

14 There is a growing literature on the southern European experience. See for example, King (2000), Baldwin-Edwards and Joaquin Arango (1999), and Anthias and Lazaridis (1999).


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countries. By the mid-1960s the assimilation model was being widely questioned. It became apparent that immigration countries were not living up to the liberal promise of equal opportunity. Immigrants experienced racism and discrimination, and found that mechanisms of labour market segmentation and residential segregation were leading to social isolation and exclusion. In response, migrants built communities in which ethnicity and cultural distinctiveness often formed the basis for solidarity. Organized immigrants pressed for change. In the UK, black and Asian immigrants from the New Commonwealth rejected assimilationist ideas that contrasted with their experience of dead-end jobs and racist harassment (Solomos 2003). In Sweden and the Netherlands, academics and policymakers began to recognize the importance of ethnic communities and cultural maintenance—issues pressed by migrant workers and their organizations. The response to the claims of immigrants was, in these three cases, to replace assimilation with ‘multiculturalism’ (under a variety of labels) in the 1970s and 1980s, even if more or less half-heartedly. The only old Western European immigration country to hold on persistently, at least officially, to hard-core ideas of assimilation is France, with its so-called Republican model of integration (e.g. Noiriel 1988; Brubaker 1990; Schnapper 1991; Favell 1998). Yet immigration to France—tacitly induced and exploited by employers in substantial parts of the labour market—has been marked by a strong measure of laissez-faire, with large contingents of undocumented migrant workers living clandestinely beyond citizenship and the reach of the French republican ‘pact of solidarity’ (Hargreaves 1995: passim). For those engaged in irregular sectors of the economy marked by dreadful working conditions and hyperexploitation, the French republican model of integration has little meaning. Yet, through repeated procedures of ‘regularization’, large numbers of undocumented workers in France have—unlike most regularized ‘illegals’ in southern Europe—acquired citizenship and become, at least formally, fully eligible for the associated civil, political, and social rights. But, as Hollifield (2004: passim) demonstrates, from the mid-1990s these fundamentals of the French republican model were progressively corrupted by attempts to roll back migrants’ civil and social rights. The right to family reunion was questioned, and a reform of the nationality code and erosion of birthright citizenship threatened fundamental political rights and the principle of naturalization basic to the republican model. This was the outcome of a long-term sequence of exclusivist measures, starting back in the mid 1970s and proceeding with the Schengen accord in the 1980s, where stringent external control measures went hand in hand with restrictions on migrants’ access to citizenship and an internal erosion of their civil rights and liberties. This process was, from the 1980s, influenced by the political sway of Le Pen’s Front National, and the movement’s voicing of arguments against immigration, family reunification, and the integration of Muslim and African immigrants in French society (Hollifield 2004: passim).

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Multiculturalism was first announced as a government policy for managing ethnic diversity in Canada in 1971, and introduced in Australia in 1973. At about this time, British race relations acts started to recognize that the UK had become a de facto multi-ethnic society and the notion of ‘multi-culturalism’ (initially hyphenated) began to be used in debates about education of black and Asian children in the UK (Joppke 1999: 233 ff.; Solomos 1988: 79 ff.). Sweden’s immigrant policy introduced in 1975 is often labelled as multiculturalism, and went far, in formal terms, in recognizing immigrants as ‘ethnic minorities’ with particular rights in Swedish society. The same applies to the Dutch ‘minorities policy’ established in 1983 (Rath et al. 1999; Entzinger 2002). Multicultural policies have also been introduced in specific sectors, such as education or social work, even in countries, like France and Germany, which have rejected multiculturalism as a general model. Multiculturalism can be characterized as a political ideology and a model for public policy designed to ensure the full socio-economic and political participation of all members of an increasingly diverse population (Rex 1985; Castles 1999). As such, multiculturalism has generally meant the public acceptance of immigrant and minority groups as representing distinct communities, which are distinguishable from the majority population with regard to language, culture, and social behaviour, and which have their own associations and social infrastructure. Multiculturalism implies, in this sense, that members of such groups should be granted equal rights in all spheres of society, without being expected to give up their diversity (Taylor 1992; Parekh 2000b), although usually with an expectation of conformity to certain key values (Kymlicka 1995), which are seen to guarantee equity and commitment to social equality. It is this combination of recognition of cultural difference and measures to ensure social equality that is habitually taken to represent the essential feature of multiculturalism (Rex 1985; Castles 1994a, 1997; Castles 1995a). But there is, generally, a marked discrepancy between the theory and ideology of multiculturalism and actual political practice. Thus, critics of an actually existing multiculturalism in Sweden, the Netherlands, and the UK, have pointed to the cooption or blocking of migrants’ civil agency through state-sponsored multiculturalism from above (Schierup 1991b; Rath 1993), or the danger that an excessive ‘cultural essentialism’ or focus on ‘corporate identity’ (Young 1989, 1997) will come to jeopardize the welfare institutional (social class) objective of equality (Frazer 1997; Barry 2001) and unwittingly promote a new racism focused on cultural difference (Barker 1981; ˚ lund and Schierup 1991). Critics on the right Duffield 1984; Gilroy 1987; A have argued that multicultural policies exacerbate the ‘clientilism’ connected ¨r with extensive unemployment among immigrants and ethnic minorities (Gu 1996). It is important to note, however, that the concept of multiculturalism is not always used in the way outlined above, that is, as a political ideology and a


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certain orientation in public policy. For instance, the term ‘multicultural society’ is frequently used as a synonym for a ‘multi-ethnic society’—that is, one in which groups with differing languages and cultures live side by side—or a ‘plural society’ (critical discussion in Rex 1985). In these terms, the great majority of the world’s societies today would be multicultural (though some more so than others). But this says nothing about the relationship between majorities and minorities, or about public policy towards minorities. A multicultural society in this sense may have highly conflictual intergroup relations, like South Africa under apartheid. In other cases, multiculturalism is often used primarily as a statement about historical and cultural identity. This is its main reference in the USA, where managing intergroup relations is not generally seen as a task of the state. US supporters of multiculturalism argue for the distinctive inclusion of the role played by Native Americans, AfricanAmericans, other racial and ethnic minorities, and women in national history, education, and culture. This understanding of multiculturalism has been criticized for its lack of a wider understanding of the intersection of race, ethnicity, and social class (Escoffier 1991; Marable 1993; Giroux 1993, 1999). Conservative opponents of multiculturalism in the USA, Europe, and elsewhere argue, on their part, that it legitimizes separatism, cultural relativism, and even fundamentalism, leading to a segmented society fraught with conflicts and therefore a threat to citizenship, modernity, secularism, and gender equality (e.g. Schlesinger 1992a; Schnapper 1991, 1994).

Between Liberal Ideals and a Convoluted Realpolitik: International Migration and the Future of European Societies The 2004 enlargement of the EU with new member states in Central and Eastern Europe may bring some satisfaction to employers’ demand for both low- and high-skilled immigrant labour. But these countries all experience high rates of economic growth, have very low natural demographic growth rates, and are themselves becoming labour-importing countries. This means that the import of labour from Asia, Africa, and parts of Latin America will probably continue for any foreseeable future. But at the same time European racism is particularly focused on these ‘visible minorities’ and the heated rejection of further settlement. Grappling with this dilemma, governments across the Union appear indeed to be staging a sort of ‘return to the future’ in terms of the post–Second World War experience of migration and settlement. Governments, local administrations, and public service institutions strive to meet employers’ demands for cheap and ‘flexible’ labour but, at the same time, they attempt not to provoke anti-immigrant populism. New short-sighted

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policies are emerging, opening the doors to new discriminatory employment practices which are supposed to steer clear of those ‘imperfections’ of earlier policies that allowed immigrants’ settlement and their gradual incorporation into a status of denizenship or citizenship.15 This is effected through short-term contract worker systems, elaborate international sub-contracting relationships, and the increased importance of non-documented or so-called illegal, or clandestine, labour migration. The latter is welcomed by certain employers and tacitly tolerated by local authorities (Martin 1997; Hunger 2000; Slavnic 2000; Calavita 2004; Sciortino 2004). Given Europe’s projected large demographic deficit and present trends in labour market needs, immigration and settlement are most likely to continue and, conceivably, to take on hitherto unprecedented dimensions. In the process, European societies across the EU, including the new member states, will most likely continue to become increasingly ‘plural’ in terms of actually existing ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity. However, it is not clear how this increasing plurality will be managed. Given the likely reality of further permanent settlement, a number of liberal scholars envisage a long-term convergence on inclusive citizenship rights for immigrants, based on fundamental principles of liberal democracy, including ¨ ck, Heller, and Zolberg recognition of a measure of cultural difference (Baubo ¨ ck and Rundell 1998; Joppke 1999): a moderate liberal civic multi1996; Baubo culturalism supplanting debased models of incorporation. Both policies of differential exclusion and a compromised assimilationism have, indeed, proved their inefficacy in dealing with the dynamics of processes of international migration, and have become trapped in the contradiction between nationality and citizenship. The stigmatization of those who are seen as culturally or racially ‘alien’ to an imagined homogeneous national community exacerbates exclusion from social rights and civil agency. This tends, on the one hand, to further alienate growing categories of immigrants in terms of culture and identity, and on the other, to play into the hands of populist movements. But the trend towards policies of recognition (Taylor 1992) in terms of ethnic plurality in some European countries in the 1970s did not necessarily, in itself, indicate greater flexibility or far-sightedness on the part of policymakers. It was sometimes adopted because an actually existing ‘multiculturalism’ was quite compatible with specific traditional models of colonial administration for dealing with ethnic plurality (Solomos 1988: 30 ff.), or conveniently extrapolated from institutional practices habitually employed ˚ lund for dealing with religious cleavages (Entzinger 2002) or class conflicts (A and Schierup 1991; Soininen 1999). Moreover, the move towards a liberal civic multiculturalism was not a one-way street. An optimistic view of the chances of multiculturalism in the 1980s and early 1990s, whatever its specific 15 The term of denizen was introduced in the habitual social science vocabulary by Hammar (1990) for covering the status of individuals (migrants and often also subsequent generations) who are not formally citizens, yet have a substantial array of rights and obligations in a state.


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(national) label, was challenged by more dissociated neoconservative views on migrant incorporation from the mid-1990s. In Sweden this had already emerged by the mid 1980s, but was not to the same degree as in Holland, one decade later, followed by a neo-assimilationist backlash: a ‘strong move away from liberal tolerance and cultural relativism and toward neoconservatism with certain nationalist traits’, as worded by Han Entzinger (2004: 291). In 2002, the Dutch government declared that it had plans ‘to force immigrants to swear allegiance to the Dutch flag and to learn the national anthem by heart’ (Dagens Nyheter 2002), and in 2003, an act for the ‘Integration of Newcomers’ was passed by parliament putting an emphasis on compulsory and disciplinary civic and language instruction to promote assimilation and loyalty to the nation. A somewhat similar trend can be discerned in the UK, notwithstanding the advocacy of a liberal ‘multicultural future’ by a distinguished government counsellor (Parekh 2000b). The Conservatives decided to ‘play the race card’ in the 2005 General Election by putting forward policy proposals designed to make immigration and asylum major campaign issues. Conservative leader Michael Howard proposed a British withdrawal from the Geneva Refugee Convention and parts of the European Convention on Human Rights (Tempest 2005). There appears currently to be a convergence on such neoconservative or neo-assimilationist political models in major parts of the EU, including, among other countries, Denmark, France, and Germany. The issue of multiculturalism recurred as the subject of heated discussion during the German election of 2002. Responding to a statement by a representative for the Green Party, who aspired to remake Germany in the image of ‘a modern, multicul¨ nther Beckstein, the Christian Democrat tural land of immigration’, Gu spokesman on ‘police and immigration matters’, responded: ‘That is exactly what we don’t want’ (cited in Erlanger 2002). Current supranational ‘postAmsterdam’ EU policy orientations concerning racism and discrimination, targeted at social inclusion through enlightened ‘diversity management’, are certainly an encouraging trend. Yet, it is doubtful whether such policies will survive or achieve their intended effects in the context of the general onslaught on equality and the welfare state. This is exacerbated by the hitherto dominant realpolitik concerning ‘the social dimension’ at the EU level, together with the increasing criminalization of immigration and debasement of formerly liberal and humane refugee and asylum regimes, and are issues that we examine in the following.

THREE

Migration, Citizenship, and the European Social Model

B

Y the end of the 1990s, the issues of immigration, asylum, and migrant and ethnic minority ‘integration’ rose to the top of the EU agenda. Boosted by a process of supranationalization of important areas of migration policy inaugurated by the Amsterdam Treaty in 1997, and the Tampere European Council in 1999, the EU has emerged as a powerful force and influential actor within the field of migration policy. Before we turn our attention to the most recent developments, it is important to clarify at the outset that European integration has always had, since its beginning in the 1950s, a bearing on questions related to international migration (see Hansen 2005b). Apart from being organized around the issue of colonial relations and the cold war logic inherent in West German rehabilitation, the coordination of coal and steel production, as well as numerous other issues tied up with security concerns, European integration also started out as a response to ‘the powerful logic of capital accumulation’ (Williams 1994: 3–4) that was to advance significantly in Western Europe during the post-war economic restoration and ensuing boom. In this scheme of things, labour migration was allocated a crucial function. Migration was seen as intrinsic to the founding logic of the EEC whereby a competitive economy of scale would be created in the Community in which the free movement not only of goods, capital, and services, but also of labour, was seen as one of the ultimate goals of integration. With each national labour market unable to meet the great postwar demand for labour on its own, intra-Community labour migration was viewed as instrumental in compensating for the general shortage of labour as well as in assisting in phasing out regional bottlenecks and other types of labour-market imbalance. However, since workers in the member states were slow to practise ‘free movement’ to meet the demand for labour, it was, instead, labour migrants from outside the Community who underwrote the continued economic expansion in the EEC and in post-war Western Europe at large. Major changes in the Community during the second half of the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, brought about by the Single Market Programme (1985), the Single European Act (SEA, 1987), and the Maastricht Treaty (1993),


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entailed an increasingly prominent role for the project and process of European integration. This culminated in Maastricht’s endorsement of European Monetary Union (EMU) and its institution of a ‘Citizenship of the Union’—or ‘European citizenship’—for member state nationals, the latter constituting an integral part of the EU’s ever more prioritized project of promoting a collective sense of ‘European identity’ in the Union (Hansen 2000a). This development, whereby more and more policy areas and future challenges to the member states took on a ‘European dimension’, would by no means sidestep the question of migration. In our discussion in Chapter 2 of the ‘turning point of 1989’, we noted that around this time, increasingly harmonized perceptions of and policies on migration were taking shape among member state governments. This signalled the true emergence of migration as a common ‘European’ ‘problem’ and ‘crisis’, calling for common action and solutions. Market-making measures introduced under the banner of the Single Market, particularly those pertaining to the free movement of persons and the associated goal of abolishing internal border controls, thus instigated a logic whereby immigration and asylum would be progressively framed as Community matters. The future dismantling of border checks between member states was generally perceived as intimately related to the compensatory development of coordinated control measures at the Community’s external frontier. Indeed, the very notion of such an external and hence, communal, border was directly related to the EC’s growing interest in questions of immigration and asylum. But, since the free movement provisions came to apply only to member states citizens, the implementation of the Single Market would also come to hinge on the development of new measures for the internal control of asylum seekers and third country nationals. From the outset, then, the endeavour to coordinate and harmonize immigration and asylum policy in the EC was to have both external and internal repercussions on the ‘frontierfree Europe’. But Community activity in the area of migration also began to address a range of other pressing problems concerning the situation of ethnic minorities of migrant background. After wide-ranging deliberations on the long-term effects of immigration in the EU, the European Commission embarked, after Maastricht, on a series of policy proposals attending to the changing conditions brought about by an increasingly multi-ethnic society. These addressed, inter alia, growing problems of ethnic exclusion and segregation, the spread of racism and xenophobia, and how to better ‘integrate’ ‘legal immigrants’ and ethnic minorities into Community societies. Indeed, the Commission believed that any failure to respond appropriately to these urgent problems would carry considerable risk, since it might well exacerbate the animosities and conflicts between majority and minority populations throughout the Union (see Hansen 1997). The present chapter likewise proceeds by way of a double movement, examining efforts in the realm of ‘immigrant integration’ together with the EU’s

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assumptions and interventions in the area of immigration and asylum. In Chapter 2 we discussed issues connected with the incorporation of immigrants as citizens or denizens in different European nation states. Our focus here is on how the development of EU social policy and policies concerned with migrant integration during the 1990s started to expose the incorporation of immigrants to a new contradictory set of conditions. This gradually puts into question established policies and terms of incorporation in individual nation states, and thus also influences the actual configurations of citizenship. On the one hand, a new manifest anti-racist orientation had, by the turn of the millennium, been turned into mandatory directives and EU-sponsored transnational development programmes requiring member states to combat discrimination and social exclusion. This reorientation towards ‘diversity’, ‘social inclusion’, and equal opportunity is, however, part of a new European Social Model (ESM), which is conditioned by an overall neoliberal consensus and policy dynamic. The contours of an emergent ‘embedded neoliberalism’ (van Apeldoorn 2003) are those of a post-national workfare regime, with critical implications for the transformation of the frameworks of citizenship marking the post-war European welfare states in general, and the incorporation of immigrants and ethnic minorities in European societies in particular. In the first part of the chapter, we discuss the changing conditionality posed by the neoliberal turn and changing frameworks of citizenship with regard to the inclusion of resident denizens and citizens with migrant background. That is (see further Castles and Davidson 2000), we focus on the actual condition of being a citizen (with immigrant background outside the OECD area). In the second half of the chapter, we shift our focus to a discussion of changing conditions for becoming (or not becoming) a citizen framed by a new supranational political economy of border control, migration management, and asylum.

Migrant Integration and Anti-Discrimination Policy on the EU Agenda Third country nationals (TCNs) were long to remain severely disadvantaged compared with member state citizens of the European Community, both in terms of freedom of movement within the Community and, in most cases, in terms of actual entitlements to civic, political, and social rights in the member states where they lived. This remained a prevalent condition, although the 1970s and 1980s saw some Community initiatives to promote the integration and mobility rights of TCNs (CEC 1985). However, this dualization between citizens of the member states and TCNs in terms of freedom of mobility and rights of citizenship should not make us forget the convoluted relation between formal and substantial rights of


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citizenship for naturalized ethnic minorities of migrant background, especially those coming from non-OECD countries. The basic assumption of the concept of universal citizenship shared by most liberal political philosophers and political ideologies is that people are equal and homogeneous in their role as citizens, and should therefore be treated equally by the state. But formal equality as citizens does not in itself overcome economic disadvantage or social marginalization, nor does it impart a share of power in major economic and political institutions. Hence, even when immigrants or their offspring have become legally entitled to a range of civil, social, and political rights in their capacity as naturalized citizens or legally resident denizens in a nation state, they may be prevented from actually enjoying their rights by discrimination, racism, or poverty (see further, Castles and Davidson 2000). The experience of migrants and ethnic minorities is that established institutions are unable to tackle a range of practices that block their full membership and actual participation in society. They may even be instrumental in upholding such practices because of their discriminatory rules, stigmatizing institutional ideologies (Grillo 1985), or habitual administrative routines that are unintentionally discriminatory in their effect (see e.g. Feuchtwang 1982). This raises the issue of pervasive and complex institutional change aimed at bridging the gap between a universalist discourse of rights and the actual reality of a ‘truncated citizenship’ (Cross 1998a). A series of Community resolutions on racism and xenophobia from the 1980s and 1990s are important in this context. Several policy documents discussed adequate responses to the perceived fact that the European Community had become increasingly ‘multicultural’ through immigration (for a detailed discussion, see Hansen 2005b, 2005c). However, without formal powers vested at the supranational level, and with matters of migration and migrant incorporation continuing to be covered almost entirely by national legislation and intergovernmental cooperation, reiterated declarations from Community institutions attracted justified criticism for being little more than ‘symbolic responses to racism’ (Silverman 1992:68, see also Geddes 2000a; Ireland 1995: 252). Although the Maastricht Treaty underlined the growing salience of migration as a Community issue and formalized intergovernmental cooperation, this hardly offered any improvement. On the contrary, the Treaty’s institution of EU citizenship further reinforced the exclusion of TCNs by reserving citizenship of the Union exclusively for individuals who were already citizens of one of the member states (see further Hansen 2005b). Only with the Amsterdam Treaty was the Commission provided with some genuine leeway for developing binding policies on diversity and integration and for combating racism and discrimination. According to the Commission (CEC 2001c), the incorporation of a new anti-discrimination article (Article 13) in the treaty gave ‘the Community for the first time the power to take legislative action to combat discrimination’. Article 13 was prefaced by an

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intensified supranational engagement with the problem of racism and xenophobia from the mid-1990s onwards. The European Year against Racism in 1997 and the decision to establish a European Monitoring Centre against Racism and Xenophobia in Vienna were just two of several developments that prepared the ground for the treaty amendment (see CEC 1995; Council of the EU 1997; CEC 2001c: 4). That there existed an actual willingness to follow up central provisions in the Amsterdam Treaty was confirmed at the Tampere European Council in 1999, which declared that ‘a more vigorous integration policy should aim at granting’ TCNs ‘rights and obligations comparable to those of EU citizens’. Moreover, the Council undertook to ‘enhance non-discrimination in economic, social and cultural life and develop measures against racism and xenophobia’ (CEC 2001a: 2). After the Amsterdam Treaty came into force in 1999 the momentum continued, and it would not take long for this explicit anti-discrimination orientation to begin to take the form of mandatory directives and development programmes requiring member states to combat racism and discrimination. In November 2000, the emerging policy agenda was laid out in an ambitious sixyear (2001–6) ‘Community Action Programme to combat discrimination’ (Council of the EU 2000a). Before that, Article 13 facilitated the adoption of a landmark Racial Equality Directive (Council of the EU 2000b), which was to put into practice Article 13 and thus to give effect to ‘the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic origin’. Integral to this was the objective of creating ‘a socially inclusive labour market’ and ‘a high level of employment and of social protection’. The Directive also focused on discrimination in the areas of education, housing, social welfare, and health. This was soon complemented by the Employment Framework Directive (Council of the EU 2000c), which added discrimination in the labour market on grounds of religion to the general framework for combating racism and discrimination. Largely confined to symbolic gesturing in the mid-1990s, EU antidiscrimination policy today musters an impressive array of measures and instruments. This includes binding directives as well as a plethora of ‘soft law’ schemes corresponding to the policymaking style of the Open Method Coordination (OMC), a cornerstone of the ‘Lisbon process’ (Hansen 2005a). As Soininen (2003: 45) states, it is largely the Commission’s astute utilization of soft law policymaking, starting in the mid-1990s, that paved the way for the Council directives, and thus for the introduction of binding EU legislation on anti-discrimination. Particularly instrumental in this development has been the Commission’s effort ‘to pursue a coherent strategy of integrating antiracism into EU policies, known as mainstreaming’ (CEC 2003c: 5). The strategy of mainstreaming facilitated the incorporation of anti-discrimination measures into a variety of EU programmes and policies, most prominently in employment and social policy (Soininen 2003). This is forcing member states to adjust and upgrade their anti-discrimination policies and legislation.


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For those member states with underdeveloped policy regimes in the area, this proffers real vistas for positive change and also for systemic change whereby EU policy may alter the distribution of influence between various actors over national policymaking in the field (Soininen 2003: 46). As Soininen (2003: 44) notes, however, when anti-discrimination policy enters the areas of the EU’s Employment Strategy and social inclusion policy, ‘the rights perspective shifts over to perspectives such as the employability of the individual’. It therefore needs to be asked to what extent EU anti-discrimination policy constitutes merely yet another market-expedient employability instrument substituting for, rather than forming part of, an EU commitment to the establishment of a structurally embedded social dimension.

Changing Configurations of ‘Exclusion–inclusion’ The ambiguities of EU approaches can be seen clearly in discourses on social exclusion and inclusion. ‘Social exclusion is a slippery and contested concept’, maintains Geddes (2000c: 783), ‘capable of a wide range of analytical and political perspectives’. But social exclusion is also a very powerful notion, argues Ruth Levitas (1998: 178), though not ‘because of its analytical clarity which is conspicuously lacking, but because of its flexibility’. This was already obvious when the notion of ‘social exclusion’ was incorporated into the French political vocabulary in the mid-1970s (Silver 1994). Ever since, it has been a contested concept, exposed to competing Catholic and socialist or social democratic understandings. A similar situation arose when, in the 1980s, discourses on social exclusion began to penetrate the wider EU political scene, and the notion eventually became elevated to a hegemonic status, guiding political strategy as well as scientific enquiry across Europe (Chamberlayne 1997). Its original strategic advantage can be seen to emerge from its inclusiveness as a concept that provided a common language of ‘solidarity’ merging the concerns of two main European political traditions, even though they would attach substantially variable meanings to the concept. One was the Christian democratic, stressing moral integration and social order; the other was the social democratic, concerned with poverty and broad issues of social justice and democratic participation. The potentially hegemonic promise and general European currency of the concept of social exclusion, and thereby also of its antonym, ‘social inclusion’, were articulated by Ralf Dahrendorf (1985) in terms of the moral and political premises of citizenship on which the twentieth century welfare states were constituted. He presented a range of new forms of marginalization and poverty that had emerged in the economically advanced welfare states from the mid1970s as an ongoing process expressed in exclusion from established rights encoded in national charters on social citizenship (Dahrendorf 1985, 1988; Schmitter-Heisler 1992). The new odd miscellany of socially marginalized and

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poor categories of the population—among them a high proportion of immigrants and ethnic minorities—made up a deviant, restless, but disorganized new ‘underclass’ excluded from the social compact of the welfare state. Thus, Dahrendorf analysed the problem of social exclusion in terms of a major contraction of the welfare state which had created a ‘crucial boundary . . . between the majority class and those who are being defined out of the edifice of citizenship’ (Dahrendorf 1985: 98): a social cleavage threatening to undermine the legitimacy of the liberal–democratic state. Consequently, the precondition for combating social exclusion and social unrest would be to uphold an ideal of citizenship as a universal entitlement. This would, inter alia, entail a distinctly redistributive welfare policy. In accordance with the ‘Social Europe’ ambitions of then European Commission President Jacques Delors, this was also a dominant connotation of social exclusion when, from the end of the 1980s, the concept became of key importance in EU political parlance. For example, the Background Report to the European Poverty Programme focused on tackling a broad range of social disadvantages (CEC 1991). The analytical and normative–political framework for reform and renewal was informed by the British sociologist T. H. Marshall’s theory of citizenship (1950): an integrated analytical and moral–political framework for the understanding of the relationship between market, welfare, and democratic polities. In the Poverty Programme of the Delors Commission, the poor were defined as ‘persons whose resources (material, cultural, and social) are so limited as to exclude them from the minimum acceptable way of life in the Member State in which they live’ (CEC 1991: 1). This echoed T. H. Marshall’s conception of social inclusiveness in Citizenship and Social Class, where he defined social citizenship as that ‘whole range [of rights of citizenship] from the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security to the right to share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilised being according to the standards prevailing in the society’ (Marshall 1992: 8). Marshall’s concept of social citizenship was explicitly adopted as the basis for the work of the Observatory on National Policies to Combat Social Exclusion, which was founded by the EC in 1990 (Room et al. 1992). The Observatory defined social exclusion ‘first and foremost in relation to the social rights of citizens’, to be analysed ‘in terms of the denial—or non-realisation—of social rights’ (Room et al. 1992: 13–15). The Observatory included other types of rights of citizenship—that is, Marshall’s civil and political dimensions—in its analyses in so far as they were considered important for exclusion from or realization of social rights (Room et al. 1992: 16ff.). However, with the marked redirection of Union policy after the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, a new situation emerged. If, prior to Maastricht, the Delors Commission had conceived of social exclusion as exclusion from citizenship in the broad sense of the blocking of opportunities for individuals to exercise substantial social, political, or civil rights in a


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democratic welfare society, post-Maastricht this focus was soon superseded by an alternative notion of social exclusion which stressed labour market integration as a precondition for ‘social cohesion’. The wider implications of poverty and inequality were thereby moved into the background (see Levitas 1998). The core concern now became to reconcile ‘social cohesion’ with ‘economic efficiency’. Moreover, the discussion was phrased in terms of deregulation and the demand for economic growth, while a parallel social concern counterpoised ‘solidarity, integration and cohesion’ to ‘unemployment, poverty and social exclusion’. But, in spite of the many references to solidarity, the emphasis was here one-sidedly on exclusion from paid work or on the issue of ‘unemployment’. Already in the European Commission’s Green Paper on social policy from 1993, this change of tone was made apparent: There is a consensus in Europe that all citizens should have a guarantee of resources but social policies now have to take on the more ambitious objective of helping people to find a place in society. The main route, but not the only one, is paid work—and that is why employment policies and social policies should be more closely linked. (CEC 1993a: 21)

What is at play is not any unequivocal enthusiasm for the market, which is seen to need ‘management’ through collective solidarity mechanisms. But it is, Levitas (1998: 23ff.) argues, crucial to note that the type of ‘solidarity’ in question is far from being synonymous with that of a redistributive welfare state. Since welfare state expenditures are deemed too costly to sustain, solidarity is instead invoked as a form of restraint in order to reduce the costs of social provision. At stake, therefore, is no longer the duty of the whole community to face up to the universal rights of citizenship, but rather a moral commitment by individual citizens, corporations, and social groups to safeguard ‘social cohesion’. The Commission’s influential White Paper on ‘Growth, Competitiveness, Employment’ illustrates this. While the White Paper was not wanting in statements supportive of ‘[a]n economy characterized by solidarity’, ‘the fight against social exclusion’, unemployment, and poverty (CEC 1993b: 15–16), it also firmly established that these aims in no way contradicted the White Paper’s overarching neoliberal stance. Prepared in close collaboration with the European Roundtable of Industrialists (Hines 1997), the White Paper comprised calls for a flexible labour market, a set of ‘more enterprisefriendly’ regulations, reduced labour costs and unemployment benefits, lower taxes, cutbacks in welfare systems and overall public expenditures, and increased privatization (CEC 1993b; see also Levitas 1998; Leibfried and Pierson 1995: 49–50). This outlook would also find expression in the Commission’s subsequent White Paper on social policy (CEC 1994a). Moreover, the post-Maastricht turn away from redistribution became ingrained in the practices of the whole range of projects initiated by the EU’s structural funds

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designed to integrate marginal groups into the labour market or to promote equal opportunities. These were now exclusively set to finance projects targeted directly on the labour market, and their rules were designed so as to ‘reinforce the understanding of social participation as labour market activity’ (Levitas 1998: 25). Arguably, this represented a nascent hegemonic shift at the EU level, a movement from one type of European political discourse and coalition to another: that is, from a traditional redistributive discourse (Levitas 1998) and a conservative-social democratic coalition attempting to merge differential political concerns with ‘social order’ and ‘equality’, towards a social integrationist discourse (Levitas 1998) of a neoliberal-conservative consensus concerned with reconciling the need for ‘market expediency’ with the exigency of ‘social cohesion’. This corresponds well with van Apeldoorn’s (2003) contention that it was a type of ‘embedded’ neoliberalism that emerged as the dominant ideological force in the shaping of the EU’s trajectory from Maastricht onwards. This was contingent on the collapse of Jacques Delors’ Social Europe Plan and the failure of ‘transnational social–democratic forces’ to set in motion a supranational harmonization of a strong welfare policy in the EU, and so put welfare objectives on a par with the Single Market and EMU (van Apeldoorn 2003). Instead of taking up the gauntlet thrown down by the various structural imbalances between ‘Market Europe’ and ‘Social Europe’, the social–democratic governments that came to power in most member states in the late 1990s increasingly came to embrace an embedded form of neoliberalism. Owing to this shift, ‘modernized’ social democracy discerns less and less of a contradiction in the enterprise of pledging to uphold the ‘European Social Model’ while simultaneously undermining the welfare state piecemeal through a steadfast neoliberal realpolitik. Unlike previous social–democratic leaderships and the Delors Commission, for which the contradiction was still real and therefore framed as a problem in need of resolution, the new social democracy, including successive European Commissions, has in many respects ridded itself of such quandaries. This is not to imply that it evinces any less concern with social welfare, cohesion, and exclusion. But since these matters are now said to hinge less on structural means geared towards universal social entitlements, redistribution, and decommodification, and more on supply-side measures of flexible labour markets, employability in paid work, and budgetary discipline, as well as on individual and corporate social responsibility, the advocacy of neoliberal policies on the part of social democracy and the steady extension of market relations into previously protected areas are no longer construed as contradictory measures (e.g. Moschonas 2002). The transition from a redistributionist to an integrationist discourse in the EU was stimulated by the British Labour Party’s so-called Third Way in the 1990s, and its subsequent adoption by other member states and the European Commission (see further, Hansen 2005a). Anthony Giddens (1998), who served as a counsellor to Tony Blair, endeavoured to mark out a new Third


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Way for British Labour that would meet the challenges of globalization through transcending both ‘old style social democracy and neoliberalism’ (Giddens 1998: 26) with an extension of direct participatory democracy as a central means for enhancing efficiency and competitiveness, and for strengthening social integration. Yet there is an unmistakably moral-political dimension to this project. Thus, argues Giddens (1998: 27), [H]aving abandoned collectivism, third way politics looks for a new relationship between the individual and the community, a redefiniton of rights and obligations . . . Unemployment benefits . . . should carry the obligation to look actively for work, and it is up to governments to ensure that welfare systems do not discourage active search. As an ethical principle ‘no rights without responsibilities’ must apply not only to welfare recipients, but to everyone.

‘Empowerment from Below’: Ethnic Minorities and the EU’s ‘Third Way’ A general reorientation towards a moral integrationism and social participation as labour market activity is clearly mirrored in the EU’s post-Amsterdam policy on the integration of immigrants. While still not altogether reducible to economic objectives, the policy discourse on ethnic minority integration nevertheless finds less and less application outside of the realm of market expediency and, in particular, of labour market policy. Thus, in the current policy discourse, the more elaborate discussion most often equates the integration of immigrants and ethnic minorities with ‘their integration into the labour market’ (CEC 2000b: 19; see also CEC 2003b: 1). This is, in turn, closely linked with an increasingly evident resort to a moralizing, Third Way-type policy discourse, full of allusions to obligations, responsibilities, duties, and sanctions. While the host society is said to be obliged to provide opportunities and hold out inducements, the ultimate success or failure of the integration policy that comes into view here still seems to hinge upon the moral stature of the migrants themselves, on their ‘willingness to integrate’, as well as on their ability to adapt to certain prescribed ‘European’ cultural and civic values. This echoes the strong ‘neo-assimilationist’ trend of the (national) member states (see Chapter 2). The EU’s new outlook on integration conforms to Third Way ideology in its heavy emphasis on the prominent part to be played by ‘civil society’ and also in its holding up integration as a potentially ‘profitable strategy’ for corporations, ‘helping them to achieve their business goals through its focus on the commercial possibilities arising from increased diversity’ (CEC 2003d: 20). This is, for example, clearly reflected in the much propagated Equal programme (2000–6) on combating discrimination and social exclusion—only one of many policy schemes that operate in accordance with this strategy (see

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e.g. CEC 2001d: 9). Managed by the European Social Fund, the Equal programme conspicuously ties together the new anti-discrimination and migrant integration agenda and the current employment agenda within the overall framework of an integrated transnational development strategy. The programme aims to try out new ways of dealing with problems of discrimination targeted on a range of disadvantaged groups (CEC 2000c: 13; 2001d: 9; see also Blaschke and Vollmer 2004). In the neo-communitarian spirit of the Third Way, the Equal programme appeals for the bottom-up mobilization of networks in ‘civil society’ into composite ‘development partnerships’ of ‘stakeholders’. These include local and regional government, small and corporate business, labour market organizations and institutions, educational bodies, and a proliferation of NGOs and networks of citizens, including immigrant associations. Such approaches convey a new hegemonic conception of governance, an instrument for forging ‘social cohesion’, and a distinct ideological and political alternative to the corporatist compacts between the ‘social partners’ (unions and employers) which were still dominant in Western European countries in the 1980s. Among the favourite targets are segregated city districts with a large proportion of socially marginalized inhabitants of recent migrant background. In general, this new networked governance has developed in parallel with the transnational convergence on an ‘embedded neoliberalism’ and its search for new sustainable policies for social inclusion to repair the proliferation of socially exposed spaces left behind by increasingly deregulated national welfare regimes. Viewed from this perspective, Equal, as well as a multitude of other EU-sponsored partnership programmes, may, in a positive light, be viewed ‘as experimental projects which in due course will need to be ‘‘mainstreamed’’ . . . [a] laudable recognition of ‘‘grass roots capacity and competence’’ ’, or more critically, ‘as a fragmentation or localisation of policy against social exclusion . . . [a] ‘‘local dumping’’ of issues that the nation state cannot resolve’ (Geddes 2001b: 24). Experience varies, not only from locality to locality, but also systematically between member states, according to their path-dependent economic policies, welfare and labour market regimes, and configurations of civil society (Geddes 2000c; Geddes and Benington 2001). The range of different ‘path-dependent’ practices suggests ‘that it might be necessary to think in terms of various ‘‘partnership regimes’’ rather than a single model’ (Geddes 2000c: 789). However, the work of a number of scholars (e.g. Jessop 2002a; Geddes 2000c; Geddes and Benington 2001; Levitas 1998) suggests—from the perspective of today’s erosion of citizenship—a need for a critical scrutiny of the EU agenda on social exclusion and inclusion, the propagation of transnational policies for ‘diversity’ and anti-discrimination from the perspective of the overall direction taken concerning the institution of a ‘neoliberal European policy consensus’ (McNamara 1998).


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From ‘Welfare’ to ‘Workfare’: Negative Integration and the European Social Model The overall logic conditioning the processes of European integration since the founding Treaty of Rome in 1957 until today has been dubbed ‘negative integration’ (Scharpf 1998; see further discussion in Hansen 2005a). This refers to ‘measures increasing market integration (by eliminating restraints on trade and distortions on competition)’, whereas ‘positive integration’ implies the establishment of ‘common European policies to shape the conditions under which markets operate’ (Scharpf 1998: 157). Negative integration has, in spite of attempts to construct a European Social Dimension over and above the national welfare states, continuously had the upper hand. Historically speaking, but particularly since the Single Market conversion in the mid-1980s, negative integration has thus stood to gain from the legal and institutional arrangements of European integration (Scharpf 1998: 157). Under the auspices of Treaty and European law, and with the Commission and the European Court of Justice as effective overseers, liberalization has thus been able to proceed and advance without much inhibition, implying, as it does, a ‘ ‘‘constitutionalization’’ of competition law’ along neoliberal lines (Scharpf 1999: 54; see also Jessop 2002a: 209–10). As for positive integration, or policies which would reinstall at the EU level what deregulation detracts from democratic political bodies at the national level, practically none of these institutional and legal structures apply. Instead, positive integration has remained in the hands of national governments in the Council of Ministers, where it readily falls prey to national assertiveness, unanimity, and the vagaries of consensual decisionmaking (Scharpf 1999: 50–1, 72; see also Streeck 1995: 395). Colin Crouch (1998: 241) describes the EU in a nutshell as ‘experiencing simultaneously a globalization of economic processes but a reassertion of the nation state (against supranational political entities) at the political level’. This line of reasoning corresponds with Streeck’s argument (1995) that neoliberalism and nationalism in fact made up two mutually reinforcing developments, both being augmented by the transformations set in motion in the Community during the 1980s. This overall development can also be seen as the result of a compromise in the 1980s between corporate capital and national political elites, whereby corporate capital was willing to concede national industrial protection schemes in exchange for nation-state elites’ commitment to phasing out market regulations imposed by political bodies in the member states, as well as ensuring that these were not to be restored at the EU level in the future (Streeck and Schmitter 1996: 184–5; see also Ross 1992). On this account, the Single Market project was predicated on an ability to deliver watertight guarantees to capital that the new supranational powers would be used solely for ‘the external reassertion of, as

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opposed to internal intervention in, the European economy’ (Streeck and Schmitter 1996: 185, italics in original). The reassertion of the nation state against supranational political entities at the political level has, argues Crouch (1998: 241), resulted in ‘a growing divorce between the level at which political action needs to be taken and that at which it can be taken’, with one crucial exception, namely, ‘policy to deregulate markets’. An ill-fated strategy of the Delors Commission from the late 1980s (which we have referred to above) of taking advantage of marketdriven integration as a motor for transposing essential features of the national welfare state to the supranational level, and thus firmly linking a ‘social dimension’ to the accomplishment of the European Single Market, is the most pungent illustration of Crouch’s succinct point on the ‘immobilizing’ dynamics of deregulation (see further, Hansen 2005a). Thus, once the Single Market and the Single European Act set out to restrain regulatory powers at national levels, the prospects, scope, and relative strength of policies tied to the welfare state would, from the mid-1980s, increasingly come to hinge on the compensatory capacities and regulatory competencies at the supranational level. Mainly because of the prevalent political disinclination at the time— that is, ‘the neoliberal European policy consensus’ (McNamara 1998)—the supranational level was never invested with such compensatory authorities. To the detriment of the EU’s welfare states, it was, rather, negative integration that prevailed, hence endowing the EU with an institutional, decision-making, and legal framework and dynamic that would come to promote a deregulating market integration, but at the expense of a protecting and positive welfare integration. This provided, the political and social consequences of the Single Market transformations were to become both extensive and lasting. These conversions continue to cast their shadow on today’s developments and, as such, they remain essential when we seek to comprehend the current situation. This certainly does not mean that, after Maastricht, the Commission and other actors gave up for good the ambition to equip the EU with a ‘social dimension’. On the contrary, prompted by anxiety about the popular legitimacy of further processes of European integration and perceived needs to combat exacerbated processes of social exclusion, new attempts at a social dimension were sailing up into the late 1990s. Finally, at the Nice Council in 2000, a new European Social Policy Agenda (SPA) was adopted as the basis for constructing a revived European Social Model (ESM), and instituted as a component of the much-propagated Lisbon Strategy and reform agenda (see further Hansen 2005a). As already noted, however, by then neoliberal recipes for reconstruction had become emblematic among reformed European social democratic parties. Thus, the basic principles of the SPA reflected neoliberal concerns about ‘employability’, ‘flexibility’, ‘social cohesion’, and ‘moral obligation’, while worries about ‘social inequality’, ‘social rights’, and redistribution had been pushed thoroughly backstage. Efforts at constructing an


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ESM had thus come to be one-sidedly connected with an agenda for economic growth and human capital development, and estranged from the premise of social rights of citizenship. Phrased in more general theoretical terms, the present state of the EU’s SPA affirms indeed the thesis of Bob Jessop (2002a; 2002b) concerning the transition in advanced capitalism from a ‘Keynesian welfare national state’ (KWNS) model into that of a ‘Schumpeterian workfare postnational regime’ (SWPR). The configuration of and transition to SWPR is formulated by Jessop (2002b: 112–13) in the following terms: . An economic policy emphasizing sociotechnical innovation and international competitiveness through supply-side policies rather than full employment and planning. Social policy is subordinated to economic policy with the aim of making labour markets more flexible. . Downward pressure is put on the social wage, which is now considered a cost of production rather than a means of redistribution. The general idea is to ‘get people from welfare into work’, to ‘create enterprising subjects’, and to break a ‘culture of dependency’ rather than ‘resort to allegedly unsustainable welfare expenditures’. . The ‘national scale of policy is being . . . challenged, as local, regional and supranational levels of government and social partnership gain new powers’. . There is a ‘growing reliance on partnership, networks . . . and other forms of reflexive self-organization, rather than on the combination of anarchic market forces and top-down planning associated with the postwar ‘‘mixed economy’’ or the old tripartite corporatist arrangements based on a producers’ alliance between big business, big labor, and the national state’. Although these features of SWPR are all, to a greater or lesser extent, present in the transformation of the advanced welfare states of Western Europe, there is, Jessop argues, no single model of change. There is, rather, a variety of different approaches that lead from different, actually existing, forms of the KWNS to particular forms of a SWPR, where neoliberal modes of governance are more or less dominant. As indicated above, the character of the ‘embedded neoliberalism’ propagated by the EU’s turn-of-the-millennium SPA pays particular attention to moral cohesion, civic agency, and a ‘stakeholders society’ based on ‘local partnerships’ and networked forms of governance. It thus embraces a conspicuous ‘neocommunitarian’ (Jessop 2002b: 116; 2002a: 263ff.) perspective on governance. However, given its close reliance on performance and flexibility, which thereby subjects a number of qualitatively different models of KWNS in Europe to an ongoing process of modification, the modernized ESM now propagated by the EU within the wider framework of the Lisbon process is not easily identified. But even if it proves difficult to present a lucid picture of what the ESM amounts to, we can still provide an assessment based on what it

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does not, indeed cannot, amount to under present circumstances. While EU policy documents abound with general statements embracing a modernized ESM that is conducive to ‘a high level of social protection’ and ‘an appropriate balance between flexibility and security’, this does not gainsay de la Porte and Pochet’s contention (2002: 292) that the EU’s social model is taking shape in the shadow of an all-pervasive neoliberal ‘economic and monetary model that continues to constitute the ideé-force of European integration’. Due to these obvious limitations, ‘[c]ertain options in welfare politics are simply not open’ (Chalmers and Lodge 2003: 10; see further the detailed discussion of ESM and the Lisbon process in Hansen 2005a): rather, a looking glass through which we must discuss also the EU’s policies on migrant ‘integration’, ‘diversity’, and anti-racism. The changing discourse and ideology of ‘social exclusion/inclusion’ on which these policies hinge conform well to the general mode of transformation from KWNS to SWPR theorized by Jessop. The social consequences of this ongoing transformation of EU policies on social exclusion were, as mentioned above, discussed by Ruth Levitas (1998) in terms of the post-Maastricht shift from a redistributive discourse to a neocommunitarian social integrationist discourse. This change in discourse and policy, she argues, obscures and legitimizes inequalities in the labour market. It carries with it a general dissociation from social citizenship. This not only represents a neglect of class inequalities and actual poverty, but also has important gender aspects, as women are far more likely than men to hold low-status jobs in the labour market (Levitas 1998: 26ff.). Arguably, it may also exacerbate rather than mitigate racialized exclusion in European labour markets with negative implications for ethnic minorities (citizens as well as denizens). In a similar critical discussion, Ruth Lister (1990, 2001) expresses her concerns about a situation where ‘poverty’ becomes ‘social exclusion’ and where, as the reference of ‘social exclusion’ becomes in the next moment limited to ‘exclusion from paid work’, the result may be the stigmatization of one particular subgroup among the poor, namely, ‘welfare clients’. A most adverse but quite typical result is that the issue of poverty and social exclusion becomes subsumed within an understanding that locates the cause of misery in a moral deficiency among the excluded themselves, (see also Katz 1989) and with a clear racial tinge. It is in the USA and (to some extent) the UK that this kind of moral underclass discourse (Levitas 1998) has been most forcefully adopted as a recipe for ‘social integration through work, or ‘workfare’, directed, to a particularly high extent, at African Americans and poor ethnic minorities. But similar practices have become commonplace across Europe since the beginning of the 1990s. Processed through ‘tough love’ disciplinary strategies of work enforcement, they have often proved to lead to the transformation of poor ‘welfare clients’ into a populous category among the ‘working poor’, permanently trapped in enforced low-status work. Morally induced work enforcement of a disciplinary character may thus deprive the poor of their power and civil and social right to defend their entitlement to an acceptable level of


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welfare by withholding their labour from the market’s sub-standard jobs (King 1999; Fox Piven and Cloward 1993).

Citizenship of the Union and the Political Economy of Free Movement While we attend more closely to the consequences of welfare state transformation for citizens and denizens of migrant background in Chapters 4–9, in the remainder of this chapter we discuss the potential implications for frameworks of citizenship of an emerging EU post-national workfare state connected with the management of migration, border control, and asylum. A critical note to the work of Virginie Guiraudon (2000) on the incorporation of migrants into Western European welfare states appears seminal as a point of departure. Based on a comparative study of France, Germany, and the Netherlands following the end of post-war foreign labour recruitment in 1973, Guiraudon (2000: 87) argues that the evolution of the rights of the foreign-born represents the ‘Marshallian triptych reordered’. Everywhere, she argues—even in Germany, with its official guest-worker policy—‘the inclusion of legally residing foreigners in the welfare state has been quite extensive . . . in spite of that fact that it ran against some of the policy goals of migration control policy and against the closed logic of the welfare state’. This is, she contends, connected with standardized practices of social bureaucracies and courts, which ‘have been positively biased in favour of equal treatment’, in terms of social rights, ‘for reasons that originate in their own functioning’. Other rights, such as voting rights, are more ‘visible’ in the reform process and thus more difficult to legitimize. Thus, in contrast to the Marshallian evolutionary scheme, where the civil and political rights were granted before social rights,16 the reverse order marks the post-war integration of immigrants and ethnic minorities in Western Europe. However, gainsaying the dominant post-war trajectory and qualifying Guiraudon’s general argument, the EU’s general approach to the issue of an emergent transnational citizenship for TCNs puts the topsy-turvy Marshallian model back on its feet. Expressed in another way, we experience a ‘return of history’ at the supranational level, starting all over, as we discuss further below, with a marketbound civic citizenship, but with no guarantees of an evolutionary follow-up in the future in terms of a social citizenship of the Union. Although hardly traceable to the founding Treaty of Rome as such, a dualized approach to migration was installed early on in the EC, under which the treaty’s provisions relating to freedom of movement for workers within the Community came to apply solely to nationals of member states, thereby effectively excluding resident TCNs. Kostakopoulou (2001: 183) argues that 16 Notwithstanding important national differences. See, for example, Michael Mann’s (1987) critical comparative reappraisal of Marshall’s theory.

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this needs to be seen in light of the negative attitude towards immigration that, towards the end of the 1960s, had begun ‘to replace earlier discourses extolling the economic benefits of immigration’. Immigration from outside the Community, including the handling of the situation of TCNs within the wider borders of the EC, long remained within national jurisdictions, and in ‘grafting their notions about ‘‘who the Europeans are’’ onto the emerging institutions’ of the Community, the member states ‘managed to institutionalize exclusion at the heart of the European project’. In this sense, the exclusion of TCNs from freedom of movement was, in effect, also ‘filtering out alternative postnational criteria of membership in the emerging Europolity’ (Kostakopoulou 2001: 184–5; see also Hansen 2005b; 2005c). In conjunction with the launching of the Single Market Programme and the negotiation of the SEA in the mid-1980s, the Commission made plain its aspirations to supranationalize the policy domain of immigration and asylum, seeing it as a necessary and logical part of the Single Market’s larger framework. But, in spite of recurrent efforts at reform from the European Commission and the European Parliament, member state governments were not swayed. Similarly, the Commission’s insistence that the freedom of movement entitlements should embrace all Community residents, irrespective of whether they were member state nationals or TCNs, was also in clear discord with the dominant political agendas of the old immigration countries in central and north-western Europe. Only after the Amsterdam Treaty were serious steps taken to even out some of the imbalances between the rights of member state nationals and TCNs (Kostakopoulou 2002). As part of this, the Commission introduced the concept of ‘civic citizenship’, which is deemed a long-term goal emerging out of the progressive ‘granting of civic and political rights to longer-term migrant residents’ (TCNs), and comprises ‘a set of rights and duties offered to third country nationals’ (CEC 2000b: 22). Civic citizenship is said to epitomize the principles and values laid down in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (European Union 2000) adopted at the Nice summit in December 2000 (CEC 2001a: 3), and subsequently incorporated into the as yet (as of spring 2005) unratified Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (Conference of the Representatives of the Governments of the Member States 2004: Part II, Titles I-VII ). However, this in no way implies that permanently settled TCNs are about to become naturalized EU citizens any time soon, or, for that matter, that long-term residence is about to replace nationality as the determining qualification for EU citizenship. Evidently, ‘free movement’ constitutes one of the core issues around which the Commission organizes and articulates its civic citizenship endeavour to expand the rights of ‘legally’ resident TCNs.17 ‘A genuine area of freedom, security and justice’, the Commission (CEC 2001a: 8) asserts, ‘is unthinkable 17

With the adoption of a Council Directive in 2003, certain limited rights of intra-EU mobility and residence have now been granted to third-country nationals ‘who are longterm residents’ (Council of the EU 2004c).


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without a degree of mobility for third-country nationals residing there legally.’ Granted that any upgrading of mobility rights for TCNs must be welcomed as such, the issue cannot rest simply as a structurally detached expression of the Commission’s benevolent intention to make ‘legal’ TCNs more visible through their gradual ‘integration’ as ‘civic citizens’. Rather, it needs to be linked to the larger question of the political economy of free movement and the Commission’s explicit mission to stimulate the economically vital, yet so far dormant, labour mobility within the EU area. Hence, it contends that to continue barring ‘legally’ resident TCNs from the free movement provisions runs counter to ‘the demands of an employment market that is in a process of far-reaching change, where greater flexibility is needed’ (CEC 2001a: 8; see further Hansen 2005c). Permanently settled TCNs constitute an untapped labour reserve that, once unhampered by the EU’s internal borders, could help remedy recurrent labour shortages in growth industries and other labour market distortions across the Union (CEC 2004c: 18; 2003a: 1). In this equation, unemployment appears to be a key variable. Since TCNs suffer disproportionately from unemployment, the Commission presumes they should be more open to intra-EU labour mobility than are member state nationals: hence the promotion of extended free movement rights as a means by which TCNs could ‘escape unemployment in the Member State where they reside’ (CEC 2001a: 8). Arguably, the articulation of civic citizenship is also contingent upon the Commission’s more general approach towards ‘social exclusion’ as manifested in the ‘embedded neoliberalism’ of the Lisbon reforms. The institution of civic citizenship thus rests on the basic premise that accelerated labour market deregulation and a more flexible and adaptable labour force hold the key to the EU’s allegedly analogous problems of unemployment and social exclusion. Promoted as a possible ticket out of unemployment for TCNs in particular, and as a means to attain more flexibility within the EU’s labour market as a whole, civic citizenship could then be seen as yet another attempt at reconciling social cohesion with market expediency.

A Contradictory Policy on Migration and Asylum Seen from a wider perspective, the discord in the 1980s and 1990s between the Commission and member states concerning the extension of the rights of free movement to TCNs had implications not only for the status of permanently resident TCNs, but also for the framing of a contradictory supranational migration and asylum regime in general. This problematic character of emergent ‘post-national’ migration policies was initiated by Schengen and other intergovernmental accords precipitating the Maastricht Treaty. The reasoning of the Commission suggested that without a universal arrangement on freedom of movement, an envisaged abolition of internal

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border checks would be unfeasible (Geddes 2000a: 70). But such a transfer of competencies to the Community level was not attainable, since member states proved far from ready to surrender their sovereignty in this policy area (Geddes 2000a: 70–1; Hoskyns 1996: 172–3). As it turned out, the Commission’s unsuccessful bid to supranationalize immigration and asylum, and resistance from the member states concerning the expansion of the scope of freedom of movement, would not prove to be a stumbling block to the subsequent rapid development in the area. Anticipating what was in the offing, given the overall agenda of the Single Market, member states had already embarked on setting up cooperative frameworks in order to coordinate and harmonize what they took to be vital precautionary measures related to migratory movements, both into and within the Community. In this sense, a consensus emerged among governments acknowledging that the Single Market required a stepping up of joint efforts and the working out of harmonized policies. Instead of a supranational solution, what resulted was an intensification of secret and democratically unaccountable cooperation along intergovernmental lines (den Boer 1995; Hentges 2002). In 1985, the first Schengen Agreement was signed by five of the member states, followed by the establishment of the Ad Hoc Group on Immigration in 1986 and the Co-ordinators’ Group on Free Movement of Persons two years later. Furthermore, in June of 1990 both the Schengen Implementation Agreement, or Schengen II (effective from 1995), and the Dublin Convention (ratified in 1997) were signed. Designed in large part to develop a common framework and course of action for combating illegal immigration and the management of asylum matters in the Community, these intergovernmental schemes would serve to gradually weaken the right of asylum and the Geneva Refugee Convention during the 1990s (Guild 1999; Hentges 2002; Joly 1999; Lavenex 2001a; Overbeek 1995). Besides the plethora of restrictive measures that flowed from these and other intergovernmental arrangements—not to mention Schengen’s amalgamation of asylum policy and international crime prevention—the building up of a new intergovernmental asylum regime would also engender a logic whereby countries with less restrictive asylum policies came to fear that they would have to carry the brunt of the EU’s future ‘refugee burden’. As a consequence, ‘[w]ith Schengen II and Dublin an ECwide contest for the most restrictive granting of residence permits, visas and transit visas was set in motion’ (Hentges 2002: 110). Other key constitutive measures of the EU’s emergent asylum and immigration policy regime that would work to the detriment of refugee protection in general and of the principle of non-refoulement in particular included the introduction of the ‘safe third country’ rule, the Resolution on Manifestly Unfounded Applications for Asylum, and the establishment of various readmission agreements with East European countries (see Lavenex 1999, 2001b). Although this intergovernmental manner of proceeding in the post-Single Market period clearly ran counter to the Commission’s supranational scheme,


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the Commission’s response never came close to all-out rejection or confrontation. Instead it opted for a ‘pragmatic stance’, deciding that it could have more say in the matter, however hamstrung it was, by accepting a subordinate role inside the intergovernmental arrangements than by maintaining a principled opposition from the sidelines (Geddes 2000a: 72). The growing salience of migration as a Community issue was further underscored by the Maastricht Treaty, which formalized intergovernmental cooperation and incorporated it into the Treaty’s so-called third pillar (Justice and Home Affairs). As far as transparency and democratic accountability were concerned, however, this formalization offered few, if any, improvements. As O’Keeffe (1999: 273) maintains, ‘the culture of secrecy endemic to the Schengen structure was continued in the framework of the Third Pillar’. Besides immigration and asylum, the third pillar also contained cooperation on police and judicial matters, including the fight against international crime, terrorism, and the traffic in narcotics (d’Oliveira 1994: 261–2). Hence, if the framing of certain forms of immigration as threats against social stability—as naturally related to serious international crime, drug trafficking, and terrorism—had been prevalent at the national level for many years, Maastricht formalized the duplication of this securitized approach at the EU level (Anderson et al. 1995; den Boer 1995; Huysmans 1995; Martiniello and Rea 1999). Even if the Maastricht Treaty formalized cooperation on immigration and asylum, the Commission’s influence remained weak vis-a`-vis the Council and the member states. That the Commission was at odds with the intergovernmental form should not, however, be taken to imply that it was opposed also to the actual content of intergovernmental cooperation on immigration and asylum. Although the Commission could be sceptical towards some of the policy objectives agreed upon by member states, Brussels and national governments were in agreement on most points, and that fact would set the tone for developments in the area during the remainder of the 1990s. Most importantly, the European Commission came to share many of the elements which structured the hegemonic discourse on immigration and asylum and which treated immigration as a ‘problem’, a malignancy, and as a potential flood about to destabilize the Union unless checked through vigorous security measures at the external borders as well as within the EU (see Hathaway 1993; Maier 2002: 94). Herein, moreover, the distinction between immigrants and illegal immigrants, and between asylum seekers and bogus asylum seekers, was gradually blurred, thereby evincing the self-perpetuating logic behind the policing and security approach. Portrayed as both enemies at the gates and enemies within, ‘illegal immigrants/illegal immigration’ would become a catch-all term in the 1990s which in many contexts almost completely eclipsed previous meanings assigned to (non-Western) immigration and asylum seeking. After Maastricht, the Commission’s message became even more pronounced (CEC 1994b: 28). A ‘comprehensive approach’ to immigration was elaborated, consisting of a three-pronged strategy. It called for: (a) ‘Taking action on

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migration pressure’; (b) ‘Controlling migration flows’; and (c) ‘Strengthening integration policies for the benefit of legal immigrants’ (CEC 1994b: 11). Unmistakably, one of the key assumptions in this strategy rested on the postulate that ‘without limitation, integration is impossible’ (Gilroy and Lawrence 1988: 133; see also Skellington and Morris 1992: 50–2). To use the Commission’s own formulation (1994b: 11): ‘It has, for example, become clear that an indispensable condition for successful integration policies with respect to third country nationals resident in the Union is control of migration flows.’ And further: ‘Society’s readiness to accept the inflow of new migrant groups depends on how it perceives government to be in control of the phenomenon’ (CEC 1994b: 32). Indeed, in the 1990s this emphasis on an assumed society that was said to demand that governments curb immigration became one of the most commonplace ways for EU governments, including the Commission, to disguise their own (tactical) readiness to impose restrictive immigration and asylum policies as simply reflecting the mood of the electorate (see Miles 1993: 201, 206). However, what national governments and the Commission failed to recognize was that, once immigration had been identified as a ‘problem’, and immigrants and refugees staged as ‘floods’ who, upon entry, could cause serious difficulties, this would scarcely promote a desired ‘integration’ of migrants or decrease the difficulties for those ethnic minorities residing in the EU who already suffered from various forms of stigmatization and racialization.

The Post-Amsterdam Volte-Face The political climate in which the Amsterdam Treaty took shape was characterized by a growing dissatisfaction with Maastricht’s intergovernmental management of matters pertaining to immigration and asylum (Lavenex 2001a: 864; Hix 1999: 328). In order to come to terms with these problems, the Parliament and the Commission called for a thorough supranationalization of immigration and asylum policy. Another novel feature of Amsterdam’s preparatory stages was the attendance of numerous NGOs, all advocating the cause of expanded protection and rights for refugees and immigrants. Forming part of the larger attempt to enhance the EU’s threadbare democratic credentials and popular legitimacy, these NGOs were invited to present their cases regarding the shaping of the Union’s future immigration and asylum policies (Geddes 2000a: 113–14). Being favourably disposed to transferring immigration and asylum policy to the Community level (Hix 1999: 329), their involvement provided an additional impetus to the supranational cause. By the mid-1990s, the case for some form of supranationalization had also, eventually, gained conditional support in all but a few of the national cabinets (Geddes 2000a: 115–18; Melis 2001: 14). But, backers of a more radical, ‘post-national’ model


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were to be yet again frustrated (Geddes 2000a: 117). While important (but far from all) elements of migration policy were relocated from the EU’s third intergovernmental pillar to the first, supranational pillar, for at least five years (1999–2004), decision-making in the area still had to abide by the unanimity principle. Although assuming recognition as a ‘communitarized’ area, the traditional Community method of, inter alia, qualified majority voting (QMV) was not to be set to apply to immigration and asylum policy until the transitional period had run its course. However, a Council Decision (Council of the EU 2004e) in December 2004 finally settled the matter, thus making QMV applicable to the Amsterdam Treaty’s new articles on immigration and asylum. Despite a rather awkward ‘supragovernmental’ set-up at the time, which drew criticism from many quarters (see Melis 2001: 51), the Amsterdam Treaty marked a historic shift which laid down the broad outlines for a future EU policy on immigration and asylum. Among other things, it was specified (Article 62) that measures should be adopted granting certain limited intraEU mobility rights to TCNs. A series of measures on asylum and immigration stressing the creation of a set of ‘minimum standards’ in the area of asylum (Article 63) were outlined, and the Schengen acquis was incorporated into the Treaty framework. Due to British, Irish, and Danish opposition, however, and in order not to derail the negotiations, it became necessary to allow these countries to opt out of these new provisions. As it turned out, such differentiation did not stem the flurry of activity and policy transformations that followed in the wake of the Amsterdam, and the subsequent, Tampere agreements. To start with, it did not take long for the Commission to decide to reverse its official stance on the issue of extra-Community labour immigration. Departing from ‘an analysis of the economic and demographic context of the Union and of the countries of origin’, the Commission takes the view ‘that channels for legal immigration to the Union should now be made available for labour migrants’ (CEC 2000b: 3). The ‘zero immigration’ of the previous thirty years is repudiated as ‘quite simply, unrealistic’ (CEC 2000d: 4). ‘The main challenge’, argues the Commission, ‘will be to attract and recruit migrants suitable for the EU labour force to sustain productivity and economic growth’ (CEC 2003d: 10). The Commission’s call for an ‘efficient management of migration flows’ (CEC 2000a: 9) is, above all, construed as a response to a set of acute predicaments facing the Union’s labour market. Prefaced with references to already established and developing recruitment schemes at the member state level (CEC 2003g: ch. 6; see also CEC 2004c), the Commission insists on a coordination of national responses within ‘an overall framework at EU level’ (CEC 2000b: 14). Hence, and since the admission of third country labour migrants will remain a national sphere of authority, the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) is set to complement and support the EU’s so far limited legislative instruments (see Caviedes 2004). This is done so as to bring forth common

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objectives and guidelines as well as best practices and targets that are sensitive to different national needs (CEC 2001b). In due course, the Commission envisages, such an OMC-driven process will help establish a common framework for third country labour migration in the EU. As part of the OMC in this particular area, all measures are to be aligned with the objectives laid down in the European Employment Strategy and developed in close collaboration with the social partners, actors at regional and local levels, various NGOs, ‘associations of migrants as stakeholders’ and other representatives of ‘civil society’ (CEC 2001b: 14). Such coordination of recruitment policies for ‘economic migrants’ should ‘enable the EU to respond quickly and efficiently to labour market requirements at national, regional and local level, recognising the complex and rapidly changing nature of these requirements’ (CEC 2000b: 15). In this context, the Commission recommends the bilateral agreements on seasonal and temporary work that southern European members have signed with various third countries, not only for helping to alleviate labour shortages but also even more, for strengthening cooperation with third countries in the fight against illegal immigration. It is also important to note that the Commission does not take issue with the fact that some of these bilateral agreements do not award seasonal third country labourers the same working conditions and salary levels as nationals (CEC 2004c: 7).

Imposing Sender-Receiver ‘Partnerships’ On the whole, the Commission advocates a policy on new third-country labour migrants that is guided by a ‘flexible approach’. ‘[W]orkers who intend to return to their countries of origin’ are said to be best admitted on the basis of ‘temporary’ work permits. Within this category, moreover, ‘special arrangements’ could be worked out for ‘certain types of workers; e.g. seasonal workers, transfrontier workers, and intra-corporate transferees’. Subsequently, temporary permits might be extended and, ‘after a number of years’, workers who ‘meet certain criteria’ may be awarded permanent work permits (CEC 2000b: 17–18). Moreover, ‘the idea of recruiting workers and developing training programmes in countries of origin in skills which are needed by the EU could be explored’ (CEC 2004c: 19). In line with this, and in order to better ‘manage’, ‘regulate’, and ‘control’ the ‘increasingly mixed flows of migrants’, a development of a ‘partnership approach’ with third countries is advocated (CEC 2000b: 8). This is set to ‘provide a framework for dealing flexibly with new trends in migration’ whereby migration, rather than being perceived as ‘simply a oneway flow’, now must be construed as a ‘pattern of mobility’ (CEC 2000b: 8, 13). A related course of action concerns the connection between labour migration and international protection. Set to be coordinated ‘in partnership with third countries’, it is recommended that ‘[b]etter access to protection in Europe must go hand in hand with a regulated and more transparent frame-


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work for a policy on admissions, including for employment purposes’ (CEC 2003e: 7), and ‘the discussion on the number of economic migrants needed in different sectors should take into account the number of persons under international protection’ (CEC 2000b: 15). The issue of immigration and asylum has thus been constituted as a centrepiece in all of the EU’s development programmes, also expressed as ‘the migration-development nexus’ (CEC 2002a: 23). Development assistance to poorer countries is to target more forcefully ‘the root causes of migration flows’—the so-called push factors—so as to better ‘manage’, ‘control’, and ‘reduce’ global migration flows (CEC 2002a). That is to say, helping developing countries come to terms with what the Commission describes as the mostly self-inflicted problems of ‘negative growth’, ‘overpopulation’, ‘unemployment’, ‘[a]rmed conflict’, ‘ethnic cleansing’, ‘[h]uman rights abuses’, and ‘[p]oor governance’ will, in the long term, also help ‘to reduce the migratory pressure’, hence facilitating a future development where migration ‘can be a positive factor for growth and success of both the Union and the countries concerned’ (CEC 2002a: 10, 7, 4). To enable third and neighbouring countries to improve their management of migration flows in general, and to reinforce their fight against illegal migration in particular, the Commission is calling for an increase in the EU’s technical and financial support within the framework of its various external policies and cooperation programmes (CEC 2004d). The ‘New Neighbourhood Policy’, designed to enhance cooperation with countries along the EU’s eastern borders and in the Mediterranean basin, harbours the twin purposes of managing the new labour migration to the EU more efficiently on the one hand and, on the other hand, of combating what the Commission enumerates as the ‘serious threats’ of ‘illegal immigration, organised crime, trafficking of various kinds, terrorism and communicable diseases’ (CEC 2004b: 23).

‘Flexible Integration’: Migrant Incorporation and Public Relations Post-‘Zero Immigration’ But the management of new labour migration is not only promoted under the banner of ‘flexibility’ and mutually beneficial ‘partnerships’ between senders and receivers. It also intimates that newcomers should be greeted with measures of ‘integration’ and with the associated boons of civic citizenship, antidiscrimination policies, and social inclusion. Integration is also construed as a competitive device, as when the Commission urges the member states to ‘greatly contribute to the integration process’, since this ‘will be particularly important in attracting migrants to highly skilled jobs for which there is world-wide competition’ (CEC 2000b: 19). But if integration can be held up as enhancing the Union’s competitive edge, its perceptibly discordant relationship with many of the objectives inherent in

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the ‘flexible management’ of new labour migration also elicits some hesitation on the part of the Commission as to how extensive integration measures really ought to be. Put differently, if the new labour migrants derive their utility precisely from their flexible status—always open to return and to continual mobility—this is clearly at variance with the Commission’s (CEC 2000b: 20) conception of integration as inevitably amounting to ‘a long-term process’ comprising a series of measures that, apart from focusing on the needs of new arrivals, are to pay ‘special attention’ to ‘second generation migrants’. Given this policy conflict, it is little wonder that the Commission, on other occasions, proves equally eager to temper, even retract, its affirmative stance on the integration of new labour migrants. As part of a wavering attempt to paper over the contradiction between integration and flexibility, the Commission thus suggests that it might be advisable to adopt an ‘incremental’ approach to integration—an approach ‘[d]ifferentiating rights according to length of stay’ (CEC 2000b: 15, 17). However, since the Commission has already established that ‘length of stay’ is to be managed through the issuing of various temporary and renewable work permits and determined by the rapidly changing and hence indeterminable market needs, this proposal cannot but amount to little more than a tautology. Arguably, it essentially seeks to square the integrationflexibility circle by subordinating the issue of integration to the requirements of flexibility. This contradictory endeavour is reflected too in the Commission’s subsequent recasting of integration as ‘reintegration’ in the EU’s proposal to design a ‘reintegration framework’ ‘to assist returning migrants to re-settle in their countries of origin’ (CEC 2000b: 8; 2001b: 10). Another predicament facing the Commission revolves around its undertaking to secure widespread public acceptance of the (official) revocation of the EU’s long-established tradition of ‘ ‘‘zero’’ immigration policies’ (CEC 2000b: 3). To be sure, ‘zero immigration’ never constituted an actual line of policy in the literal sense of the term; today it is rather used as a generic term, denoting thirty years of restrictive immigration policies aimed at limiting the (legal) entry of labour migrants, or ‘economic migrants’, from poorer parts of the world. But if the Commission’s call to end zero immigration must not be allowed to conjure up a picture of the past thirty years as characterized by a true intention to hermetically seal off the borders for all third country labour migrants (as we demonstrate elsewhere in this book, the passivity, even tacit consent, of many governments towards industry’s exploitation of undocumented labour amounts to just one refutation of such an intention), neither should it be taken to signify the first step towards a future policy of ‘open door’ labour immigration. Listening to the Commission, however, one gains the impression that it is, nonetheless, a public reaction partly built on just such an interpretation which it has now set out to forestall. The Commission appears to be apprehensive that the ‘host populations’ will respond negatively to the abrogation of ‘zero immigration’, possibly interpreting it as portending less restriction and an uncontrolled inflow of immigrants. In its detailed Opinion


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on the Commission’s new approach to immigration, the Economic and Social Committee (2001: 111) voices similar concerns: ‘It will not be easy to persuade public opinion to take a favourable view of the more open immigration policy now being proposed, but far-reaching work to this end is now urgently required.’ In light of the Commission’s exceedingly restrictive stance on immigration in the 1980s and 1990s, however, such uneasiness is far from surprising. Indeed, for more than two decades the Commission rarely missed an opportunity to emphasize that a restrictive immigration policy, or ‘zero immigration’, was the only ‘realistic’ way forward. The restrictive approach to immigration also functioned as a crucial public relations tool, often put to use when the Commission sought to assure the EU citizenry that further European integration by no means implied an increase in extra-European immigration. As such, the pledge to uphold (the illusion of) ‘zero immigration’ also served as one of the core ingredients in the Commission’s articulation and promotion of a ‘European citizenship’ during the 1990s. Here, the underlying assumption was that the EU citizenry, in order to consolidate, needed to be assured that immigration and asylum were being effectively checked at the external borders (see Hansen 2000b). In order to obviate possible public disapproval of the EU’s rather abrupt shift from its promise to perpetuate the policy of ‘zero immigration’ to its current call for an increase of third country labour immigration, the Commission has come up with a series of public relations measures to be adopted by a range of elite actors. ‘A shift to a proactive immigration policy’, the Commission (2000b: 22, 15) asserts, will ‘require strong political leadership to help shape public opinion’, as well as ‘a clear commitment to the promotion of pluralistic societies and a condemnation of racism and xenophobia’. More specifically, politicians are being urged to highlight the positive effects of immigration and to ‘avoid language which could incite racism or aggravate tensions between communities’. In addition, the media is held up by the Commission as having ‘considerable responsibility in this respect’, that is, ‘in its role as an educator of public opinion’ (CEC 2000b: 22). While the public is to be on the one hand reassured about the EU’s commitment to an ever more intense fight against illegal immigration, and on the other hand educated about the benefits of immigration and diversity, the Commission also puts forward a third set of conditions to be considered. Here, and in contrast with the critical importance attributed to the task of teaching the public to be appreciative of immigration and diversity, the Commission (2000b: 16) sees it necessary also to pay heed to such ‘factors’ as ‘public acceptance of additional migrant workers in the country concerned, resources available for reception and integration’, as well as ‘the possibilities for social and cultural adaptation etc’. Although the Commission refrains from any further elaboration of these ‘factors’, their very incorporation into the Union’s overall immigration scheme is nonetheless quite indicative of the

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contradictions that pervade immigration policy at the EU level. As such, it tallies with the situation at national levels, and could arguably be interpreted as a tactical move on the part of the Commission to appease the discrepant positions on immigration between, as well as within, the member states. True, most governments share the Commission’s view that an increase in extra-EU labour migrants is necessary, but to assume that they are able, let alone prepared, to shoulder the responsibility to ‘shape public opinion’ in an anti-racist and pro-immigration direction is a completely different matter. As has been made painfully clear in recent years, the relationship between the traditional parties of government and the anti-immigrant right is no longer limited to one where the former assimilates many of the proposals and sentiments of the latter; rather, in many member states, it has entered a phase of open cooperation and coalition-building.

Externalizing the Asylum Crisis In the post-Amsterdam period, asylum policy has been subjected to even more intensive supranational activity than the issues of migrant and/or minority integration and extra-EU labour migration.18 So-called ‘minimum standards’ have been established in a number of areas; for example, minimum standards on ‘temporary protection’ (Council of the EU 2001a),19 ‘reception of asylum seekers’ (Council of the EU 2003a),20 ‘the qualification and status of third country nationals or stateless persons as refugees’ (Council of the EU 2004a), and ‘minimum standards on procedures for granting or withdrawing refugee status’ (Council of the EU 2004b).21 On account of Amsterdam’s new provisions, moreover, all facets of visa policy have been incorporated into the EU’s legal framework (Council of the EU 2001c).22 As for the Commission’s rationale, it is ‘illegal immigration’ that ‘represents one of the basic criteria for the determination of those third countries whose nationals are subject to the visa requirement’ (CEC 2003h: 4). Since prospective asylum seekers, as a rule, are denied visas to EU countries, this conversion implies a key legal retrenchment on the right of asylum. Indeed, the number of countries whose citizens are required to have a visa in order to enter the Union includes practically all those countries that the EU recurrently reprimands for human rights abuses. In line with the EU’s visa policy, an EU Directive on Carrier Sanctions was adopted in 2001 (Council of the EU 2001b). It imposes financial penalties on 18

For a more detailed analysis and further sources, see P. Hansen (2005c). While the UK decided to opt in to this Directive, it does not apply to Ireland and Denmark (Council of the EU 2001a: 13). 20 The UK has opted in to this Directive; Ireland and Denmark do not participate (Council of the EU 2003a: 19). 21 At the time of writing (2005), the adoption of this Directive is still pending. 22 The UK and Ireland retain their own visa policies. 19


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carriers that transport TCNs who are refused entry into the Union, and obliges carriers to send back such TCNs. The Eurodac information system, which became fully operational across the EU in 2003, makes up another component of the building of a ‘Common European Asylum System’ (see Council of the EU 2002a).23 It was established in order to ensure the effective implementation of the Dublin Convention (see Council of the EU 2003b), which stipulates that asylum seekers are allowed to file for asylum in only one member state. Its decision, then, has legal force in the Union as whole, thus preventing a rejected applicant from taking her case to another member state. Eurodac’s main official function is to collect and store fingerprints of all people over the age of 14 who have applied for asylum or been detained while ‘illegally’ entering or residing in a member state. Despite the growing number of new supranational provisions and measures, Brussels maintains that the process embarked upon since Amsterdam and Tampere has done little to overcome the crisis that has plagued asylum policy in the EU since the early 1990s. On the contrary, the Commission maintains, the new millennium has just seen a worsening of this crisis. There is thus a ‘growing malaise in public opinion’ and ‘[a]buse of the asylum procedures is on the rise’ (CEC 2003e: 3). Brussels views the asylum crisis as ‘a real threat to the institution of asylum and more generally for Europe’s humanitarian tradition’. As such, it ‘demands a structural response’ that does not stop short of measures targeted at the internal operation of the EU’s developing asylum system (CEC 2003e: 3). Rather, and in line with the measures embarked upon in the EU’s new labour migration policy, the core of this structural response needs to be transposed to the external dimension of the EU’s asylum and immigration policy. As was declared at the Seville European Council in 2002, the issue of migration should make up an obligatory and salient feature in all of the EU’s external relations (CEC 2002a: 4). Thus, a growing emphasis has been placed on the establishment of ‘asylum and immigration projects in third countries’ (CEC 2002a: 4), including cooperation in reinforcing border controls and in rendering more effective the repatriation of rejected asylum seekers (CEC 2002a). The Commission seems unable to emphasize enough that ‘[a] policy on returns or effective removal from the territory is an absolute necessity for the credibility of the common asylum system and the common procedure’ (CEC 2000c: 10; 2003h: 8), and is thus keen to use readmission as a public relations tool to increase ‘public faith in the need to uphold the EU humanitarian tradition of offering asylum to those in need of international protection’ (CEC 2003f: 20); that is, as a promise to an imagined populace hankering for reassurance about the authorities’ resolve and relentless crackdown on bogus asylum seekers. The Commission also points to the merits of ‘the forced return of illegal residents’, arguing that this can ‘help to ensure public acceptance for more openness towards new 23

The Eurodac Regulation does not apply to Denmark (Council of the EU 2002b: 2).

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legal immigrants against the background of more open admission policies particularly for labour migrants’ (CEC 2002b: 8). As part of the external dimension and the EU’s ‘global policy’ (CEC 2002a: 26) on asylum and immigration, the Commission has been seeking to establish a firm link between development assistance policy and the striking of readmission agreements with third countries. The Cotonou Agreement (replacing the Lome´ conventions), or the EU’s ‘Partnership Agreement’ with seventy-seven African, Caribbean, and Pacific countries already contains a readmission clause (CEC 2002a: 24; see Lavenex 2002), just like the EU’s agreements with countries such as Egypt, Georgia, Lebanon, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Uzbekistan. Moreover, the Commission has been authorized to negotiate ‘readmission agreements’ and other migration- and asylum-related cooperation agreements with a growing number of countries, the great majority of them (like those already enumerated) with deplorable human rights records (see CEC 2002a: 25; 2003h: 12–14). Furthermore, the AENEAS Programme has been established to facilitate the development of the readmission instrument and also aims to address the root causes of migration, promote legal labour migration channels, improve third countries’ asylum systems, and combat illegal immigration and organized crime (European Parliament, Council of the EU 2004). Closely related to this is an endeavour to render more effective the utilization of refugee-absorbing ‘safe third countries’ and, most importantly perhaps, to develop the instrument of ‘refugee protection in the region of origin’, or ‘regional protection’. As Boswell (2003) argues, regional protection may be developed into a tool of mere refugee containment, thus perpetuating the ongoing transfer of the refugee burden from richer to poorer countries; or it could be based on a commitment to real protection and human rights, and vested with adequate resources. But the current reality of protection in the region of origin is a distressing one indeed, and there is little prospect of improvement in the near future, the actual trend being towards a worsening of conditions in the regions of refugee origin (Loescher and Milner 2003; ECRE and US Committee for Refugees 2003). However, despite being fraught with obvious drawbacks, the notion of regional protection is still confidently espoused. One conspicuous initiative was taken with the British government’s Vision paper in 2003 (UK Government 2003: 2), calling for sweeping reform of a ‘failing’ asylum system, deemed to undermine ‘public confidence’, because it is held to be tremendously demanding to expel rejected asylum seekers, something which, in turn, is claimed to be gratifying for illegal immigrants and terrorists (UK Government 2003: 1–2). A package of far-reaching measures is here put forth, promoting refugee protection in regions of origin through the establishment of Regional Protection Areas (RPAs) outside the EU. Once the RPAs have been set up, the paper goes on, all asylum seekers (with a few exceptions) arriving into the UK and, preferably, the whole of the EU and possibly ‘other Western States’ should be deported to them (UK Government 2003: 2). The RPAs should provide for basic needs so that refugees do not


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decide to abscond (and turn ‘illegal’) in search of better living conditions, but should also guard against offering too generous provisions since this ‘will act as a magnet to those in need in the surrounding area and cause resentment’, ‘envy or mistrust’ (2003: 13, 2). As for the processing of asylum claims, the paper approaches this as something that ‘[i]deally. . . would not be necessary because the asylum seekers will be able to go home quickly and it is more efficient to provide for all rather than determine claims’ (2003: 13). Among the many proposals—of which just a selection can be accounted for here—the British government also affirms an ‘international recognition of the need to intervene to reduce flows of genuine refugees and enable refugees to return home’. Measures here would range from ‘non-coercive’ to ‘coercive’ action, including military intervention in sovereign states (2003: 3, 11). As Noll (2003: 309) argues, these and other far-reaching changes proposed in the British Vision paper ‘signal the most radical break with the international refugee regime as we know it’. They reflect ‘an ongoing paradigm shift’ in asylum policy, one that purports to ameliorate the refugee crisis ‘by locating the refugee beyond the domain of justice’ (Noll 2003: 338; see also Loescher and Milner 2003). In a recent Communication (CEC 2004c: 16), the Commission concludes that there is indeed ‘a long way to go before most of the current refugee hosting countries in the regions of origin could be considered to meet such a standard where they are able and willing to offer effective protection’. Nevertheless, the Commission has decided to promote what it has termed ‘EU Regional Protection Programmes’ before the decidedly distant and difficult goal of meeting protection and human rights standards has been fully realized. Less than two years after the original UK proposal, then, external EU or EU-sponsored camps for refugees have emerged as a highly viable option. The EU’s new multi-annual Hague Programme (2005–10), which succeeds the Tampere Programme, has confirmed that EU Regional Protection Programmes are to be vigorously pursued in the future. The Hague Programme envisages pilot projects to help establish asylum centres in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Mauritania, where refugees en route to Europe, and those apprehended in the international waters of the Mediterranean, would be deported and housed (Council of the EU 2004d: 21).

Migration and the Conditionality of an Emerging Post-National Regime The task of analysing the EU’s post-Amsterdam policies on migrant and ethnic minority integration together with policies on immigration and asylum is largely a matter of grappling with an awesome accumulation of contradictions. We began by examining pronounced commitments in the EU’s integration policies

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to equality of migrant ethnic minorities and extended free movement rights for TCNs on the one hand, and their marked adjustment to the needs of the EU’s flexible labour market on the other. As also elucidated, a similar approach permeates the Commission’s policy line on labour immigration from third countries. Here, however, the heavy emphasis on flexible and temporary work permits for new labour migrants contradicts the premise of integration policy that migrants’ integration is always a long-term process. On the whole, the primacy of market requirements that permeates EU policy discussion on new labour immigration leaves very little room for the type of ‘civic citizenship’ and rights dimension that, despite its flaws, is still endorsed in policies addressing the situation of the EU’s ‘legally’ and permanently settled TCNs. But we also saw that EU integration policy is not only adapted to market requirements and labour market flexibility. The aspiration that migrants and minorities should embrace ‘European values’ is also accentuated, as are these groups’ responsibilities and obligations in the integration process. The conceptions that underpin this approach to the integration of resident migrants and minorities are also manifest in the Commission’s contradictory endeavour to prepare host populations for the rescission of the ‘zero’ labour immigration policy. Calls for increased tolerance and a greater understanding of the benefits of additional labour migrants are made to coexist with the Commission’s respect for popular scepticism about the prospects for migrants’ ‘social and cultural adaptation’, as well as for host populations’ possible rejection of new labour migration from third countries. Arguably, such contradictory approaches largely draw upon the political currents in vogue in most member states. It partly represents the Commission’s adaptation to governments which are intent on inviting in more migrant labour in order to sustain competitive economies, but which have simultaneously fomented anti-immigrant sentiment and played on ethno-cultural identity politics in order to stay competitive with the extreme right at the polls. Adding to the contradictory picture, we also pointed to EU policy initiatives which appear at odds with such sentiments, above all, anti-discrimination and anti-racism policies. Arguably, we may conceive of these as signifying budding elements of a more inclusive ‘European creed’ that addresses the ‘social exclusion’ of disadvantaged groups in their institutional and structural embeddedness. However, from a wider perspective, we also need to enquire where anti-discrimination policy will end up when, as now, it lacks a foundation in a firm commitment to social citizenship rights. Without such a foundation, the more far-reaching aspects of EU anti-discrimination policy might run the risk of becoming bogged down in fragmented, localized, and parochial projects and partnerships for social inclusion, however supportive of ‘diversity’ or ‘empowering from below’ they may appear to be. However, the EU’s increasingly externalized policies on asylum, illegal immigration, expulsion, and border control raise another and perhaps even more pressing question. We have to wonder what the real prospects for anti-


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discrimination are in a Europe that (once again) is haunted by the ‘spectre of the camp’ (Noll 2003: 339). It is here, then, at the intersection of benign antidiscrimination objectives and the deplorable treatment of asylum seekers and ‘illegals’ that we are brought face to face with some of the most painful contradictions inherent in today’s European integration. We have seen how the already diluted right of asylum in the EU appears to be on the verge of being debased to the level of a merely formal commitment, set to be outsourced through the politics of stick and carrot to poorly resourced countries in the regions of refugee origin. This development forms an integral part of the gradual downgrading of the EU’s commitment to resolving the global refugee crisis to the mere globalization of its border controls, or to its ‘fight’ against illegal immigration, international crime, and terrorism. The fabrication of a menacing ‘problem’ of illegal immigration and the actions that supposedly have to be taken to address it thus constitute key enabling factors in the gradual undermining of the right of asylum. In this way, moreover, the EU is exploiting, as a pariah and scapegoat, the very same group—the ‘illegals’—that simultaneously serve as indispensable cogs in the Union’s much desired flexible economy and labour market. Having arrived here, and seeing that all roads—beyond or maybe indeed as a consequence of all contradictions—lead to the flexible labour market, we can now appreciate more fully the intimate and complementary relationship between policies on extra-EU immigration and policies on intra-EU integration. If the intra-EU labour reserve of long-term resident TCNs needs to be induced to relocate in step with the labour market’s ‘flexibility’ requirements, the same can be said to apply to select groups from within the extra-EU labour reserve. The fact that the Commission (2000b: 15, emphasis added) requests that recruitment schemes for extra-EU labour migrants address ‘the need for greater mobility between Member States for incoming migrants’ is just another case in point underscoring the complementary character of the two policy schemes in question. If the policy development in the wake of Amsterdam and Tampere has been deeply disquieting, it must also be kept in mind that it has occurred in conjunction with an increasing supranationalization of the policy areas in question. Contrary to what many analysts and NGOs had predicted or hoped, then, supranationalization has, so far, not proven to be conducive to a reversal of the pattern of a ‘race to the bottom’ harmonization that was set in train through intergovernmental cooperation in the 1980s. True, as indicated above, in some areas of anti-discrimination policy, supranationalization has effected an upgrading of many of the national anti-discrimination regimes. But as demonstrated in this chapter, this seems to be the exception that proves the rule. This problem strikes at the heart of the current European dilemma. It also raises a number of central questions about the future development of European integration. We have emphasized the necessity of discussing the EU’s development of supranational or ‘post-national’ policies on migration and the societal

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incorporation of migrants and ethnic minorities within a wider framework that focuses on the particular conditionality posed by the EU’s emergent social model. In all, the EU’s Lisbon reform agenda represents a modification of European approaches to the welfare state, one that is almost exclusively preoccupied with growth and competitiveness, while effectively steering clear of any serious attention to social citizenship. Here, economic policy encroaches upon social policy by way of seeking to extricate, or immunize, itself from those aspects of welfare policy that are deemed to impinge on growth, competitiveness, employability, and so on. To borrow from Chalmers and Lodge (2003: 10), this encroachment-extrication nexus now operating in the EU could also be likened to ‘a colonisation of the Welfare State by the economic policy-making process’. We have, in the context, referred to Jessop’s (2002a) general theory on the transformation of a ‘Keynesian national welfare state’ into a ‘Schumpeterian postnational workfare state’. We have argued further that the emergent European Social Model carried along through the EU’s Lisbon process and its so-called open method of coordination represents a markedly neocommunitarian approach to this more general transformation, contingent on European social democracy’s change of course. Despite the patently neoliberal nucleus of the Lisbon process and the deepseated structural–institutional transformation of European welfare state traditions it carries along, a number of crucial qualifications remain to be spelled out. For one, we should like to note that our account is not to be read as implying that the road now lies open for the smooth liquidation of the welfare states in the EU, or, for that matter, that the wholesale importation of the American model is just around the corner. Certainly an emergent EU regime, which is in many aspects modelled on American policies, represents a common conditionality to which the member states are bound to adapt. Nevertheless, this does not mean that Europe’s historical plurality of policies and regimes of citizenship has come to an end, or that the actually existing EU-Europe has come to ‘speak with one voice’ on today’s increasingly complex and controversial issues of social welfare and migration. This is the subject to which we are now directing the inquiry.

FOUR

Transatlantic Convergence or Transatlantic Split? Elements for a Comparative Framework

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HE observation that immigrants and ethnic minorities in Europe suffer from racial discrimination and unequal access to citizenship, welfare, and socio-professional advancement is hardly new. As discussed in Chapter 2, the immigrant workers or Gastarbeiter of post-war Western Europe often lacked fundamental rights of citizenship in the countries where they worked. But their typical mode of employment and social trajectory (as documented by Rex and Moore 1967; Rex and Tomlinson 1979; Castles and Kosack 1973) differed from those of substantial sections of the multifarious new immigration of the 1980s and 1990s. What emerged in the course of the 1980s and 1990s, giving the European issue of race, class, and migration its particular tinge at the turn of the third millennium, are new forms of exclusion that are seemingly permanent: disadvantaged enclaves in a fragmented ethnic division of labour tend to become or remain isolated from mainstream inclusive institutions that regulate access to citizenship in the member states of the EU. As a result, in a multi-ethnic and still multinational Europe an incipient ethno-racial stratification confronts us with a whole range of differentially excluded population groups, variously stigmatized as ‘immigrants’, ‘foreigners’, an ‘underclass’, or ethnic or racial minorities. Most migrants coming from outside the so-called Western geopolitical space, including the growing number of migrants and children of migrants who have indeed managed to make ‘elite’ careers in cultural and political spheres, continue to suffer from racial stigma and practices of exclusion. In this and the four following chapters, however, we concentrate on the conditions of some of those groups that are most marginal in relation to the frameworks of citizenship in European soci¨ ic Wacquant eties. These are groups that share what the French sociologist, Lo (1996a), has called ‘advanced marginality’ and others ‘the new poverty’ (e.g. Room, Lawson, and Laczko 1989). Their advanced marginality signifies that their exclusion and their lives are formed by conditions that belong to the novel and most advanced political and economic configurations rather than

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Transatlantic Convergence or Transatlantic Split?

representing the imperfections of a passing order. The new racialized poor are socially marginal but essential cog-wheels serving the much-hailed flexibility of labour-market regimes and of the new service economies characteristic of current processes of restructuring (e.g. Sassen 1991, 1998; Castells 1996; Spoonley 1992; Lash 1994). These economies and societies are qualitatively unlike the ‘Fordist’ industrial mass-production and welfare states characteristic of the post-war employment of immigrant workers in Western Europe. As broad class-based organizations, previously so influential in the established European welfare states, lose their integrative power for economy and society, ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘diversity’—major idioms of the self-understanding of contemporary Western societies—have emerged as coded references to new fragmented divisions of labour and multiple forms of racialized exclusion (Balibar 1991; Wallerstein 1999; Grillo 2000). These processes of restructuring and new forms of ethnic segmentation within contemporary advanced capitalist economies and labour markets are still most typical for the USA, but they are present in Europe as well, both in the ‘old’ immigration countries in central and north-western Europe and in the newer immigration countries of southern Europe. In shrinking welfare states under global pressure, migration has become a source of conflict, embedded in struggles over the current restructuring of the national welfare state. One general scenario includes the impact of migration on what has been described as the wholesale ‘Americanization’ of European social policies (Freeman 1986; cf. Leibfried 1992). Migration and the ‘politics of belonging’ (Crowley 1999) as it relates to immigrants, asylum applicants, and new ethnic minorities become main issues of contention in the broad consensus on which national systems of social redistribution and citizenship have rested (e.g. Freeman 1986). This carries the potential for political and social fragmentation along lines of ethnicity and ‘race’. Deepening social divisions, expressed in terms of ethnic divisions of labour, serve to rationalize new discourses of social exclusion. These tensions, it is argued (e.g. Favell 1998), become difficult or impossible to solve within the closed ‘clubs’ of national welfare states and their crisis-ridden institutions. We may add—along the lines of the argument in Chapter 3—that the prevalent dynamics of ‘negative integration’, embedded in the policies and institutions of the EU, tends to exacerbate such so-called neo-American (Kloosterman and Rath 2001) trends of the deregulation of national labour markets and the dismantling of the decommodifying institutional frameworks of the welfare state. Yet, although present everywhere, such processes are articulated in importantly different path-dependent ways in the various member states. We cannot translate American policy experience, the institutional-structural transformation in the economy and the labour market of the USA, or the effects of this on the social fabric, to Europe in any straightforward way. Nor, in spite of all efforts at and indeed, pervasive effects of supranational


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integration, is the EU a single cultural, social, or economic space. Hence, the impact of economic globalization should be understood in terms of its concrete articulation within a range of unique national and local institutional settings, political traditions, and systems of governance, which still lend the EU the character of a patchwork of national states rather than a uniform social and cultural space. Current changes demand a theoretical and conceptual framework that is capable of mapping the articulation of the general and the specific, the global and the national, the supranational and the national. Mainstream sociological studies of welfare states and labour markets provide clues to a theoretical and analytical understanding of the still differentiated impact of current global change on particular nation states, but they lack frames of reference for understanding issues of exclusion/inclusion, labourmarket segmentation, and access to citizenship and social welfare as these relate to processes of ethnization or racialization. Most of them still ignore the fact that European societies have become multi-ethnic. This blunts their analytical power and credibility at a historical juncture when ethnically segmented labour markets and the racialization of access to social citizenship have increasingly come to shape the institutions and practices of the changing welfare state per se. In the attempt to overcome these inadequacies of mainstream sociology of the welfare state, some innovative European studies have had recourse to rich US academic research and debate on racial or ethnic disadvantage. Along similar lines, in this chapter we discuss two prevalent US academic perspectives on current post-Fordist macro-structural political and economic change. We address the issue of a possible transatlantic convergence between the US and current EU experience. Finally, we discuss seemingly contrasting discourses and research perspectives on racialized exclusion in the EU, which bring out the complexity of the issue. One major approach to the study of racialized social exclusion focuses on the disadvantaged urban welfare-dependent poor. In a series of studies, ‘leftliberal’ (or ‘social-democratic’ in continental European discourse, but simply ‘liberal’ in US political discourse) scholars of US race relations demonstrate how the spatial and socio-demographic mismatch between de-industrialization and the relocation of services and production within cities has impoverished racially stigmatized African-American residential areas and generated a new disadvantaged urban underclass. This spatial mismatch is exacerbated by another mismatch between the increasing demand for and actual deficiency of qualified labour, with African-Americans in the urban ghettos again remaining at the bottom. But others have focused rather on the development of a new urban job hierarchy resulting, as they see it, from a fundamental structural transformation of the global economy. The concentration of finance and advanced producer services in large cities in the economically leading regions of the world is thought to lead to a new division of labour. It is

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marked by the polarization between new high-status, high-tech professional jobs and low-status, low-paid casual jobs in a new booming service sector, with the disadvantaged pole largely staffed by new immigrant labour. One result is the emergence of a multitude of new categories of racialized ‘working poor’. These two major and complementary (albeit not entirely satisfactory) frameworks for analysing the inclusion and exclusion of immigrants and ethnic and racial minorities in the advanced economies and in the societies of the North Atlantic sphere originally took US cities as their chief point of reference. They have also had a major impact on European research. As we shall argue, however, a convergence between the extent and the qualities of racialized exclusion in Europe and the USA is not evident. We may even question the extent to which these perspectives from US urban sociology on race, class, and postFordist restructuring, which have attracted particular attention in Europe, capture the contemporary complexities of the intersection of race and class in the USA itself. However, a critical discussion of them may induce us to go further into the rich US academic debate on migration, race, ethnicity, and class, which, we argue, may in turn promote an informed discussion of the demands that could be placed on a complex comparative theoretical and analytical framework for understanding current trajectories of migration and racialized exclusion in Europe. Hence, although generalizations from the US experience cannot be brought to bear on European societies in any simple way, American theory and research may certainly provide clues for interpreting the multifarious contemporary European scene. It is thus important to develop the perspectives of European scholars (e.g. Cross 1998a; Kloosterman 1994) who have tried to integrate American ethnic and urban studies with comparative insights from European sociological studies of changing welfare states. Although others have tried to refine the typology with additional distinctions and categories, Gøsta Esping-Andersen’s (1990, 1996: 194) broad tripartite division of ‘welfare regimes’ in the Euro-Atlantic sphere still stands out as the most well- argued and authoritative analytical framework and proficient theoretical edifice in current social policy and welfare state studies. His three ideal types of modern ‘welfare state regimes’, or ‘worlds of welfare’, in the ‘western’ Euro-Atlantic sphere are: 1. The Anglo-American liberal regime focusing strongly on the market, a liberal work ethnic which favours private welfare solutions combined with a system of means tested public welfare transfers targeted at low income groups and based on a universalism of minimal needs. 2. The conservative central and southern European corporate regime highly influenced by Christian values, which focuses on the conservation of the traditional family, a morally sanctioned social order, and which reproduces a particularistic and hierarchic edifice of citizenship.


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3. The social democratic regime, most typical for Scandinavia, focusing on values of equality and individuality, and which is occupied with safeguarding a high degree of universalism in an extensive and ramified public welfare system, catering even for differentiated needs of the middle classes. ‘Welfare regimes’ is here understood as qualitatively different arrangements between state, market, and the family or household that different historically established modes of governance and class relationships have given birth to. The three welfare state regimes differ in terms of historical formation, political foundation, institutional set-up and functional logic. Each of them elaborates the dimension of social citizenship on the basis of its own distinct political rationale, embedded in specific institutional frameworks, and carried up by different forms of class alliances and modes of consensus making. The simpler and more common notion of the ‘welfare state’ is often ‘too narrowly associated with the conventional social amelioration policies’, argues EspingAndersen (1990: 78), and denotes linear and quantitative classification rather than the qualitatively different dynamics of welfare state institutional frameworks. However, what is important is not only how the traditional social welfare policies of different countries are constructed, but how they influence and shape society, economy and the labour market, and social stratification and segmentation. A ‘regime’ in this sense thus denotes welfare as a ramifying complex of legal and organizational features systematically interwoven between state and economy (Esping-Andersen 1990: 78). It also takes into account a range of non-state forms of welfare (Bagguley 1994: 78) and their complex interrelation with state, civil society, and the market. Esping-Andersen’s tripartite typology has been criticized for being obsessed with the ‘desire to emphasise the role of institutional and political traditions in shaping contemporary welfare regimes’ (Bagguley 1994:78–9) and neglecting the possibilities of piecemeal change brought about by local social actors. It has also been criticized for not providing any analytical space for transition between qualitatively different regimes. Its emphasis on the traditional Fordist industrial working class (and its role in political coalitions) is claimed to have inhibited any discriminating understanding of deepening and differentiated class, gender, and ethnically based divisions of welfare and labour (Bagguley 1994: 82, referring to Esping-Andersen 1990). Although these criticisms appear at least partly justified, and although issues of immigration and ethnic minorities are indeed peripheral to Esping-Andersen’s work, several of the existing (and so far few) empirically based discussions of European welfare states and their current transformation from the perspective of immigration and ethnic relations (e.g. Lash 1994; Soysal 1994; Faist 1995b) suggest that the ‘welfare regime’ approach remains fruitful. However, these studies, inspired by mainstream welfare and social policy research, tend to eschew the central and most dynamic aspect of EspingAndersen’s work, which is his endeavour to reintegrate the welfare-state

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debate into the intellectual tradition of political economy. Most important in Esping-Andersen’s analytical perspective is not the typology itself, or whether it should be supplemented with further European ‘regimes’ or ‘worlds of welfare’, but its theoretical meaning. This is his vantage point for analysing the central role of the welfare state and particular welfare regimes as a midwife of different post-industrial trajectories as they influence the distribution of jobs by gender and race or ethnicity (Esping-Andersen 1990: 192; elaborated further in Esping-Andersen 1996, 1999). The present study shares this ambition to reintroduce a political economy perspective, though integrated within a comparative analysis of post-Fordist ethnic divisions of labour and racialized exclusion.

‘Underclass’, ‘Ghetto Poor’, ‘Working Poor’, and ‘Workfare’ in US Research The ‘Mismatch’ Perspective Myrdal’s introduction (1964) of the old-fashioned Swedish term ‘underclass’ into the American debate on poverty and, mainly black, urban disadvantage received considerable attention among liberal (that is, ‘social liberal’ or ‘social democratic’) US scholars during the 1960s. African-Americans, exposed to the advance of a green technological revolution and fleeing from desperate poverty in the rural south-east of the US, had migrated into the great industrial cities of, in particular, the northern states, still marked by the classical base industries of Fordism. Here they had become a substantial part of the more disadvantaged sections of the manual industrial working class. But they had also become a dominant and particularly exposed category among a population of poor unemployed or underemployed in the large cities—a black so-called urban underclass (e.g. Wilson 1978, 1987). Liberal studies at the time focused mainly on the adverse social effects of racism and discrimination analysed against the background of the prevailing processes of economic and structural change. However, these were still times of a relative optimism among liberals about the future of US race relations, reflecting faith in the federal civil rights and equal opportunity policies, which were, in general, seen as showing a path out of the inner-city racial ghettos. During the 1970s, liberal underclass discourse, following in the footsteps of Myrdal, generally lost much of its impact and public appeal (Wilson 1997) as it confronted the setback of the civil rights movement. Rising radical leftist, black, and multiculturalist movements criticized it for its liberal reformism (Platt 1992; Schierup 1995). However, following deepening inner-city marginalization and deprivation during the 1980s, the debate on the ‘underclass’ was strongly revived in the 1980s and 1990s. As it became a prominent theme in the US political debate, it also bifurcated into two main directions: a predominantly


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conservative moral–political discourse focusing on ghetto culture and individual and collective behaviour among the urban ‘underclass’, and a refurbished left-liberal version continuing to stress the marginalizing impact of ongoing structural and institutional change (cf. Roche 1992). A number of studies by left-liberal researchers during the 1980s and 1990s locate the primary causes of social exclusion and the realities of ghetto culture in processes of macro-structural change (e.g. Wilson 1987, 1993; Kasarda 1989; Kasarda, Friedrichs, and Ehlers 1992). They point to two major economic processes—uneven economic growth and deindustrialization—largely beyond the control of the underclass constituents. This produces a spatial mismatch between the location of employment and residence in the inner city. This is exacerbated by a second mismatch between the changing qualification needs of a restructured labour market and the actual education and qualifications of the population of traditional (black) working-class residential areas (e.g. Kasarda 1989; Kasarda, Friedrichs, and Ehlers 1992). The most systematic analysis of the growth and conditions of the inner-city so-called underclass in the left-liberal tradition has been undertaken by US sociologist William J. Wilson (1978, 1987, 1993, 1997). He argues that the historical dimension of discrimination and a relatively late process of migration from rural areas in the south to industrial metropolitan centres made large sections of the black working class particularly vulnerable to the processes of deindustrialization taking place since the 1970s. It was the time when the major manufacturing industries and most jobs in the new service economy started to move out of the old working-class neighbourhoods of central cities. Despite subsequent anti-discrimination legislation and affirmative action programmes, this has created a permanently high rate of joblessness among black people, a concentration of poor people and of poor single-parent families, and permanent dependence on welfare benefits. These adverse effects have been exacerbated by the exodus to the suburbs of white but also of many black middle- and established working-class families. The latter had become more and more socially and spatially mobile, partly because of the equal opportunity policies spawned by the civil rights movement and the federal administration during the 1960s and 1970s. These former middle-class inner city dwellers, maintains Wilson, had earlier—through investment of economic resources in building up diversified local networks of institutions (stores, schools, banks, community organizations, churches) and through reinforcing positive and integrative societal values—made it reasonable even for lowerclass people to anticipate some upward mobility. Deindustrialization, uneven economic growth, out-migration of the resourceful, and the evacuation of economic, political, social, and cultural institutions from the inner cities have, consequently, together created extended and spatially concentrated urban enclaves of deprived people whose opportunities are limited by their relative social and cultural isolation. The problem of long-term and intergenerational reproduction of welfare

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dependency and persistent urban poverty among black communities in the USA is partly attributed to a specific and allegedly problematic subculture seen as characteristic of these ‘ghetto poor’—a notion that Wilson uses in his later works instead of the much-criticized term ‘underclass’ (see e.g. Katz 1989; Lister 1990). But Wilson links the fate of African-Americans inextricably to the changing structure of the American economy and welfare state (Wilson 1987: 9), and his perspective is profoundly one of social class.24

Globalization, Immigration, and the ‘Working Poor’ In contrast to rising qualifications as a general tendency in contemporary capitalism that marks the mismatch perspective, another major approach to structural transformation and social exclusion focuses on what is seen to be a general dualization and polarization of expanding post-Fordist labour markets. This generates new categories of working poor (see e.g. Shipler 2004) associated with large-scale immigration. This perspective, of which US sociologist Saskia Sassen (1988, 1991, 1998) is a well-known advocate, has attracted attention since the early 1990s. It has inspired research into the conspicuous growth of a range of new low-wage, low-status, and deregulated so-called atypical jobs (Jonsson and Wallette 2001). It is a development at odds with what the policies setting up post-war Fordist welfare and labour market regimes prescribed as ‘normal’. But it also runs counter to influential theories of post-industrialism, which have forecast an ever-rising demand for highly qualified labour. According to Sassen, the globalization of corporate business has been accompanied by a shift from manufacturing to service production in those city centres which serve as hubs in a global network of information and financial service markets. She (e.g. Sassen 1991, 1998) argues that the concentration of the control and management functions of international corporate finance and nodes of the informational economy in large urban centres and a new vast inflow of immigrants to these ‘global cities’ since the beginning of the 1970s are two major and closely interlinked aspects and processes of globalization (Sassen 1991, 1998). The transnationalization and wide dispersal of corporate activity, made possible by the advance of telecommunication and IT, is far from a unilateral movement of decentralization. Rather, global dispersal requires an offsetting recentralization and concentration of information flows, communication, and management. In the process, balanced and decentralized national grids of cities typical of the period of Fordist mass industrialization (Sassen 1998) are being replaced by a reconcentration of dynamic nodes of the economy in a number of large cities. They become privileged sites for the corporate elites and high-salaried professionals with a sophisticated hyper24 This class perspective corresponds, especially in Wilson’s early works, with a downplaying of the significance of race; a focus criticized by, among other, Hochschild (1984).


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urban lifestyle. But they are also the main destinations for international migrants, most of whom enter a new and large low-wage labour force in service occupations, functionally necessary for the economy of the global city: these are new categories of immigrant working poor, or ‘new helots’, as the British sociologist Robin Cohen (1987) calls them. In terms of an emerging post-Fordist class structure, the advanced global city becomes the most extreme expression of a new labour market regime penetrating every pore of society. The labour market is characterized by deregulation of the collective job security that marked the heyday of Fordism in favour of ‘flexible’, individualized, and casualized forms of employment. The proliferation of an informal economic sector goes hand in hand with corporate outsourcing of less profitable but essential services to the so-called selfemployed, without job security or social benefits. Hence, the new emphasis on services and IT creates two new areas of employment that exist alongside one another: a high-wage sector characterized by the provision of financial and information services, corporate management, planning, design, research and development, etc., and a low-wage manufacturing and service sector of sweatshops, small retail stores, catering, and home-work. The low-wage sector, which includes jobs such as unregulated cleaning and childcare services, as well as low wage producer services and sweatshop manufacturing (e.g. in the garment industry), is populated mainly by new immigrants that arrived in the USA from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The result has been a steadily growing ethnic differentiation within the city economy and a corresponding polarization and social exclusion along ethnic lines. Together with a polarization of the labour market and the class structure, the marginal pole of the service economy is being ‘feminized’ as the employment of migrant women in part-time work in low-salaried, insecure, and informal sectors of the urban labour market grows.

Towards a Political Economy of ‘Race’ and Class The two theories on racialized poverty under scrutiny—the ‘mismatch’ approach and Saskia Sassen’s ‘global restructuring’ perspective—both display a focused clarity that has appealed to numerous scholars in Europe and North America. Few have, however, discussed the apparent contradiction between the two theories that arises if their treatments of the post-Fordist transformation are examined together rather than separately. Each focuses on one aspect of contemporary poverty and marginality in the form of a single subset of the racialized poor. They thereby achieve theoretical strength at the cost of empirical neglect or, as succinctly expressed by Roger Waldinger (1996) in Still the Promised City, the virtues of one approach are the vices of the other. In reality, across the US, as indeed in Europe, the two trends are present at the same time: the permanent racialized joblessness at the centre of the mismatch approach coincided throughout the 1980s and 1990s with the

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growth of a casualized post-Fordist low-wage service sector staffed by new racialized immigrant communities. The welfare-dependent so-called ghetto poor in the US have been particularly concentrated in the ‘rust belt’, or restructuring older northern industrial cities (with Chicago and Detroit as perfect examples of industrial decay), while the new racialized low-wage labour markets virtually exploded in economically buoyant post-Fordist ‘sunbelt’ cities like Miami and Houston (e.g. Lash 1994). Yet, as Waldinger argues in his illuminating 1996 study of the complexity of New York’s ethnic division of labour, these different categories of the poor are present, side by side, in several US cities, which still has black ghettos while hosting a booming postFordist economy that spawns a multitude of new low-wage jobs for immigrants. But neither the mismatch approach nor the restructuring approach seems capable of accommodating this complex reality within its framework. The mismatch approach hardly mentions or reflects upon the fact that newly settled immigrants occupy a range of burgeoning low-wage jobs while many black ghetto-poor remain unemployed; conversely, the global restructuring approach hardly mentions, let alone tries to make theoretical sense of, the proliferation of new employment niches for immigrants alongside persistent unemployment. According to Waldinger, each approach suffers from a marked selectiveness in terms of the empirical data it takes into account. But each approach is also distinguished by its own version of theoretical economism as it selects a particular aspect of the post-Fordist urban economy as its point of departure. Hence, the mismatch approach extrapolates a downward spiral of joblessness, poverty, multi-dimensional disadvantage, and cultural deviancy from the supposed disparities both between the location of the new economy and sociodemographic trends and—in particular in some varieties of the theory (e.g. Kasarda 1989, 1992)—between the supposedly unlimited demand for qualified labour and the inadequate supply of it, which are viewed as chronic characteristics of the so-called post-industrial condition. The global restructuring approach, meanwhile, extrapolates its representation of the new immigration from an inflated hypothesis about the persistent functional need for low-qualified labour in post-Fordism. It is, however, Waldinger maintains, the actual power struggle for economic control and niches in the post-industrial urban economy which ultimately circumscribes and directs both processes—the production and deepening reproduction of the black ghetto and the new racialized low-wage immigration—and which establishes the relationship between them. Hence, the black welfare ghetto and the new immigration are both aspects of a complex ethnic division of labour in cities marked by continuous conflict between ethnically and racially defined groups. This makes the present not much different from the American past. As before, we see a succession of ethnic groups occupying specific niches. New groups of immigrants from Asia and Latin America have not only occupied new low-pay niches in the post-industrial service economy but also have


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taken over developed industrial sweatshops following the passing of traditional Fordist mass production. Here ethnic and kinship networks and their often still relatively intact traditional extended families are assets in the development of small-businesses, and unpaid family-labour makes them competitive in a low-wage environment. Usually an ethnic group does not remain indefinitely in the same niche, as new generations pass on to more attractive niches through their groups’ nested networks in the city or in the wider society. The trajectory of each group is historically bounded and pathdependent. The specific condition of modern urban African-Americans in the complex, structurally interdependent ethnic division of labour, Waldinger argues, is that they are not ‘newcomers’ to American society. They possess neither the specific values nor the traditional kin and family assets of a range of newer Asian and Latin American immigrant groups. They cannot and typically do not compete with the ‘new immigrants’ for the same low-wage, low-status occupational niches in the post-industrial economy. Their chief antagonists have always, from slavery to post-Fordism, been white Anglo- or European-Americans. When they migrated from the rural south to the big industrial cities at the dawn of Fordist industrialization, they came to compete with an established white working class. This helped to reproduce in new forms in northern cities the heavily historically rooted racism targeted at African-Americans, which has been a basic constitutive social and political feature of US society since its inception, as well as to feed numerous new forms of racialized discrimination. As the most vulnerable group in established industrial Fordism, AfricanAmericans were those who were to be hit most severely by industrial crisis and restructuring from the early 1970s. With the advances of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, African-Americans had certainly started to gain a new stronghold in the civil services, but here they have continued to compete directly with white Americans. Faced with the monopolized niches of Asian and Latin American ethnic groups in low-wage post-industrial occupations on the one hand, and facing confrontation with whites for professional jobs on the other, attractive opportunities for African-Americans have remained bounded. Seeing the ethnic division of labour as a single complex field cross-cut by relationships of power and the agency of corporate (ethnic) groups offers more productive research perspectives (in Europe as well as in the US) than focusing on the trajectories of single groups or categories in isolation. Yet, while it offers a justified critique, the rather one-sided focus of this perspective on corporate ethnicity risks eschewing important insights of both the mismatch and the restructuring approach and their efforts to link localized processes to major patterns of macro-structural transformation. Sassen’s, and to a lesser degree Wilson’s, hyper-structuralism and predisposition to subsume race and ethnicity within class tends to overlook the political in the economic. Waldinger’s analysis, on the other hand, tends to overlook the deep-seated

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structural transformation, which is indeed taking place in a historical and presumably irreversible sense. By the same token, he tends to subsume class within racial and ethnic struggles for dominance in a way that largely misses the wider national and urban political economy of race and class. As argued by Carnoy (1994), the complex articulation of race and class has always been a critical mark of US political struggles in general, and of elite strategies of governance in particular. These struggles and strategies are embedded in the unique ideological foundations and overall institutional frameworks of society and economy (King 1999), which profoundly influence responses to economic cycles as well as to major periods of structural transformation. From this perspective, we examine two more American studies that bring out the complex interconnection of the issue of the welfare poor and that of the new immigrant working poor and their place in a wider post-Fordist ‘ethnic division of labour’. Going beyond the perspective of corporate ethnic struggles, these studies indicate how the diverging perspectives of the mismatch and restructuring approaches can be brought into a single explanatory framework by extending the analysis to the wider political economy of race and class in societies in transition. They illuminate the centrality of social citizenship in the struggles going on around the issue of the urban welfare ghetto-poor as well as concerning the emergence of the new categories of working immigrant poor, and how these struggles are closely interrelated.

From the ‘War on Poverty’ to the ‘War Against Labour’ Already by the mid-1970s, power relations in the US had started to tip in favour of conservative and neoliberal grievances over an allegedly destructive welfare dependency. It was represented as the result of the ‘Great Society’ programmes of the 1960s and a reformist federal elite’s misguided ‘war on poverty’ in the inner cities. By the 1980s, a US federal ‘war on poverty’, sparked by the civil rights movement of the 1960s, had turned into a full-scale ‘war on welfare’ (Katz 1989), whipped up by a neoliberal-cum-conservative moral discourse focused on an allegedly deviant and destitute black ‘urban underclass’. Focusing on deprivation as connected with cumulative cycles of cultural transmission, New Right intellectuals, publicists (e.g., Murray 1984; Mead 1988) and politicians succeeded in construing a moral underclass discourse (the critical notion of Levitas 1998) that diverged fundamentally from Myrdal’s original idea. From a predominantly social–psychological vantage point, they focused on the development of an allegedly uncooperative mentality and an unsound psychological dependency on welfare transfers among the unemployed inner-city (black) ghetto ‘underclass’ (cf. Roche 1992). An allegedly problematic sense of pride and attitudes expressing ‘fatalism’, ‘defeatism’, and an exploitative parasitism were held to result in a stubborn unwillingness to


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take those many low-quality jobs that were seen as being indeed available. The welfare poor were thereby, largely due to their own agency or lack of such, seen to be caught in a vicious circle, unable to accumulate sufficient work records for qualifying for more attractive jobs in the labour market. Poor people’s inefficacy is in turn, according to the neoconservative approach of Lawrence M. Mead (1988: 134), understood ‘to be the result primarily of weak socialization . . . erratic parenting (and failure) to internalise goals such as work and self-reliance with enough force to feel them as obligations’. This so-called ‘culture of poverty’ 25 would allegedly encourage ‘voluntary non-work’, ‘breakdown of the work ethic’, and asocial and menacing criminal behaviour among male (implicitly black) adolescents and irresponsible childbirth burdening the welfare system among young (implicitly black) women: the two categories represented as the main scapegoats for the accumulating problems of innercity ghettoes. The values and the deviant behaviour depicted as typical of the inner-city underclass are not, however, in themselves irrational, Murray (1984) argues. On the contrary, given the circumstances and seen from the perspective of the individual, the prevalent underclass strategies would be perfectly rational, at least in the short run. From a wider perspective, the crux of the problem was not the irresponsible behaviour of the destitute ‘underclass’ as such, but the mistaken liberal welfare-policies inducing and rewarding such behaviour. The cure was represented as ‘workfare’, that is, making public benefits for able-bodied, working-age people dependent on employment related activities, such as vocational training, job-seeking and entrepreneurship, and a systematic change in attitudes concerning engagement in low-wage, low-status jobs (Roche 1992). Ironically, the workfare ideology propounded by, mainly, republican conservatives was first put into effect on any appreciable scale only through the bipartisan Clinton-Gingrich welfare to workfare reform: the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. This sweeping reform, which was warmly commended by Tony Blair (Thayer 1997: 10; see also Deacon 2000), did away with most remnants of Roosevelt’s New Deal, as well as Johnson’s Great Society, and would soon beget the formation of ‘a virtually indentured labor force of welfare recipients’ (Fox Piven 1998: 72). These workers were forced to compete with the already working poor and often coerced into jobs earning less than minimum wage, which in turn led to massive layoffs and replacements of (often unionized) workers with cheaper welfare labour (Cooper 1997).26 In Regulating the Poor, Fox Piven and Cloward (1993) situate a bitter and protracted war over welfare in the wider context of an overall change in the political economy of the US (Katz 1996). Their comprehensive historical analysis demonstrates that the conservative onslaught on welfare dependency 25 This distorts the meaning of the work of Oscar Lewis (1968) on ‘the culture of poverty’. 26 For a critical scrutiny and evaluation of the Clinton-Gingrich ‘welfare reform’, see King (1999); the contributions in Social Justice (2001); and Handler (2003).

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was an integral part of a much wider war against labour, connected with the overall (post-Fordist) restructuring of capitalism. Facing deep crisis in the 1970s, US employers predominantly came to favour the deregulation and ‘casualization’ of substantial sectors of the labour market. The ‘war against welfare’ was, in essence, an integral part of a wider strategy for wage depreciation and labour market deregulation. This brought the ever-present latent antagonism between the rights of social citizenship and the cravings of market-driven capital, stressed by Marshall, into the open. Employers have always understood that by shielding working people from some of the hazards of the market, relief reduces the power of employers over workers . . . for just this reason, the very idea of social provision is defined as dangerously subversive of market ideology. Because the stakes are high, struggles for social protection from below are always answered by resistance from above. Accordingly, once a measure of social peace has been restored following a large relief rise, employers press to restrict and reshape the programmes. They exert themselves to lower benefits, to tighten eligibility criteria so fewer people can receive benefits, and to attach such punitive conditions to the receipt of aid that few people would willingly apply for it. Such measures are intended to compel workers generally to sell labor on whatever terms the market offers. (Fox Piven and Cloward 1993: 345)

In the 1960s, there had been an unprecedented expansion of numbers of people eligible for social relief in US inner cities. This was not so much a direct response to the urban poverty that followed black migration from the socially depressed rural south to the big cities, Fox Piven and Cloward argue (1993: 222ff.), as a reaction to the rising black urban unrest that followed, which federal elites viewed as a social time bomb. But after the 1970s, in which urban unrest started to be appeased and the forceful civil rights movement of the 1960s to disintegrate (Marable 1993; Schierup 1995; Highham 1993), a preoccupation with work discipline again came to the fore. During the 1970s and 1980s, the pressure on welfare and for the institutionalization of disciplinary work-enforcement grew, as filling a growing number of low-salaried, part-time, and casualized jobs without social security benefits became a vital concern. With the introduction of new workfare laws and practices in the 1990s, pressures on welfare recipients to join an expanding labour market became less attached to participation in re-skilling courses and increasingly resembled compulsory acceptance of any kind of job under any condition and without future prospects. Thus, workfare has not solved the vast poverty problem of the US (e.g. Myles 1996),27 but has served to discipline the black urban ghetto through a breakdown of the American ‘social contract’ (Fox Piven and Cloward 1997), while leaving the urban poor exposed to levels of subsistence reminiscent of the nineteenth century (Jones and Novak 1999). 27

In his comparative analysis of workfare ideologies and policies in the USA and Canada, John Myles (1996) offers a revealing analysis of the wide connotation and different implementations and effects of ‘workfare’.


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Fox Piven and Cloward (1993) demonstrate that the welfare poor are hardly superfluous to capital in any absolute sense. The ‘underclass’ represents, rather, a specific version of the ‘reserve army of labour’ in the classical Marxian sense. Hence, ‘redundancy’ is relative and always politically determined. That ‘work disappears’ (paraphrasing Wilson 1997) and jobs continue to remain unavailable is indeed the expression of a state of the struggle over rights of citizenship and over the terms on which labour may be sold and bought in the market. The character and function of the ‘ghetto’ depend largely on the relationship of forces in that struggle. When racialized minority groups hold a strong political position, they may be able to withhold their labour from unfavourable sections of a racially divided, discriminatory labour market, and the ‘ghetto’ may function as a political stronghold. The US black ‘ghetto’s’ function as a sanctuary for social and political citizenship was reinforced by the terms of the ‘Great Society’ in the big cities of the US during the 1960s (e.g. Fox Piven and Cloward 1993), but this changed when minorities became weak and dispersed and when new political constellations were in a position to exploit the ever-present possibilities of racialization. New and exceedingly unfavourable terms of negotiation were forged through strategies of plant reorganization, spatial relocation, and internationalization, as well as policies to stimulate large-scale and continuous immigration of low-wage labour. The ghetto was, contingent on this, transformed into a stigmatized hellhole with the disciplinary function of deterring anybody attempting to withhold her labour from sub-standard jobs in a labour market where employers had the upper hand. Thus, subjected to the terms of the triumphant low-wage strategy that came to characterize broad sections of the US labour market during the 1980s, the ghetto became a depressed and haunted labour reserve. The prison has effectively boosted the disciplinary function of ‘workfare’. With more than 2 million Americans behind bars, the US has developed ‘a social policy that can be described only as mass imprisonment’ (Mauer and Chesney-Lind 2002: 1). With the mass incarceration of the poor—which affects poor black Americans to an extremely disproportionate degree28—the former ghetto’s ‘ethnoracial prison’ has been systematically transformed in the direction of the prison’s surrogate ‘judicial ghetto’(Wacquant 2000). With the privatization of prisons, the listing introduction of private prison companies on the stock exchange, and the commercialized character of forced prison labour, a refurbished post-Fordist mode of the slave economy was de facto (re-)introduced in the US, less than 150 years after its formal abolition under the auspices of humanism and mass industrialism. An important difference is, however, that it is now no longer restricted to the south-east but is as present across the country. 28 The lifelong cumulative probability of doing time in a state or federal prison is, as estimated on the basis of the imprisonment rates of the early 1990s, being 4% for whites, 16% for Latinos, and 29% for blacks (according to Wacquant 2002: 43, quoting Bonczar and Beck 1997: 1).

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Institutionalized within the framework of the so-called prison-industrial complex,29 the private prison corporations operate under ‘ideal business conditions’ (Parenti 2000: 232). They are guaranteed a secure labour supply at extremely low-wage costs. They receive direct state subsidies and have a guaranteed market (see also Shane 2003). The rising demands and political movements of the black American ghetto and African-Americans’ rejection of the new ‘slave jobs’30 of the post-Fordist economy have been ruthlessly curbed. American employers succeeded in one fell swoop in exploiting the gradual conversion of poor African-Americans from welfare recipients into a labour reserve through workfare and the new slave economy of the prisons. This, by implication, put them in a position to impair the bargaining power of wider groups of working poor (AfricanAmericans, Asians, Latin Americans, and whites alike), groups that already before the rapid expansion of the wage-depressing prison-industrial economy’s ‘bloody Taylorism’ (Liepitz 1987; see also Chapter 11) of the 1990s were in a weak position in a changing US labour market. Ironically, the relationship between the ‘restructured’ black ghetto and the ‘new economy’s’ low-wage pole had, by the turn of the millennium, become reversed. State subsidized workfare programmes and the prison economy had become an additional lever for wage-dumping in a dual post-Fordist economy rather than a welfare refuge.

The ‘Immigrant Problem(s)’ of Europe We have so far stressed the embeddedness of current forms of social exclusion within the wider political economy of race and class. The question is not about preordained scores related to ‘globalization’ or ‘economic restructuring’ dei ex machina, but that those processes are themselves an expression of class and social struggles embedded in a particular national political economy and (changing) national institutional frameworks. This exposes the ideological and institutional character and path-dependence of a certain (liberal) political and social policy regime. This perspective is important to bear in mind when, in what follows, we discuss the European experience. Given the still different political economies and institutional settings of the US and the member states of the EU, with their stronger unions, more regulated labour markets, and still, in the main, relatively robust welfare states, several analysts have projected a bifurcated post-Fordist development, or transatlantic split, as a plausible scenario (e.g. Castells 1996; Esping-Andersen 1999): 29

In California, for example, subject to the so-called Prison Industry Authority (PIA) (Parenti 1999: 232). 30 As they are commonly called by ghetto inhabitants (Wacquant 2002: 54).


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. A US trajectory driven by the low-wage or dual labour-market strategy of a particular version of ‘post-industrial’ (Esping-Andersen) or ‘informational’ (Castells) capitalism. This trajectory is marked by an increasing polarization between the high-salaried professional elites of the informational society and the proliferation of casual, low-paid service jobs. Large-scale immigration is a constituent and continuous process connected with this trajectory. . An (EU) European trajectory marked by a trade-off that tends to generate high and permanent unemployment rather than the growth of a low-wage sector. It is, by implication, primarily this unemployment and the concomitant welfare dependency that produce the social exclusion of immigrants and new ethnic minorities, rather than the growth of a US-style low-wage and deregulated pole of the economy and the labour market. In essence, this would be an American situation reminiscent of Sassen’s ‘global city’ model and a European trajectory reproducing patterns structurally similar to the racialization pattern of Wilson’s mismatch model. But we find this bifurcated scenario unsatisfactory. We have argued, with the US as an example, that the dynamics of ‘race’ and ‘class’ exceeds the explanatory capacity of simple models. Moreover, there is, despite the EU’s undoubtedly homogenizing impact, no single European trajectory. A striking contrast between both research and social trajectories on international migration and racialized exclusion in what have been labelled, respectively, the ‘old’ immigration countries of northern and central Europe and the ‘new’ immigration countries of southern Europe is a good illustration of this, although, as we shall argue, it would be premature to stop the analysis there.

The ‘Underclass’ Perspective in (Northern) European Discourse and Research One dominant trend in European discourse on an ever newsworthy ‘immigrant problem’ throughout the last quarter of the twentieth century, in politics and popular lore, certainly appears to confirm the generalized mismatch scenario of Europe’s trajectory into post-Fordism. Here, immigration and new ethnic minorities are routinely associated with high unemployment, inflated welfare dependency weighing down municipal budgets, and, by inference, racial underclass ghettoes, urban unrest, and high rates of criminality. This is also, within most of the old immigration countries across north-western and central Europe (the UK, France, Germany, the Benelux and Scandinavian countries, Austria, and Switzerland), grateful raw material from which influential national-populist movements have forged the political discourses through which they speak in the name of the nation’s supposed ‘moral majority’ (e.g. Schierup 1993). References to conservative and neoliberal US discourse on the ‘underclass’ are common, especially in the UK (See e.g., critical discussion in Lister (1990)).

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Transatlantic Convergence or Transatlantic Split? Foreigners

Foreign-born

2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 0.0 da SA lia na U stra a C Au

ly ce d in rg lic ay ny UK gal nd tria ds nd ce en ark um Ita ree elan Spa bou ub rw ma tu rla s an la an ed m gi p or itze Au erl Fin Fr Sw en Bel G Ir m Re No Ger P e D th x h Sw Ne Lu zec C

FIG. 4.1. Proportion of foreigners or foreign-born in total unemployment, relative to their share of the labour force, 2001–2 average. Note: Calculations are based on the labour force ages 15–64, except for Canada, for which it is 15þ. The calculation for foreigners in Italy is based on the rate of resident workers with work permits but without employment as a percentage of total work permits. Sources: European countries: European Community Labour Force Survey (Data provided by Eurostat, second quarter 2001 and 2002); Australia: Labour Force Survey (2002); Denmark: Population register (2001), Italy: Ministry of Labour (data on foreigners) (2001); Canada: 2001 Census; USA: Current Population Survey (March 2001 and 2002). Reproduced from (OECD 2004: 53).

The tangible material background is a high rate of unemployment among immigrants and new ethnic minorities from outside the OECD area, which since the mid-1970s has been way above the average rate of unemployment in most of the older major immigrant countries of northern Europe (Fig. 4.1), together with a below the average level of employment (see Fig. 4.2). This is closely connected with the political-economic responses of capital and state to the deep crisis of traditional industrial Fordism that was displayed after the first so-called oil crisis (e.g. Schierup 1985). These responses involved relocation of the traditional base industries to so-called newly industrializing countries, predominantly in Latin America, south-east Asia, and southern Europe. They also involved economic restructuring and plant closures in Western European economies, organizational reshuffling, and the formation of new, tighter, and disciplined labour market and industrial-relations regimes. There followed a rise in government spending on unemployment benefits and social welfare measures to compensate for the social repercussions of mass unemployment among redundant employees. Immigrants had been employed

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All persons

Turkey Morocco Sub-Saharan Africa

OECD countries China

Ex-Yugoslavia % 90 80 70 60 50 40

Be

lg

iu

m

n ai Sp

ce Fr

m er G

an

y an

ria st Au

la er th

UK

nd

s

en Sw

ed Ne

Sw

itz

er

la

nd

30

FIG. 4.2. Labour market participation rate of foreigners by country or region of nationality, selected EU member states, 2002 Source: European Community Labour Force Survey (data provided by Eurostat). Reproduced from OECD (2004: 52).

predominantly in exactly those parts of the European labour markets that were most severely affected by restructuring. The rate of unemployment and welfare dependency among immigrants and new ethnic minorities, which had earlier enjoyed a higher rate of employment than had national majorities, now became disproportionately high, and their rate of participation in the labour force exceedingly low. This was due partly to their previous overrepresentation in those sectors mainly hit by restructuring, and partly to their weaker bargaining power, which made them vulnerable to discrimination in cases of mass dismissals (Castles, Booth, and Wallace 1984; Schierup 1985). The basic pattern of this uneven distribution of unemployment and welfare dependency in terms of national or ethnic background, related to post-war immigration, has remained a constant in the old northern European immigration societies. The discrepancy has survived subsequent periods of boom and slump in their national economies. As in the US, the post-1970 formation of a large category of unemployed and long-term welfare dependants was not only unevenly distributed in terms of race or ethnicity/national background but also spatially concentrated. The specific patterns vary according to different classregion configurations of cities across EU-Europe, and are also related to the

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different characters of their housing policies, urban redevelopment policies and integration policies targeted specifically at immigrants and ethnic minorities and inserted into local housing markets and urban economies. In the UK, for example, the dominant pattern has been the concentration of unemployed or welfare-dependent immigrants and ethnic minorities in older poor inner-city neighbourhoods. The dominant pattern in, for example, most parts of France and in particular Sweden (e.g. Molina 1997; Andersson 1998) has, on the contrary, been one of concentration in modern housing projects on the periphery of the big cities with an impoverished institutional infrastructure. Taken together, Cross (1993a: 132) maintains, ethnic or racial divisions, spatial segregation, labour market exclusion, and resultant poverty in European cities suggest, indeed, a process of ‘ghettoization’. Similar observations across the old immigration countries of north-western Europe have, during the 1990s, prompted a range of discussions on the emergence of a new European racialized ghetto underclass of immigrant background similar to that of the poor black inner-city ghetto dwellers in the US (e.g. the anthology by Mingione 1996b). Based on Wilson’s argument the contemporary black US urban ghetto has been construed as a kind of ideal type of post-Fordist ‘advanced marginality’ (Wacquant 1996a), against which the character of contemporary European segregated and socially excluded migrant and multi-ethnic local communities has been compared and measured (e.g. Bunar 2001; Burgers and Kloosterman 1996; Cross 1987b, 1993b; Cross and Moore 2002; Dangschat 1994; Kasarda, Friedrichs, and Ehlers 1992; Kloosterman 1994; Mingione 1996b; Wacquant 1996a). This ideal-typical model of the (post)modern black ghetto of the US has little to do with the traditional black American ghetto or, for that matter, with other urban ethnic or racially defined communities—little Italies, little Polands, and the like—of the US during the first two to three quarters of the twentieth century. Much more extreme than its predecessors, it is rather a ‘hyperghetto’ (Wacquant 1996a: 126), which has shed most of the characteristics of social solidarity and civil society that used to mark local urban ethnic or racially defined communities in the US. The hyperghetto is an isolated territory bearing a heavy social stigma. It is associated with a fixed local territory, and life in it is associated with shame. Unlike the ‘classical’ American ghetto, the hyperghetto is no longer a place of relative security and identification. It has lost the ghetto’s traditional function as a social, institutional, and economic ‘hinterland’ which could back up long-term social and professional trajectories of individuals and ethnically or racially defined collectives. The new hyperghetto lacks a common symbolic idiom and is marked rather by extreme symbolic and social fragmentation. Its inhabitants are focused on sheer survival, which is often accomplished by preying on other ghetto dwellers (Wacquant 1996a). Spaces that, to some extent, share such characteristics of post-Fordist marginality are found in many larger cities in Europe, especially those of the old


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immigration countries of northern Europe. This is connected with similar structural forces that since the mid-1970s have shaped advanced marginality in large US cities (e.g. Wacquant 1996b; Davis 1992). Wacquant (1996a) argues that this is definitely connected with the general character of work relations in post-Fordism, with the dwindling power of unions and the general dissolution or transformation of national political compacts on work and welfare, even in EU-Europe. Several empirical studies in Europe also suggest that the basic mismatch hypothesis is broadly relevant to the development of European cities. Thus, Kasarda, Friedrichs, and Ehlers (1992) maintain that there is a parallel development in German and American cities. The relocation of economic activity leaves behind islands of structural unemployment at the same time as their unskilled inhabitants are rendered ‘unemployable’ by the growing demand for highly skilled labour in the new service economy. In the case of London, Cross (1992, 1987b, 1995) attributes the disproportionate concentration of unemployment among particular ethnic minority groups to a geographical mismatch combined with the impact of racism, which, however, affects individual minority groups in different ways. He also emphasizes regional factors, comparing the English industrial Midlands, which suffers from a deep and protracted crisis of restructuring and extended long-term unemployment, with London, where the post-industrial economy took hold earlier and to a much greater extent. However, in spite of similarities, most researchers on the European continent and in Scandinavia emphasize that there are still no easy comparisons to be made between the nodes of high unemployment and ethno-racial segregation in big European cities on the one hand (e.g. Bunar 2001; Burgers and Kloosterman 1996; Dangschat 1994; Kloosterman 1994; Wacquant 1996b) and the racial ghettos of the US on the other. The distinction is contingent on the still highly tangible presence of the institutions of the welfare state in Europe. This continues to give the high-unemployment and welfare-dependent multi-ethnic neighbourhoods in Europe the character ‘welfare refuges’ that provide greater or lesser degrees of assistance rather than that of the US ‘ethno-racial prison’ (Wacquant 2002) haunted by police and authoritarian ‘workfare’. If seen as a long-term trajectory, this may well be the expression of the kind of trade-off delineated by Esping-Andersen (1999), Castells (1996), and others: a constant price that the EU and its member states would have to pay on a longerterm basis in order to conserve a large and relatively generous and ‘universalistic’ welfare state. Thus, in spite of much evidence supporting the mismatch hypothesis, the dominant view is that important differences remain between social marginality in EU-Europe and in the US, which makes the representation of the black ghetto poor by Wilson and others still an idiosyncratic feature of US society. For example, it has been emphasized how the particular class character of American racism, with its roots in the ideology and institution of slavery, has continued to serve the reproduction of a profoundly racially structured society in general under historically shifting conditions (e.g.Hochschild

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1984) and in particular, the formation and reproduction of a contemporary black underclass that has no equivalent in Europe (Lash 1994). A range of local empirical studies, in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Stockholm, and other northern European cities, demonstrate, indeed, that the configuration of ‘advanced marginality’ in Europe is still a far cry from the ideal-type ‘hyperghetto’ of the US. Given the traditionally ‘small’ and deteriorating welfare state in the US, the ideas of ‘underclass’ or ‘inner-city poverty’ as articulated in that country are not directly applicable to the conditions prevailing among disadvantaged urban populations in European countries. This is so, at least so far as concerns more developed welfare states on the Continent, for example Holland (Kloosterman 1994; Burgers and Kloosterman 1996), France (Wacquant 1996b), Germany (Dangschat 1994), and the Scandinavian countries (Schierup 1993; Bunar 2001), which are all marked by a high degree of de-commodification. Even with their ongoing post-Fordist restructuring, they embody elaborate welfare systems and social policies that differ from the dwindling remains of the US ‘Great Society’. De-commodification is effected not only with social benefits, but also through the provision of a range of public services like health care, education, public transport, and low-cost public housing. As a consequence, and in spite of their relative deterioration, disadvantaged neighbourhoods in European cities inhabited by large proportions of new ethnic minorities and immigrants do, in terms of social security as well as their integration into the national institutional system in general, represent a qualitatively different universe from that of the isolated underclass ghettos in the US. Yet current research indicates that this view of the contemporary (northern) European welfare state and its handling of ethnic minorities may need to be progressively revised as neoliberal perspectives encroach on labour market, and social welfare policies, not only in the UK but increasingly on the Continent and in Scandinavia as well (e.g. Pennen, Smit, and Wardt 1999; Slavnic 2002; Thomas 1999). But it is as important to note that the studies on unemployment, welfare, and urban marginality in Europe that we have mentioned so far typically relate to the older immigration countries and EU member states of north-western and central Europe. They convey a typical focus on social exclusion, immigration, and ethnic relations in these countries throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Irregular Migration and the Underground Economy: The Southern European Perspective In the southern European member states—the ‘new immigration countries’ of Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece—immigration has come to be seen as a ‘social problem’ of growing importance on the political as well as the ‘research’ agenda, but it has been phrased in substantially different terms.


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Although the absolute number of residents of immigrant background is still larger in the old immigration countries in north-western and central Europe, numbers have been growing constantly in southern Europe, and immigrant workers represent a substantial proportion of the total workforce. In southern Europe, employment of immigrant labour from outside the EU 15 and OECD countries has taken place in a limited range of sectors and activities: in construction, in agriculture, in the large tourist industries, in mining, in smaller manufacturing industries and workshops, and in household work, which continues to be the single most important occupation for immigrant workers in southern Europe. Along with this comes, as in other EU-countries, the expanding sex industry (e.g. discussed by Campani 1999), which exploits a considerable number of women from eastern Europe, Africa, and elsewhere, who are exposed to extreme conditions of exclusion, often under outright slave-like conditions. Each sector and occupation displays its particular modes of employment and conditions of work, but characteristic of all is a high degree of informality and lack of regulation of employment, and social welfare conditions. Employment patterns among immigrant workers are gendered, with migrant women predominantly in, for example, household work, and male migrants in construction and mining. But employment patterns and occupational distribution vary between the southern European countries. As well, the extent of undocumented entries of migrants and of illegal work varies both between countries and between regions.31 In southern Europe unemployed immigrants are few in absolute numbers. Most unemployed or underemployed immigrants survive, relying on informal networks of ethnic community members or on the attention of charity or workers solidarity organizations. The racialized excluded constitute mainly a range of categories among a growing number of ‘working poor’ immigrants, who have also been the main objects of social research on international migration and ethnic relations for the past three decades. ‘Illegal immigrants’ and the criminalization they are routinely associated with have been at the centre of political and popular discourse in this part of Europe, not the unemployed ‘ghetto poor’. Undocumented migrants, or even the many who have been legalized through ‘amnesties’ but continue to work in a vast underground economy, have no recourse to unemployment benefits or, usually, to any public social welfare benefits, services, or aid. The informal sector has expanded in all EU member states during recent decades, but is (still) substantially larger in the south than in the north, and everywhere in southern Europe a large ‘underground economy’ continues to be an important source of employment for immigrant labour and to act as a strong magnet for continued immigration (Mingione and Qassoli 2000: 53ff.). While 31 Greece has still, in spite of recent legalization efforts, the highest proportion of undocumented immigrant workers (e.g. Fakiolas 2000). But the proportion of undocumented migrants among all immigrant workers, while remaining high, started to diminish in southern European immigration countries during the 1990s (see also Chapter 9).

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undocumented immigration and irregular employment are apparently growing in all member states, the ratio of unregistered to registered migrant labour continues to be much higher in southern Europe than in the EU 15 as a whole (e.g. Jahn and Straubhaar 1999 ). Private brokers and local social networks mediate interaction with public institutions and the local labour markets; and informal migrant social networks, once established, tend to push newcomers along already mapped trajectories (Mingione and Qassoli 2000). Even when their residential status is regulated, as it has been through consecutive ‘amnesties’ and legalization procedures targeted at undocumented migrants, this tends to be a temporary state, and even ‘legalized’ migrant workers tend often to continue working in the irregular economy (Reyneri and Baganha 2001; Reyneri 1999). Mingione and Quassoli (2000) note the importance of the traditional character of the substantial informal sector that predated Fordist restructuring and the new immigration. It is a long-standing feature of southern European economies, sustained by an economic structure traditionally characterized by many small and inefficient firms and buttressed by legislation as well as the dominant political coalitions (Mingione and Qassoli 2000: 50ff.). Since the 1970s, immigrant labour has progressively replaced the role earlier performed by domestic labour in a secondary and irregular labour market, and in this sense represents ‘an element of continuity in the mode of national economic organisation’ (Mingione and Qassoli 2000: 32). But the function of immigrant labour cannot be reduced to this. It forms an integral part of the post-Fordist transformation of the southern European labour markets during the 1980s and 1990s. Post-Fordist deregulation has thus strengthened the already existing underground economy (Mingione and Qassoli 2000: 40) but also contributes to a further and deeper polarization of the economy and of the labour market, which has, in turn, acted to make the underground economy the segregated realm for immigrant labour. In the wider context of the EU, the southern European member states are notorious for violating the Schengen agreement’s norms on border control. Repeated admonitions from the European Commission and northern member states have not brought to an end a continued and substantial influx of nondocumented migrant labourers and unrecognized refugees through what has, in the war-like jargon of current international migration policies, become known as the Union’s ‘soft underbelly’. However, as Emilio Reyneri (1999) argues, this is not, as is usually claimed, due primarily to lax border controls or to huge and growing ‘push’ factors in sub-Mediterranean, Asian, or east European emigration countries plagued by poverty, wars, and ethno-national clashes. The main causes of the continued immigration to southern Europe as well as of the particular modes of entry and incorporation of the immigrant workers are located in the political economies and labour markets of the southern European countries themselves. This argument resembles Sassen’s critical review (1998: 31ff.) of US political debates on ‘America’s immigrant problem’, that is, the so-called new


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immigration to low-wage deregulated (or unregulated) occupations from, in particular, Latin America and Asia, which took off in the beginning of the 1970s, and which reached extraordinary proportions throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Sassen exposes what she believes to be the groundless anxiety and the hypocrisy exhibited by a public ‘panic on immigration’ which regularly resurfaces in the US. The continued reception of millions of migrants is neither a ‘burden’ for American society, she argues, nor some kind of ‘charity’ (which ‘must have limits’) practised by a benevolent ‘host society’. Mass immigration is propelled by, and is essential for, the ongoing deep-seated transformation of US urban and regional economies and for their role as central nodes in a globalizing world economy. In fact, the present southern European EU member states started to make their transmutation from countries of mass emigration to labour-importing countries at about the same time as the so-called new immigration took off in the US in the early 1970s.32 This coincides with the time when most of the old labour-importing countries of north-western Europe blocked the previous mass influx of migrant labour that had fuelled their now downsizing and restructuring industrial sectors. But the ‘new immigration’ to southern Europe is not in any respect a replication of the ‘old’ labour migration to northwestern Europe; it is in almost every aspect different (Baldwin-Edwards 1999: 2ff.). While the ‘old migration’ to north-western Europe mostly involved selected nationalities with predominantly lower educational levels, the ‘new immigration’ to southern Europe generally involves numerous nationalities, drawn from across the world and with diverse educational levels. The old immigration was marked by ‘general legality’ (except in France, to a considerable degree), the new by a general irregularity of entry and work. Whereas the old immigration, state agencies had a dominant role in recruitment and there was little clandestine immigration, the new is dominated by illegal ‘brokers’, smuggling, and trafficking by private agents. The old immigration was targeted towards incorporation into the formal economy, while the new has been marked by high absorption by the informal. A system of bilateral treaties between labour-importing and labour-exporting countries provided legal protection for immigrants in the old system, while contemporary migration to southern Europe is dominated by bilateral and multilateral treaties concerned with expulsion arrangements. Finally, the old labour migrants either came to enjoy, at least formally, equal rights of citizenship with nationals in essential aspects (as in Sweden, France, and Britain) or their residence was regulated on a specific legal base, while the new immigrants often have few or no legal rights. At the same time, there are conspicuous similarities between new immigration in southern Europe and in the US. One is the parallel development 32

Nikolinakos (1975; 1977) offered an early analysis of the ‘new immigration’ in southern Europe, seen from the perspective of their changing political economies and position in a transformed international division of labour.

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of a high-end process of regulated migration of high-salaried experts and a low-end process of largely clandestine immigration (e.g. Bagagna 2000). Another is the informality and lack of regulation that marks employment procedures and jobs, and which may enhance post-Fordist ‘flexibility’, but at the expense of a marked lack of social protection and exclusion from pension schemes and the main institutions of the social welfare system in general. By the same token, the southern European immigration countries could be seen from a different perspective: as the vanguard of globalization on the very edge of capitalist ‘restructuring’ in Europe, rather than as simply the erratic violators of rational norms and regulations. Rather than seeing ‘the irregular economy’ in southern Europe, as a force of ‘tradition’— a legacy of the past, still hampering their full integration into a regulated European economic space—we may see their deregulated—or, rather, nonregulated—underground economies as conforming fully with post-Fordist ‘flexibility’ strategies, which take advantage of the ‘informal sector’ in their networking strategies. But there are important differences between the informal sectors in the US and southern Europe, with important implications for migration policy. For example, although workers’ lack of documentation and illegality of residence and employment have been permanent features of three decades of ‘new immigration’ in the US, legalization of the undocumented appears to be more feasibly backed up through government sanctions against employers, than in southern Europe, which appears to be particularly inefficient in these respects (see Chapter 7). This difference is conditioned by the contrasting structural-institutional features of a ‘liberal’ US welfare system and southern Europe’s ‘corporate-conservative’ system, and by their different paths of accommodating neoliberal globalization. The informal sector in the US is inserted into an economy and labour market distinguished by general and pervasive processes of deregulation progressively built into legislation and the institutional system. The informal sector and the low-end immigration to southern Europe are, by contrast, marked rather by non-regulation. This large and growing non-regulated sector is, at the same time, juxtaposed to and excluded from a still highly regulated and institutionally rigid formal labour market and welfare regime. The contrast between the liberal American or, increasingly, Anglo-American model on the one hand and southern Europe on the other is highlighted in the fact that most southern European countries and regions have continued to be marked by high unemployment coexisting with increased immigration related to the informal sector. In contrast to the ‘old’ European immigration countries, where high-end unemployment is concentrated among immigrants and their children, in southern Europe we find the high-end unemployment concentrated among the national majorities and, in particular, among majority youth. Take the case of Greece, which may be the most conspicuous. Fakiolas (2000: 59) reports that the still very high unemployment in the Greek labour market


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rather matches the scale of the (still to a large degree clandestine) immigrant labour force, which is reported to make up more than 25 per cent of the total number of wage earners in the country. A high demand for cheap labour is produced by . needs generated by a preponderance of small, often family-based, labourintensive production units, marked by low and medium technology; and . a high demand for domestic work generated by increasing female employment in middle-class occupations coupled with the lack of a public welfare system, which may substitute for the traditionally female functions of reproductive family work. At the same time, the continued existence of a fairly generous system of welfare transfers imposes institutional limits on the indigenous labour supply. This weakens the negative income effects of unemployment and underemployment, and also the incentives to work in low-status jobs. The indigenous labour force, seeking refuge in the welfare system, systematically avoids these jobs, which remain or become submerged in the irregular economy and are largely taken over by migrant labour. One effect of a thus racialized polarization within a dual labour market coupled with a dual welfare system is that a large group of immigrants with high education and work qualifications from countries outside the OECD area are systematically disqualified and relegated to low-paid unskilled work in the informal sector without prospects of economic, social, or professional mobility (Reyneri 1998a; Veiga 1999).

The Research Challenge of a Multi-exclusionary Europe In light of the preceding discussion, a complex analysis would need to take account of the two perspectives of southern Europe: as a vanguard of capitalist ‘flexibility’ and as rooted in a particular type of conservative-corporatist welfare regime. We should discuss the (no longer so) ‘new’ immigration in southern Europe and the modes of racialized exclusion this entails in a more comprehensive framework of these countries’ overall political economies and welfare regimes. This precludes any simplistic comparison between the new immigration to the US and that to southern Europe, but may serve to place the important differences between southern Europe and the ‘old’ immigration countries of north-western Europe in a complex perspective, concerned less with the past than with the present and the future. Hence, there is nothing so simple as a general Atlantic ‘split’. But neither can we speak about a straightforward European split, with racialized exclusion dominated simply by the welfare-dependent poor in the more extended welfare states of the north and the ‘working poor’ in the south. As in the US and in southern Europe, poverty and racialized social exclusion in northern Europe is characterized to a growing degree by new categories of working poor among

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immigrants and new ethnic minorities. The northern European situation is, as we will explore later, also characterized by multiple modes of racialized exclusion; and, as discussed above, different categories among the excluded cannot be seen in isolation. They are, as we have illustrated by visiting the US debate on the political economy of race and class, mutually interdependent and embedded in complex and changing ethnic divisions of labour. Extended areas of chronic social disadvantage and welfare dependency are always potential ‘incubators’ of working activities that are ‘precarious and underpaid and systematically performed by women, immigrants and disadvantaged minorities’ (Mingione 1996a: 382). The extension of areas of low-paid, casual, and precarious jobs performed by exposed minorities and other disempowered groups excluded from substantive rights of citizenship is, in turn, apt to put pressure on welfare institutions and to be exploited to support political programmes for dismantling the function of social citizenship as a sanctuary and defence of the vulnerable against market forces. This general development is everywhere contingent on general strategies of labour market deregulation, new flexibility regimes, the growth of an informal economic sector, and the irregular sector of the labour market. These all form part and parcel of an overall strategy of neoliberal restructuring, called ‘globalization’, propelled by political coalitions under the hegemony of dominant transnational business interests. Different categories of both working and non-working poor racialized others are found in most EU member states. Yet particular combinations and modes of racialized exclusion are forged by particular dynamics of the political economy and social struggles in local and national institutional settings as they are exposed to global pressures; the concrete forms of intersection of different faces of marginality vary according to the character of the welfare regime in each country or group of countries, and according to their policies of migration and incorporation. Although present across the board, contemporary processes of exclusion are articulated in significantly different path-dependent ways. This poses the need for an adequate comparative analysis. As stressed in the introduction to this chapter, it is important to forge a merger between mainstream research on changing welfare states and established research on international migration and ethnic relations. In line with this perspective, the following four chapters pursue an analysis of differential patterns of ‘advanced marginality’ (see above) and articulate different current forms and configurations of racialized exclusion in particular countries, namely, the UK, Germany, Italy, and Sweden. The UK ‘Third Way’ (Chapter 5) comes closest to the American pattern, a model (neo-)liberal post-Fordist flexibility regime in Europe which has increasingly influenced political discourse and practice also in other member states as well as in the Union as a whole. At the same time, however, the UK can boast of having Europe’s most elaborate anti-racist and anti-discriminatory legislation, policies, and institutional framework. The politics of multiculturalism have


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been important in forming strong ethnic minority communities and particular strategies of incorporation. The second case, Germany, is a highly regulated conservative/corporate welfare and production regime, but at the same time, it is the prime example of the institutionalization and practice of guest-worker systems, past and present. Together with its long-dominant and highly exclusive ethno-national conception of the nation and of citizenship, this lends the German development features that are important to the study of both the current institutionalization of policies for the employment of temporary immigrant workers in the EU as a whole and the narrowing of the conception of the nation, which is one current tendency among a number of the EU member states. Introducing new temporary-worker systems on a grander scale is controversial, however, and a sizeable informal sector run by non-documented immigrant labour is instrumentalized for purposes of ‘flexibility,’ and to undercut the price of labour in parts of the economy. This is among the sources of tension that threaten to undermine the formal labour market and the institutional and fiscal foundations of the welfare state. Italy is a particularly well-documented case among the southern European member states, where migration and migrant incorporation is deeply enmeshed with the disjunctions between a buoyant informal economy, a clientilistic system of governance, and a rigid formal welfare regime exposed to social crisis and pressures for change. Italy thus represents a particular version of the conservative/corporate regime, different from northern and central European states like, for example, Holland, Austria, and Germany, although important features and disjunctions are shared between south and north. In terms of its mode of immigrant incorporation, Italy has all along, since the country made the shift from an emigration to an immigration country and in contrast to the UK’s and Sweden’s elaborate policies of regulation and inclusion, followed a course marked by informality and laissez faire. But is has lately started to shift towards a revamped and regulated guest-worker policy. The fourth case, Sweden, represents the quintessence of the social democratic welfare regime. The country was long renowned for its inclusive policy of immigration and migrant incorporation; at some stage a particular variety of multiculturalist discourse and practice, but one markedly different from the British and with a stronger slant towards (hidden) assimilationism. This has been coupled with a highly coordinated economy and regulated labour market. Here, a novel mode of ‘embedded neoliberalism’ (Chapter 3) and new forms of racialized exclusion develop in particularly convoluted forms. Although far from exhaustive, these four country cases give at least some idea of the complexity and varied configuration of processes of racialized exclusion across Europe. With reference to ‘the three worlds of welfare capitalism’, we focus on regime-specific responses to post-Fordist forces of change in terms of the development of particular ethnic divisions of labour. We explore

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characteristic configurations of racialized exclusion from citizenship. Moreover, as we have suggested, the four countries represent significantly different migration policy regimes and modes of incorporation of migrants and ethnic minorities. Thus, we continue the discussion in Chapter 2 concerning the crisis of established policies on migration and nation building under conditions of growing ethnic plurality. We illuminate how the crisis of migration and integration policies, together with the problems of nationhood and identity that they bring to the fore, are intimately connected with the crisis and restructuring of established policies and regimes concerned with citizenship and social welfare.

FIVE

Britain’s ‘Neo-American’ Trajectory

I

N Chapter 2 we presented a sketch of post-Second World War migration trends, the incorporation of immigrants, and the formation of ethnic minorities in Western Europe. We noted that Britain was the first of the traditional labour-importing countries of north-western Europe to introduce rigid control of immigration. But Britain was also the first country where post-Second World War immigrants—mainly coming from former colonies, now part of the Commonwealth—started to constitute permanently resident ethnic minorities. They were part and parcel of the social fabric, with an at least formal recognition of full rights of citizenship, and with distinct political claims. We have noted that throughout the 1950s and 1960s, their incorporation into the labour market resembled that of immigrant workers in other Western European countries (Castles and Kosack 1973) with a heavy bias towards manufacturing industry and male employment. In Chapter 4 we also discussed the ensuing, patterns of social exclusion as economic and labour-market restructuring started to get under way in the mid-1970s. New processes of racialization and social change became prevalent and continued to deepen throughout the 1980s and 1990s and into our present millennium. In this chapter, we focus more closely on the British case. Despite a shortage of in-depth studies on changing configurations of racialized exclusion, we raise some questions about the particular character of the British welfare state, its current trajectory, and its implications for ethnic minorities and migrants. From a wider European perspective, an understanding of the British experience is particularly important: the UK, in more ways than one, seems to form a kind of master model for a successive transformation of other European welfare states, even though they have, historically, quite different structural and institutional foundations. In that sense, the UK could be seen as a forerunner of a general ‘Americanization’ of European welfare regimes, as foreseen by influential scholars in comparative welfare state research (e.g. Leibfried 1993).

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The UK’s New Political Economy from Thatcher to New Labour To refer to our discussion in Chapter 4, the UK can be seen as the European society which most closely follows a ‘neoliberal’ or ‘neo-American’ (e.g. Kloosterman and Rath 2001; compare Mingione and Qassoli 2000) path into post-Fordism and globalization. This is not surprising, given common traditions of liberal welfare regimes and, in many ways, similar political economies and production regimes (see e.g. Soskice 1999). Their structural-institutional similarity was intensified through the interactive and parallel development of Thatcherism and Reaganomics during the 1980s and the radical ways in which policies of deregulation concerning state intervention in the economy, the labour market, and the social welfare system have been pursued during the last two decades. These practices have been essentially continued by New Labour since 1997 under the banner of the ‘Third Way’ (Giddens 1998). Deregulation was supposed to support two dynamic factors of development in a ‘new economy’: the growth of small and medium business, and individuals’ motivation to become active and ‘responsible stakeholders’ in their own futures through educational achievement (see also, the discussion by Habermas 1999). Elaborate anti-discrimination policies, together with an ambitious urban regeneration programme first instituted in the late 1960s, have been seen as a guarantee that the UK’s ethnic minorities will get a fair share of the general prosperity. All of these trends affect the economic and social situation of ethnic minorities, structuring new ethnic divisions of labour. This forms the background for the emergence of complex configurations of racialized exclusion. Yet, according to some observers (e.g. Lash 1994), poverty in an ethno-racial sense appears to be more equally distributed in the UK than in the US. The UK has no equivalent to the US racial divide; there is no massive block of historically accumulated racial injustice, no forceful factor of continuous large-scale immigration boosting extended occupational ghettoes staffed by racialized new working poor, and nothing like the intense competition and clashes of interest as among ethnic/racial groups in the US. There may be some truth in such claims. Yet striking similarities remain concerning ongoing processes of transformation, as well as the general orientation of current policies and changing modes of governance. The development in the UK must be understood in the context of an historical tradition which fits in with Esping-Andersen’s model of the liberal welfare state, but also in the context of struggles by the British labour movement to change this model in a social-democratic direction. The high point of the social-democratic challenge was the introduction of far-reaching welfare state measures by the post-1945 Atlee Labour government. Policies of subsequent governments, especially the Thatcher-Major governments of 1979–97,


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have been driven by the desire to roll back such measures and return to minimalist welfare principles. A basic institutional characteristic of the liberal welfare state is the predominance of means-tested assistance, modest universal transfers, and residualist social insurance plans (Esping-Andersen 1990: 26ff.).33 Public welfare schemes mainly cater for a low-income clientele, traditionally mostly working-class. The development of social reforms has, historically, been heavily circumscribed by the insistence on the market as the privileged regulatory instrument in society, and on norms belonging to a traditional liberal work ethic. The state stimulates the market, on the one hand by guaranteeing only a minimal level of welfare, and on the other by subsidizing private welfare schemes. The marginal character of public welfare generates a strong propensity to opt for poorly remunerated work instead of social assistance. Poor-quality public services stimulate the commercial provision of alternative services, for instance in health care, childcare, and facilities for the elderly. Even in education, private and market-based services are stimulated. One consequence of the liberal system is that it diminishes the decommodification effects of citizenship and effectively contains the realm of social citizenship. The liberal system is marked by social stratification with ‘a blend of a relative equality of poverty among state-welfare recipients, market differentiated welfare among the majorities, and a class-political dualism between the two’ (Esping-Andersen 1990: 27). The accentuated dualism between the public system of minimal welfare catering only for the poorest part of the population and a differentiated system of private welfare creates a permanent tension in the system, which experiences recurrent crises due to lack of support among the middle classes for upholding any public welfare system. Esping-Andersen (1990) subsumes the UK under the heading of the liberal welfare regime. Historically, however, the UK has rather been a ‘mixed liberalreformist case’, as Mann (1987) puts it. In contrast to the US, protracted class struggle was an important factor in bringing about civil and political rights of citizenship in the UK, from which major parts of the population were long excluded. But the constitutional regime was less exclusive and oppressive than regimes on the European continent. In the UK, both liberalism and socialism remained attractive ideologies. The labour unions have had a stronger position than in the US, being more articulated in terms of class. The process of developing citizenship, largely following the Marshallian sequence, has typically vacillated between liberalism and social democracy. Social citizenship became here by more strongly established in the UK than in the US, but the state has remained profoundly liberal, unwilling to intervene in interest-group bargaining or to actively induce corporatist forms of alliances or negotiation. It has guaranteed basic subsistence through the welfare state, but 33 In addition to the US, Esping-Andersen classifies the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as liberal regimes.

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this ‘meshes into, rather than replaces, private market and insurance schemes’ (Mann 1987: 343). From the end of the 1970s, Thatcherism came to be seen as a rapprochement with a genuine British liberal tradition, endeavouring to dismantle existing public welfare schemes and to radically enforce market principles together with a traditional liberal work ethic. By the mid 1990s, the UK’s social expenditure share of GDP was the lowest among all northern and central European member states (except for Luxembourg) (Vogel 2003a: 121). In international comparison the UK emerges, together with the southern European member states, among the countries with the highest levels of income inequality. The UK became known as the country with the fastest growing income inequality among the EU 15 (Vogel 2003a: 121–22), and also had the largest proportion of persons living below the national poverty limit in 1994, only surpassed by Greece and Portugal (Figure 5.1 and Vogel 2003a: 126).34 When New Labour came to power in 1997, many expected a profound break with Thatcherism. However, the Labour government under Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown was determined to maintain investor confidence through monetary and fiscal policy, so that little change took place initially. By Labour’s second term, starting in 2001, fiscal restraint combined with strong economic growth had built up considerable budget surpluses, allowing Brown to fund large programmes to improve the overstrained health, educational, and transport sectors. The UK’s ‘Third Way’— between traditional social democracy and neoliberal conservatism—appears to have had considerable economic and political success, but at the price of a continuing squeeze on welfare and a growth in social inequality. The consequences of this new political economy have been a dramatic decline in trade union influence, low minimum wages, a deregulated labour market, and increasingly restricted and means-tested social assistance transfers. These effects have been defended in terms of a rhetoric of ‘flexibility’. They have stimulated the casualization of employment in extended sectors of the economy, leading to a proliferation of new low-wage jobs, disconnected from social benefits and labour regulation. The aim has been to force the new poor into participation in badly paid and insecure jobs by means of the institutionalization of disciplinary welfare measures based on US ‘workfare’ models (see Jones and Novak 1999). This casualization of employment ran parallel with a development that is often seen as the quintessence of ‘post-industrialism’, or what Sassen (1991; see also Chapter 6) describes in terms of an advanced ‘global city’ pattern. An accelerated contraction of manufacturing was followed by a rapid growth of business and other services (see e.g. Owen and Green 1992), and by a spectacular increase in self-employment. Low and decreasing wage levels in extended parts of the labour market have furthered the expansion of cheap 34 Defined as persons falling below the national poverty limit of 50 per cent of the national average equivalent disposable household income (Vogel 2003a: 126).

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Britain’s ‘Neo-American’ Trajectory 30

26.8

25

21.8 19.1

Per cent

20

20

20.6

17.9

15 10.9 11.4

12.6 12.9 13.1

10 4.6

5

5.5

6.5

U K re ec Po e rtu ga l G

Ita ly Sp a Ire in la nd

er m et a he ny rla n B ds Lu elg xe ium m bo u Fr rg an ce

G

ar k

N

D

en

m

en

an

Sw

nl Fi

ed

d

0

FIG. 5.1. Poverty rates in the EU, 1994 Poverty limit ¼ 50 per cent of the national average disposable household income per consumer unit. Source: Data from Vogel (2000: 20, based on EUROSTAT and Nordic Surveys).

personal services, providing incentives for middle-class households to contract traditional (reproductive) housework out of the family. Cheap personal services act to support and to extend middle-class female incorporation in the labour market. This all functions to increase overall labour force participation and to press down unemployment. But the actual consequences of, as well as the precondition for, this emerging system are rapidly growing wage gaps, labour market polarization, and extended social inequality.

From ‘Race Relations’ to Multiculturalism Any analysis of the contemporary British welfare state must be linked to the evolution of immigration and ethnic diversity over the last half-century. Discourses on ethnic and racial differentiation in the UK reflect the dominant understanding of such processes as the result of migration and settlement from the New Commonwealth countries of the Caribbean, South Asia, and Africa from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. However, large numbers of other immigrants have arrived since 1945. One of the largest groups, the Irish, has included both temporary sojourners and permanent settlers. The UK has also had many entrants from the EU and other European countries. These have included highly skilled personnel, low-skilled workers for

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agriculture, manufacturing, and the services sector, dependants of British citizens, and others. Since the late 1990s, there has been immigration of asylum seekers, legal immigrants, and undocumented workers, many from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Mainstream understandings of labour-market segmentation, residential segregation, and social exclusion have so far largely ignored the new characteristics of these recent migrations. The 2001 Census (see Table 5.1) showed that the UK population of 58.8 million included 4.6 million members of ‘ethnic minorities’ (7.9 per cent of the total population). This indicated a growth in the ‘non-white’ population of 53 per cent since 1991, when the figure was 3 million. The biggest groups were Indians (over 1 million), Pakistanis (747,000), black Caribbeans (566,000), and black Africans (485,000). These figures are based on self-assessment of ‘race’. It is interesting to note that 677,000 people declared themselves to be of ‘mixed race’, indicating the frequency of intermarriage. As an official statistical category, ‘ethnic minorities’ means ‘non-white’. The term says nothing about nationality, place of birth (indeed, at least half the ethnic minority members were born in the UK), or ethnicity in a wider sense. It leaves out the many ‘white’ immigrants from a wide range of origins. The largest ‘white’ ethnic group was the Irish: 691,000 people in 2001. Data based on the annual Labour Force Survey show a foreign population of 2.7 million in 2002. The ten top countries of nationality were Ireland (411,000), India (148,000), USA (109,000), Pakistan (99,000), Italy (98,000), France (96,000), Portugal (90,000), Australia (77,000), Germany (71,000), and Somalia (66,000) (OECD 2004: 350)—a list indicative of the UK’s new diversity. Of course, these figures partly overlap with those for ethnic minorities (e.g., a resident with Indian nationality is also non-white), so it would not be permisTABLE 5.1. Population of the UK by ethnic group, April 2001 Total population (Numbers) (Per cent) white Mixed Indian Pakistani Bangladeshi Other Asian All Asian or Asian British black Caribbean black African black Other All black or black British Chinese Other ethnic groups All minority ethnic population All population

54,153,898 677,117 1,053,411 747,285 283,063 247,664 2,331,423 565,876 485,277 97,585 1,148,738 247,403 230,615 4,635,296 58,789,194

Source: Office for National Statistics (2004a).

92.2 1.2 1.8 1.3 0.5 0.4 4.0 1.0 0.8 0.2 2.0 0.4 0.4 7.9 100

Non-white population (Per cent) 14.6 22.7 16.1 6.1 5.3 50.3 12.2 10.5 2.1 24.8 5.3 5.0 100.0


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sible to add the two categories together to arrive at a figure for ‘population of immigrant origin’. The ethnic minority population lives mainly in England, where it made up 9 per cent of the total population in 2001. They accounted for only 2 per cent of total population in Scotland and Wales, and less than 1 per cent in Northern Ireland. They are concentrated in urban areas, especially London: 45 per cent of ethnic minorities live in the capital, where they make up 29 per cent of all residents. London fits the pattern of a dynamic, overcrowded, global city, with strong divisions based on class and race. Seventy-eight per cent of black Africans, 61 per cent of black Caribbeans, and 54 per cent of Bangladeshis lived in London. A third of the Irish also lived in London, where they made up 3 per cent of the population. Other ethnic groups, such as the Indians and the Pakistanis, were more evenly distributed. Other ethnic concentrations were to be found in the older industrial areas of the West Midlands, the north-west (Manchester, Liverpool, and so on), and Yorkshire (Bradford, Leeds, and so on) (OECD 2004). Concentration in urban areas, especially London, is important for white British perceptions, which often grossly overestimate immigrant and ethnic minority numbers. A key issue in recent debates on national identity has been the growth of Islam in the UK. A once predominantly white Christian population has become more diverse in terms of both race and religion. The 2001 Census showed that 72 per cent of the population considered themselves Christians, while 16 per cent had no religion and 7 per cent gave no response. There were 1.6 million Muslims (2.7 per cent of the population), 559,000 Hindus (1 per cent), 336,000 Sikhs (0.6 per cent) 267,000 Jews (0.5 per cent) and 152,000 Buddhists (0.3 per cent) (Office for National Statistics 2003b). Unlike most European countries, most immigrants in the UK are full citizens. Irish residents enjoy full citizenship rights in the UK, including the right to vote. Commonwealth immigrants who came before 1971 were British subjects who enjoyed all citizenship rights once admitted. This situation was ended by the 1971 Immigration Act and the 1981 British Nationality Act, which put later Commonwealth immigrants on a par with foreigners. However, the earlier Commonwealth immigrants retained their rights. New immigrants, wherever they came from, could apply for citizenship after five years in the country. Immigrants from the EU in any case enjoy full rights to employment and welfare,35 and often see no need to apply for UK citizenship even if they do stay for long periods. In the early stages of New Commonwealth immigration, British academics and policymakers generally supported assimilationist approaches: immigrants were seen as ‘dark strangers’ who had to acculturate, that is, to give up their 35 An exception was introduced in 2004 for migrants from the ten new EU accession states, which would have to wait for up to two years before being eligible for various welfare benefits. This was in response to newspaper scare campaigns about so-called welfare tourism by eastern and central Europeans.

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original languages and customs and individually adopt British culture and customs. The functionalist sociologists who dominated social science at the time assumed the UK to be a harmonious society with a universally accepted dominant culture and set of values. Racial prejudice in the white population was seen as a matter which could be dealt with through education (Castles and Kosack 1973). This model rapidly collapsed due to the race riots of 1958, growing anti-immigration mobilization on the right, and mounting evidence of economic and social marginalization of black and Asian immigrants. In addition, the emergence of labour-market segmentation in the 1950s and 1960s, with Asians and Afro-Caribbeans concentrated in the least desirable jobs, made it clear that assimilation was not taking place. High levels of residential concentration also developed, mainly in run-down inner-city areas and poorer neighbourhoods of industrial towns (Rex and Moore 1967; Rex and Tomlinson 1979). The integration model which emerged in the late 1960s and the 1970s was based on a high level of state intervention through anti-discrimination legislation and policies, and micro-management of intergroup relations by social bureaucracies, police, and local authorities. Integration thus meant recognizing the existence of distinct groups, defined primarily on the basis of ‘race’. This race relations approach had its antecedents in British colonial experience, and it was no coincidence that it was now being applied to people who came from those very colonies. Other roots of British pluralism in race relations included the historical experience of building a nation state with four constituent nations since the Middle Ages, and the religious tolerance which gradually developed following the bitter struggles of the seventeenth century. Schools played a major part in the integration policies of the 1960s and 1970s, with educationalists introducing the notion of ‘multicultural education’ as a way of developing mutual respect and self-esteem in multiracial classrooms. Black activists quickly dismissed the notion, arguing that the use of cultural labels implied that the problems lay in deficiencies among the minorities rather than in the racism of the white population. Instead, they called for ‘anti-racist’ education. However, the label stuck, and the UK came to be seen increasingly as a ‘multicultural’ society. There was however, general agreement among political leaders that integration and ‘good race relations’ in the UK were possible only on the basis of a restrictive immigration policy. Successful integration policies for those immigrants who had been admitted were thought to require exclusion of further entrants. Since 1965, a series of race relations acts has been passed, outlawing discrimination in public places, in employment, and in housing. These have been ‘inextricably linked’ (Solomos 2003) with a series of increasingly restrictive immigration acts (see Table 5.2). A key feature of the British approach is that the main responsibility both for controlling migration and for improving race relations lies with the Home Office—a link which is particularly problem-


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TABLE 5.2. Immigration and race relations legislation in the UK since 1962 Date

Legislation on immigration

1962 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1976 1993 1996 1998 1999 2000 2002

Commonwealth Immigrants Act

Commonwealth Immigrants Act Immigration Appeals Act Immigration Act British Nationality Act Immigration Act

Legislation on race relations Race Relations Act Local Government Act Race Relations Act Race Relations Act

Race Relations Act Asylum and Immigration (Appeals) Act Asylum and Immigration Act Human Rights Act Asylum and Immigration Act Race Relations (Amendment) Act Nationality, Immigration, and Asylum Act

Source: (Solomos 1993: 57, 79).

atic in view of the Home Office’s image as a repressive institution responsible for police and prisons. This constant tinkering with both areas of law also indicates the difficulty in finding adequate solutions and mobilizing public support for them. It would go too far here to examine the details of the various laws, and how the approaches of various Conservative and Labour governments differed; there is extensive literature on the topic (for overviews see Favell 1998; LaytonHenry 2004; Solomos 1993). Two crucial features of the British model as it evolved from the 1960s should be noted. First, issues of conflict, discrimination, or exclusion were defined in terms of race or ethnic group membership, based on bureaucratic definitions of the various groups. Hence the rather arbitrary, one-sided, and frequently changing categories of official statistics. This also implies the need for close monitoring of indicators of employment, education, and social status on the basis of race or ethnic group. Second, the British model is characterized by increasing levels of institutionalization of measures to prevent discrimination and combat racism. The 1965 Act set up a Race Relations Board; the 1968 Act strengthened its powers and added a Community Relations Commission; the 1976 Act merged both into a more powerful Commission for Racial Equality (CRE). The 1998 Human Rights Act followed the Labour government’s adherence to the European Convention on Human Rights. It provided a set of basic rights which had long been missing due to the UK’s lack of a written constitution and the principle of primacy of Parliament. Henceforth, British courts could enforce human rights standards—for both locals and migrants—and appeals to the European Court of Human Rights could override British court decisions. Finally, the 2000 Race Relations (Amendment) Act

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gave all public authorities (including the police and local government) the duty to promote racial equality, which meant not only preventing discrimination, but also working for equality of opportunity and good relations between persons of different racial groups (Solomos 2003: 92). Such measures sound very positive, but also reflect the reality of frequent acts of discrimination and racial exclusion. The constant need to improve antidiscrimination legislation and ensure its effective implementation indicates that previous measures were not adequate to deal with entrenched racism. Organized racist groups such as the National Front grew rapidly in the 1970s. Their electoral success was limited, but they recruited members of violent youth subcultures, such as skinheads. Racist violence became a major problem for Asians and Afro-Caribbeans. At the same time, minority youth felt that they were being unfairly targeted by the police. These tensions gave rise to riots in inner-city areas in 1980–1 and again in 1985–6 and 1991. Despite its principle of ‘small government’, the Thatcher government had to introduce measures to combat youth unemployment, to make education more accessible to minorities, to improve conditions in urban areas, and to change police practices. In the 1990s, however, there was a shift away from interventionist anti-racist policies. Instead, there was a move to market-oriented approaches, which emphasized service to local authority ‘customers’. The role of local government in bringing about change was severely restricted. The abolition of the Greater London Council by the Thatcher government was partly a response to the council’s strongly anti-racist policies.

The New Immigration and the Debate on Social Cohesion By the mid-1990s, the UK was widely seen as a multicultural society, in which distinct groups—defined by race, ethnicity, and religion—could live together peacefully and with reasonable levels of participation in social and political affairs. Race and multiculturalism remained controversial: conservatives lamented the loss of a supposed past homogeneity and harmony, while radicals argued that multiculturalism was often a device to avoid dealing with racism and inequality. But immigration had lost a good deal of its significance as a divisive political issue. This optimistic view is summed up in a speech by Lord Bhiku Parekh (a former Deputy Head of the CRE): Thanks to the efforts of ethnic minorities, anti-discrimination legislation and successive governments’ policies designed to reduce ethnic minorities’ economic, educational and other disadvantages, Britain is increasingly moving in the direction of becoming a relaxed and tolerant multi-ethnic and multicultural society. (Parekh 2000a)

Such perceptions were soon to change, as immigration, asylum, and ‘social cohesion’ once again become central political issues. In opposition, the Labour Party had expressed its commitment to multiculturalism and to better


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immigration policies. However, its electoral strategists had identified public fears on immigration, and were determined that the party should not appear ‘soft’ on such issues (Solomos 2003: 90). Soon after Labour came to power in 1997, an upsurge started in immigration and asylum. Net immigration of nonBritish persons increased from around 100,000 a year in the mid-1990s to 161,000 in 1998 and 225,000 by 2001 (Office for National Statistics 2003a: Table 2.1). Many of them were asylum seekers: applications rose from 41,500 in 1997 to 58,000 in 1998 and 92,000 in 2001. At the same time, the net emigration of British people—mainly to Australia, Canada, and other ‘old Commonwealth’ countries—fluctuated around levels of 50,000 a year, as it had for many years. The combination of growing immigration and asylum, and departure of British people fuelled a new debate on immigration and national identity, with strong impetus from sensationalist popular newspapers (especially the Daily Mail and the Daily Express). Fears of ‘losing control’ of immigration became a powerful force in politics. The Home Office was not prepared to deal with the increase in asylum applications, leading to severe delays, embarrassing mistakes (such as the failure of an expensive new computer system), and increasing numbers of appeals. The government responded with a series of evermore draconian immigration and asylum rules, including measures to reduce entries through visa controls and carrier sanctions (making airlines bear the cost of repatriating people refused entry), detention camps for asylum seekers, refusal of welfare benefits, and denial of the right to work (Institute for Public Policy Research 2003; see also Chapter 3). Accounts of the exploitation of undocumented workers and scare stories about loss of jobs through entry of workers from central and eastern European states joining the EU in 2004 added to public concern. Immigration became an area of constant conflict and scandal, and opinion polls showed that it was now one of the main issues likely to affect voting decisions in parliamentary elections. The new immigrants were highly diverse in origins. Top areas of origin for asylum seekers included Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, and China. Only one-third of immigrants in 2001 came from either EU countries or the (predominantly white) Old Commonwealth countries. Two-thirds came from a wide range of countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The question was whether the model of state-regulated multiculturalism devised to deal with the older Commonwealth immigration would work effectively in the much more complicated emerging situation. It is still too early to answer this question. In any case, it is doubtful whether British multiculturalism is really working effectively for the older minorities. The optimistic picture of a successful multicultural society invoked by Parekh (see above) reflected the success of many descendants of immigrants in obtaining educational credentials and gaining access to high-status positions in the civil service, business, and the arts. Yet there is another side to race relations in the UK: the low socio-economic status and high rates of

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unemployment of many black and Asian people, the high rates of ethnic minority concentration in poor neighbourhoods and desolate housing estates, the continuation of racist violence in many areas, and the prevalence of racism in the police forces. The continuing strength of racism in the UK had been highlighted by the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993. The apparent unwillingness of the police to investigate this death properly had resulted in a long campaign for justice by his family and its supporters. One of the first acts of the new Labour Home Secretary, Jack Straw, in 1997 was to set up a public enquiry into the case. The Macpherson Report, published in 1999, revealed severe and persistent institutional racism in the police forces, and showed that this was linked to shortcomings in many other areas including education and social policy. This became a key factor in Labour’s thinking about racism (Solomos 2003: 91). The 2000 Race Relations (Amendment) Act (see above) was the key measure designed to reform the police service and other public institutions. However, the parallel work of the Cabinet Office Unit of Social Exclusion was also important in seeking to identify and combat causes of exclusion. The racism, social exclusion, and hopelessness prevailing in many depressed areas were vividly demonstrated in the summer of 2001. The riots in deindustrialized northern towns with large minorities of Asian origin like Oldham, Burnley, Bradford, Leeds, and Blackburn showed that social equality was still a distant dream for many members of ethnic minorities. These disturbances were also marked by the high-profile involvement of extreme-right groups like the British National Party, which gained surprising voter support in the June 2001 general election as a result. The situation was further exacerbated by the events of 11 September 2001 and the ensuing ‘war on terrorism’. Alleged links between al-Qaeda and radical Islamist groups based in the UK led many people to question the loyalty of British Muslims. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq caused severe tensions, especially when it seemed that some young British Muslims of Asian immigrant background were being recruited as fighters. The government was at pains to stress that most Muslims saw themselves as British and were opposed to religious bigotry and violence. However, public debates on ‘British national identity’—already stimulated through the publication of the Parekh Report on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain (Parekh 2000b)—became ever more heated. Right-wing critics of multiculturalism argued that acceptance of cultural difference led to separatism, and that there was a need to reassert ‘core cultural values’ and Britishness. This meant insisting on the use of the English language and limiting the use of ethnic cultural and religious symbols in public. Left-wing critics argued that multiculturalism was doing little to achieve social and economic equality, and that integration into education and the labour markets were more important than acceptance of cultural difference. ‘Social cohesion’ became the new keyword in debates on ethnicity and race. Although never clearly defined, social cohesion seemed to imply


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replacing multiculturalism with an integration model designed to achieve both greater cultural homogeneity and socio-economic integration. David Blunkett (Home Secretary 2001–4) introduced proposals for citizenship tests for people seeking naturalization, as well as an emphasis on measures to improve integration in various areas of society. Blunkett was influenced by the ideas of US theorist Robert Putnam on social capital and social trust, and believed that ethnic diversity had the potential to undermine these. At the time of writing, it not clear what policies are envisaged to improve social cohesion, but the government appears to be looking at a mixture of measures to combat discrimination, improve civics education, and develop ‘British identity’ among minorities. By 2004, immigration, asylum, and racism seemed more intractable issues than ever for British society—and especially for Labour. To understand such difficulties, it is necessary to analyse the way in which these issues are linked to the UK’s changing political economy and welfare system.

From ‘Redundancy’ . . . In the UK, as in most other parts of north-western Europe, research on social exclusion of migrants and ethnic minorities, has—when it has looked at labour market issues at all—mostly focused on unemployment and welfare dependency. The consequences of processes of economic restructuring on employment were more austere than anywhere else in Europe, bestowing on the UK the honour of having climbed to the top of the EU’s poverty league (Cross 1993b and Figure 7.1). This triggered a lively ‘underclass’ debate among academics (Buck 1996; Cross 1987a, 1987b; Cross and Waldinger 1999; Lister 1990; Macnicol 1998; Morris 1996) that included frequent references to the US underclass debate, in particular to the perspectives on the urban ghetto poor propounded by William Julius Wilson and other left-liberal US researchers (see Chapter 4). The UK has, John Macnicol (1998: 161) argues, experienced a ‘widening social polarisation and income inequality on a scale unprecedented in recent history’.36 In spite of a spectacular growth in social inequality, there is no evidence of income polarization to the extent found in the US (Hamnett 2002). This does not preclude, Nick Buck (1996) maintains, convincing evidence of the long-term formation of what could be called an ‘underclass’ in the UK. But this differs from its US counterpart, he argues, as it is mainly composed of poor people permanently excluded from the labour market, while the US situation is characterized by a mix of unemployment, occasional work, and 36

Between 1979 and 1993 the poorest decile group in the population experienced a fall in its real income of 18 per cent, whereas the richest decile experienced a 61 per cent rise (Macnicol 1998; see also Vogel 2003a: 123).

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unstable marginal employment. Although he notes ethnic differences in redundancy, he also stresses the importance of social class, household composition, and residential location rather than race as a precondition for ‘very-long term withdrawal’ from the labour market in the UK. There is hardly anything like the locally confined and isolated US racial ghetto. Poverty and exclusion are more equally distributed among black and white in the same bypassed urban regions. He warns against any easy translation of ‘definitions of marginality and exclusion from one society to another’ (Buck 1996: 297). A similar perspective has been advanced by Scott Lash (1994), who insists on the prevalent class-rather than race-related character of social exclusion in the UK. This argument appears disputable, however, in the light of data on the racial/ethnic distribution of unemployment in the UK since the onset of the so-called third industrial revolution and post-Fordist restructuring in the 1970s. In addition, there is evidence of the increasing presence of new racialized categories of the working poor in the UK, an issue that we return to later. Malcolm Cross (1987a) argued that the unemployment consequences of the crisis of the 1980s for migrants and minorities were connected with substantial discrimination, which affected ethnic minority youth most severely. The impact was concentrated in certain cities and regions. The state of race relations in a city like Liverpool, with long-term settlement of certain ethnic minority groups, demonstrates that ‘after more than a century of settlement previously migrant people are still marginal and excluded’. And ‘they are’, Cross (1998a) argues, ‘still the objects of discrimination and hostility’. Adverse social conditions and racialized divisions in extended inner-city areas were exacerbated by changes in British policies of urban regeneration, which became increasingly evident during the 1980s and 1990s. As programmes for urban renewal, or gentrification, were becoming increasingly based on government ‘partnerships’ with the private sector, and market considerations were given increasing sway, they appear to have been concentrated less and less on projects promoting the social inclusion of ethnic minorities in socially exposed inner-city areas (Cross 1998b; Thomas 1999). In the early 1990s, an analysis by David Owen and Anne Green (1992) confirmed that rates of employment and unemployment varied greatly between regions. The north and north-west represent a kind of British ‘rust-belt’ marked by a sudden downturn of the old core manufacturing industries with severe consequences for ethnic minorities like Afro-Caribbeans and Pakistanis, who used to be employed in these industries. The growth of the new service economy has taken place mainly in the south and the east. An exhaustive longitudinal analysis of the British Labour Force Survey data (Blackaby et al. 1999) demonstrates that ethnic/racial inequality cannot simply be dismissed as a ‘characteristics problem’ such as poor qualifications or regional distribution. Discrimination remains an important factor for social exclusion, despite the anti-discrimination policies laid down in successive race relations Acts since 1965.


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The situation of young ethnic minority people was documented by an authoritative study of educational attainment and labour market inclusion by David Drew (1995). He found no empirical evidence for underachievement among ethnic minority youth who invested heavily in educational qualifications. However, these qualifications often did not receive adequate recognition in the British labour market. Young people of African-Caribbean and Asian background continued to be considerably more likely to be unemployed and to get part-time and casual jobs than white youth. Controlling for a wide range of factors, Drew concluded that racial discrimination continued to be a major factor in the British labour market and, moreover, that past improvements might be jeopardized by incremental institutional inadequacy. More recent findings show a sharp differentiation in educational achievement by ethnic group and gender. In 1999, 66 per cent of Indian girls achieved five or more General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) passes at grades A to C. This was better than white girls at 55 per cent. Indian boys did best among males at 54 per cent, compared with 45 per cent for white boys. The results were worst for Pakistani and Bangladeshi girls (37 per cent), black

White

10.9

4.7

Mixed

10.7

12.4

Indian

18.4

7.3

Pakistani

24.9

16.1

36.9

Bangladeshi

21.3

Other Asianc

10.7 23.7

Black Caribbean

11.6

Black African

24.1

14.1

16–24 All working age

c

Black Other

16.4

Chinesec

6.0

Other

23.4

10.0 0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

FIG. 5.2. Unemployment rates, UK:a by ethnic group and age,b 2001–2, per cent a

Unemployment based on the ILO definition as a percentage of all economically active. Males up to the age of 64, females up to the age of 59. c 16–24-year-olds, sample size too small for reliable estimates. b

Source: Annual Local Area Labour Force Survey, Office for National Statistics (2004c).

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boys (31 per cent), and Pakistani and Bangladeshi boys (22 per cent) (Office for National Statistics 2002: 12). Ethnic inequality became a long-term feature of the labour market (Figure 5.2). In 2001, Bangladeshi women had the highest unemployment rate at 24 per cent—six times that of white women. Indian women had an unemployment rate of 7 per cent, while other ethnic groups ranged from 9 to 16 per cent. Bangladeshi men had a 20 per cent unemployment rate, four times that of white men (5 per cent). Indian men had only slightly higher unemployment than white men—7 per cent. All other ethnic minority groups—both men and women—had unemployment rates two to three times higher than whites. Again, young people under twenty-five years of age were far more likely to be out of work. The rate for young Bangladeshi men was 40 per cent, compared with 12 per cent of young white men. Other minority group young men had unemployment rates of 25–31 per cent. The picture for young minority women was similar, with unemployment rates considerably higher than for whites (Office for National Statistics 2002). A similar picture of ethnic differentiation can be found in labour force participation. In 1999–2000, 85 per cent of white men were economically active, compared with 77 per cent for all minority groups. For women, the difference was even greater, with 74 per cent of white working-age women economically active, compared with 56 per cent of all minority women. This can reflect a number of factors, including departure from the labour force due to lack of job opportunities. Cultural and religious factors cause women of some origins to have a lower propensity to work outside the home: Bangladeshi and Pakistani women have by far the lowest participation rates. Differences in participation rates increase with age: for instance, the economic activity rate for Pakistani and Bangladeshi men aged forty-five to sixty-four was 62 per cent and 40 per cent respectively, compared with 78 per cent for white men in this age group (Owen and Green 2000). This could be due to decline in the older-type industries that employed these immigrants on first arrival, as well as health problems arising from manual work. The general picture at the beginning of the new century was of a labour force stratified by ethnicity and gender and with a high degree of youth unemployment. Generally, people of Indian, Chinese, or Irish background tend to have employment situations as good as, or sometimes better than, the average for white British. By contrast, other groups are worse off, with a descending hierarchy on most indicators of black African, black Caribbean, Pakistani, and—at the very bottom—Bangladeshis (Office for National Statistics 2004a). Gender distinctions vary: young women of black African and black Caribbean ethnicity seem to perform better in both education and employment than men of these groups, while the opposite appears to be the case for Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. Again, it is important to note the way in which UK statistics reflect the prevailing definition of inequality as an issue of race: all the main data-sets, including the Census and the Labour Force Survey, present informa-


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tion aggregated on the basis of racial categories rather than nationality or place of birth. This makes it difficult to say anything about the situation of newer migrant groups, such as central and eastern Europeans, Africans (like Somalis), or Asians (like Afghans or Sri Lankans).

To Casualization Members of ethnic minority groups are far more likely to be living in poverty than the majority white population. An official study on ‘low-income households’37 in 2000–1 found that 21 per cent of the white population were living in low-income households (after housing costs). The proportion of Pakistani and Bangladeshi households with low income was 68 per cent, followed by 49 per cent of black Non-Caribbean households. The categories Indian, black Caribbean, and Other were all more likely to have low incomes than whites (Office for National Statistics 2002: 11). For those putting their trust in ‘a changing climate of opinion, as reflected in legislation’, it was a disappointment that ‘after nearly two decades of political concern, the minorities continued to be in low status, low paid work, and . . . disproportionately out of work’ (Modood 1998: 108 ). From 1986 unemployment started to decrease substantially among the population in general and also among ethnic minorities. However, this decrease in unemployment was largely the result of an increased supply of jobs connected with a general economic upturn, combined with a looming ‘demographic crisis’, meaning that the number of young people available for the labour market had decreased substantially (Brown 1995: 591ff.). The kind of casual and low-paid jobs that used to be occupied by young and inexperienced youth were now progressively taken over by ethnic minorities. Hence, ethnic minorities have benefited in terms of ‘numbers of jobs, but not necessarily in the quality of jobs’. Sassen’s comparison (1991) of New York and London, together with information from various other studies on the UK, indicates how this is more than a matter of economic cycles and demographic trends, but connected with a general shift in welfare and production regimes. While in the late 1980s researchers spoke of a ‘collapsing’ UK labour market, the emphasis of the 1990s was on the increasing differentiation and segmentation of a postFordist (Kenneth 1994) or post-industrial labour market, resulting in the generation of a whole range of new categories of devalued, precarious, and ‘flexible’ jobs. There has indeed been a vast increase in part-time, casual, and sweated work, tapping labour reserves among women and ethnic minorities. But the effects 37 A low-income household is defined as having less than 60 per cent of the median equivalent disposable income. Figures are given either ‘before housing costs’ or ‘after housing costs’. The latter are quoted here. The research was carried out by the Department of Work and Pensions.

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spill over into deteriorating wages and working conditions even for betterorganized workers. Often jobs are redefined as ‘self-employed’ and workers as ‘subcontractors’, which exempts the employer from paying taxes and social costs. Casualized jobs are typical for cleaning, catering, and other service occupations, but also for the construction and textile industries. The textile and clothing industry has been thoroughly restructured. The big firms no longer engage directly in production, but subcontract it to international networks or with domestic producers in sectors of the labour market with a high degree of informality and scant regulation of working conditions. Through outsourcing to subcontractors, they strive for a maximum of flexibility. The subcontracting firms make use of the cheapest labour in areas where women from ethnic minorities are concentrated, from Bangladesh, Pakistan, or Cyprus, and a high proportion of them are engaged in home work (Phizacklea 1990). The frequent celebration of the rise of ‘ethnic entrepreneurship’ needs to be seen in the context of such trends. One category of highly gendered and racialized labour, which expanded remarkably in the period of income polarization during the 1990s, is that of female domestic workers engaged as nannies, all-round house servants, and cleaners/housekeepers (Anderson 2000; Cox 2000). This growing sector is highly variable, criss-crossed by a hierarchy of work tasks, of formal and informal modes of employment, and of differentially treated racialized segments (classified and sorted according to countries and regions of origin) with variable social statuses. These racialized hierarchies are generated and reproduced through the formal practices of recruitment agencies, which sort workers into different slots in the proliferating market for domestic labour according to stereotyped images of ‘culture’ or ‘ethnic’ disposition. But they are also increasingly formed through practices of covert agencies and social networks embedded in a growing underground economy fed by undocumented immigration from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as well as from ¨ vell 2002). Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (Jordan and Du The strong trend towards casualization has been exacerbated through the deregulation and privatization of public services, especially through the introduction of subcontracting. Casualization has also extended into producers’ services like architecture, banking, and engineering, leading to income polarization within the advanced service sector. Here, jobs defined as ‘part-time’ have proliferated, which facilitates the exploitation of a growing pool of female labour in a society with a shortage of public childcare facilities. As unorganized female part-time labour replaces unionized male full-time labour, wages decrease in a range of service jobs. The most important benefit for employers is the exemption from paying national insurance contributions. Here, regulations in the UK are particularly permissive; as in the US, British governments have systematically promoted legislation which weakens the position of part-time workers and stimulates part-time employment. At the same time, the standard of industrial welfare has decreased consistently.


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Workfare, the Underclass, and Prisons as Social Policy In a comparative study of what he calls the ‘illiberal social policy’ of liberal regimes in the US and the UK, Desmond King (1999) demonstrates how an increasing emphasis on the obligations, as opposed to the rights, of citizenship during the 1980s led to the exclusion of poor population groups from the compact of citizenship during the 1990s. Social exclusion has, under New Labour, come to be seen as a problem of the underclass and defined, in line with US neo-conservative discourse, as a behavioural and moral issue. Like in the US, morally induced work enforcement of a disciplinary character deprives the poor of their ability and civil right to defend their entitlement to an acceptable level of welfare by withholding their labour from the market’s sub-standard jobs. The poor have been ‘squeezed by unemployment, low pay and casualisation on the one hand, and an increasingly parsimonious and brutalising social-security system on the other’ (Jones and Novak 1999: 71). The welfare state has been ‘fundamentally recast and its ‘‘caring’’ functions have been increasingly superseded by its regulatory and surveillance functions’. Stripping off any social democratic rhetoric, they argue that New Labour’s message has become that: If the most vulnerable and exposed were to avoid a future of impoverishment and join the winners, it was their duty to become more flexible, to get on their bikes in search of new opportunities, to get trained, not to be bothered about wages, or health and safety, for once in work the job escalator would take them upwards. ( Jones and Novak 1999: 71)

Workfare-type policies were first introduced in the UK on a small scale by the Conservative government as ‘Project Work’, and then turned into a general system after 1997 by the Labour government under the labels ‘Jobseekers Allowance’ and then the ‘New Deal’. The collective experience and the aspect of collective solidarity and resistance embodied in the the old unemployment benefit system has been replaced by ‘individual jobseekers contracts’, which oblige the unemployed, the disabled, and the single parents to seek and accept work of any type. The main aim of such measures has been to push the unemployed into any job available, often at the minimum wage. New Labour’s welfare-to-work reform programme largely follows the US model as instituted under the Clinton administration after 1996 (Jones and Novak 1999). It may conceivably end up with similar consequences, paving the way for the transformation of poor ‘welfare clients’ into a populous category among the ‘working poor’, permanently trapped in enforced lowstatus, deregulated and under-remunerated work (see Myles 1996). Yet, Jones and Novak argue, the British economy does not have the same capacity as the American to absorb millions of low-wage and casual workers, and only in the face of yet further inequality and massive lowering of wages could the unemployed in the UK be expected to accept the kind of short-term and low-paid

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jobs on offer in the programmes. They therefore see the welfare-to-work policy as being caught in a ‘pincer’ between ‘claimants who see welfare to work as punishment, and a labour market in which there is little interest in employing the long-term unemployed, except in the most exploitative of situations’ (Jones and Novak 1999). Another related area where the UK follows a trajectory which is becoming similar to the American is in the criminalization of the poor or, phrased in another vein, in substituting redemption through social work with disciplining through the criminal system. In England and Wales, the prison population was over 71,000 in mid-2002, an increase of over 25,000 since 1990, and the highest figure ever recorded (Office for National Statistics 2004b). Ethnic minorities made up about 16 per cent of British nationals in prison—nearly twice their share in the total population. The rate of imprisonment in England and Wales in 1998 was 125 per 100,000 population, the second highest in the EU after Portugal, but still only one-fifth the US rate of 645 per 100,000 (Walmsley 1999). There is a clear connection between poverty, blackness, and imprisonment, with African-Caribbeans being seven times more likely to be imprisoned than white people; especially vulnerable are black men, many of them being ‘caught in a pincer of poverty leading to crime in order to survive and deep-rooted racism which condemns them to being seen as irredeemable’ (Jones and Novak 1999: 205).

Ethnic Entrepreneurship: Window of Opportunity or Occupational Ghetto? A conspicuous trend, running parallel to the upsurge of unemployment among immigrants and ethnic minorities in all of the older north-western European immigration countries, is the proliferation of self-employment and so-called small ethnic businesses. But both theoretical arguments and empirical evidence make it necessary to draw distinctions between the trajectories in different types of welfare regimes. Kloosterman (1999) contrasts the ‘neoAmerican’ model with what he (following Albert 1991) calls the European continental ‘Rhineland model’ of the highly regulated welfare state (compare Mingione and Qassoli 2000). This category collapses Esping Andersen’s conservative-corporatist and social democratic regimes into one. ‘Supply’ as well as ‘demand’ factors in the neo-American model favour a particularly intensive development of self-employment and small ethnic business (Kloosterman 1999: 98–99). Deregulation of the labour market and the welfare system produces a large pool of unemployed for whom subsistence on social welfare transfers is not a viable alternative (Mingione and Qassoli 2000: 31). As the threshold of entry into low-wage jobs is generally low, the mobility into higher job levels may often be blocked, in particular for migrants and ethnic minorities without adequate networks and social capital. For these, self-


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employment and small business will be an attractive alternative. At the same time, deregulation provides a supply of cheap labour for immigrant small business, which allows not only survival but also the expansion of successful ethnic businesses within particular niches. On the demand side, income polarization and the expansion of a high-wage professional middle class provide an expansive market for personal and domestic services. In the US, this kind of development has, for decades, been fuelled by large-scale immigration of labour from low-income countries in Latin America and Asia. Extended practices of casualization and informalization of the economy and the labour market, effected through outsourcing and sub-contracting, act to intensify this kind of development and to favour the activation of the ‘social capital’ and special entrepreneurial potentials of certain ethnic communities. In the Rhineland model, on the other hand, a high degree of state regulation and welfare protection, along with high minimum wages, limit both the motivation for self-employment and the availability of a cheap labour force. Here self-employment and ethnic entrepreneurship, Kloosterman and Rath (2001: 101ff.) argue, will be more restrained and mainly limited to niches left over by the majority population—small shops and handicrafts, repair work, restaurants, and so on—where it is possible to circumvent regulations by ‘cutting corners’ and resorting to informal practices. There is persuasive evidence for a neo-American small business trajectory in the UK. A marked effect of deregulation has been the provision of a range of new opportunities and niches for small ethnic business. It has resulted in the formation of extended ethnic business networks during the 1980s and 1990s, operating in personal and producer services and in manufacturing. This development belongs to the favourite themes of recent studies on ethnic relations in the UK when it comes to issues of the economy and the labour market (Waldinger, Aldrich and Ward 1990). The growth in numbers of self-employed and ethnic employers is impressive (Fig. 5.3). The groups most likely to be self-employed are Pakistanis (23 per cent) and Chinese (18 per cent), compared with 12 per cent of white British (Office for National Statistics 2004a). However, self-employment does not represent high status for these groups, but an attempt to escape a cycle of low-paid insecure jobs and unemployment. Income figures show that Pakistanis and Bangladeshis (the poorest groups in the UK, as we have already seen) are the least likely to obtain their income from employment: wages made up only a third of their household income in 2000–1, while a third came from self-employment and nearly a fifth from social security benefits (Office for National Statistics 2002: 10). The strong networks of social, religious, economic, and family ties within the Asian communities, Brown notes (1995: 592ff.), certainly lend many of the self-employed the ability to circumvent the impediments that face minority workers in the ordinary labour market. Yet, he argues, scrutinizing British surveys and statistics, that self-employment contributes systematically to a

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Britain’s ‘Neo-American’ Trajectory Pakistani

21.8 19.1

Chinese Other Asian

13.6

Indian

12.5

Bangladeshi

12.3

White

11.0

Mixed

9.4 7.1

Black Caribbean Black African

6.6 12.4

Other 0

5

FIG. 5.3. Self-employment, UK a b

10 a,b

15

20

25

by ethnic group 2001–2

Percentage of all in employment who were self-employed. See Appendix, Part 4: Annual Local Area Labour Force Survey.

Source: Annual Local Area Labour Force Survey, Office for National Statistics (2004c).

distorted and inflated impression of the degree of social mobility and racial equality in the UK as a whole: . . . in the available statistics they are included with employees and are classed in the top occupational categories; therefore, the move in to self-employment raises the proportion of Asians in ‘top jobs’ by definition and might be misinterpreted as evidence of better treatment of Asians in society at large. (Brown 1995: 592)

Self-employment rates can be linked to occupational data from the 2000–1 annual Local Area Labour Force survey: one in six Pakistanis in employment was a cab driver or chauffeur, compared with one in 100 white British men. Two in five Bangladeshi men were either cooks or waiters, compared with one in 100 white British men. One in ten black African and white Irish women in employment were nurses, compared with three in 100 white British women. By contrast Indians, Chinese, white Irish, and other non-British white groups had rates of professional employment of 17–20 per cent, compared with 11 per cent for white British. Five per cent of Indian men were working as doctors— twelve times the rate for white British (Office for National Statistics 2004a). Altogether, such figures show a complex pattern of ethnic and gender segmentation, with some ethnic minority groups doing quite well while others are clearly disadvantaged and impoverished.


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Such trends have gone hand in hand with a marked informalization and the development of a ‘niche’ and ‘network’ economy through practices of downsizing, outsourcing, and sub-contracting by large firms and public sector enterprises (Mitter 1986; Ram, Jerrard, and Husband 2002). It is a development which appears to confirm the idea that a (neo-)liberal regime offers advantages for certain migrant and ethnic minority groups which have the capacity to modify the effects of discrimination and structural disadvantage in the labour market by recourse to the closely knit social networks and solidarity of their bounded communities (Mingione and Qassoli 2000: 31). According to some observers, the British experience indicates that when new (Asian) business communities reach a critical mass they can transform a ‘marginal’ economic existence ‘into an asset rather than a disadvantage’ as ‘the excluded have beaten an exclusive path to progress’ (e.g. Brown 1995: 592). This is the focus of several British studies, which see the business achievements of ethnic entrepreneurs as grounded in specific cultural and social potentials of ethnic community networks. Pnina Werbner (1999) argues that, even though many self-employed and small business owners seem to be in a marginalized state at present, there is a long-term perspective of success for ethnic entrepreneurs, based on the support of their ethnic communities, unique cultural resources, and social (network) capital. Ethnic entrepreneurs may thus benefit from post-Fordist changes at the same time as they contribute substantially to them. ˚ lund (2000: 8) There is, however, good reason for scepticism, Aleksandra A argues, commenting on Werbner and highlighting the factors of discrimination and structural constraints: With all due respect to the dimension of time, what still gets lost in the context is the aspect of compulsion regarding starting your own business, a compulsion that doesn’t always show when one meets the person in his ‘shop full of dreams’38 . . . where the dreams can be about becoming a clerk, physician, or computer engineer and not just that which one is forced to become, namely self-employed.

Certainly, there are a fair number of ‘success stories’ including a number of millionaire ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’ who have become media personalities (Ram and Jones 1998b: 7). British-Asian ethnic entrepreneurs have established themselves within a range of occupational niches, and not only within marginal sectors. However, as Shaila Srinivasan (1992: 61) points out in summarizing a case study of Oxford small-business owners: [W]hile status within the society at large may not be significantly improved, the ‘hosts’ frame of reference is not the important one for the Asians . . . [as] . . . within their own communities, business entry and financial prosperity contribute to significant status enhancement.

38

Referring to a book title (Collins et al. 1995).

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Yet overall studies of ethnic entrepreneurs in the UK (Ram and Jones 1998a: 61 62; see also Ram, Jerrard and Husband 2002) bring to light that hard work and diligence . . . are characteristic of the harshly competitive economic sectors that such minority groups trade in rather than a culturally specific work ethic . . . and when the capacity of family labour to constrain business development, and the often unequal nature of gender relations is highlighted, the image of the cosy, consensus oriented ethnic minority firm becomes even more illusory.

‘Ethnic entrepreneurship’ is obviously diverse in a society like the UK. On the one hand, conspicuously affirmative policies towards ‘small ethnic business’ stimulate entrepreneurial breakthroughs over an increasing range of economic segments (Ram and Jones 1998b), together with the gradual emergence of new Asian and ‘black’ petty bourgeoisies (Small 1994; Srinivasan 1992). But on the other hand, ‘racialized barriers’ (Small 1994) are consolidated and they take new forms as ‘ethnic business’ and self-employment often offer racialized ethnic minority groups employment in informal, marginalized, and highly competitive niches of a deregulated labour market within the ‘new economy’. This is all ‘embedded’ in an increasingly ‘neo-American’ welfare regime, where paths of escape from the most downgraded ‘occupational ghettoes’ (Feuchtwang 1982), through retreat from the labour market into ‘welfare’, have become increasingly narrow. The complexity of the issue highlights the importance of detailed comparative case studies that mirror the ethnic and economic multiplicity of entrepreneurship and self-employment (Ram and Jones 1998a: 62). But this should not make us forget to study ethnic small business in the perspective of the current overall processes of globalization and restructuring of economies and labour markets. This implies examination of new forms of exclusion marked by complex mergers of ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’, and ‘class’. Rather than continuing to fix our attention one-sidedly on the degree of success of ‘entrepreneurs’, it is important to devote more attention to workers employed by these entrepreneurs and to the structural-institutional ‘embeddedness’ of the poor labour relations and working conditions often prevailing in ‘ethnic business’ and among self-employed.

The UK (Neo)-Liberal Dilemma of Race and Class As noted earlier, the marked neoliberal or ‘neo-American’ trajectory of the UK’s post-Fordist policies of restructuring is unique among European welfare states. This can be seen as the return of a market-oriented and individualist intellectual tradition which had been interrupted in post-war UK by Keynesian economic policies and the welfare state expansion influenced by the thinking of Beveridge and Marshall (see e.g. the analysis by Rustin and Rix 1996).


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A specifically British merger of liberal and social democratic regimes was abruptly broken by a deep crisis of governability in the 1970s and the subsequent Conservative neoliberal resurrection (Rustin and Rix 1996). ‘New Labour’ followed suit (Levitas 1998) with its renewed stress on the basic liberal dogma that there is ‘no proper reason for altering the stratification outcomes produced in the marketplace . . . ’ as they are just because they mirror ‘effort, motivation, adeptness, and self-reliance’ (Esping-Andersen 1990: 62). The liberal resurrection triggered a schism between ‘rights of citizenship’ and ‘primacy of the market’—a constant source of ambivalence in British social policy (see e.g. Capet 1998). As succinctly phrased by Esping-Andersen (1990: 62), ‘liberalism’s universalist ideals’ have always been ‘contradicted by the dualism and social stigma it promoted in practice’. This appears to be as true as ever. But class polarization and stigma are currently enmeshed with dimensions of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ which are more complex than ever. The UK has been rather more successful than other European countries in enforcing a neoliberal model of social policy. But, due to the historical weight of an economy based on outdated manufacturing plants and geared to an imperial model of operation, the UK has experienced problems in erecting a successful post-Fordist model of capital accumulation (see e.g. Pierson 1994). Heavy-handed industrial restructuring generated a large class of marginal workers, which includes ethnic minorities, but many whites as well (see Lash 1994). As long as economic expansion remained relatively limited, the severity of the social crisis, in conjunction with the political defeat of the labour unions and an increasingly restrictive social welfare system, secured a cheap, docile, and largely sufficient reserve army of labour at the disposal of employers. Under these circumstances, strict policies of migration control were comparatively effective until recently. Since the late 1990s, however, rapid economic growth, the high value of sterling, and the growth of the informal sector have begun to attract large numbers of immigrant workers, both skilled and unskilled, legal and undocumented. This is still not on the same scale as the continuous immigration that filled tens of millions of new low-wage deregulated jobs in the US during the last three decades of the twentieth century. Similarly, there is no real equivalent of the US hyperghetto in the UK. Welfare provisions are, after all, still less restrictive, and the racialized ethnic minority populations are relatively smaller. The UK may be seen as a special case in Europe, given that its historical institutional framework regulating the relationships between production, labour, and welfare has facilitated the introduction of neoliberal deregulation more readily than the frameworks of other EU member states. The result has been marked income polarization and persistent poverty among certain population groups in urban areas. Although poverty is less concentrated within racial and ethic minorities than in the US, patterns

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of racialization and emerging ethnic divisions of labour bear an obvious affinity. The British liberal model also includes quite illiberal ways of dealing with unemployment, welfare dependency, and social and (in particular) racial-ethnic disadvantage. The reaction to such phenomena, and to the resulting urban unrest and delinquency, has been rigid disciplinary workfare programmes and criminalization on the zero-tolerance principle. The UK may not be able to compete with the US in the making of a prisonindustrial complex, but it has the dubious distinction of being the European leader in this field. Another legacy of the Thatcher government’s polices of economic deregulation and disciplining the labour movement is that the UK is also the EU leader in ‘casualization’ of labour. The small and medium business sector has grown impressively, spreading across a wide range of sectors and activities. The other side of the coin is a large informal labour market for jobs in personal services, sweatshop production, and other activities with lamentable pay and working conditions. Such work is done by those who lack the skills, market power, or legal status to enter the formal sector: youth—both white and black—from depressed areas with inadequate educational facilities; racialized ethnic minorities; women returning to the workforce following child-raising; and new immigrants lacking documents and local networks. Overall, British multiculturalism, with its emphasis on creating good race relations through anti-racist legislation and government action, seems to have had ambivalent results. Certainly there has been upward mobility for many, and blackness and diversity have taken on positive connotations, especially in some sectors of the media and arts. Yet the approach has fallen far short of its aims of eliminating racial discrimination and achieving social equality across ethnic and racial boundaries. The election of the Blair Labour government in 1997 has done little to bring about change. Today, the UK has the best-paid senior executives and the lowest-paid unskilled workers in Western Europe. It also has possibly the worst health services and the most children living in poverty. In a situation of growing inequality and social exclusion, it is the ethnic minorities who have fared worst, leading to a divided society. The tensions are constantly manifested in media hysteria about immigration and asylum and in the resilience of institutional racism, despite four decades of anti-discrimination legislation. Occasionally they become more dramatic, as in the riots of 2001 or the immigration scandals of 2004. Since there is growing pressure to encourage immigration in order to make up for deficiencies in UK education and training, it is necessary to ask whether current approaches to immigrant settlement and ethnic diversity will meet the challenges ahead. The British example shows clearly that possession of formal citizenship is not in itself enough to prevent social exclusion and conflict involving minorities. The current trend towards abandoning the principles of multiculturalism and replacing them with vague notions of ‘Britishness’ and ‘social cohesion’ is not likely to bring much improvement.

SIX

Germany: Immigration and Social Exclusion in a Declining Welfare State Europe’s post-war migration history, the Federal Republic of Germany39 is recorded as the country with the most highly organized ‘guest worker’ (or temporary labour) system, through which millions of migrant workers were recruited from southern Europe and Turkey between 1955 and 1973 (Castles and Kosack 1973). According to official policies, they were never meant to settle, and restrictive naturalization rules made it very hard for them to ever become citizens. However, after labour recruitment was suspended in 1973, most of these migrant workers stayed on, and the ensuing family reunion led to the immigrant population becoming stabilized and demographically normalized (Castles, Booth, and Wallace 1984). Following the end of the Cold War and German reunification, large new inflows developed in the 1990s, including ‘ethnic Germans’ from the east, war refugees from former Yugoslavia, asylum seekers from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, contract workers mainly from Eastern Europe, highly skilled workers, and undocumented workers. By 2001, Germany had 7.3 million foreign residents, nearly 9 per cent of the total population. The largest group were the nearly 2 million Turks (BBA 2002; Castles and Miller 2003: ch. 9; Martin 2004). If we add the 1 million immigrants who became naturalized in the 1990s and about 2.6 million ‘ethnic Germans’ who had migrated from Russia and Eastern Europe from the late 1980s on, we get an idea of the new diversity of Germany’s

I

N

39

The Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) refers to the western parts of the divided nation from 1948 to 1990, then, following reunification, to the whole of Germany. For brevity we mostly use the term Germany, but refer specifically to the FRG where confusion with the eastern part, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), needs to be avoided. Even today, many economic and social statistics are given separately for the western part (‘West Germany’ or ‘the old Federal states’) and the eastern part (‘East Germany’ or ‘the new Federal states’).

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Germany: Immigration and Social Exclusion

population.40 As a result of these post-1973 developments, Germany is also cited by migration scholars as proof that large-scale guest-worker systems cannot be sustained in a modern democratic state. As Mark Miller wrote in 1981: Democratic values and principles as expressed in a society’s laws and institutions are universalistic. . . . The restricted legal and socio-economic status of foreign workers and their electoral disenfranchisement intrinsically constitute affronts to democratic values, but the point that seems obvious on the basis of the European experience is that migrant workers cannot be denied nearly equal rights with citizens unless society at large is willing to forego some of its fundamental freedoms and rights. Administratively, it is virtually impossible to deny a significant category of society rights and opportunities enjoyed by the rest of the populace without creating a police state apparatus to administer foreign workers. Truly democratic societies are unwilling to do this. (Miller 1981: 198)

This analysis does seem to have proved accurate in the long run. In Germany, this is shown above all by two major reforms: the Citizenship Act of 1999, which abandoned the exclusionary principle of national belonging on the basis of descent in order to integrate immigrants into the society, and the Immigration Act of 2004, which is designed to introduce a modern system of migration management. However, it is important to realize that Germany’s road from the official dogma of not being ‘a country of immigration’ to a general recognition that it has, in fact, long been a country of immigration and will remain so has been long, painful, and conflictual. Moreover, this process is still far from complete: both laws are the result of bitter political battles, leading to compromises that removed important reform elements. Immigration, cultural diversity, and the position of minorities within society remain highly controversial. Parallel to these changes, which go to the heart of German identity, has been a long-drawn-out and equally painful crisis of the ‘social state’ model based on full employment, high wages, short working hours, and comprehensive social insurance, which had brought prosperity and social peace after a long period of class struggle, war, and tyranny. This chapter focuses on the interplay between Germany’s hard road to accepting that it has become a multicultural society and the simultaneous crisis of one of the strongest welfare states in Europe. First, we examine the specific characteristics of Germany’s welfare state, attempts at reforming it, and the resistance that these have met. Then we give a brief overview of debates on immigration, integration, national identity, and citizenship. We

40 German figures are based on nationality and give the ‘foreign resident population’, therefore ignoring naturalized persons and immigrants of German nationality who may be culturally very different. Birthplace figures (as used in the UK and the US) would show a higher immigrant population, but would of course leave out persons of foreign nationality born in Germany. In view of trends towards increased naturalization, it would be best to give both nationality and birthplace figures, as Sweden and the Netherlands now do.


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go on to look at new forms of labour migration in recent years, especially attempts to reintroduce guest-worker systems and undocumented employment. We review evidence on social exclusion of immigrants and their descendents, and link this to the effects of globalization, European integration, and the crisis of the welfare state. This forms the basis for a final discussion on the specifically German form of the European Dilemma.

The German Social State and Its Crisis The notion of the ‘social market economy’, as conceived by Christian Democrat (CDU) Finance Minister (and later Chancellor) Ludwig Erhard in the early years of the Federal Republic, has been crucial to Germany’s self-understanding for the last half-century. It encapsulates the idea of a modern and innovative market economy, with strong mechanisms of democratic participation, and a comprehensive social insurance system designed to protect the working population against social risks. The principle of ‘the social state’ (Sozialstaatlichkeit) is laid down in the Basic Law (Constitution) of 1949 (Claessens, ¨ nne, and Tschoepe 1985: 41), but the welfare state has, in fact, been a crucial Klo element of Germany’s political economy since the industrial expansion of the late nineteenth century. Welfare systems have had the function of incorporating labour into the capitalist economy, and have largely been introduced from above, rather than being the direct result of working class struggles. Germany thus belongs to Esping-Andersen’s ‘conservative’ or ‘conservativecorporatist’ type of European welfare regime (Esping-Andersen 1990). Here also belong several other welfare states in northern as well as southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece). Based on a succinct outline by Guiseppe Sciortino (2002: 5), their common structural characteristics can be summarized as follows: . provisions arranged mainly through compulsory social insurance programmes with a widespread presence of status segmentation and differential corporatist arrangements; . the centrality of families as key care-givers with ultimate responsibility for the welfare of their members, including legal responsibilities for their adult offspring and for their aged members; . a comparatively passive approach to employment management matched by strong labour market regulations targeted to protect the already employed, in most cases adult male breadwinners, and to guarantee a ‘family pay’ that allows the family and the household to take responsibility for most welfare functions; and . a prevalence of monetary transfers to households over service provision (whether via a publicly organized service system like in Scandinavia, or the market-like system in the liberal Anglo-Saxon model.

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The conservative-corporatist regime embodies a high degree of de-commodification and in this context, pressures for market liberal economic reforms and deregulation of the labour market create serious social and institutional disjunctions (Esping-Andersen 1999). The legitimacy of the national political elites depends upon the protection and maintenance of highly formalized privileged hierarchies embedded in elaborate welfare institutional arrangements. It is contingent, in particular, upon a conservation of a high level of income transfer to private households, through wages and generous workrelated pension schemes. The social cohesion, the ideological role, and central service functions of the family are dependent upon this. The central hub for the system is, traditionally, the male breadwinner model, according to which a salaried (habitually male) worker’s protected and secure employment guarantees an extended transfer of long-term benefits to the family. The system is strongly dependent on the family’s institutional stability and its reproductive and caretaking welfare function, including childcare and care for the elderly. This is traditionally premised on the housekeeping function of women. The regime is, concomitantly, characterized by a lack of public, and even most often privately organized, personal services outside the family. This creates serious tensions in families and in society as a whole, as women are progressively drawn into the labour market. Many observers stress the importance of the German welfare state model, both in shaping labour migration policies and in determining the forms of integration offered to immigrants. Bommes and Halfmann (1998) note that strong welfare states can tend to encourage governments to restrict immigration in order to limit privileges to nationals and so keep down costs. Geddes (2003: 90–1) emphasizes that the principle of work-related eligibility for social benefits was a powerful mechanism for the inclusion of foreign workers, despite the principle of temporary migration. Yet one should add that the male breadwinner model is exceedingly costly and presupposes that most welfare services are integrated and catered for within the household. When influential employers’ and other interest groups’ pressure for extending the range of low-wage and casualized jobs in particular sectors mounts, as it increasingly did throughout the 1980s and 1990s, even in Germany, then solutions are typically sought outside the orbit of the central institutions of the welfare state in the forms of employment and informal social relationships that are excluded from the central realms of the dominant regime. This was, in fact, part of the logic of the old guestworker system and, as we discuss below, the constant contemporary search for ways in which to renew it in more proficient institutional forms. In the same vein, we have seen a permanent tendency throughout Germany’s post-war immigration history to circumvent the high costs connected with the conservative-corporatist employment model within an extended parallel underground economy, excluded from the formal institutional system altogether. Certain categories of German employers today strengthen


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this tendency through strategies ranging from wage-cost reduction under conditions of stiff international competition to pressing for politically controversial neoliberal ‘deregulation’. Claus Offe (2000) argues that that the German welfare state can best be visualized as an ‘institutional architecture’ with four levels: 1. Protective regulation of the labour process. This refers to rules, going back to nineteenth-century Prussia, designed to protect workers and to regulate access to the labour process. Giving workers guarantees of employment and safety was thought to justify limiting the liberal right of freedom of contract. 2. Rules and measures designed to protect workers (and later also their dependents) outside work through social insurance (Sozialversicherung). These were first introduced by Bismarck in the 1880s. Social insurance provided support in case of loss of work income through illness, accident, disability, and old age. Later, health care and unemployment coverage were added. Bismarck counterbalanced this concession by restricting the right of association and proscribing the Social Democratic Party. 3. Collective wage bargaining. This system was introduced during and after the First World War and fully developed in the 1950s. It meant institutionalizing negotiations on wages and conditions between collective actors— industrial trade unions and employers’ federations—and giving their outcomes a mandatory character. The right to strike was restricted by requiring a 75 per cent majority of registered union members voting in a formal ballot at a set stage of the negotiations. This system of ‘social partnership’ guaranteed industrial peace, while giving considerable power to the institutionalized collective actors. 4. Macroeconomic policies designed to achieve full employment. This was the achievement of the Federal Republic from the early 1950s until the mid1970s. Earlier, under the Weimar Republic, this fourth level of the welfare state was absent. The economic and social insecurity of the Great Depression thus led to the collapse of democracy and the rise of Hitler. The proemployment policies of the early post-war period were based on this historical lesson, epitomized in Erhard’s ‘social market economy’. However, they were possible only because of a set of specific historical factors: the long post-war boom in the capitalist world, the global hunger for industrial products following a long period of stagnation and war, high US investment in Germany following the Marshall Plan, and the large labour reserves resulting from displacement of up to 11 million Germans from the lost eastern territories and then from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) (Kindleberger 1967). The result of this constellation was the German ‘economic miracle’ of the 1950s and 1960s, in which a war-ravaged economy was quickly rebuilt to

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become the industrial powerhouse of Europe. German growth was export-led, but quickly brought remarkable improvements for the population. By the 1970s, Germans were prosperous and confident, with high wages and salaries, excellent social security, and full employment. The social insurance principle required all able-bodied (men) to work, but guaranteed them replacement income at levels of up to 80 per cent of previous pay should they be unable to work through factors beyond their control, including (temporary) unemployment. This was a far cry from the Anglo-American system of residual welfare. Together with Germany’s comprehensive educational and vocational training systems, it was the basis for a high-productivity economy with high levels of social peace and consensus. However, an understanding of the four levels described by Offe makes it easy to understand the contingent nature of the German success story and the challenges it was to face once Germany’s competitive advantages in productivity and skills were eroded. Protective regulation of the labour process meant controlling labour supply to prevent both over- and under-supply. Once the post-war labour reserves had been absorbed, it was logical for the state to seek new sources by importing foreign labour from 1955 onwards. Equally logically, foreign workers were to be recruited in an organized way and their rights restricted so that they could be sent away again if no longer required. The ‘rotation principle’ of the guestworker system (the expectation that temporary workers would return home after a few years and be replaced by new recruits) seemed to ensure labour market flexibility. As already mentioned, this principle failed to work after 1973. As foreign workers stayed despite the recession, and family members and new workers continued to arrive, labour market regulation became more difficult. This problem was exacerbated by free movement of workers within the European Community and then by the mass immigration after German reunification. On the other hand, more recent debates on labour needs have gone full circle: awareness of the imminent decline of Germany’s active population has been a major factor driving debates on the need for a more open migration policy. The social insurance system is a very effective way of securing not only social integration but also political consensus in key policy areas. However, it is also extremely expensive, as it requires a ‘social wage’ that increases basic wages by between 25 and 50 per cent. With the opening of markets through the EU and World Trade Organization, this meant that German firms found it hard to remain competitive both domestically and internationally. From the 1970s, German industrialists started moving low-productivity sectors of their operations offshore, while German investors put their money into multinationals using low-wage production sites (Froebel, Henricks, and Kreye 1980). This was bound to hurt employment levels in Germany in the long run. Similarly, collective wage bargaining was an effective way of maintaining work discipline and productivity, but it had unforeseen results. One was to create a new class of ‘collective actors’ (known as die Verba¨nde) with strong


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power bases and sectional interests. These collective actors included not only the powerful industrial unions and employer federations but also the quasi-autonomous public organizations responsible for managing the social insurance system, social housing, health insurance, and so on. Important voluntary organizations like Caritas, the Red Cross, and the Protestant Diakonie, which had been given public functions and finance under the subsidiarity principle, also became influential. There have been public debates for many years on the erosion of the power of parliament and government through ‘the dominance of the organizations’ (Herrschaft der Verba¨nde) (Claes¨ nne, and Tschoepe 1985: 101–6). Combined with Germany’s federal sens, Klo structure, which gives major prerogatives to the states (La¨nder), this multi-sited power structure led to a politics of consensus which made it very difficult for German governments to achieve major reforms, however pressing (Green 2004; Offe 2000). Adaptation to new conditions is not excluded, but has become a long and complex process, usually resulting in compromises rather than radical change (as we can see with the recent changes in the migration field). Finally, full employment, as Offe (2000: 29) points out, is not just one element of the German welfare state, but the vital precondition for the functioning of the other elements. Without full employment, all the other elements—labour protection, social security, and autonomous collective bargaining—come under great strain. Put in simple financial terms, the generous social insurance benefits cannot be financed if there is long-term chronic unemployment. On the other hand, the high social wage costs resulting from the other elements of the model make chronic unemployment extremely likely under conditions of global competition. This is indeed what has happened in Germany. Unemployment rates have been at or above 10 per cent since the mid-1990s, meaning that over 4 million people are constantly out of work and have to be supported by the social security system. Some of this is due to de-industrialization in East Germany following the hasty reunification of 1990. Unemployment in the east exceeds 20 per cent, about twice the level in the west. But even in the territory of former West Germany (pre 1989 FRG) there have been around 2.5 million unemployed every year since 1994, with unemployment rates of 9–11 per cent. The rate for foreign workers has ranged from 16 per cent to 20 per cent, nearly double the general rate, as will be discussed below. The German welfare state continues to cushion individuals from the consequences of the economic malaise, but at the macroeconomic level it actually exacerbates and perpetuates the crisis by keeping wages and social benefits at levels that cannot be financed. ¨ der’s long and difficult attempts to reform Germany’s ecoChancellor Schro ¨ der staked the future nomic and social structures illustrate this dilemma. Schro of his government on achieving lower social wage costs and greater labour market flexibility while preserving core elements of the German economic and

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social model. He appointed Peter Hartz, personnel director of Volkswagen, to head a government commission to examine possible changes. The Hartz Commission report called for reduced benefits for the long-term unemployed and tougher means tests to force people back to work. Employers have taken this as a signal to try to force through enterprise agreements for increased working hours without wage increases by threatening to move jobs abroad. Such enterprise agreements have been resisted by the trade unions because they could undermine collective bargaining and union power. In 2004, opponents of the changes organized weekly demonstrations in hundreds of cities, on the model of the ‘Monday demonstrations’ which did much to bring down the government of the GDR in 1989 (The Guardian 2004; The Observer 2004). By the end of 2004, the protests were declining, but the prospects for reform and economic recovery remained uncertain. Not only is the crisis of the German welfare state caused partly by globalization, but also by the special German factors of the costs of reunification and the demographic decline in the working-age population. The welfare state (with its four interdependent levels) seems unsustainable in its present form, yet the political constellation of which it is a central part is highly resistant to change. The consequence could be a long-term decline in the German economy, which would threaten the country’s position as a major economic power. The current inability to meet EU fiscal stability goals is revealing. However, those who oppose change do so for good reasons too, because their living standards and social security are threatened. They are resisting a move to the Anglo-American model of growing income inequality and declining welfare. For many people, the promise of more jobs in the future is too vague to persuade them to accept major welfare cuts now.

The Death of a National Myth: From Ausla¨nderpolitik to Zuwanderungsgesetz Over the last half-century, Germany has experienced large-scale immigration of many different types, and has become one of Europe’s most ethnically diverse societies. Yet for many years, there was a consensus that ‘Germany is not a country of immigration’. This mantra was constantly repeated by politicians of all the main parties until as late as 1998, when the new Social Democratic and Green Coalition government started planning its Citizenship Act (which was to come into force in 2000). The claim not to be an immigration country in the face of the very large inflows of the last half-century seems absurd, yet it reflected the general view that Germany’s national identity and social cohesion would be threatened by permanent immigration. Germany therefore did not have an immigration policy, but rather a ‘foreigners policy’ (Ausla¨nderpolitik): a set of measures designed to regulate entry and to facilitate temporary integration of foreign residents and their children. It was clear to many observers by the late


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1970s that this approach was misguided, and likely to lead to severe social divisions.41 However, it was not until August 2004 that the German parliament finally passed its first Immigration Act (Zuwanderungsgesetz).42 Together, the Citizenship Act and the Immigration Act represent a fundamental shift in German politics that affects not only immigration and integration, but also notions of national identity and social cohesion. However, as pointed out above, both reforms remain incomplete and highly controversial. It is impossible here to present a detailed account of the long, drawn-out and complex political struggles that have led to change.43 However, a brief summary of these developments is necessary to understand the shift to a multiethnic society and its consequences. First, it should be noted that entry of foreigners is only one part of Germany’s post-war immigration experience. There have also been several major waves of immigrants claiming German ancestry. The first was of some 8 million expellees from the former eastern German territories lost after the Second World War. Then came over 3 million refugees from the GDR prior to construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961—after which there was only a trickle until a new wave of what was now internal East-West migration began in 1989. Finally, entries of persons of German ancestry (Aussiedler) from Russia, Romania, and other Eastern European countries increased in the 1980s, surging to a peak of 397,000 in 1990. Aussiedler were granted immediate citizenship and provided with a package of services and benefits to facilitate their integration. However, the large numbers, arriving at the same time as an upsurge in asylum seeker entries, led to a public outcry, and the government introduced a quota system in 1993 to reduce numbers to 220,000 a year. By the late 1990s annual entries had declined to fewer than 100,000. There was widespread suspicion that many Aussiedler had no strong claim to German ethnicity. Many of them spoke no German and had little knowledge of German society. The special rights and services for this group were gradually abandoned or made available to foreign immigrants too. The total number of Aussiedler arriving from 1950 to 2001 is put at just over 4 million (Green 2004: 4), of which about 2.6 million came after the late 1980s (Martin 2004: 234).

41 In his official report in 1979, Germany’s first Ausla¨nderbeauftragte (Commissioner ¨ hn, stated that immigration was irreversible and that measures for Foreigners), Heinz Ku were needed to ensure equal rights and integration for immigrants and their children (Castles, Booth and Wallace 1984: 80). 42 The Zuwanderungsgesetz of August 2004 is officially translated as the ‘Immigration Law’ (see website of the Federal Ministry of the Interior, www.bmi.bund.de). However, Zuwanderung is a weaker term than Einwanderung. The latter means (permanent) immigration while Zuwanderung really means migration in the sense of actual entry to a country, and therefore does not imply permanence. In any case, many aspects of the law are regulated in a subsidiary section referred to as the ‘settlement law’ (Aufenthaltsgesetz). 43 In any case, many good accounts exist, such as Bade (1994); BBA (2002); Green ¨ ssmuth (2001); Castles and Miller (2003). (2004); Ireland (1997); Martin (2004); Su

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Although the situation of ethnic German immigrants is not examined here, it should be noted that it has helped to influence debates and policies on immigration and integration of foreigners. Attitudes and policies on foreign immigrants and their descendents have passed through several phases. In the guest-worker period up to 1973, foreign workers were recruited for mainly low-skilled jobs under a system of rigid controls designed to prevent family reunion and settlement. Migrant workers were denied secure residence status and political rights, and were initially provided with separate social services through the voluntary sector. They were seen as temporary labour—to be sent away when no longer needed— not as future citizens. This model, designed to prevent permanent immigration and the emergence of new ethnic minorities, was connected with traumatic factors in German history: the exclusionary ethno-cultural model of national identity resulting from Germany’s late unification as a nation state in 1871, the destruction of ethnic minorities in the Third Reich, and the feeling of economic insecurity during Germany’s ‘economic miracle’ based on memories of the deep depression of the 1920s and 1930s. The second phase from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s was one of stabilization of the immigrant population through family reunion, the move from workplace accommodation into low-grade city centre housing, and the establishment of ethnic communities. Issues of integration began to be discussed, with special emphasis on the situation of the foreign children, who formed a large proportion of the pupils in inner-city schools. Such trends could be taken as confirmation of Miller’s thesis that, for democratic societies, it is: . . . unthinkable to compel aliens admitted for work at jobs of a permanent nature to repatriate against their will. To do so would be to violate the fundamental democratic notion that all adult members of society are entitled to security of residency, freedom of movement, and, if so decided, the grant of citizenship. (Miller 1981: 198)

But is has to be remembered that such insights were not dominant in the mid1970s. Although the guest-worker system had clearly failed, German policymakers did not abandon Ausla¨nderpolitik or recognize the reality of permanent settlement. Rather, they introduced a range of measures to deter family reunion and encourage repatriation. These failed partly because of the social dynamics of the migration process, which encouraged family reunion and settlement, partly because German employers wanted to retain foreign workers even in the recession, and partly because of the role of Germany’s legal system in protecting the rights of the family and preventing deportations (Castles 1986, 2004; Castles, Booth, and Wallace 1984). By the 1980s, the migrant presence in the cities was inescapable even for leading politicians and bureaucrats. Moreover, teachers were complaining about the stress of handling multinational classes with many pupils who could not speak German. Problems of migrant unemployment (especially youth), exploitation


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in the housing market, and poor social conditions were increasingly evident, sometimes leading to local strains and conflicts. Trade unionists, church groups, migrant associations, the Green Party and the left wing of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) saw the solution in recognizing the permanence of immigration through measures designed to offer equal rights and eventually citizenship to immigrants. The mainstream parties, including the SPD leadership, rejected such radical moves because they believed they would undermine the principles of national identity based on German descent and not being a country of immigration. Attempts by the conservative Coalition government44 to reform the Foreigners Act (Ausla¨ndergesetz), the main legal instrument regulating the status of foreigners, became bogged down in inner-party conflicts. The new law was passed only in 1990, and brought few significant improvements, apart from a slight one in naturalization rules (Green 2004: ch. 3). Instead, the federal and La¨nder authorities introduced a range of short-term measures to improve the situation in the schools and the social arena. It was a model of ‘temporary integration’ exemplified by a ‘dual strategy’ for the schools: a mix of measures designed to help children cope with their life situation in Germany while simultaneously preparing them for eventual return to the country of origin of their parents (Castles, Booth, and Wallace 1984: ch. 6).The long-term legacy of such measures was not integration but the reinforcement of trends to social separation, combined with a high degree of educational disadvantage for children of immigrants. There were, however, trends towards local multiculturalism in some cities with large migrant concentrations, such as Frankfurt and Berlin, where multicultural offices or commissioners for ‘foreign fellow citizens’ were established. In some areas, elected foreigners’ advisory councils were set up, but moves by some La¨nder to give local voting rights to foreign residents were blocked by the Federal Constitutional Court. A third phase started around 1990 with the upsurge in new immigration following the end of the cold war and German reunification. Germany became the focus of a European panic about a perceived ‘migration crisis’. The inflows of the period were large and multifaceted, including ethnic Germans, war refugees from former Yugoslavia, Jews from the former Soviet Union, and asylum seekers from many countries in the South. The media did their most to alarm the German public, pointing to the non-European origins alleged uncontrolability of a rapid increase in asylum-seeker arrivals. In the peak year of 1992, Germany received 438,200 asylum seekers out of the European total of 684,000. The result was an upsurge in anti-immigrant hostility, encouraged and exploited through agitation by extreme-right groups. Racially motivated crimes soared from 2,400 in 1991 to over 6,000 a year in 1992 and 1993 (Green 44 A coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) and the centrist Free Democratic Party (FDP).

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2004: 144–5). At first, such violence was worst in the area of the former GDR, and much of it was directed against hostels for asylum seekers. Soon violence spread to western Germany, and a number of Turks were killed in arson attacks. The growing racism was deeply threatening to Germans in view of the experience of the Third Reich. The reaction of conservatives was to call for stricter immigration control in order to ‘alleviate popular fears’. The left organized big anti-racist demonstrations and called for easier access to citizenship as the key to overcoming the social isolation and political marginalization of immigrants. Migrant associations raised the demand for dual citizenship as the best way of recognizing the situation of many immigrants of the first and second generations. The debate on citizenship policy was to continue until the end of the decade before any significant change could be achieved. The debate on immigration control had more immediate consequences. At first it focused on asylum. Article 16 of Germany’s Basic Law laid down the right to apply for asylum. Critics argued that this constituted a powerful pull factor. After acrimonious debates, the CDU and the SPD agreed on an ‘asylum compromise’ which amended Article 16, restricted the right to enter Germany to seek asylum, and introduced a temporary protection status for war refugees from former Yugoslavia. Asylum-seeker entries did fall sharply by the mid1990s, although this was also due to the ending of some of the conflicts that had led to mass exodus. German policymakers also stressed European cooperation through the Schengen Agreement and the EU as a way of reducing entries. A fourth phase of the political debate on immigrant integration in the late 1990s centred on the citizenship issue. The ‘migration crisis’ of the early 1990s was seen as a setback to the integration of the groups whose original entry was a result of guest-worker recruitment. Awareness of the permanent nature of settlement, but also of processes of social and cultural differentiation, became stronger throughout the 1990s. The strength of Turkish community formation and rise of Islam as Germany’s second religion gave added impetus to calls for facilitating naturalization and for a move to jus soli for the second generation. The Social Democrat-Green Coalition that came to power in 1998 announced that it would reform naturalization law and permit dual citizenship. This met with strong opposition from conservative groups. The CDU-CSU opposition organized a petition to oppose the planned changes, which led to a large-scale mobilization of public opinion against the notion of dual citizenship. This seems to have been a main factor in the CDU victory in the State election in Hesse in the 1999, which also had the effect of removing the SPD-Green majority in the Bundesrat, Germany’s upper chamber of parliament which represents the La¨nder governments. This forced the federal Government to negotiate a compromise with the opposition, which meant dropping dual citizenship and other liberal measures (Green 2004). The 1999 Citizenship Act (which took effect in 2000) represented a major shift towards jus soli, but stopped short of allowing dual citizenship. Foreign


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immigrants now have a right to naturalization after eight years residence, providing they renounce their previous nationality, have not been convicted of a serious offence, are able to support themselves and their families, acquire basic proficiency in German, and declare allegiance to the Basic Law. Children born to foreign parents in Germany acquire citizenship at birth if at least one parent has lived legally in Germany for at least eight years. They can hold dual citizenship until they reach maturity, but have to decide between their German and other citizenship by the age of 23 (although only time will tell whether it will prove legally possible to remove German citizenship from young people who have held it from birth). Births of foreign children in Germany fell from 95,216 in 1999 to only 49,778 in 2000 due to the effects of the new law (in other words, about half the children born to foreign parents had German citizenship by birthright) (BBA 2002: 429)—a trend which may have important long-term effects. Naturalization rules and practices had been extremely restrictive in the 1970s and 1980s. As a result, only 10,000–20,000 foreign residents acquired German citizenship per year, fewer than 0.5 per cent of foreign residents annually (OECD 1997). Naturalizations increased throughout the 1990s, due mainly to the improved rules contained in the 1990 Ausla¨ndergesetz. Naturalizations of foreign immigrants went up from 61,709 in 1994 to 143,267 in 1999. Under the new law, the number of naturalizations rose to 186,688 in 2000 and 178,098 in 2001 (BBA 2002: 413). However, the 2001 figure still amounts to only 2.4 per cent of the foreign population, indicating that many immigrants will never become German citizens. Overall, just over 1 million foreign residents became German citizens between 1994 and 2001—a very significant change in view of past reluctance to allow immigrants to naturalize. Despite the prohibition of dual citizenship, many exceptions are allowed in cases where it is difficult for people to renounce their former citizenship. In 2000, 44.9 per cent of naturalizations led to dual or multiple citizenship (BBA 2002: 414). A fifth phase of the debate on immigration and integration started in Feb¨ der announced a ‘Green Card’ programme ruary 2000, when Chancellor Schro for the recruitment of up to 20,000 IT specialists from outside the EU who had to be educated to tertiary level or be offered a post with a salary of at least 250,000 a year (Green 2004: 112). This fairly modest proposal transformed the debate. The 1973 halt to recruitment had heralded a period in which government policy and public opinion were firmly attached to a zero immigration principle (even though this did not conform to the reality of what was happening). For the first time in many years, a leading politician was emphasizing the necessity of immigration. As the Federal Commissioner for Foreigners Affairs pointed out, ‘The shift from the whether of migration to the how was based on the insight that the migration patterns of recent decades represented an irreversible immigration process that would continue in the future’ (BBA 2002: 23).

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Awareness of the imminent decline of Germany’s active population following the publication of the UN Population Division Report on ‘replacement migration’ (UN 2000) was one factor driving discussion on the need for a more open migration policy. Another factor was employer demand for labour recruitment, not only for high technology jobs but for a range of other sectors experiencing shortages. The realization that Germany had become much more embedded in EU and global patterns of open circulation of capital, commodities, and labour reinforced the pressure for a more modern approach based on principles of migration management rather than prohibition. It was also clear that the Citizenship Act had still not resolved many basic problems of integration policy. In 2000, Interior Minister Schily appointed a Commission to advise on immi¨ ssmuth. The twenty-onegration, chaired by a leading CDU politician, Rita Su member Commission included representatives of parties, employers associations, trade unions, and the churches, as well as social scientists. The Commission’s report declared that Germany had, in fact, been a country of immigration for many years, and that Germany needed immigrants for both demographic and economic reasons. The Commission proposed a planned immigration system to encourage recruitment of skilled personnel. It also advocated a comprehensive integration policy to overcome social disadvantages suffered by immigrants. The goal was to achieve their full participation in society while respecting cultural diversity. This policy required reforms and special measures ¨ ssmuth 2001). in education, social welfare, the labour market, and other areas (Su In March 2002, the Bundestag (the lower house of the federal parliament) adopted the SPD-Green Coalition’s Zunwanderungsgesetz. It contained a comprehensive reform of legislation on immigration and asylum and on the residence, economic activity, and integration of immigrants. The act embodied a new perspective on the need for migration and its comprehensive management through a flexible system of rules (BBA 2002: 31–3). However, as with the 1999 Citizenship Act, conservative elements around the CDU-CSU fought a bitter battle against key aspects of the Zunwanderungsgesetz. The act was also debated and voted upon in the Bundesrat in March 2002. Although the law appeared to have received majority support, the voting procedure was controversial, leading to a legal challenge by CDU-led La¨nder. In December 2003, the federal Constitutional Court struck down the act, just before it was due to come into force (Green 2004: 127).The Coalition had to go back to the drawing board and negotiate with the conservative parties. The resulting compromise, finally adopted in August 2004, still represents a step towards comprehensive legislation on immigration and integration, but many of the more important changes of the original act have been removed. In the new version, the Zunwanderungsgesetz allows immigration only of highly skilled workers and entrepreneurs, and maintains the 1973 ban on recruitment of low-skilled labour. The original idea of a points system (like Canada’s or Australia’s) has been abandoned, so highly skilled personnel can be admitted only on the basis of employer requests. However, they can apply for


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immediate permanent residence, a significant innovation. Foreign graduates of German universities may be allowed to stay to take up employment. The asylum provisions of the law grant protection on the basis of persecution by non-state actors (such as rebel movements) as well as gender-based violence. The law establishes a new Federal Office of Immigration and Refugees (which includes a research institute on immigration). The large number of differentiated residence permits is to be replaced by just two: a limited residence permit and an unlimited settlement permit. The new law provides for free compulsory integration courses for new arrivals (following the recent Dutch model, although with weaker sanctions for non-compliance). Foreigners already resident in Germany who are unemployed or deemed to have ‘special integration needs’ may also be required to attend integration course. Finally, as a reflection of security debates following the Madrid terrorist attacks of early 2004, the act contains a range of provisions for deportation and surveillance of people suspected of terrorist activities. Penalties for people smuggling have also been tightened (Bundesministerium des Innern 2004).

New Guest-worker Systems and Undocumented Workers Despite German politicians’ repeated declarations that ‘Germany is not a country of immigration’, the situation of migrant populations gradually stabilized and became more demographically normal in the 1970s and 1980s. Family reunion and formation reduced the male surplus and increased the share of women and children. Migrant workers thus lost their old function of providing mobile and flexible labour in an otherwise inflexible labour market. However, the need for such flexible labour continued, and employers and officials sought ways to fill the gap. In contrast to the ‘macroeconomic’oriented mass import of guest workers to Germany up to 1973, the new temporary worker programmes have typically been oriented towards ‘microshortages’ of labour in certain economic sectors. In the late 1980s, the combination of growing labour demand in Germany and relaxation of departure controls in eastern European countries encouraged Poles, Czechs, and Hungarians to enter as ‘tourists’ and spend short periods (generally just a few months) working in agriculture, building, or catering. The German authorities favoured this type of temporary migration, but preferred it to take place in a legal and organized way. They therefore introduced a number of foreign-worker programmes, which by the late 1990s were leading to temporary employment of around 350,000 foreigners a year (Martin 2004: 239). The largest was the seasonal worker programme, set up in 1991, which provided for bilateral agreements with central and eastern European countries to admit workers for up to three months in agriculture, building, or catering. In 2001, there were 278,000 seasonal workers, of whom 85 per cent came from Poland, and the rest mainly from Romania, the Slovak Republic, Croatia, and

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Hungary (OECD 2004: 200). Conditions are laid down in the bilateral agreements, and seasonal workers may be employed only if no German or EU workers are available. It is not clear at the time of writing whether these agreements will continue now that most of these countries have joined the EU. Since Germany has postponed free movement from the accession countries, they probably will continue for the time being. Another programme is for foreign ‘contract workers’, employed by firms in their home country, who come to work in Germany for up to two years on specific projects, usually in the building sector. Again, this is regulated by bilateral agreements with central and eastern European governments. There were 47,000 such workers in 2001, nearly half of them from Poland (OECD 2004: 200). German firms contract foreign firms and their workers to carry out certain parts of construction projects. The workers engaged remain workers of the countries of the subcontracted firms—Polish, Hungarian, and so forth— and are employed under the conditions negotiated with their non-German employers, which entail a huge (indirect) reduction in labour costs and social benefits for the German firms. Other smaller programmes covered cross-border commuters from the Czech Republic and Poland, and short-term recruitment of nurses from former Yugoslavia and Asian countries. Transnational sub-contracting arrangements within the EU are a further way of providing flexible labour for the German building industry. Workers from countries with relatively low wages and social costs, such as Portugal and Britain, may be ‘posted’ temporarily by their firm to work on subcontracts in Germany. According to EU legislation, the work of these temporary migrants may continue to be subject to the laws and regulations of the country from which the workers are posted. Thus, numerous building workers from countries with lower wages and less generous pension and social security schemes work continuously within the German construction industry. More than 200,000 employees from other EU countries were working on German construction sites in 1999 (Hunger 2000: 189). The building labour market has changed fundamentally in the process. It has become deeply split, with different categories of low-paid foreign workers (‘illegals’, non-community subcontracted workers, ‘posted’ workers from low-wage EU member states) competing with highly paid domestic counterparts. This has led to exceedingly high levels of unemployment among German building workers. The long-term consequence, Hunger concludes, seems to be ‘a paradigm change in labour market relations from the Continental European type to the AngloAmerican type’ (Hunger 2000: 189). This trend should, like current problems of post-industrial restructuring and migration in general, be seen in the context of ‘glocality’45, which involves capital-labour relations and the character of welfare regimes at various levels 45 Notion expressing the complex articulation and interdependency of ‘global’ and ‘local’ processes of change.


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(Raes 2000b: 32ff.): the local and the national, the integrated socio-economic space of the EU, as well as the wider regional and global international space. German-Portuguese interdependency is an illuminating case in point. The presence of ‘posted’ Portuguese workers on Germany’s building sites represents, in a new form, a continuation of decades of Portuguese labour migration to north-western Europe. Currently, this is not due to a shrinking labour market in Portugal but rather to reluctance among Portuguese workers to accept the low wages and poor working conditions in the country’s own booming construction sector, boosted through the EU’s Structural Funds (Corkill 2001). Here, working conditions and wages have been heavily downgraded due to mass employment of undocumented workers from former Portuguese colonies and Eastern Europe (Bagagna 1998: 2000). Hence, ‘Portugal is now a country of simultaneous immigration and emigration, with Portuguese immigrants holding the same kinds of jobs abroad that immigrants hold in Portugal (in construction) (Reyneri and Baganha 2001: 34). A recent study (Hunger and Thra¨nhardt 2001) explores the consequences of this new type of migration for Berlin. Following reunification and the move of the German government to Berlin, the city experienced an unprecedented building boom as impressive official buildings were erected. Yet 25 per cent of unemployed persons in Berlin were building workers by 1996. Employers preferred to take on cheaper contract workers or posted workers. In addition, large numbers of workers came in as daily commuters from the former East German hinterland of Brandenburg. This competition had adverse effects on long-standing unionized building workers, many of whom were long-term foreign residents of Berlin. As Hunger and Thra¨nhardt point out, in the old German model of long-term employment, the firm (Betrieb) and the trade union have been sites of interethnic communication and integration. Racism against migrants has always been less pronounced at work than in other social areas. The decline of the long-term employment model and its replacement with contract workers has thus had negative effects on social integration and intergroup relations. This is no doubt one factor behind the increase in racism and racist violence since German reunification. Closely linked to such legal forms of temporary employment are increasing trends to undocumented immigration and employment. The regulated German labour market has long been seen as the antithesis of the large-scale informal or ‘black’ economies of southern Europe. Yet trends towards the growth of small enterprises, deregulation, casualization, and contracting-out have opened up the space for informal employment. Undocumented workers in Germany include illegal immigrants, but the majority of undocumented workers are probably people who entered legally but who do not have (or have lost) permission to work. This includes many asylum seekers awaiting a decision. Some workers in irregular employment are actually legally resident foreigners, as a comparative study of Germany and France commissioned by the EU found:

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In Germany informal work is not limited to undocumented foreigners, but is also done increasingly by foreigners with legal status, or by young adults of Turkish origins. Informal work is also frequently done by people who come legally through family reunion, but have a four-year waiting period for a work permit. The trend is linked to a general increase in Schwarzarbeit (‘black work’) . . . . Thus, less qualified foreign residents have become a flexible labour reserve and may be entering the informal [sector] to a certain extent in both countries. In some cases in Germany it is perceived as necessary to work in the informal sector to supplement income from low public assistance. And, also to earn money for work and not to be a recipient of public assistance. In other cases working without a permit is a result of a precarious legal status, a permit to stay which does not include an accrued right to a work permit. The informal are often the only jobs which low skilled unemployed persons can find. (Wilpert and Laacher 1999: 53)

German authorities arrested 28,600 illegal immigrants at the border in 2001, a slight decline from the previous year. They also arrested 2,700 alleged people smugglers, and noted that organized smugging appeared to be increasing. At the same time, the German Federal Labour Office and the Customs Department put increased resources into curbing illegal employment. In 2001, proceedings against employers for illegal employment of foreigners were initiated in 315,000 cases—a very substantial increase on previous years (only 64,000 cases in 2000 and 27,000 in 1999) (OECD 2004: 199). It is impossible to say what proportion of undocumented workers this might affect, since estimates of the number of undocumented workers are notoriously unreliable: Martin notes figures ranging from 150,000 to 1.5 million, and points out the difficulty in effectively policing Germany’s long land borders (Martin 2004: 242). Illegal migration and employment have become apparently permanent features of the German labour market, providing a substantial share of the labour force in certain sectors of the economy. Philip Martin (1997) notes in particular the building industry, but points to the flexibility of a large undocumented workforce moving between different sectors. He also points to the ineffectiveness of a huge corps of German labour inspectors, assigned to enforce labour and immigration laws, in actually curtailing illegal employment of undocumented migrants. Such difficulties indicate the presence of strong vested interests in the continuation of illegal employment practices. They seem even to indicate their semi-official acceptance within the context of the German welfare and labour market regime (Martin 1997: 491).

Social Exclusion and Ethnic Differentiation New guest-worker systems and informal employment are ways in which the German employers and authorities try to restore the flexible labour supply of the guest-worker period, but such trends remain relatively small relative to the large established labour force consisting of both Germans and immigrants. As pointed out above, the high level of protection and the inflexibility of this


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labour force are at the core of the crisis of the German welfare state. One result is Germany’s declining international competitiveness and the resulting economic and fiscal crisis. Another result is the emergence of processes of differentiation whereby some groups of employees retain a privileged position, while others are pushed into marginalized forms of work or out of the labour process altogether. Marginalized workers and the unemployed are subject to various forms of social exclusion. The non-viability of the welfare state model, combined with the inability to achieve fundamental reform, has meant that adaptations to the new conditions have had to take place in more fragmented and unplanned ways. Michael Bommes points to the shrinking capacity of modern welfare states to provide social inclusion, particularly for migrants. He argues that the ‘core population’ is no longer based on the old nationalist notion of the collectivity of ‘the people’ but is, rather, increasingly ‘defined by individuals and their competitiveness and success’. A complementary ‘residual population’ consists of those who fail to achieve an adequate living standard or gain a political voice. These marginal groups are addressed by the state as social problems through welfare programmes for basic needs. The welfare state is no longer concerned with achieving equity, but with providing care for the excluded. Migrants are part of both categories, but are overrepresented in the residual population (Bommes 2003). Typical of Germany over the last fifteen years is an increasing differentiation of the population, with a shrinking core labour force still enjoying the highly regulated and protected conditions of the old welfare model, while more and more groups are excluded or fail to gain access to such conditions. They face a situation of persistent unemployment or underemployment in jobs marked by casualization, de-qualification, insecurity, and low wages. This applies not only to the low-skilled but also to qualified personnel in sectors with an excess supply of labour. At the same time, those dependent on social welfare face cuts in benefit levels, tighter access conditions, and growing insecurity. As Bommes indicates, such differentiation is not tantamount to ethnic or racial exclusion, since many migrants do belong to the still-protected core industrial workforce. However, the probability of migrants and their descendents facing economic and social exclusion is far higher than for Germans. This is because of the way in which legal, educational, social, and political factors have tended to isolate and disadvantage migrants, reducing their market chances under current conditions. Both German workers and migrant workers are subject to these processes, but a range of indicators (see below) show that migrants are far more likely to be adversely affected. This appears to be because of a combination of two sets of factors: lower rates of possession of human capital (education, vocational training, and job experience), and discrimination. Lack of opportunities to build human capital can be seen as a ‘class’ rather than an ‘ethnic’ factor, although it may well be the result of the past institutional discrimination of the guest-worker phase, when foreign workers had few chances to move out of

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low-skilled jobs. Discrimination is based on ethnic exclusion or racism. A third factor, which stands between the other two, is the absence of the social networks that are so important for providing jobs and training. This results from migrants’ relative social isolation or exclusion from the groups that have the power to allocate such resources. We explore these issues by looking at information on the work and social situation of migrants in Germany. To start with, here are some basic data on the foreign population. Table 6.1 gives some indication of the size and complexity of Germany’s foreign population. Of the 7.3 million foreign residents, only 240,000 live in former East Germany; the great majority of foreigners are in West Germany and Berlin. Three-quarters are from outside the EU. The top ten nationalities reflect the recruitment patterns of the pre-1973 period as well as the influxes from former Yugoslavia during the wars of the 1990s. However, together these top ten now make up only half of Germany’s immigrant population. The other half comes from a great variety of countries. One in six immigrants is a refugee. Nearly a quarter of the total foreign population consists of children of foreign immigrants born in Germany. The prevailing model of citizenship by descent (jus sanguinis) has made them foreigners in their land of birth, although the 1999 Citizenship Act has gone some way to redressing this through a limited

TABLE 6.1. Germany’s foreign population, 2001 Thousands Total foreign population Of which: From EU member states Female Resident in Germany over 10 yearsa Refugees (including dependents) Born in Germany In the employed labour force Top ten nationalities Turkey Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) Italy Greece Croatia Bosnia-Herzegovina Portugal Spain Morocco Macedonia a

% of total foreign population

7,319

100.0

1,870 3,270 3,984 1,100 1,563 1,922

25.6 46.0 54.6 15.0 22.4 26.3

1,948 628 616 363 224 159 133 129 79 56

26.6 8.6 8.4 5.0 3.1 2.2 1.8 1.8 1.1 0.8

Figure for 2000.

Source: Data based on registration figures from the Foreigners Authorities and the Federal ¨ r Ausla¨nderfragen Labour Office, from Appendix tables of Beauftragte der Bundesregierung fu (BBA 2002).


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birthright citizenship model (jus soli). The table does not show the number of naturalized persons, who have increased quite rapidly in recent years, as discussed above. Just under half of all foreign residents are female; the very large male surpluses of the guest-worker period have nearly gone. Over half the foreign population has been in Germany for over ten years, indicating that most should be seen as permanent immigrants. Indeed, about 1 million foreigners have been in Germany for over thirty years (BBA 2002: 432). Only 5 per cent of foreigners were over retirement age in 2001, but the large number resident for over thirty years shows that many will soon reach that age, leading to demands on pensions and age care. What do we know about the social situation of the immigrant population? There is a wealth of statistical information on a range of indicators. However, most analyses on such topics as employment, education, living conditions, and poverty focus on immigrants and their descendants from the former guest-worker ‘recruitment countries’ (Anwerbela¨nder) of southern Europe and Turkey (BBA 2002; Faist 1993b; Hunger and Thra¨nhardt 2001; Meyer 2002; ¨ ssmuth 2001). Indeed, many observers see the 2 million Turks as the most Su significant ethnic minority. However, we should not lose sight of the many smaller non-European groups, who have come, in many cases, as either asylum seekers or undocumented workers. Table 6.2 gives information on the foreign working population. As Table 6.2 shows, over 3 million foreign residents are economically active. However, many more foreign residents would be capable of work if jobs were available: the Federal Labour Office puts the ‘potential foreign active population’ at 4.1 million (BBA 2002: 336). This will increase in the next few years, as large cohorts of young foreigners enter the labour market. In view of Germany’s economic stagnation, this could lead to serious minority youth unemployment. The rate of economic activity46 for foreigners has declined TABLE 6.2. Economically active foreign residents by employment status, Germany, 2000

Economically active foreign residents Self-employed without employees Self-employed with employees Family helpers in business Non-manual workers (Angestellte) Manual workers (Arbeiter)

Thousands

% of economically active foreigners

3,012 147 111 26 891 1,827

100.0 4.9 3.7 0.9 29.6 60.7

Note: These figures are not comparable with those in Table 6.1 due to different methods of collection. The figures on salaried employees and wage earners include the unemployed. Source: Figures from the Micro Census (BBA 2002: 436). 46 In German, Erwerbsquote: economically active persons as a percentage of total population.

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from 62 per cent at the end of the guest-worker period in 1974 to 51 per cent in 2001 (compared with an increase for Germans in the same period from 42 per cent to 49 per cent). This reflects the structural shift away from the mainly young working population of the recruitment years towards a more normal demographic structure. Thus, the potential foreign labour force is increasing while actual employment is declining. In 2000, 2 million foreigners were in formal employment in West Germany (including Berlin). This surprisingly small number (only 27 per cent of the total foreign resident population) reflects the way many migrant workers have been made unemployed, become self-employed in the hope of escaping unemployment (a pattern that we also saw in the UK), or been pushed out of the workforce altogether. A further 437,000 foreigners were officially registered as unemployed in 2000. This represents an unemployment rate of 16.4 per cent. The rate for Turkish nationals was over 20 per cent. Bad as this figure is, it shows an improvement on the peak year of 1997, when 522,000 foreigners were unemployed—a rate of 20.4 per cent (BBA 2002: 440). In recent years, the unemployment rate for foreigners has been more than double that for the labour force as a whole (7.8 per cent in 2000). Foreigners’ high rates of unemployment and withdrawal from the labour force reflect the major structural changes in the German economy, as industrial jobs have been shifted offshore and employment has moved to hightechnology production and services. In 1989, over half the foreign workers were employed in manufacturing; by 2000 that figure had fallen to just over one-third. For many German workers, restructuring meant not only a change in occupation but also a shift from manual to non-manual worker status, often as a result of retraining or the gaining of new qualifications. The majority of German workers are now in the non-manual category while, as Table 6.2 shows, less than 30 per cent of economically foreign residents have managed to join the white-collar labour force. The problem for foreign workers was that most of them lacked the education, vocational training, and German language competence necessary for the new job opportunities. This lack of human capital was a direct result of the guestworker system, which was originally designed to provide low-skilled workers and to restrict their mobility. Another factor was probably discrimination, although this is hard to establish clearly, except in public employment, where many jobs are explicitly barred to foreigners. A study in North-Rhine Westphalia in 1999 shows that foreigners are considerably underrepresented in public employment, especially in administrative positions (BBA 2002: 342–3). The result of this situation was that most foreigners (61 per cent in 2000) stayed in the manual category, despite declining employment opportunities and increased insecurity in this sector. On the more positive side, there has been a shift from unskilled to skilled occupations within the manual category (Meyer 2002). The other important trend has been the growth of self-employment and entrepreneurial activity. Guest workers were never meant to be self-employed;


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in 1970 only 2 per cent of foreigners were in this category. Longer residence in Germany and economic restructuring have led many immigrants to move into small business. By 2000, 258,000 (nearly 9 per cent) were self-employed, and they employed a further 111,000 persons. The growth of ethnic businesses is often taken as a sign of successful integration. However, the type of activity shows the marginal character of many entrepreneurs: 44 per cent of those from the ‘recruitment countries’ had catering sector businesses, while 19 per cent were in commerce (mainly small shops). They were under-represented in other economic sectors (BBA 2002: 343). Foreign entrepreneurs were thus mainly in areas with modest requirements for qualifications and capital (Meyer 2002: 80). The move into self-employment is often motivated by lack of opportunities elsewhere, and does not generally indicate upward social mobility. On the other hand, the self-employed are often financially betteroff than manual workers. Overall, though, the work situation of first-generation migrants remains disadvantaged. The key question is whether this position is being carried over to the second generation, to the children of immigrants who have grown up in Germany. A detailed analysis of educational participation and achievement of immigrant children is not possible here.47 Up to the 1980s, German educational policies for children of foreigners often led to separation from German children and poor average achievement levels (Castles 1980; Castles, Booth, and Wallace 1984). Since then, considerable efforts have been made to integrate foreign children into German schools. However, such measures have been only partly successful. Foreign school-leavers today generally have higher educational qualifications than their parents, but still show considerable deficits compared with young Germans (Meyer 2002: 76). Foreign children show lower participation in pre-school education (an important precondition for later school success). They also have far lower rates of participation in the higher levels of the selective secondary school system. In 1999, only 19 per cent of foreign students attended the Gymnasium (grammar school, which generally leads to higher education), compared with 40 per cent of Germans. Rates of attendance at the Realschule (middle school) were closer (18 per cent for foreigners, 22 per cent for Germans). But foreigners were dramatically overrepresented at the Hauptschule (non-academic school, which generally leads to manual or low-level white-collar jobs) and the Sonderschule (school for students with learning difficulties). Just under half of all foreign secondary students were at one of these types of school, compared with 21 per cent of Germans. The result was that less than 10 per cent of foreign school-leavers had the Abitur (certificate for admission to higher education), compared with 26 per cent of Germans (BBA 2002: 199–201). Interestingly, this official report notes that such disadvantage is linked to class as well as ethnic background. German children of working-class origin are also very 47

See (BBA 2002) for a detailed analysis and references.

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disadvantaged in education. However, children of immigrants tend to be disadvantaged by both class and ethnicity (BBA 2002: 192). A similar picture is to be found in vocational training—crucial in Germany, since entry to most occupations requires a training certificate. Normally, those who leave school at fifteen or sixteen are expected to register for an apprenticeship (Berufsausbildung) combining on-the-job training with theoretical instruction in a vocational school. Among Germans of this age group, 68 per cent were in an apprenticeship in 1999, but the figure for young foreigners was only 39 per cent (BBA 2002: 419). Moreover, the majority of foreign trainees were enrolled for training in occupations with fairly low qualification levels and limited prospects for promotion, such as retail clerks, hairdressers, motor mechanics, painters, electricians, and plumbers (BBA 2002: 422). This confirms earlier findings of research that indicated that young foreigners were disadvantaged in the vocational training system (Faist 1993a). The general picture, therefore, is that the second-generation migrants are likely to obtain better qualifications than their immigrant parents, but are still usually worse-off than Germans of the same age group. In view of the decline in formal-sector jobs open to low-skilled labour-market entrants, poorly qualified young foreigners have few opportunities, and are likely to end up in a situation of casual employment alternating with unemployment. Betterqualified foreign labour-market entrants have better opportunities, but may lose out in competition with young Germans due to discrimination or formal reservation of jobs for nationals (in the public sector). Obtaining German citizenship can improve their chances. To sum up: ‘the second generation has a labour market position between that of the parent generation and the corresponding German age group’ (Meyer 2002: 79). This indicates that ethnic segmentation is likely to be a long-term feature of the German labour market. However, it is important to stress the complex interaction with factors of class, as a minority of Germans with poor educational and vocational qualifications also share this excluded position. The social exclusion of minorities could be explored with regard to a range of indicators such as housing, health, and political participation. However, that is not possible here. To close this discussion, we present a few findings on income and poverty. In recent years, the income gap between Germans and foreign residents has increased. According to official research, the proportion of foreign households with a monthly income under DM 1,400 in 1995 was 10 per cent, compared with 5 per cent of Germans. By contrast, only 1 per cent of foreign residents were in the highest income class—DM 5,000 per month or more—compared with 9 per cent of Germans. A more recent federal Government report classified 26 per cent of foreign households as falling below the poverty line in 1998 (less than 50 per cent of average household income), compared with 11 per cent of German households. Those classified as well-off (over 200 per cent of average household income) included 6 per cent of the German population but less than 1 per cent of foreigners (BBA 2002: 352).


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The overall picture presented by the social position of immigrants and their descendents in Germany is thus one of increasing social differentiation, which is closely related to processes of economic restructuring away from a national industrial economy and towards a mixed high-technology and service economy integrated into regional and global relationships. Social differentiation means that a person’s opportunities are linked to complex patterns of class, ethnicity, and gender. Migrant origin or ethnic background are generally not criteria for complete exclusion—at least for legally resident foreigners—but do indicate an increased likelihood of economic disadvantage and social exclusion. However, social exclusion affects Germans too, and this makes it all the harder to reform the ailing welfare state.

The German Dilemma: Building a Multicultural Society under Conditions of Economic Stagnation and a Declining Welfare State The German expression of the European Dilemma could be encapsulated in a story of ‘paradise gained and paradise lost’. The first half of the twentieth century was a period of constant crisis, with huge losses in two disastrous wars, a deep economic depression, and a brutal dictatorship, which made Germany a pariah state. The 1950s and 1960s, by contrast, were a time of reconstruction and success. Germans, massively plagued by guilt after the Third Reich, were able to replace a discredited nationalist identity with one based on the industrial success of the ‘economic miracle’ and the social security of the ‘social market economy’. A high degree of state intervention in economy and society was balanced by the decentralized federal power structure and the strong role of the collective actors. The system brought a long period of stability and a new self-confidence. Regulation of labour supply was intrinsic to the model, and the recruitment of temporary guest workers was widely supported. This was the ‘economic miracle’ paradise, which guaranteed high incomes, long holidays, short working hours, and social protection to the great majority of Germans. In this chapter, we have described how the German model has unravelled through a series of simultaneous changes: globalization has transformed the German economy, the welfare state has become unsustainable, and the temporary workers have turned into new ethnic minorities. In addition, an unexpected and hasty reunification has led to major economic and social strains, while the decline in fertility is leading to new burdens of age dependency and a shrinking workforce. As described above, German politicians went on intoning that ‘Germany is not a country of immigration’ until the end of the 1990s, and the CDU still does. This blocked the reforms necessary to dissolve the legacy of nationalism and racism and build a multicultural society.

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This happened too late to prevent the entrenchment of new patterns of ethnic and class exclusion. Moreover, the reforms are half-hearted and incomplete. The realization of the unsustainability of the social state model is taking even longer. It is obvious to nearly everyone that the combination of labour protection, generous social security, and autonomous collective bargaining cannot function in the absence of the fourth element of the German model: full employment. But full employment has gone due to global and regional integration, and it will not return as long as real wage levels in Germany are way above the norm for industrial economies. Economic recovery without reform is impossible, but reform is extremely difficult politically. The result is an unplanned creeping non-solution: a process of fragmentation and differentiation of economy and society that keeps things going (for the time being), but does not offer long-term prospects for economic recovery or social security. The costs are borne initially by the immigrants and their descendants, who can be marginalized without high political costs, partly because of their continuing exclusion from full political rights. But this social differentiation is affecting many Germans too, particularly those lacking educational and vocational credentials. In the long run, it is likely to be a threat to social peace and stability for the whole society and polity.

SEVEN

Economic Miracle and Political Limbo: Italy and Its ‘Extracommunitarians’

T

mid-1970s, when major industrial nations of northern Europe had just signalled a halt to three decades of extensive labour immigration, was also the very moment when Italy changed from being a country of emigration to one of immigration. Between 1860 and 1970, an estimated 26 million people emigrated from Italy (Campani 2004) to mainly North America, the Anglo-Saxon Antipodes, and north-western Europe. Throughout the first two decades after the Second World War, Italians had been among the largest groups of migrants in Germany, France, Benelux, and Switzerland, but were also among the first postwar labour migrants to Sweden. Part of the rationale for the free movement of labour, stipulated by the Treaty of Rome in 1957, was to make Italian ‘surplus’ labour more readily disposable by the northern European signatories. Migration was also, generally, seen positively by the ruling political elites in Italy. The outlet that migration to northern Europe provided for a large unemployed or underemployed ‘surplus population’ was expected to soothe social problems and political tensions in, particularly, the Italian south. The migrants were also expected to contribute positively to the Italian economy through remittances and through investments in the homeland.48 Most of the post1945 Italian migrants to north-western Europe came from southern Italy, the Mezzogiorno. A huge parallel internal population movement took place from southern Italy to the Italian industrial north, without which sturdy economic growth in northern Italy could not have been sustained. This internal population transfer involved about 20 million Italians between 1955 and 1970 (Petrillo 1999: 233). By 1975, Italy’s international migration balance became, for the first time, positive (Petrillo 1999: 233), with the number of immigrants markedly exceeding that of emigrants. By the early 1980s, Italy had already become an HE

48

But see the critical analysis by Reyneri (1979).

164

Italy and Its Extracommunitarians

important immigration country, with substantial numbers entering each year. From around 300,000 at the beginning of the 1980s, the migrant population increased to the current number of around 2.5 million resident foreign citizens, documented and non-documented, working and non-working. They come from a wide range of countries across the world and make up about 4.6 per cent of the total resident population of Italy (Cesareo 2004b; Blangiardo 2004). Italy’s second ‘economic miracle’,49 the much-celebrated bravado with which Italy set out to overcome the Fordist crisis after 1980 (e.g. Ginsborg 2001), would hardly have been possible without immigration, and its prospective extension may become even more important for Italy’s sustained welfare and economic performance in the future. Immigrants have come to form a permanent part of the subordinate labour force in a range of sectors and occupations, for example, as domestic workers, in agriculture, in building, in an expansive sector of specialist small and medium industrial workshops and in a growing private service sector. These migrant workers, who are regarded in political and public discourse as the ‘problematic immigration’ (paraphrasing a sardonic statement by Zincone 1999: 46ff.), and who are habitually the object of research as well as of politics and populist discourse, make up the major part of Italy’s foreign residents. They belong to a wide range of national backgrounds, coming from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and central and eastern Europe (see Table 7.1). At the beginning of the 1980s, most of the growing migrant population from non-OECD countries were undocumented or so-called clandestine residents (clandestini). Consecutive legalization procedures have eventually modified this situation. But Schengen membership and EU demands for tightening immigration control have, in conjunction with a rising tide of populism in Italy, contributed to the establishment of an increasingly stringent and discriminatory migration regime that works against legal requirements on equal rights and emergent policies for social inclusion. In the resulting political limbo, neither inclusive citizenship policies nor coherent guest-worker policies can be framed. The exclusionary effect of this situation has been exacerbated by non-EU immigrants’ particularly exposed position in the Italian postFordist labour market, a familistic and exclusivist welfare system, and a political and administrative system imbued with clientilistic networks of power. Indicative of the particular subject status and insecure conditions of marginality that migrants experience in Italian society is their designation as so-called extra-communitarians (extracomunitari), which denotes their origin outside the European Community. But the term also intimates their persistent status of non-belonging to the Italian nation, and is used ‘disparagingly, as a synonym for ‘‘immigrant from a poorer country’’ ’ (Petrillo 1999: 250). This exclusion is, as in the case of Germany discussed in Chapter 6, contingent on a prevailing ethno-cultural definition of the Italian nation. But the exclusionary quality of 49

The first ‘miracle’ being that of rapid industrial development after World War Two.


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the Italian case is further exacerbated by the constant absence of a coherent legally based asylum and refugee policy. To grasp Italy’s experience of migration, welfare, and citizenship, it is necessary first to understand the particularly convoluted relationship between formal legislation and central directives on the one hand, and their interpretation and implementation in a decentralized and clientilistic political-administrative setting on the other. Added to this is the complexity of Italy’s division into major regions that are still very different in terms of economy, political culture, and social structure and, consequently, in terms of the modes in which immigrants become incorporated into economy and society. This pertains in particular to the traditional north-south divide, which has not vanished during the last three decades of economic restructuring and political change but has taken on partially new forms. However, a comprehensive body of empirical studies by native researchers tend to adopt a more holistic perspective than those in the old immigration countries in northern Europe. In this chapter, after presenting some data on the growth of immigration in Italy we draw a cursory sketch of the specific character of the Italian conservativecorporatist welfare state and the discontents produced by its merger with Italy’s post-Fordist political economy and labour market. We refer to the growing structural dependency of the Italian economy on migrant labour and discuss the segmentation of the labour market as this is associated with major regional divisions. We close with a discussion of vagaries of policy formation and the current political struggles in Italy over immigration.

Immigration to Italy: General Trends Undocumented migration has been, and still is, the main source of immigration to Italy. From 1982 onwards, smaller or larger groups of undocumented migrants have from time to time, and on the basis of special directives or legal measures, been offered the opportunity to become legalized. But after the implementation of each such amnesty, a substantial residual group of undocumented migrants has remained, rendering impossible any precise estimate of the number of resident foreign citizens in Italy. Figure 7.1 provides an overview of the increase in the officially recorded number of legally resident migrants in Italy from 1981 until the end of 2003, whereas Figure 7.2 depicts the successive concentration of legally resident migrants in the central and, in particular, the highly industrialized and economically dynamic regions of the Italian north. The steep rise in the number of migrants with residence permits in 2003 (Fig. 7.1.) reflects the effects of the latest legalization procedure, initiated in 2002. It gives an idea of the large number of undocumented migrants actually present in Italy at the turn of the millennium. The 2002–3 amnesty increased the legally resident ‘extracommunitarian’ population of Italy by as much as 50 per cent (see Table 7.1). To this should be added

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2500 2000

In total

1500 From ‘high emigration countries’*

1000 500

20

(2

)

) (1

00

20

03

99

19

20

98

19

02

96

19

03

94

19

20

92

19

20

81

19

01

0

FIG. 7.1. Number of residence permits 1992–2003, (in total and from high emigration countries; in ’000) Source: Based on Blangiardo (2004: 40), where orginal sources are given. 2003(1) stands for 1 Jan. 2003 and 2003(2) includes newly legalized immigrants during 2003.* ) High emigration countries in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia (see Table 7.1).

an estimated remaining number of undocumented migrants amounting to about 10 per cent of the total number of resident non-EU citizens (Blangiardo 2004: 39). Almost one-quarter of all legalized migrants in 2003 were resident in the region of Lombardy, with Milan as Italy’s most dynamic economic-industrial 1600

1465

1400 1200 1000 821 800 600

1993 2001

573 418 287

400

179

200

226 107

0 Italy

North

Centre

South

FIG. 7.2. Total number of residence permits in Italy and per geographic region in 1993 and 2001 (in ’000) Source: Based on Calavita (2004: 348), where original sources are given.


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metropolis and the single most important employer of foreign labour. A major proportion of the migrants from non-EU countries have relatively high levels of education, coming often from middle-class backgrounds in their home countries (Reyneri 2001: 10ff.). But a ‘subordinate incorporation’ in a discriminatory and ‘ethnicised’ labour market (Zanfrini 2004: 86ff.) seldom brings formal recognition of their education or skills. Italy’s migrants belong to more than 200 nationalities. The older migrant groups include, for example, Moroccans and Filipinos. The new immigration comes very largely from Eastern European countries like Romania, Ukraine, and Moldavia. These latter groups also contain the largest number of recently undocumented immigrants, as is revealed by their extremely high incidences of legalization in 2003 (Table 7.1). A sizeable number of fairly recent migrants, some with refugee status, came from different parts of former Yugoslavia during the wars of the 1990s. But new migrants commonly enter Italy undocumented and become submerged in the underground economy. Groups with a higher number of old and settled migrants generally enjoy a less precarious situation on the labour market, and are more often legal residents working in regular jobs. There is currently an almost equal gender distribution among migrants. Women have always been heavily represented among migrants to Italy due to its substantial demand for housekeepers and carers for the young and the elderly. In addition, family reunion is increasing, involving mostly women and children. TABLE 7.1. Number of immigrants with residence permits by 1 January 2003 and legalizations granted during 2003 under Law L.D. 195/2002 (migrants from the main emigration countries) Countries of emigration Romania Morocco Albania Ukraine P.R. China Philippines Poland Tunisia Senegal Ecuador Peru India Yugoslavia Egypt Sri Lanka Moldavia Total

Migrants with residence permits 1.1.2003

Legalizations granted in 2003

Migrants with residence permits in total 2003

Increase in 2003 due to legalization (%)

96,000 173,000 169,000 14,000 62,000 62,000 35,000 51,000 36,000 12,000 31,000 34,000 40,000 30,000 36,000 7,000

133,000 47,000 47,000 100,000 33,000 46,000 30,000 9,000 12,000 34,000 16,000 13,000 6,000 15,000 7,000 29,000

229,000 220,000 216,000 114,000 95,000 78,000 65,000 60,000 48,000 46,000 47,000 47,000 46,000 45,000 43,000 36,000

138.5 27.2 27.8 714.3 53.2 25.8 85.7 17.6 33.3 283.3 51.6 38.2 15.0 50.0 19.4 414.3

1,271,000

635,000

1,906,000

50.0

Source: Blangiardo (2004: 42), based on statistics of the Ministry of Labour and Social Policies and the Ministry of the Interior.

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Whereas female migrants used to come for work, the current rise in the number of family reunions has led to a growing proportion of ‘housewives’ among female migrants (e.g. Blangiardo 2004: 87). The number of children with foreign citizenship in Italian schools is also growing; in total more than 230,000 were registered in 2003, of whom about 130,000 had extra-European citizenship (Besozzi 2004: 104). In general, however, migrants are less settled in Italy than migrants in most northern European immigration countries. This is partly due to the relatively recent character of migration to Italy. But the issue of migrant incorporation is also bound up with a vacillating Italian migration policy and exclusionary practices concerning the renewal of residence permits and access to citizenship. Most permits are given to workers and only a negligible proportion to asylum seekers, which reflects the fact that Italy has still no genuine legislation or policy on refugees and asylum (e.g. Garosi 2004). In 2000, for example, 63 per cent of all residence permits were issued for work and 26 per cent for family reunion, but only 0.8 per cent to asylum seekers (Calavita 2004: 351). A higher than average proportion of legally resident foreign citizens live in the Italian north, while a larger proportion of immigrants in the south are undocumented. This is contingent, as we discuss in more detail below, on the heavily unbalanced regional political economy of Italy.

The Familistic Welfare System It has been argued (e.g. Mingione 1995) that southern European countries should be added as a fourth type of welfare regime to Gøsta Esping-Andersen’s (1990) much cited ‘triptych’ (Chapter 4). These countries have weaker and less integrated economies than those of northern Europe, a particularly strongly marked familistic orientation in their welfare systems, a predominance of family and small firms, and only relatively small, fully proletarianized working classes (Mingione 1995: 121ff.). However, we find (with Sciortino 2002, 2004) Italy sharing general structural characteristics of the conservative-corporate welfare regime (as outlined in Chapter 6) with a number of central and northern European welfare states and with Spain, Portugal, and Greece. As in southern Europe in general, however, the Italian welfare system accentuates the conservative model’s familistic and particularistic features. ‘The family, with its gendered and generational division of responsibility and labor, as well as its asymmetrical structure of interdependencies, is’, Chiara Saraceno (1994: 61) reasons, ‘the explicit partner of the Italian welfare state.’ Families’ responsibility for their members is inscribed in law, with reference to both parents and offspring, and ‘most of the procedures are actually centred on the expectation that this will happen’ (Sciortino 2002: 6). The family household is thus the central unit of the welfare regime: a caretaking and redistributive unit with a wide range of responsibilities and which integrates a range of welfare functions in society (see details in Vogel 2003c). These functions are premised on a


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particular gender division of labour both within families and in society at large (Saraceno 1994). The role of married women as the main carers of family members is constitutionally entrenched. In this capacity they are, in principle, economically dependent on their husbands’ employment and employment-related old-age pensions. The caretaking and redistributive functions of the family are not simply confined to the nuclear family but may, depending on local institutional practice, be extended to wider kin (sisters, brothers, nephews, and so on), a principle that is taken explicitly into consideration in the case of eligibility for means-tested public social assistance. The responsibility of the main (in principle) male breadwinners towards their ‘dependants’ is safeguarded in labour law. In the larger firms, this applies to generous treatment of employees made redundant because of market downturns. The privileged position of the employed is supplemented with a generous pension system heavily biased towards work-related retirement benefits.50 The absence of any public income support for young, never employed, or part-time employed, who are, in effect, obliged to rely on family or kin, represents the other side of this asymmetric relationship of dependency and reliance of the welfare system on the family’s redistributive functions, just as does the absence of incomesupport programmes for the long-term unemployed in general. 80

76

70

66 65.9

60

55 55,8 .8

Per cent

52.2 50

44.1

35,6

30.9

26.6

30

44.8 42.1

38.7

40

Women Men

26.6 19

20 74.7 77.9

10

13.3

13.6

d ly lta

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ce

Sp

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G

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re e

y K U

en

an m

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m

ed

Sw

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EU

14

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k

0

FIG. 7.3. Young adults (25–29 years) living with their parents or in multigenerational families (EU 14 and selected member states). Source: Data from Vogel (2000: 15, based on ECHP 1994 and Nordic Surveys). 50

Although Italy’s social expenditure as a percentage of GNP is lower than that of a number of other European countries, expenditure on pensions is above the European average (Sciortino 2002) and is a major component of Italy’s total social expenditure.

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The welfare system thus puts a priority on income maintenance, distributed through the household, as its central institution, rather than on full employment. It is linked to a labour market regime with a strong male bias. It privileges middle-aged, less educated men in larger firms who are family heads, and among whom there are few unemployed, while the unemployment pattern penalizes women and educated young people, who often remain dependent on their family for long periods (e.g. Reyneri 1999: 85ff.). Until recently, there have been fewer attractive openings for women into the labour market, especially in the south. Here unemployment rates among youth are also very high.51 Yet unemployment and dependency still mean something different from what they do in northern Europe. As in other southern European countries, there are few households without at least one (still most often male) breadwinner established in the formal economy and with high job security. There are consequently only a few households where all available income is derived from casual part-time or temporary jobs (Vogel 2003b: 33; Sciortino 2002). The system not only cushions youth unemployment; it also serves as a basis for prevalent career strategies. Traditional handicrafts, as well as new low-wage niches proliferating in the labour market since the early 1970s, are generally not attractive to educated native unemployed youth, who instead continue to seek shelter in the family for prolonged periods (Reyneri 1999 and Graph 9.3), waiting for better job opportunities with a higher status. Another corollary of the familistic welfare system, and the wide range of personal services it is obliged to provide for household and quasi-household members, is the residual character of the public service system. This is particular true of care for children and the elderly. It does not mean, however, that the welfare system lacks universal dimensions altogether. This is especially relevant to the national health system with its universal coverage and to the educational system. There is, as well, a public system of kindergartens for children between three and five years of age, supposed to complement mothers’ and the family’s socializing functions, but its actual coverage varies by regions (for details, Saraceno 1994; Sciortino 2002, 2004).52 Local availability of public services is highly variable. The best coverage is in some regions of the north, but public services to the household are poorly developed in extended regions of the south. Reforms in the 1990s have reduced the universalism of the health system and also increased the local differences of access to social services in general. This tends to exacerbate the clientilistic character of the Italian political system. The availability of local funds depends on the political capacity of local governments to extract fund51 The average Italian rate of unemployment for young males was 33.8 per cent in 1991 and for young females as high as 54.6 per cent (Mingione 1995: 125, on the basis of data from Istat). 52 According to Vogel (2000: 12) 6 per cent of all Italian children in the age group 0–3 attended formal day-care institutions in 2000, compared with 2 per cent in the territory of the former Federal Republic of Germany (W Germany), but 33 per cent in Sweden and 48 per cent in Denmark.


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ing from the centre, and their actual use depends on priorities at the local level. In order to gain popular support and votes, the political parties and trade unions have habitually exploited the great degree of discretion available to local administrations over the access to jobs and even to social welfare provision. The main parts of the modern Italian public welfare system were developed during a short period in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which saw an important reform of the educational system and a strengthening of the position of women in the labour market (e.g. Saraceno 1994). But budget deficits of the 1990s, and a general decline in the power of those political constellations that promoted the expansion of social rights, have resulted in a gradual erosion of the welfare state.

Gender and Migrant Domestic Workers An increase in the immigration of predominantly female housekeepers became one of the earliest and most important components of Italy’s new immigration from the 1970s. This is closely connected with the static character of the welfare regime at a time when more attractive occupational opportunities started to become available to native Italian women. Universal access to education facilitated social mobility into full-time professional jobs in administration, education, and science. A remarkable industrial expansion in the 1980s, which we examine more closely below, brought an expansion of new, well-salaried middle-class jobs for women in an expanding service sector. This exacerbated tension between Italian women’s prescribed domestic role in the family-centred welfare system and their growing and changing presence in the labour market: a tension that was hardly mitigated by any further expansion of a domestic services sector. Rather than responding to demands for quality and specialist services, state policy became increasingly marked by cuts to existing universal programmes and by the implementation of mixed systems that combine public coverage with market-driven private arrangements, though still grafted on to a largely unchanged conservative regime (e.g. Campani 2000; Saraceno 1994). The gender division of labour within households did not change in ways that could compensate for changing gender divisions in the labour market and substitute for women’s and mothers’ traditional roles in the family. A constantly expanding demand for market-based household services has ensued, creating an ‘occupational ghetto’ (the notion of Feuchtwang 1982) for migrant domestic workers, mainly women, but also a limited niche for migrant men of particular ethnic backgrounds. Most migrant domestic workers are employed by double-income households, where they become engaged as all-round ‘livein’ maids, caring for children, cleaning, cooking, and doing other domestic work. Similar employment relationships are organized also by professional single persons or parents (Sciortino 2002: 9). A prevalent pattern for younger

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families is to hire migrant women to ‘live in’ and take care of the needs of their elderly lone relatives. This latter practice is becoming increasingly important given a fast-ageing Italian population, scant provision of public services for the elderly, and the falling number of extended families with elderly people living with the younger generation(s). Statistics on immigration speak about the importance of migrant domestic workers in transforming Italy from a country of emigration into a country of immigration (see Graph 9.1 and Sciortino 2004: 115). Active recruitment managed by the Catholic Church through its web of missions played an important part in this. Table 7.2 shows an overwhelmingly large proportion of women among migrant groups of certain national backgrounds who are concentrated in specific female employment niches, particularly domestic work. This gendered ethnic division of labour is further articulated through racialization processes within the domestic work sector (e.g. Andall 2000), giving rise to ethnic hierarchies and differentiation in terms of status and salary. The importance of domestic work in total migrant employment in Italy indicates that what had earlier been a normal pattern reserved for a limited number of urban middle- or upper-class Italian families has become a general coping strategy for a large and growing category of new Italian middle-class families. This development is, as such, not unique to Italy, which is demonstrated by our discussion of the British case in Chapter 5. Yet this pattern is still much more widespread in Italy, as it is in other parts of southern Europe. Here it represents a continuity with an earlier practice, considered normal in middle-class life, which never came to an end. In the UK, as in other parts of northern Europe, earlier middle-class practices of engaging ‘living-in’ maids and other sorts of domestic help largely ceased with the advance of egalitarian ideologies and of the welfare state in the 1960s and 1970s. Yet even in Italy TABLE 7.2. Women as a percentage of the total number of (registered) migrants and among migrants from single countries of emigration in 1996 Female foreigners in total Senegal Algeria Morocco Albania Iran Nigeria Romania Somalia Philippines Peru Brazil Ethiopia Colombia

44.7 5.0 10.8 20 27.7 36.4 51.7 55.2 66.2 67.3 70.0 70.8 71.0 74.0

Source: Ministry of the Interior, quoted from Petrillo (1999: 240).


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and southern Europe these practices have become embedded in a changing historical-structural and institutional framework. These changes are closely connected with the racialization of domestic work, as previous forms of recruitment of domestic workers among women from Italian rural and workingclass families have given way to the recruitment of women from a globalized labour market and migratory system. The actual legal-institutional regime and social conditions under which these immigrant women work and live raises important new questions about the relationships between gender, race, and class (Campani (2000: 151). The work of Jacqueline Andall (2000) provides a rich account of the historical-structural changes and institutional predicaments that condition female migrant domestic workers’ labour and living in Italy, as well as of the struggles of what she calls the ‘new service caste’ (Andall 1998, 2003). The increasing presence of migrant labour within domestic work meant a marked historical shift in the relation between employees and employers. Historically, employment in the sector had been connected with the migration of younger peasant and working-class women from villages and towns in mountainous areas and in the south of Italy to the larger cities and to the north. Habitually, domestic work would be a transient period in the working lives of women, who would later return to family life. ‘Living in’ was regarded as the most proper employer–employee relationship and was strongly sanctioned by the Catholic Church. By the 1970s, this sector, which always had a low status, experienced increasing difficulties in attracting native working-class women. It came to compete with new employment opportunities in industry and services, and native women remaining in the sector came increasingly to insist on hourly pay instead of ‘living in’. With the flow of migrant women into the sector, the ‘living-in’ relationship again became the dominant type of employment, sanctioned by legal regulations and migration policy and practice in granting temporary work permits, and it was again strongly supported by the Catholic Church. Migrant women were, moreover, bound to particular employers by their work permits. Thus it is both difficult for domestic workers to change employer, to change the form of their particular (living-in) employment contract (if any formal contract exists at all), or to use their employment as a stepping stone to professional or geographic mobility. For the female employers of migrant women, there are significant advantages over employing native women (Andall 2003). Hiring a domestic worker represents a drain on a working woman’s salary and on many middle-class family budgets. But the weak legal and social position of the migrant women makes their services cheaper, which is further accentuated in the many cases where employment has been of an irregular character. The ‘living-in’ relationship provides for greater employer control and increased possibilities for exploitation. While the employment of native Italian women as domestic workers lasted for a short period of their lifespans, for migrant women it may, because of the character of regulations and a concomitant lack of

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alternatives, last for decades (Andall 1998, 2000). These women’s long-term ‘living-in’ relationship often imposes strict limits on their private lives and their chances of forming families. It encroaches on their opportunities to define and express their femininity, while their labour is, in effect, often instrumental in supporting and boosting their female employers’ construction of theirs (Andall 2003). The dominant definitions of migrant women’s employment have been contingent on the exclusive organization of workers in the domestic sector within the Catholic trade-union ACLI-COLF. Growing influence of migrant workers in the union has, however, brought increased attention to their working conditions and has thus strengthened their struggles for improvement (Andall 1998).

The Looming ‘Demographic Crisis’ The tension between Italian women’s productive and reproductive roles is charged with wider consequences in terms of immigration and newly emerging ethnic divisions of labour. The employment rate among Italian women is still lower than the European average and particularly the high female employment rates in the Nordic countries (Fig. 7.4). Yet the proportion of female part-time workers has, at least until recently, been very low.53 Hence, employment outside the home has amounted to a demanding dual role for women as the main domestic support for the family and full-time employee. Many are reluctant or unable to pay an immigrant domestic worker from their wage. Some employed women have chosen to reject marriage and/or maternity. Hence, ‘a past Italian practice of withdrawing from the labour market after motherhood [ . . . ] has been replaced by a withdrawal from motherhood in order to be present on the labour market’ (Andall 2003: 46 referring to Balbo and May 1975; and Trifiletti 1999). A resultant decrease in birth rates has caused increasing alarm about the ageing of society and a latent ‘demographic time bomb’. With fewer than 1.2 children per couple, Italy competes with Spain and Japan for the world’s lowest birth rate and is one of the fastest-ageing societies in the world. This makes deepening demographic deficits one of the most conspicuous issues in Italy’s post-Fordist development. A demographic and social situation where the number of pensioners already surpasses that of the working population leads to projections of a permanent future need for large-scale immigrant labour in a range of occupations and sectors. It is estimated that Italy would have to give access to more than 2.2 million immigrants a year for the next thirty years in order to fill its economy’s labour requirements and to ward off a crisis in its pension system (Calavita 2002: 11). This does not imply that all potential domestic labour reserves are absolutely exhausted. Poor local rural and regional labour reserves, which have tradition53

Only 6.2 per cent in 1994 (Andall 2003: 47 quoting Del Boca 1998).


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90 80 70

Per cent

60 50

Men 20−64

40

Women 20−64

30 20 10 0 k

ar

m en

D

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en

an

Sw

ed

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m er

nd

la

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nc

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ly

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gd

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G

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FIG. 7.4. Male and female employment rates in some European countries in 1994 Source: Data from Vogel (2000, based on ECHP 1994 and Nordic Surveys).

ally served as an internal recruiting ground for the informal economy, have largely disappeared. But, in spite of change, women’s overall rate of employment is still low. Youth employment is still significant, particularly in the south of Italy. However, many women remain tied to the roles that the conservative welfare system assigns them. Young unemployed native Italians tend to seek ‘shelter’ in the family as long as no job with acceptable status credentials becomes available. Hence the problem of a fast-ageing population is exacerbated by the consequences of a welfare regime that does not encourage the majority population to take up casualized low-status jobs. This creates a relative demographic deficit and a structurally determined labour deficit which has become more and more marked during the past three decades (e.g. Corkill 2001). This constant shortage of labour is also related to the particular kind of ‘economic miracle’ for which Italy has become renowned during the last two decades. It has, as we relate further below, taken the character of a labourintensive small business revolution, to a large degree premised on filling exactly the kind of jobs that only immigrants will take on. In this situation non-OECD migrant workers have progressively replaced native Italians, not least in Italy’s large underground economy. Many have become permanently stuck in the irregular labour market, often undocumented and excluded from the social welfare system altogether. Their presence in the labour market and in society has, however, started to take on a more permanent and regulated

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character. Understanding complex patterns of migrant incorporation and their present change demands an awareness of the specific character and development of the Italian economy and labour market and their regional differentiation.

A Dual Economy The Italian economy, as it developed in the three decades following the Second World War, had important structural attributes differentiating it from most of the major industrial capitalist economies in north-western Europe (e.g. Ginsborg 2001: 1–67). The most important was its more accentuated bifurcated structure. On the one hand, there was a selection of large industrial enterprises organized along the lines of Taylorism and industrial Fordism, with well-known companies like Fiat, Zanussi, and Olivetti at the forefront. The world of large enterprises also included state-owned firms in heavy industry, for example, in shipbuilding and steel production. The large industrial firms were concentrated to the north-west and central parts of Italy, but large plants were found also in the south, often located there as the result of clientilistic bargaining between local elites and the political centre. Large industrial plants were everywhere the bastions of well-organized and frequently militant bluecollar unions, often with close connections to the Italian Communist Party. Added to this was state employment in central and local administrations and in finance and other advanced service institutions, with a high level of protection, high social status, and favourable retirement pension arrangements. On the other hand, there was a multitude of localized networks of smaller handicraft and industrial workshops distributed over a range of different activities: more traditional in the south and more advanced (in organization and technology) in the north. Paul Ginsborg (2001: 17) describes the spectrum of Italy’s extensive network of small firms and industrial districts thus: The world of the small firm is a kaleidoscopic and multiform one. . . . At one end of the spectrum it was possible to find firms that were little more than artisan shops, often in an highly dependent relationship with other larger firms, producing components of partly finished goods for them, employing casual labour on low wages. At the other end were autonomous enterprises producing sophisticated goods for particular niches in world markets, with a significant part of their workforces highly specialized and integrated into the life of the firm. In between there existed innumerable local variations—in size, in degree of autonomy, in relationship to markets, in treatment of the workforce.

The legitimacy of ruling elites has, historically, been dependent on supporting a large petty bourgeoisie (e.g. Mingione 1995), including owners of a myriad of tiny family-run retail stores and family businesses in catering and tourism; and


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this other pole of the Italian economy has long benefited from active protection through a variety of legislative measures and national tax policies. Employees in the large industrial enterprises and in state administration enjoyed the most privileged positions in a hierarchic corporatist system in terms of wages and the level and conditions of pensions. Working conditions for employees in small and medium firms were often objectionable, wages low, and arrangements for pension and social benefits less favourable. In smaller firms with less than fifteen employees, unions had—and still have—no legal right of access. This dual structure of the Italian economy was also contingent on and intersected with a stark dichotomy between a formal sector and a large informal one. The labour market of the formal sector in Italy was, until recently, one of the most highly regulated in Europe in terms of prescribed hiring practices and job security (e.g. Calavita 2004: 353ff.). But this was matched by the largest informal sector among the OECD countries after that of Greece, amounting, according to common estimates in the late 1990s, to close to 30 per cent of GNP and employing a quarter of the total labour force. It is estimated that the size of the informal economy relative to the total economy grew by more than 10 per cent of GNP between 1994 and the turn of the millennium (Calavita 2004: 353). Its irregular labour market has long been a source of cheap labour for small business and family firms, eschewing the formal sector’s high social-wage costs and onerous regulations on hiring and firing practices, working conditions, and workplace security. Thus, Calavita (2004: 354) notes, the role of migrant labour in Italy must be analysed from the perspective of a ‘bifurcated and segmented economy . . . at once ‘‘inflexible’’ and shot through with precarious and unregulated work’.

The Informal Sector The growth and structural importance of informal economies and irregular labour markets make up a global feature of the transformation that has taken place in the economies of the advanced capitalist-industrial countries since the mid-1970s. Current processes of informalization are contingent on strategies of capital to enhance profitability through ‘flexibilization’ and deregulation. Yet, Mingione and Quassoli (2000: 32ff.) argue, informalization takes importantly different forms in the North Atlantic sphere. In Chapter 6, with Germany as an example, we discussed tensions innate to the corporatistconservative type of welfare regime and the tendency to find solutions to wage-cost and employment inflexibility outside the formal framework of the welfare system and the labour market. However, in Italy and southern European countries, the informal sector is a more pervasive and long-standing structural element of a traditionally weaker economy, with a predominance of small and medium low-tech firms. A large informal and non-regulated

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economy and an extensive irregular labour market, staffed by an indigenous labour force, have thrived as parallel systems to the formal economy and a regulated formal labour market, to which the public welfare system has been exclusively connected. However, the maintenance of the informal sector was enmeshed with the reproduction and legitimacy of the familistic and clientilistic welfare institutional system as well. Under conditions where large-scale industry was less dominant than in conservative welfare states to the north, the viability of working-class households has long been dependent on the supplementary income that could be earned from temporary, casual, and informal work in agriculture, as domestic helpers in middle-class homes, or from labour in workshops, restaurants, retailing, and so forth. This was connected with patterns of rural-urban and interregional migration. Internal (native Italian) labour migrants obtained supplementary income to peasant or peasant-worker households through work in the extended informal sector. Innate social and political tensions have thus long been managed through the reproduction of a dual economy and labour market and a dual welfare system, in which the informal economy has been a hub and social safety valve. But with the pervasive restructuring of the Italian economy from the mid1970s, the informal economy and its irregular labour market have taken on a new and markedly dynamic role. Moreover, the least privileged part of its labour force is no longer socially marginal groups among the indigenous population, but foreign migrant labour. The resort to the international migratory system as a resource for the informal economy has been an integral element of economic restructuring to a considerably greater degree than in other advanced capitalist countries. Yet the informal sector and a growing irregular migrant labour market have played a markedly different, but also shifting, role in different sectors of the Italian economy.

Crisis, Reconstruction, and Continued Discrepancies From the mid-1970s, Italy experienced, as did other Western European countries, a major crisis of large-scale industrial capitalism together with a similar trend towards closure, restructuring, or relocation of traditional metal, textile, and other Fordist manufacturing industries. Responding to the crisis in manufacturing, growth shifted partially to an advanced service economy, centred particularly in some of the large cities of the centre and north, with Milan coming closest to an Italian version of a ‘global city’. But Italy did not develop any financial or information nodes meeting the most advanced North American or north-west European standards. It was Italy’s predominance of networks of specialist small-scale workshops that would become its foremost post-Fordist asset and global comparative advantage. The small business sector experienced serious problems during the 1980s due to strong competition


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from new Asian world market producers, but reacted with great flexibility (Ginsborg 2001: 17ff.). Family-driven small businesses in Italy’s traditional multitude of specialist industrial districts, particularly concentrated in the north-east, adapted to new world market needs and developed dynamic regional cooperative networks and new sophisticated products. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, small workshops multiplied and expanded as a growing share of the world market was oriented towards quality, versatility, design, and fashion. These successes of Italy’s mushrooming small-business networks contributed to a remarkable economic recovery. From the early 1980s, Italian GNP went up as fast as the average number of employees per company shrank. Between 1976 and 1991, Italy’s GNP rose by almost 50 per cent and the level of consumption by more than 60 per cent (Ginsborg 2001: 28). The number of employees per company shrank from an average of twenty in 1981 to eight in 1997 (Calavita 2004: 353; quoting Ambrosini 2001: 49). Large Italian industrial corporations moved production to low-wage countries across the globe. They also reorganized remaining production in Italy along new lines of flexible specialization, teamwork, and workers’ participation, endeavouring to forge a solidarity within the firm that would displace militant trade union influence. Some production was outsourced or franchised to networks of small domestic producers. This contributed to the expansion of Italy’s small business districts also in the central and north-western areas, where big industries had been most important. It further hastened the decline of union influence and reduced the big corporate employers’ welfare spending costs. The size of GNP rose to new records, and small entrepreneurs and families became wealthy. But the faux frais of these successes were frequent tax evasion and adverse terms of employment and working conditions. It included employers’ evasion of social contributions through informal recruitment and employment practices, the cost of which was now to be increasingly passed on to migrant workers. A general economic revival occurred across Italy from the early 1980s, but the new small business miracle was especially manifest in the centre and north. In the Mezzogiorno vast districts remained economically peripheral and depressed with high rates of unemployment. While the overall Italian unemployment rate was about 9 per cent at the turn of the millennium, the rate in the south was more than double that figure. In contrast, the official unemployment rate in the north of Italy was less then 4 per cent, and in the dynamic industrial regions of the north-east, the lowest in Europe (Istat quoted by Calavita 2004: 353). But despite high unemployment and the continued fragility of the economic structure, the south too experienced rising living standards. This economic paradox of the south could be explained, at least partly, by its particular patterns of spending public funds (Ginsborg 2001: 22ff.). More than elsewhere in Italy, it had come to consist in cash transfers to households rather than investment in public services, often knowingly under false pretences, whether in the form of pensions and other welfare benefits or jobs in the public sector. Ginsborg (2001:

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24) contends that as a result ‘family spending power and the internal market were kept buoyant, while public services—hospitals, schools, the supply of water—remained at often abysmal levels’. This, he makes clear, reflects the specific trajectory that Italy’s clientilistic political economy had, for historical reasons, taken in the south, with criminal networks like the Cosa Nostra and the Camorra as integral partners: In the Mezzogiorno, politics mattered more in economic terms than elsewhere in Italy, because the historic weakness of the private sector made the public one the privileged point of reference. The primacy of politics, though, had anything but benign effects. The southern political class, in search of legitimacy in a society characterized by low levels of trust and association, gave priority to interpersonal, clientelistic relations rather than to relatively disinterested works of public utility. Southern politicians mediated between centre and periphery, distributing state subsidies to individuals and families in return for electoral loyalty. (Ginsborg 2001: 24)

It is important to understand the constitution of this regional political economy, with its exceedingly familistic and clientilistic features, not least as it relates to the complexity of the issue of migrant labour. That the earlier intensive south-north migration in Italy largely came to a halt in the 1980s and 1990s can conceivably be explained by these particular features of the economy and the welfare system in the south. Since the turn of the millennium, however, the trend towards renewed south-north migration among the native population has resumed. This may intensify competition between natives and immigrants in changing labour markets in the north.

The Segmentation of a Discriminatory Migrant Labour Market The growing Italian migrant labour market is highly segmented in terms of ethnic/national background and gender, with particular migrant groups concentrated in particular occupations (e.g. Petrillo 1999; Calavita 2004: 352ff.; Zanfrini 2004; Mingione and Qassoli 2000). One example is an overwhelming concentration of Filipina and South American women in domestic services; another is that of North African men in building and construction. The unequal gender distribution within groups of migrants from individual countries, mapped in Table 7.2, reflects this gendered ethnic division of labour. There are also marked differences in the extent to which migrants of different nationalities are represented within the underground economy. The employment of immigrants varies greatly from region to region in terms of sectors and occupations as well as wages (Calavita 2004: 355ff.). While the general picture of immigrant labour in Italy is one ‘of a workforce that is not only mobile and ‘‘flexible’’ but is also subject to real discrimination and segregation on the job market’ (Petrillo 1999: 241), ‘informal work and regular or irregular status interweave to create a


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wider variety of combinations mirrored in diverse forms of social insertion or marginalization and discrimination’ (Mingione 1995: 210). This varying regional political economy is, as shown in Figure 7.5 below, reflected in patterns of migrant occupation in different Italian regional labour markets. In the Mezzogiorno, the agrarian sector is a major area for the employment of migrant workers, most often undocumented and labouring under markedly degraded and exposed conditions in irregular jobs. Formal contracts for regular jobs in agriculture are, in fact, relatively easy to obtain, but are often used simply in order to secure a residence permit, and thence as a fake cover for taking on an irregular but better-paid job in industry, often connected with secondary migration to the north. There are fewer and less varied job opportunities in the south than in the north, but at least in the 1980s and 1990s, migrants often regarded the conditions for integration into local society as being more favourable (Mingione and Qassoli 2000: 45): in the south there was less police control and less bureaucratic involvement with immigration and employment than in the north. Migrants regarded being irregular or clandestine in a less regulated socio-economic context as less problematic, and they shared this social situation with parts of the indigenous population. Moreover, Mingione and Quassoli argue (2000: 46), the informal social context offered migrants favourable opportunities for reconstructing (ethnic) social networks,

100% 90% 80% 70% Services 60%

Domestic work Construction

50%

Manufacturing

40%

Agriculture 30% 20% 10% 0% North-west

North-east

Centre

South

FIG. 7.5. Non-European Union legal migrant workers by region and economic sector. 1999. (%) Source: Based on Zincone (2001: 354)

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temporarily broken as they left their home countries. Social life is harder in the metropolitan areas of the north, and problems of maladjustment and social isolation more common. But the north possesses a much more varied set of social and economic assets through which to adapt successfully to post-Fordist restructuring. Although the informal economy is less prevalent and bureaucratic control more present (Mingione and Qassoli 2000: 45), there has long been a high and varied demand for migrant labour in both industry and services, and in both the formal and the informal economy. This led gradually, during the 1980s and 1990s, to a shift in the gravity of immigrant employment to the north (see Fig. 7.2), which has also been connected with a process of secondary south-north migration by resident migrant workers within Italy. The largest single concentrations of migrant workers are found around Rome and Milan—in Rome overwhelmingly in a booming service economy, and in Milan more often in small and medium industrial workshops. In the conurbations of the so-called Third Italy in the north-east, small and medium-sized manufacturing firms— relying on family networks, a high degree of informality of leadership, and close relationships and cooperation between employers and employees—have consistently recruited large numbers of migrants. Also in the north-west, where the expansion of small business became an integral element of postFordism as big companies started to rely on outsourcing and the structuring of an emerging network economy,54 migrant workers have gradually become a substantial part of the permanent workforce in new small firms. Hence, the expansion of small business clusters in central and northern Italy is of particular importance for understanding the specific role that migrant labour has played, not only in economic restructuring in Italy, but also in the gradual relocation of migrant employment from the south towards the north, as well as for understanding the changes in the incorporation process from an initial predominance of exploitation of undocumented workers in the irregular labour market towards the growing dependency of employers on a permanent, regular, and settled migrant labour force.

The Shifting Role of Migrant Labour: Between ‘Primitive Accumulation’ and ‘Flexibilization’ Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, migrants had a different place in processes of post-Fordist restructuring in Italy and other southern European countries from that in the old northern European immigration countries. In northern Europe, industrial restructuring largely meant the end of labour migration, at least for two decades, and it generated extensive unemployment which was, in particular, concentrated among an already large resident migrant 54 See, for example, Mitter’s (1986) analysis of outsourcing in the Italian clothing industry.


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population. Also, in Italy restructuring indeed meant the emergence of extended industrial wastelands, as in, for example, the formerly prosperous urban-industrial node of Genoa. But, independently of chronic structural high unemployment in the south and temporarily soaring rates of unemployment among the indigenous working-class also in parts of the industrial north, this was exactly the moment when extensive recruitment of migrant workers took off. Submerged in the large informal sector, migrants were kept from interfering directly with restructuring in the regulated industrial labour market and the often bitter class struggles surrounding it. But a range of actual forms and shades of irregularity concerning permits and work continued to keep them in a state of geographical flux and social and political insecurity. It made them particularly exploitable and disposable as a flexible source of labour in a wide variety of sectors and occupations, instrumentalized for boosting the international competitiveness of a restructuring industry and economy. They became a cheap and flexible menial labour force in a new service sector. As they entailed no social wage costs for their employers, and often worked for subminimal wages, migrants provided a cheap source of ‘primitive accumulation’ for the initial phase of the small-business revolution in the 1980s and 1990s.55 Through chains of value transfer transmitted through new outsourcing and franchising networks, they also boosted the profitability of big corporations that did not themselves directly employ informal labour. Seen from this perspective, ‘[f]ar from being an effect of the irregular immigration, the existence of an underground economy in the receiving countries would appear to be its cause’ (Reyneri 1998a: 329). It is, accordingly, not underdevelopment and poverty in the countries of origin that is the root cause of illegal immigration, as maintained in public discourse. It is, rather, as in other parts of southern Europe and eventually throughout Europe, the downgrading of the labour market that induces undocumented immigration and which reproduces it in spite of tightening control at the borders (Reyneri 1999: 103). In this sense, the informalization of economy and labour market is indeed a general feature of post-Fordist restructuring across the North Atlantic sphere as a whole. Yet the development in southern Europe, and not least Italy, is special due to the traditional importance and size of the informal sector and long prevalent, albeit covert, political support for its reproduction and further expansion. Migrants’ insertion into it was facilitated by the extension and

55 ‘Primitive accumulation’ is a notion derived from Karl Marx’ analysis of the accumulation strategies of early capitalism in England. Here it is used as reconceptualized by Claude Meillassoux (1981 (1975)) in terms of a ‘free rent’ appropriated by the employers of immigrant workers. This free rent results from unpaid costs of reproduction in terms of the feeding, socialization, and education of immigrant workers outside the politicaleconomic orbit of the immigration countries. It is realized as long as employers can avoid paying a normal social wage associated with the employment of migrant workers and their families’ social integration in the host society.

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adaptation of already existing practices belonging to both a dual labour market and a dual welfare system. But eventually, the proportion of migrants engaged in the irregular labour market decreased. According to a survey by the Italian Ministry of Labour (quoted by Reyneri 2001: 28), the total proportion of irregular non-EU wage earners among all non-EU labour migrants was in 1994 almost 69 per cent, but in 1998 only around 30 per cent; and it has decreased further to about 20 per cent (of a larger total migrant population) with large-scale regularization measures after the turn of the millennium (e.g. Calavita 2004: 346ff.; ISMU 2004). Irregularity is, however, highly variable between sectors. It is still excessive among immigrants in agriculture and in building. The highest proportion of regular employment contracts are found among immigrants in domestic work and in manufacturing, which are currently the two single most important occupational realms for new hirings of immigrant workers in Italy (Zanfrini 2004: 93). In these occupations, the proportion of irregular work has decreased markedly since the mid-1990s. In small industrial workshops, a continuous inflow of immigrant labour has become an indispensable precondition for the recruitment of labour and a structural requirement for their further viability. An increasing number of employers of small and medium businesses have come to regard immigrants as a regular, permanent, and integral part of their formally employed workforce. Thus, forecasts of hirings by the Italian Ministry of Labour for 2003 projected that a minimum of every fifth and a maximum of every third hiring would be of non-EU labour. While the highest absolute number recorded was in manufacturing, the highest proportion of projected hirings of non-EU personnel was in menial services, for example in cleaning, which comprised over 60 per cent of the forecast hirings in these occupations (Zanfrini 2004: 85). Altogether, this signifies that by the close of the millennium, migrant labour had changed from a residual factor boosting flexibility in an increasingly competitive global environment to a central structural component of the economy. But this is also a process, Zanfrini (2004: 95) maintains, that contributes to the degradation of increasing parts of the labour market. It testifies, she argues: [T]o the operation of classification processes, which define some kinds of jobs as ‘immigrant jobs’ and so end up by impoverishing them in terms of pay and union protection, progressively ousting the low-skilled—but not for this reason more flexible—Italian labour . . . employment ethnicisation and discrimination against ethnic minorities are the other face of the complementarity that made possible the inclusion of thousands of immigrants in an economy that is still badly hit by unemployment.

It points to the still relative, rather than absolute, character of the lack of manpower linked to employers’ drive for flexibility and diminished working conditions and labour costs. This is further indicated by a recent growth in the


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rate of unemployment among resident migrants workers in Italy, now higher than the average level of employment among natives. It demonstrates that Italy has started to converge with the racialized pattern of redundancy marking the older immigration countries in Europe. Another trend corresponding to a general development in Europe is a (still limited) growth in the number of self-employed migrants. Self-employment may, like elsewhere, contribute to social mobility in some cases, but often it conceals the failure to find employment and should rather be interpreted as a result of employers’ strategies of containing the costs and risks entailed in the signing of an employment contract (Zanfrini 2004: 97).

From ‘Irregularity’ to ‘Atypical Jobs’ Alongside their growing structural importance for small and medium-sized industrial workshops, migrants’ employment has, for the most part, become based on formal contracts, although mostly in the economically expansive centre and north of the country. This is particularly common in the small business clusters in the north-east, where almost all immigrants working in manufacturing now have formal employment contracts as well as valid residence permits. Irregular employment is, indeed, still widespread, especially in the south, with still an estimated 51 per cent of the underground economy (Tartaglioni 2001: 3, quoted by Calavita 2004: 353), but also in parts of the north, for example Lombardy (including Milan). But, as the rapport between the formal and the informal sectors is being gradually modified through deregulation of the labour market and the Italian welfare state, the relative importance of informality for reproducing a cheap and flexible workforce appears to be a less significant factor in employers’ labour market strategies than it used to be (e.g. Cesareo 2004a; Calavita 2002: 15). As early as the 1960s, smaller employers started to use the informal sector as a vehicle for evading the strict regulations of the labour market and for enhancing flexibility (e.g. Petrillo 1999: 240ff.; Zanfrini 2004). Radical union activity also influenced the strategies of large companies to outsource production to the underground economy. The fast-growing recruitment of immigrant labour from the mid-1970 boosted the efficacy of such strategies. Yet deregulation through changes in Italian labour law at the turn of the millennium—a development contingent on a general turn of the whole political spectrum towards the right, and prompted by EU legislation (e.g. Calavita 2002: 16)— has opened the way to flexibility of formal employment practices. National regulations restricting temporary and part-time employment in the Italian labour market have been relaxed. So-called ‘atypical jobs’ have proliferated, with a marked overrepresentation of women and migrants. These practices are, so far, much more pronounced in the dynamic industrial north than in the south, where the more encompassing underground

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economy continues to mask the actual extent of part-time and temporary employment. The trend towards regularization is both bifurcated and gendered. This is well illustrated by a survey of the migrant labour force carried out each year in Lombardy (quoted by Cesareo 2004a: 187, who refers to Lombardy 2004). It recorded a decrease in the employment within the irregular sector from about 30 per cent of employed and self-employed migrants in 2002 to about 20 per cent in 2003, following the latest Italian amnesty for undocumented workers. But there was, at the same time, a substantial increase in the proportion of atypical jobs (temporary and part-time). Almost twice as many women as men work in such jobs, and they also participated more in the underground economy. A relatively high degree of unemployment among migrants, well over 10 per cent of the total labour force, was also recorded. All in all, only 38 per cent of the total migrant labour force were, according to the survey, holding regular full-time jobs in the formal labour market. Contracts for ‘atypical jobs’ are, as this indicates, indeed becoming the ‘normal’ position on the labour market for a significant part of Italy’s migrant workforce (Zanfrini 2004: 88; Petrillo 1999: 241), particularly in the north, while in the south irregular employment continues to be the main source of ‘flexibility’. These new types of contracts are, Petrillo (1999: 241) argues, ‘representative of the shape the post-Fordist ‘‘new work’’ is taking in Italy, and include self-employment contracts, compulsory part-time contracts, and special contracts in derogation of existing laws . . . with the employer often resorting to the regulations in force in the immigrants’ country of origin’. It introduces new tensions between migrants and natives in parts of a segmented labour market (Zanfrini 2004), while keeping immigrants exceedingly exposed to discrimination, and this is further exacerbated by their convoluted legal status and the deadlock of a bungled migration policy.

The Deadlock of Immigration Policy By the end of the 1970s, Italy was becoming known as an attractive country of immigration, easy to enter without permits of residence and with lax border control, with a population tolerant of, or at least indifferent to, immigration, and with fair opportunities for an undocumented migrant to find a job. This was especially true for the large underground economy, where a majority of employers preferred irregularly employed migrant labour. There were no particular administrative barriers to labour migration to Italy, which had moderate proportions. The presence of foreign citizens in Italy was regulated exclusively by police laws from 1931, passed and amended during the Fascist period (Garosi 2004: 346). Ministerial decrees established a system of legal immigration, whereby employers could request immigrant workers to fill labour shortages (Calavita 2004: 367). But until a first law on immigration was promulgated in 1986, there was no interest in migrant incorporation, but


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only in the control of ‘illegal’ immigration and the legalization of the status of undocumented migrant workers. Thereafter, consecutive amnesties for the legalization of ‘illegal migrant workers’ were issued together with legislation attempting to regulate migration, residence and social rights of migrant workers. The past twenty years (1986–2005) of immigration legislation speaks, however, about ‘continuous starts, shifts, and changes of course’, with a ‘marked disjuncture between the stated purpose of a law and its effect’ (Calavita 2004: 373). Single legal acts were often ambiguous or contradictory and were interpreted in widely different ways in particular local settings, where administrators were subject to covert clientilistic lobbying from economic and political interest groups. The first attempt to regulate migration through a Ministry of Labour circular in 1982 is as good an example as any of a miscalculation. It had the dual purpose of halting further immigration and legalizing undocumented migrant workers already in the country. But, due to the negative sanctions, economic costs, and burdens of evidence it placed on employers, only relatively few migrants were legalized and had their employment regulated. Simultaneously, at a moment when the actual demand for labour grew to match Italy’s reputation as a promised land for migrants, the effect of closing existing legal channels for immigration and migrant employment was to stimulate an unforeseen escalation in undocumented immigration. Thus, the amnesty was to initiate a prolonged abortive experience of Italian migration management where, as Agosto Petrillo puts it (1999: 253): [T]he immigrant’s destiny was part of a confused game between entrepreneurs and governments . . . [resulting in] a repeated shifting of the immigrants from one condition to another, keeping them in limbo, in a state of uncertainty between work in the formal economy and in the informal one, between regular and irregular status. The immigrant’s condition is . . . marked by an unsettled state, being subject to economic fluctuations and to the consequences of political whim . . . even regular immigrants have no guarantee of maintaining their status, and therefore their ‘privileged’ condition is real but precarious and as such is little better than that of the clandestine migrant.

This limbo of migrants and of migration policy was exacerbated by Italy’s signing the Schengen Agreement. The first Italian law on immigration in 1986 expressed a dual, not to say ambiguous, concern. It was passed in the light of international conventions on the rights of immigrant workers signed by Italy (e.g. Garosi 2004). But it was also motivated by northern European governments’ and the European Community’s mounting concern about unwanted clandestine migrants entering the Community through the back door of its soft southern ‘underbelly’ at a time when the Community’s internal borders were set to be dismantled (e.g. Calavita 2004: 367). The law introduced, as it were, parity of treatment between foreign and Italian workers concerning access to social benefits and welfare services. It assured migrants’ right to family reunion and announced a second amnesty for undocumented

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migrant workers. It also adopted a set of sanctions against employers hiring clandestine migrant labour. However, in none of these respects did it come up to expectations. As further immigration laws, amnesties, and measures to regulate the employment status of migrant workers were introduced in 1990 and 1996, together with stricter measures of police control criminalizing immigration, the paradoxes and conflicts inherent in an ambiguous policy process became increasingly acute. The consecutive mass legalizations of undocumented migrants were shot through with fake ‘bought’ employers’ evidence of non-existent employment contracts on the basis of which migrants were able to legalize their residence but continued working in the underground economy. Undocumented migrants who managed to legalize their status and to obtain a residence permit on the basis of actually holding a regular part-time or full-time job would risk soon relapsing into illegality because of the limited duration and unreliable conditions of their residence permits (e.g. Reyneri and Baganha 2001). The main responsibility for administering immigration policy remained with the police, and the interpretation of criteria and actual administrative practice varied hugely across the country (e.g. Zincone 1999; Sciortino 2002: 20, 2004; Mingione and Qassoli 2000). Migrants would regularly experience problems trying to renew their residence permits because of the capriciousness of local administrations, but few orders of expulsion were actually executed (Reyneri 1999: 88). Under these conditions, many migrants held a regular job, but with an ‘illegal’ status and without a valid residence permit. Others would both lapse into ‘illegality’ in terms of residence and hold an irregular job. There were also provisions for stipulating yearly quotas for legal immigration, but these were never implemented as intended, quotas were mainly used for retrospectively legalizing migrants who had entered clandestinely. The measures facilitating expulsion merely acted to criminalize clandestineness and to drive immigration further underground. A restrictive policy on entry combined with a hungry labour market ‘thus transformed itself into a complete obstacle to legal immigration’ (Petrillo 1999: 249). Migration control had manifestly been introduced to safeguard equal rights for migrants and to protect Italian workers from competition. But the almost complete blocking of legal channels of entry allowed the underground labour market to flourish and intensive exploitation to proliferate. The flouting of laws on the minimum wage and on employers’ social security contributions, not to speak of regulations on conditions of work and employee protection, was tolerated. The blocking of legal immigration on the grounds that it would increase undue competition thus generated, in effect, the worst possible state of competition by encouraging clandestine immigration (Calavita 2002: 40). The requirement that legal status be regularly renewed for short periods clashed with the irregular characteristics of the sectors of the Italian labour market in which most immigrants continued to work well into the 1990s. Calavita (2004: 369) argues that precisely those qualities of ‘invisibility, mar-


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ginality, and vulnerability’ that made the ‘extracommunitarian’ migrants attractive to certain parts of the labour market also made it difficult to control their employment through sanctions on employers or to legalize them through amnesties. This deadlock of continuously reproduced insecurity and flux also implied effective exclusion from access to social rights. The Italian bureaucracy implemented the policy in a way that left migrants wholly confused about their legal status, and its implications for access to labour markets, services, and rights of citizenship (Mingione and Qassoli 2000: 50ff.). Migrants’ rights of residence have always been open to interpretation, easily lost, and vulnerable to a low level of legal enforcement. The conduct of the police and local authorities produced a confusing picture, blurring the distinctions between formal and informal arrangements, thereby creating the most favourable conditions for the reproduction of informal practices. As a result, residence permits, far from representing the first step toward some kind of integration of migrants into Italian society, remained merely documents considered useful for legally crossing the Italian border (Mingione and Qassoli 2000). In 1998, the so-called Turco-Napolitano Law—named after its main architects and passed by the centre-left Olive Tree coalition government, headed by Romano Prodi—attempted to break this deadlock. The new law came into force at the time when, as already discussed, many employers were shifting their preferences, as far as migrant labour was concerned, from clandestine employment towards stable regular employment in the formal economic sector and in particular in manufacturing. It was, accordingly, the first immigration law to concretely and seriously address the issue of long-term incorporation of migrants in the Italian society and welfare system, the prospect of which had already been raised in 1986 by the principle of equal rights for foreign workers. One of its measures was to introduce the permanent residence card, which was intended to create a durable denizen’s status for long-term resident foreign citizens, and thus guarantee them genuine access to welfare services and other social benefits (Sciortino 2002: 20ff.; 2004). The law prescribed equal treatment with Italian workers and full access to social services, including access of undocumented migrants to urgent medical treatment and to public school. Temporary residence centres were to be set up, providing for the needs of socially vulnerable migrants. Other measures at least partly separated the issue of residence permits from that of work permits, and thus made it easier for employees in the underground economy and for unemployed immigrants to legalize their presence in Italy. Legal immigration was, moreover, to be facilitated by a system of sponsorship by corporate actors including immigrant associations (e.g. Calavita 2004: 370; Garosi 2004: 350ff.). However, as Christian Joppke (2004) notes, the main factor driving the 1998 law was EU pressure on Italy to further restrict undocumented immigration, lest Italy should be excluded from the widened Schengen cooperation. Among the important measures were instruments for detaining

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and expelling ‘illegals’ and for tougher sanctions on employers of clandestine labour. The law was to facilitate further the conclusion of readmission agreements with the governments of individual emigration countries, which were thereby obliged to receive expelled clandestine migrants in return for, among other things, yearly admission quotas for migrant workers to Italy and funding for reinforcing their border police control (Garosi 2004: 351ff.). In view of the major provisions of the Turco-Napolitano law, it looked for a moment as if Italy would follow a German pattern of ‘differential exclusion’ (see Chapter 2), offering a major group of migrants the long-term prospect of social inclusion combined with a stringent border control and the setting up of premises for a revamped and tightly monitored guest-worker system. Yet critical Italian research exposes the skewed practice of almost all the measures of this ambitious law (e.g. Calavita 2004: 370ff.; Sciortino 2002: 17ff). Its operative details were, in the main, drafted by the Ministry of the Interior in ways allegedly inspired by the Schengen agreement; according to Petrillo (1999: 250), the logic of expulsion and rejection indeed came to supersede that of acceptance. The idea of reception centres was realized in the shape of actual detention camps for illegals, resembling in some cases ‘a maximum security prison’ (Calavita, 2004: 372, referring to Gullo 2001: 59). The ad hoc way in which the quota system was administered led to fresh illegal immigration and to further large numbers of clandestini, who were now more criminalized than before. At the same time, programmatic declarations on and legislation prompting equal rights continued to be jeopardized, obstructed by capricious localized practices of regularization and migration control. Sciortino (2002: 17ff.) argues that the result of all this was a continuous restrictive filtering of immigrants towards statuses marked by insecurity and irregularity, even for long-term settled immigrants. This was most clearly demonstrated by a ruthless filtering process connected with the passage from temporary residence permits to permanent residence cards. Almost 65 per cent of the regular foreign residents at this time (1998) fulfilled the law’s basic formal requirements for applying for the residence card, which seemed to promise transition to a more secure status for the majority of Italy’s migrant workers. However, this did not materialize. An exceedingly restrictive interpretation of the new measure by the Ministry of the Interior and the low administrative priority accorded it, exacerbated by the opaque practices of local police offices, meant that only a tiny fraction of the non-EU migrants were able to cross the line and obtain such a document (Sciortino 2002: 21, 2004: 125). The latest Italian immigration legislation from 2002 carries the name of the Bossi-Fini Law after the leaders of the two coalition partners of the Berlusconi centre-right government that came to power in 2001. Its professed success in carrying through the legalization of more than 600,000 undocumented migrants (e.g. Blangiardo 2004, and Table 9.1) veils the contours of a discriminatory policy exacerbating most of the exclusionary features of the 1998 law while, in the same fell swoop, jeopardizing still further some of its inclusive


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potentials (e.g. Garosi 2004). By tying any residence permit closely to the holding of a work permit, it has further criminalized undocumented migrants. But at the same time it has strangled potential legal channels for immigration embodied in the old law. By vesting increasing powers of control and expulsion in the police and by strengthening local administrative discretion it has paved the way for continued arbitrariness in the handling of residence permits and residence cards. Furthermore, by making entitlement to a residence card conditional on a renewal every two years rather than every fifth year as before, the Bossi-Fini law took a major step towards again shutting the window on the formulation of a long-term policy of integration and social inclusion that was opened by the Turco-Napolitano Law in 1998. This increasingly exclusionary character of immigrant policy after the turn of the millennium is, in effect, exacerbated by the innately discriminatory character of the existing law on citizenship, which was passed in 1992 in connection with Italy’s signing of the Maastricht Treaty (Sciortino 2002: 21ff.; 2004: 125). Thus, the revised law prescribed a two-tiered treatment— one for EU citizens and one for ‘extracommunitarians’—and introduced manifestly ethno-cultural principles in the operative definition of the Italian nation. Under the earlier law on citizenship, aliens had been licensed to apply for naturalization after only three to five years’ residence. In the postMaastrich era, the requisite period for EU citizens was halved while for others it was doubled. These new norms were, moreover, applied retrospectively to foreign citizens who had already resided in Italy for five years or more. The exclusionary consequences of these changes were further exacerbated by a clause that made uninterrupted continuity of residence for the whole decade a condition for eligibility for naturalization: a condition that most non-EU migrants found exceedingly difficult to meet given the capricious system of migration management. The amended 1992 legislation on citizenship also emphasized jus sanguini and ethno-cultural principles of admission. This facilitated the naturalization of foreign citizens of even remote Italian ancestry, while representing great obstacles for other migrants of non-EU background (Sciortino 2002: 22). The new law on citizenship has, Sciortino demonstrates, been efficient in holding actual naturalizations down to a very low number. Most naturalizations now occur through marriage to an Italian citizen—which confirms the familistic character of the Italian welfare state and its underlying exclusionary predisposition, which has increasingly taken on a sinister ethnonational quality.

Towards a New Guest-Worker System? We have referred to the institutional-structural dynamics behind Italy’s change from a country of emigration to a country of high immigration in the course of the last three decades. The change is contingent on the static

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features of a conservative welfare system confronted with an expanding and labour-intensive economy undergoing rapid change. We have discussed how the movement of native Italian women into middle-class full-time jobs has jeopardized the canonized functions of a familistic welfare system. It has triggered an enormous demand for low-paid migrant workers in homework and care, and generated a looming demographic crisis. The Italian experience also illustrates a prevalent response of a corporate-conservative welfare regime that accords scant legitimacy to market-based solutions, to the political quandary posed by neoliberal policies pressing for market dominance, labourmarket deregulation and increasing ‘flexibility’. We observed this tension between the welfare system and new market-driven claims in the case of Germany. But the economic structure of Italy, like that of other southern European societies, has encouraged solutions to global pressures in ways that turn a low-wage underground economy into a particularly important vehicle for restructuring and crisis management. Adapting and expanding the functions of a large informal economy was thus exploited as a strategy for soothing costly political confrontations and for circumventing a pressing imminent dilemma. Undocumented immigration and the displacement of a growing, but politically uncomfortable, burden of non-regulated casual work on to immigrants and new ethnic minorities became, at first, an efficient means to these ends. We have also noted how this strategy was adapted to boost the competitiveness of the formal business sector via links of value transfer from the informal sector effected by means of subcontracting arrangements. Thus, the existing institutional configuration, embodied in the conjunction of a bifurcated labour market with a bifurcated welfare regime was, at one and the same time, exploited and accentuated through the prevalent political management of migration. It helped the political elites to circumvent the challenges and dilemmas of economic globalization. However, feeding the growth of the informal sector of the economy and labour market has from a longer perspective proved to be detrimental to the sustainability of a welfare state, and to political stability (e.g. Jahn and Straubhaar 1999; Reyneri 1998a: 326ff.). It undermines the tax base and thus the financing of central welfare services like health and education, and it threatens the financial underpinning of pension schemes. A vicious circle is forged, Reyneri (1998a: 326ff.) argues, whereby the disjunctions of the welfare regime reproduce the informal economy, which spurs illegal immigration and the deepening fiscal crisis, and hence recourse to the informal economy. From this perspective, we may interpret the seemingly bizarre oscillations in the Italian management of immigration as the expression of tensions between conflicting claims and interests. These innate tensions were, in turn, exacerbated by external political pressure, in particular from the EU, to curb undocumented immigration, with the result that undocumented migrants were increasingly criminalized. All this occurs concurrently with multiple pressures on the established welfare regime arising from liberal-conservative pressure for dismantling exist-


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ing job-security legislation, for downscaling established distributive welfare schemes, for commercializing established public pension schemes, and so forth. Although migration is not the main cause of the crisis, migrants have repeatedly ended up as its main scapegoats. Thus, the populist upheavals following in the wake of Europe’s welfare state crisis since the early 1980s reminds of the fascist movements upsetting Europe following the Great Depression of the 1930s. The examples are many and have grown increasingly radical during the last decade. The radical populist reaction that took off in Italy at the beginning of the 1990s echoes the messages of racist-populist movements in other parts of Europe. But Reyneri (1999: 103) argues: [The] situation worsens if most migrants work within the submerged economy, since this strengthens a vicious circle between welfare and fiscal crisis, a growth of irregular jobs, an increasing incorporation of migrant workers into the underground economy, a growing attitude of rejection towards immigrants and a more and more strict immigration policy.

In Italy in the early 1990s, the media obsession with a flourishing informal economy, a large number of clandestine immigrants, and fears of an ‘invasion’ by poor Albanian migrants across the Adriatic coalesced with worries over a deepening fiscal crisis and the collapse of the political establishment that had ruled Italy since the Second World War. The so-called Tangentopoli (‘Bribesville’) trials in Milan, focusing on a corrupt clientilism among politicians from the old Christian Democratic and Socialist elites, contributed to the creation of a particularly fertile terrain conducive to radical populist movements on the right. It was first exploited by the regionalist political movement Lega Nord. The Lega managed to skilfully fuse the subjects of illegal immigration, rising criminality, and ‘cultural deviation’ with a condemnation of clientilism, corruption, and arrogant centrist mismanagement of resources into a single captivating scenario of decay. It was contrasted with its own agenda for an autonomous northern Italian ‘Padania’ based on hard-work, economic diligence, honesty, law, and order (e.g. Bull and Gilbert 2001). The post-fascist movement Alleanza Nazionale, based mainly in southern Italy, followed suit with a racializing anti-immigration crusade. The two populist parties were coalition partners in the first short-lived government formed by Silvio Berlusconi and his party, Forza Italia, in 1994. Campaigning for re-election in 2001, Berlusconi chose to play the immigration card as one of the key messages of his coalition (e.g. Calavita 2004: 361ff.). Backed by his huge media empire, he did so with panache and considerable success in a general atmosphere of public concern about a tangible breakdown of public safety and law and order. As a result, the law and order discourse in Italy, as elsewhere in Europe, has been increasingly conflated with the topic of ‘illegal immigration’ and a racializing discourse on ‘cultural difference’, in particular the allegedly irreconciliable antagonism between Christianity and Islam. The Islamophobia of the populist discourse was boosted all the more by the events of September 11, 2001.

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While pressure from the EU had so far been a major political factor in the war on clandestine migration, this role was now assumed unreservedly by the dominant domestic political actors. But the result, as embodied in its first major act on migration, the Bossi-Fini Law of 2002, has so far rather been, Joppke argues (2004: 381), to make ‘Italy a bit less like its European neighbors (where the permanence of most labor migrants is now a statutorily provided and constitutionally protected option) and a bit more like the new immigrantreceiving states in the Middle East or Asia, in which the migrant worker’s temporariness is heavily enforced’. However, this does not mean that the question of immigration is in any way settled. The populist parties have to confront a powerful, composite, and growing political bloc propagating and actively promoting the long-term inclusion of migrants in Italian society: ‘From Catholics with their concern for the humanity of immigrants, to unions’ advocacy on behalf of potential members, to various ideologically committed advocacy groups, to employers who are alarmed at the shrinking labour supply’ (Calavita 2004: 366). Emerging migrant associations have become important actors in the ongoing political struggles for social rights and citizenship in cooperation with these allies. Caritas and other influential humanitarian church organizations already have a long history of working with immigrants in Italy. In the absence of any genuine inclusion of a major part of the migrant population in the Italian welfare system, in particular undocumented workers, the church organizations have carried out extensive social and charity work among emerging ethnic communities and are the main providers of immigrant health care. They support immigrants in regulating their terms of residence and in protecting their civil and social rights, and they press for more liberal legislation. In the name of international solidarity, all three Italian trade union federations assist clandestine workers in legalizing and in obtaining access to the welfare system, and induce them to enter the unions (see further Calavita 2004: 363ff.). As migrant workers are coming to represent a growing part of the regular blue-collar working class, the trade unions see them as increasingly important partners in ongoing and future struggles over labour market regulation, employment, and social welfare. Important newcomers to this composite ‘immigrant friendly’ bloc in Italian politics are regional employers’ associations, in particular from the north-east, with its extremely tight labour market. The employers urge the government to open Italy to legal immigration, to liberalize legislation, and to initiate programmes for integration. They may approve of the neoliberal policies of deregulation practised by the Berlusconi centre-right coalition, which contribute further to the casualization of the labour market and to a dismantling of the national welfare regime. However, a growing number of employers also see access to a regular and settled category of long-term integrated migrant workers as a sine qua non for their firms’ current and future expansion and viability.

EIGHT

‘Paradise Lost’? Migration and the Changing Swedish Welfare State

T

social democratic regime of the Nordic welfare states has been cited as a possible future model for the EU because, among other things, of its allegedly successful inclusion of immigrants. The contemporary challenge for the social democratic welfare states, Magnus Ryner argues (2000: 68), would be to merge extended civil, political, and social rights of citizenship with a political framework thoroughly divorced from ‘nativist’ conceptions of ‘national belonging’. This challenge has, in political practice, been met in diverging ways in the Nordic welfare states. In what follows, we limit ourselves to the Swedish case. The ‘Swedish Model’ has been represented as the quintessential social democratic welfare regime (Esping-Andersen 1990), and Sweden enjoys a reputation for having one of the world’s most far-sighted immigration policies. As a result of six post-war decades of continuous immigration, Sweden has today one of the largest proportions of immigrants in relation to total national population in the EU (see Fig. 2.2, Chapter 2). This includes Swedish-born children of immigrant parents. Altogether, the population with a so-called immigrant background—that is, immigrants and those born to two immigrant parents— approaches 1.4 million (2003), or approximately 16 per cent of a total Swedish population of 9 million (Integrationsverket 2004). But only about a quarter of all persons with immigrant background are foreign citizens; the rest hold Swedish or dual citizenship. This reflects one of the highest rates of naturalization among immigrants and their children in Europe. The immigrant population has a diverse ethno-national background, ranging across the globe. While immigrants from the other Nordic countries were still most numerous by the late 1970s, migrants from Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe have made up the majority of migrants to Sweden each year from the early 1980s. Along with family reunions, refugees became, from the mid-1970s, the main source of immigration. Sweden’s formerly solidaristic refugee policy has, HE

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Migration and the Changing Swedish Welfare State

however, become increasingly restrictive, particularly after access to European Schengen cooperation began in 2001. As long ago as the 1960s, Sweden adopted a liberal policy of incorporation in which resident foreign citizens were given full rights to welfare and public services on a par with those enjoyed by native Swedes, and easy access to citizenship. In the mid-1970s, Sweden became the first European country to grant foreign citizens the right to vote in and run for office in local elections. These policies were embedded in a multiculturalist ideology emphasizing the ethnically diverse character of Swedish society. The upsurge of new nationalist-populist movements in the late 1980s and the onset of a deep economic and social crisis in the early 1990s were followed by self-critical scrutiny among national institutions and across the political spectrum. Enquiries by ˚ lund and several public bodies into adverse Paradoxes of Multiculturalism (A Schierup 1991) resulted by the end of the decade in the restoration of a broad consensus on a flexible and manifestly anti-racist ‘integration policy’ supported by all mainstream political parties (Proposition 1998). As a result, Sweden is unique in Europe, with its political compact committed to combating racialized exclusion (see the programmatic platform in Na¨ringsdepartementet 2002). The Swedish welfare system that was built up after the Second World War, and reached its peak in the late 1970s, was designed to attract wide political support going beyond the centralized labour movement and the hegemonic Social Democratic Party’s core constituency among the blue-collar working class. Public welfare services with universal coverage—including the educational system at all levels, care for children and the elderly, health services, unemployment insurance together with a state sponsored pension system— has appealed, and still does appeal, to both traditional and new professional middle class groups. The welfare state’s social basis and public legitimacy were strengthened by the large-scale incorporation of women into the labour market at an early date, and their inclusion in the welfare system on at least formally equal terms, while the comprehensive public social service system substituted for their domestic care work. However, notwithstanding its high rate of female employment (Fig. 8.2), the Swedish labour market has remained one of Europe’s most gender-segmented, and immigrant workers in the 1960s and 1970s were likewise incorporated on terms of ‘subordinated inclusion’ (the notion of Mulinari and Neergaard 2004). They were exploited as a means of managing peaks of economic cycles and temporary labour shortages, and were often exposed to discrimination. An unequal ethnic division of labour ˚ lund 1985; Schierup and Paulson 1994). But miemerged (Persson 1972; A grants were not, as in central and southern Europe, exploited as disposable guest workers without essential rights of citizenship or as clandestine workers in an irregular labour market. They were soon acknowledged as permanently resident ‘denizens’, enjoying—in principle, if not always in practice—full access to the welfare system (see Hammar 1990).


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Despite setbacks, Sweden is still something of an international ‘model’, not only with regard to its policies for incorporating immigrants, but also for its restructured welfare regime at the turn of the millennium. Although it is critical of Sweden’s high taxes and finds many welfare measures too generous, the European Commission has praised Sweden for its investment in the new ‘knowledge-based economy’, which has reached ‘levels similar or superior to that of the US’ (CEC 2004a: 83). Precisely because it is a model, the Swedish experience warrants particularly critical scrutiny. In this chapter, we focus on a truly puzzling disjunction between a strong commitment to ‘sustainable welfare’ and ‘diversity’ on the one hand, and deepening structurally and institutionally grounded ethnic-class divisions on the other. We elucidate dimensions of this current Swedish paradox in conjunction with what stands out, alongside the UK, as one of the most clear-cut cases of ‘regime change’ in advanced capitalism (Pontusson 1997). Thus, several key components of the Swedish model, which had been the basis of the post- war social democratic welfare state, were largely disbanded during the 1980s and 1990s. This issue has been posed in terms of a ‘Paradise lost’? (Marklund 1988), with substantial groups of migrants and their children being among those most exposed to the change. After a short description of general trends in migration, we present the historical specifics of the ‘Swedish model’, its subsequent transformation, and examine changing forms of racialized marginality. We conclude by displaying Swedish policies on migration and incorporation, and discuss migrants’ ambivalent position in a changing, social democratic welfare state. These pertinent issues of migration, citizenship and welfare continue to be inadequately researched in Sweden. There are a number of detailed quantitative surveys of the distribution of employment and unemployment, and in recent years we have also seen an array of critical qualitative analyses of racism and discrimination. But both sets of studies are seldom connected to research and analyses of structural and institutional change: we will readdress in the following pages as we attempt to bring together some of the disparate pieces of the complex Swedish puzzle.

Patterns of Immigration and Settlement Post-1945 migration to Sweden resembles that to other parts of Western Europe in terms of the shifting national-geographical background of migrants (see Chapter 2). The first migrants came from Finland; historically they were in a position of political subordination, extended by later economic dependency, corresponding, at least in some aspects, to Irish immigration in the British case. Later on, migrants came mainly from southern Europe (Italy, Greece) and the wider European rim (Yugoslavia, Turkey). From the early 1970s, but in particular after 1980, immigrants started to come from a wider selection of countries in Asia, Africa, South America, and the former Soviet sphere of

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influence in Eastern Europe. Immigration has contributed substantially to population growth in Sweden during recent decades. Since the 1980s, around two-thirds of population growth has been due to net immigration, and since the mid-1990s, around 25 per cent of those born in the country have had foreign-born parents (SCB 2004b; Integrationsverket 2004). The number of immigrants from other Nordic countries has remained substantial. Today most have a background in Africa, Asia, or Eastern Europe; the most populous subgroups are those with a background in the former Yugoslavia, the Horn of Africa and Iran, Iraq, and Turkey (Table 8.1). In 2003, a total of 45,000 foreign citizens migrated to Sweden. Of these, 23 per cent came from other Nordic countries, while only 11 per cent from the pre-enlargement EU countries (other than Denmark and Finland). Another 13 per cent came from ‘other European Countries’ (chiefly former Yugoslavia) and 53 per cent from the rest of the world, mostly from ‘Asia’ (including Turkey), accounting for 35 per cent of the total number of migrants in that year. Sweden was, until recently, widely perceived as a very homogeneous society with only a small aboriginal minority, the Sami, and small long-settled minorities of Jews, Roma, and Tornedalers. But in fact, Sweden has a history of considerable ethnic diversity (see Svanberg and Tydeń 1998). The Swedish state crushed local and ethnic opposition in order to build a centralized system with a strong commitment to assimilating ethnic and social minorities. Sweden’s transformation into a fully-fledged modern industrial nation came rather late, but from the mid-nineteenth century it took forms that were, in some aspects, almost as

TABLE 8.1. Foreign-born residents by country of birth: Swedish-born with foreign-born parents (in 000s), 1960–2003 1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2003

Total population (Dec 31) 7,498 8,081 8,318 8,591 8,883 8,976 Foreign citizens 191 411 422 484 477 476 Foreign born 300 538 627 790 1,004 1,078 Foreign born: individual regions and countries: Nordic countries (except Sweden) 174 321 341 319 280 279 Europe (excluding Nordic countries) 79 176 191 221 330 350 Yugoslavia 2 34 38 43 72 75 Poland 6 11 20 36 40 42 Africa — 4 10 27 55 62 Somalia — — — 1 13 15 North America 12 16 14 19 24 26 South America — 2 17 44 51 54 Asia 2 10 45 150 253 295 Iraq — — — 10 49 68 Iran — — 3 40 51 53 Turkey — 4 14 26 32 34 Oceania — — — 2 3 3 Swedish born with two foreign-born parents 284 315 Source: (SCB 2004b) and Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket 2004).


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disruptive for the existing agrarian society as it had been in eighteenth-century Britain. This generated comprehensive emigration, as small peasants and poor workers were driven away by poverty and dreams of a better life. From the midnineteenth century to 1930, about 1 million Swedes, over one fourth of the population, emigrated, mainly to the US. During and immediately after the Second World War Sweden received considerable groups of refugees, but only with the extensive labour immigration encouraged after 1945, and throughout the 1950s and 1960s Sweden transformed from a country of emigration into a country of immigration. Until the early 1970s, the overwhelming source of immigration to Sweden was labour migrants largely recruited by employers. A ban on further labour immigration implemented in 1972 at the behest of the trade unions is still (2005) in force. Thereafter, refugees and asylum seekers became the dominant source together with a steadily rising number of relatives to earlier immigrants. Sweden accepted refugees from Chile, after the coup of 1973, and Christian Assyrian asylum seekers from Turkey. In the 1980s, following the Islamic revolution, Iranians became a major group among the asylum seekers, and from the late-1980s, refugees arrived from the Horn of Africa. During the 1990s, Sweden accepted more refugees from war-torn former Yugoslavia than most other countries. The total number of residence permits granted to immigrants was moderate until the mid-1980s, ranging between 10,000 and 15,000 a year. Towards the end of that decade, however, the number more than doubled. This reflected a growing number of applications for asylum and an asylum policy that, in terms of the ratio of residence permits granted to applications for asylum, continued to be among the least restrictive in Europe. The immigration of refugees reached a climax in 1994, when close to 80,000 residence permits were granted: a reflection of Sweden’s reception of large contingents of refugees from the Yugoslavian wars. While immigration declined somewhat during the rest of the 1990s, the numbers rose again to an average of approximately 45,000 immigrants granted residence during 2000–3. The number of residence permits for asylum seekers has decreased in both relative and absolute terms (Fig. 8.1). In 2003, 24,500 residence permits were granted for family reunion reasons and 6,500 went to asylum seekers. This restrictive trend in asylum policy reflects a deeper integration with EU policies on asylum in general, and with Sweden’s membership of the Schengen agreement (2001) in particular. The proportion of immigrants granted residence permits for labour market reasons continued to be extremely low. There is, however, a growing number of undocumented migrants.56

56 During 2001, for example, a total of 15,300 aliens were apprehended in accordance with the provisions of the Aliens Act (absence of necessary permits, visa overstayers, and so on), compared with a total of 8,400 during 2000. The persons apprehended come mainly from Iran, Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Russia (OECD 2004: 273–4).

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Migration and the Changing Swedish Welfare State Reason for granting residence permits 1980-2003

100% 90% 80%

EES

70%

Adoption

60%

Student

50% 40%

Labour

30%

Family ties

20%

Refugees

10% 2002

2000

1998

1996

1994

1992

1990

1988

1986

1984

1982

1980

0%

FIG. 8.1. Reason for granting residence permits, 1980–2003 (%) Source: Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket 2004)

The ‘Swedish Model’: Historical Success and Conspicuous Debacle In the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, the so-called Swedish Model of the welfare state was widely reputed for its successful merger of economic growth and industrial development with full employment and a distribution of income, and considered among the world’s most egalitarian. The model was founded on three key features (see Weiss 1998): 1. A programme of economic management premised on a centralized corporatist compact between unions and employers. 2. The long-term political hegemony of the Social Democratic Party. 3. A large universalist welfare state. A critical feature of the Swedish Model was the Rehn-Meidner Programme of economic management (RM). RM was conceived by two Swedish social democratic economists in the late 1940s and operated, at least partly, for the following three decades. It offered a political and economic framework for the post-1945 welfare state that went further than Anglo-Saxon Keynesianism in forging a coordinated welfare capitalism (see Soskice 1999; Pontusson 1992). RM was premised on a solidaristic wage policy of the trade unions based on the principle of equal pay for equal work. Its aim of equalizing wages across economic sectors and firms was anchored in the world’s most centralized


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system of collective wage bargaining, set up between strong unitary national unions under the hegemony of the main blue-collar union, LO, and the Swedish employers association, SAF. The core idea was to raise wages in weak sectors and thereby precipitate firm closures or reorganization, while wage restraint in advanced sectors and plants would support profitability and expansion within internationally competitive export industries. Labour redundancies due to plant closures, relocation, or new skill requirements were matched by an active labour market policy (ALMP) geared towards industrial retraining or upgrading of skills. ALMP should recycle laid-off workers, or those whose skills had become obsolete, back into more dynamic parts of the economy or across geographical regions, and thus keep unemployment at a minimum. Finally, the objectives of the RM programme were premised on a stringent financial and monetary policy, expected to prevent overstimulation of the export sector, and maintain international competitiveness by forging innovation and continuous restructuring. The solidaristic wage policy made Sweden the country with the highest degree of income equality in the OECD area, and the union-led policy of wage restraint made employers accept full employment (see Swenson and Pontusson 2000). The second distinctive feature of the Swedish Model was the long hegemonic status of the Social Democratic Party, which has governed the country with only minor interruptions continuously since the early 1930s. Historically this hegemony rested on class-based social movements ‘from below’ with unusually united labour unions at the centre. It shaped a different political context for carrying out the great post-1945 social reforms from that which existed in most other parts of Europe (Mann 1987). In Sweden, the Social Democratic hegemony became the political guardian of centralized corporatist wage bargaining, the guarantor of full employment, and made possible extensive regulation of employment and workplace conditions, and legislation on workers co-determination. The Social Democratic Party was and is also the prime political force behind the third distinctive attribute of the Swedish (and Scandinavian) model: a universal welfare state with a public service sector that has a large share of all expenditures on welfare and of employees in the Swedish labour market. In 1985, one in every three employees in Sweden worked in the public sector as compared with, for example, only one in six in Germany. This kept Sweden’s employment rate high relative to Germany and most other OECD countries. Public sector expansion substituted for female home work and facilitated womens’ coping with double roles as mothers and employed. By the mid 1990s, Sweden had by far the highest proportion of labour market active persons to non active (age 16-84 in 1995) in the EU: that is 2.4 active to one inactive as against, at the other extreme, 0.9 active to one inactive person in Italy (Vogel 2000: 6), where the conservative-corporatist regime’s family-based welfare system made women abstain from childbirth and where the pension system was geared to early retirement (Chapter 7). The public service sector

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boosted female employment, and women became the public sector’s main workforce. By the mid-1980’s, the female employment rate was almost as high as the male, and had risen to almost 80 per cent from less than 40 per cent in 1965 (Fig. 8.2), and two in every three female employees worked in the ¨ fstro ¨ m 1997). The RM premise of full employment and ALMP public sector (Lo institutions were central to the operation of the welfare regime as a whole. Provisions for unemployment insurance and income maintenance through means-tested welfare transfers were designed to play a marginal role. Periods for which unemployment benefit may be paid were and still are short. This is due to unemployment insurance being treated as an integrated measure of the ALMP, the Swedish welfare model’s principled ‘work strategy‘ (Arbetslinjen), rather than as a social policy measure (Junestav 2004). Unlike almost all other advanced welfare states, Sweden managed to sustain near to full employment right until the beginning of the 1990s. But already by the beginning of the 1980s, the dynamics of the RM programme had been jeopardized (Pontusson 1992; Weiss 1998) as the Social Democratic Party started to lean towards the then internationally dominant neoliberal economic doctrines (see Pontusson 1992). But the so-called ‘Third Way’, propagated as a hybrid between Anglo-American economic liberalism and the traditional Keynesian welfare state politics of the French Socialist Party, turned out to have exceedingly disruptive economic effects. These were aggravated by a haphazard deregulation of the national credit system and an ill-planned tax reform, all promoting a consumption boom without financial coverage and a surge of speculation in real estate (see further Martin 2000). A deep recession and the collapse of the Swedish monetary system by the beginning of the 1990s were followed by plant relocations and labour-saving reorganization in large industrial corporations, together with the bankruptcy of thousands of firms across the country. This produced unemployment of a scope unheard of since the Great Depression, a setback which also spilled over into the public sector. There is no generally accepted explanation of this debacle of the formerly celebrated Swedish Model. Some analysts point to problems posed by an allegedly oversized public sector (Henrekson, Jonung, and Stymme 1993). Others stress the inability of a model characterized by a solidaristic wage policy and centralized corporatist bargaining to attract domestic investment once globalization had created opportunities for exit (Kurzer 1993: 20 quoted by Weiss 1998: 91), a failure to accommodate the enhanced labour market and wage setting flexibility demanded by a global post-Fordist economy (Pontusson 1992; Swenson and Pontusson 2000), or innate difficulties in accommodating a highly regulated national monetary and credit regime to a globalized political economy (Martin 2000). Most accounts can be seen as variations of a more general theme of globalization, stressing the inability of the nation state to sustain a regulated economy and labour market and a large welfare sector when confronted with economic globalization and the increasing autonomy of multinational corporations. However, in one of the most illuminating


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analyses of the Swedish case, Linda Weiss (1998) questions outright whether globalization was the prime mover. The key problem has been a shift since the mid-1970s from cost-driven competition to the dominance of innovation-led competition in the advanced post-Fordist economies, in which the capacity for product innovation and industrial planning has become central (Weiss 1998: 102ff.; see also Crouch 1993; Jessop 2002a). The Swedish Model was not suited to accomplish such a shift, Weiss (1998: 103ff.) argues. By the mid1970s, the RM programme had in fact already been ‘undermined from within’, she maintains, and had ceased to function as originally intended. By turning centralized bargaining into a mere instrument for wage equalization across sectors, rather than for wage restraint, the LO undermined the support of the major employers (see also the argument of Pontusson 1992). By letting the protected sectors (in particular a fast-growing public sector) rather than the export industries lead wage negotiations, the government and the unions reduced Sweden’s outward orientation and effected a loss of external discipline. Laws protecting low-productivity workers from dismissal eroded the skillenhancing effects of the ALMP. A hyper-stimulative devaluation policy in the 1980s induced speculation and reduced the pressure on firms to innovate and upgrade (e.g. the analysis of Martin 2000). Yet, even if the RM had continued to work as designed, its basic institutional set-up, Weiss argues, would not have been adequate for effecting a necessary shift in orientation. The problem was not the size of the welfare state itself, but rather the one-sided Swedish institutional approach to industrial change, which focused on full employment but without a corresponding policy to influence the structure and development of industry (Weiss 1998: 109). The particular corporatist strategy represented by RM benefited a handful of large mass-producing and export-oriented corporations, which reacted by enhancing the management of existing labour-saving processes at home within established lines of production and making portfolio investments abroad. But the Swedish Model never provided the institutional means to make the necessary strategic choices connected with industrial innovation. Accordingly, this ‘paradox of an active labourmarket policy without an active industrial policy to create the new wealth and new activities necessary to reabsorb displaced labour’ (Weiss 1998: 110) was not due to any failure to apply the model. It was embedded in the very nature of it and the historical Swedish class-compact of 1938, which institutionalized ‘a distributive project connected to the goal of full employment, in exchange for which business would require the state to eschew any coordinating role in capital and product markets’ (Weiss 1998: 113).

Third Way Restructuring? A new Social Democratic government, succeeding a short-lived (1991–4) centre-right government in 1994, followed neoliberal policy prescriptions in

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subordinating its reiterated promises to restore full employment to anti-inflation measures. A formerly solidaristic union policy and the centralized wage bargaining system had also, by the 1990s, been thoroughly dismantled in favour of decentralized bargaining and collective union-employer agreements at branch and enterprise levels. This contributed to place Sweden among the OECD countries with the fastest-growing income inequality, albeit departing from a very low level (Vogel 2003a: 446ff.), thus reversing an unbroken decades-long trend of declining inequality. Rising unemployment rates and an eventual growing dependency on diminishing residual means-tested social welfare transfers resulted in an increasing number of poor households (Vogel 2000: 34). Yet the increase in inequality was relative and took off from a level way below the EU average. Total unemployment went up from 1.5 per cent in 1989 to 8.1 in 1994—about the EU average—but Sweden still had Europe’s lowest rate of open long-term unemployment (1.6 per cent). In 1994, 5.5 per cent of Swedish households had an income below the national poverty level, as against 20.6 per cent in the UK, 10.9 per cent in Germany, and 17.9 per cent in Italy (Vogel 2000: 35). In effect, the 1992 financial crash left a transformed social democratic regime sharing certain similarities with the UK’s New Labour and its ‘Third Way’. Yet we should be aware of national governments’ different responses to the crucial choice, as Pontusson (1992: 327) puts it, ‘confronting any and all social democratic labor movements in the ‘‘post-Fordist era’’ ’, where labour must choose between two alternative growth strategies: ‘one based on extraordinary product and process innovations and the other on wage-cost competition.’ Referring to David Soskice’s (1999) classification of different ‘production regimes’ among the advanced capitalist states, Pontusson (1997) argues that the UK—like the US, where the labour market regime is based on government regulation rather than on powerful compacts between capital and labour—has readily chosen strategies with a marked element of wage-cost competition including the expansion of a new large low-wage service sector (see Chapters 6 and 7). In contrast, the Swedish post-1994 social democratic strategy is more of a midway ‘muddling through’, persistently struggling to eschew the second alternative, yet producing unwelcome and politically inopportune ‘neo-American’ (Chapter 7) modes of social marginality. The emerging ‘New Swedish Model’ (NSM) is, as it were, approaching ideals of the ‘embedded neoliberalism’ prescribed by current EU policies (discussed in Chapter 3), sharing also their inherent social hazards. Put differently: a transformative programme indeed, yet in imminent danger of selling out social citizenship and distributive justice. The redirection implicated by the NSM since 1990 is signified by, among other things, the foundation of a new Swedish Ministry of Industry, Employment, and Communication (Na¨ringsdepartementet) and new national agencies organizing, financing, and merging research and innovative economic and


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industrial development.57 Together with the Swedish branch of the European Social Fund, they should promote entrepreneurship, small business development, and ‘employability’, and organize centres for innovation and economic growth. Mandatory ‘agreements on growth’ (tillva¨xtavtal) between regions and the ministry will exploit local and regional comparative advantages and generate ‘development partnerships’ with a plurality of stakeholders from public administration, business, and ‘civil society. They are supposed to include migrant associations and entrepreneurs and have responsibility for gender equality, ‘diversity’, and ‘integration’ (see e.g. Andersson 2004). This policy is still committed to social welfare and solidarity, yet less associated with distributive justice than with a view of the individual as a ‘stakeholder’ with responsibility for enhancing her personal ‘employability’ through ‘lifelong learning’. Sturdy investments in educational facilities are geared to developing a vast market for the upgrading of skills. The system of higher education has been broadened and regionalized in order to enhance the human capital of distant regions but also, for example, to better reach out to children of immigrants in poor and socially so-called exposed metropolitan areas. An ambitious 1997–2002 ‘Special Build-up of Adult Education’ programme (Kunskapslyftet 2002) was launched to upgrade the educational level of the population in general, including measures targeted particularly at immigrants whose education had become out of date due to long-term exclusion from the labour market. In these processes, the public discourse changed—similar to what we observed in Chapter 3—from a ‘device for redistribution’ to one of ‘reducing the costs of social provision’ (Levitas 1998: 25). Yet distinctive features of the original Swedish model are still present. This is particularly true of the large publicly financed welfare sector. The total amount of social benefits remains (together with those of other Nordic countries) the highest in the EU and still with comparatively strong elements of ‘decommodification’ and universality (Vogel 2000: 9). Public services have certainly gone through extended processes of reorganization and outsourcing to private entrepreneurs, the resources of many municipalities have become stretched, benefit levels have been reduced, and the quality of public welfare services often jeopardized. But the degree of coverage is still outstanding compared with the welfare state of the UK, as well as those of most of central and southern Europe. Also, the rate of unionization has remained the highest in the EU. It was in fact higher at the turn of the millennium than in the heyday of the Old Swedish Model (OSM), growing from an overall membership of 69 per cent of the labour force in 1969 to 81 per cent in 2003 (LO 2004). The unions have succeeded in defending essential achievements of the post-war struggles, such as regulated working conditions, co-determination, job security, health insur57 In particular NUTEK, the Swedish Business Development Agency and VINNOVA, the Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems.

206


ance, and so on. Although Sweden’s rate of employment continued, even at its lowest in the mid-1990s, to be among the highest in Europe (see Chapter 7, Fig. 7.4), this was achieved at the cost of a persistent substantial unemployment together with the growth of a secondary ‘casualized’ sector of the labour market with so-called atypical (see Jonsson and Wallette 2001), part-time, short-time, and insecure ‘project-related’ jobs, together with increasingly workfare-like ALMP measures. This implies lower standards of social security, unemployment insurance, and pensions. Increasing numbers have even been pushed from unemployment and long-term welfare dependency into what Bill Jordan (1996: 75) calls ‘hyper-casualisation’, that is, a precarious subsistence on the edge of a deteriorating and increasingly disciplinary welfare system combined with equally precarious work activities within a growing informal sector of the economy. All of these marginalization processes, as we discuss further below, systematically and disproportionately hit immigrants and their children with backgrounds from outside the OECD member states. In sum then, the change from the OSM to the NSM has meant an increased bifurcation of the labour market, a rising number of ‘working poor’, and ‘workfare’ practices. Although today’s processes of marginality and social exclusion do not imply giving up on the ‘work strategy’ as a basis for Swedish social policy, as Malin Junestav (2004) demonstrates, its ideological and political premises have changed crucially since the beginnning of the 1990s. While the work strategy of the OSM was premised chiefly on rights and (working class) self-help, the NSM promotes an ideology and discourse more focused on control and discipline ( Junestav 2004: 21ff. and 180ff.) reminiscent, as it were, of the moral underclass perspective of the US and British workfare practices (Chapters 3–7, and Junestav 2004: 180ff.). In place of funnelling the unemployed into more qualified jobs, the function and legitimacy of ALMP has more and more come to rest on keeping presumptive long-term welfare clients ‘active’ and ‘employable’. The ALMP has thus moved towards a ‘Third Way’ welfare ideological perspective focusing on individual behaviour and the individual’s personal responsibility for her social and economic situation ( Junestav 2004: 190ff.).

The Swedish ‘Vertical Mosaic’ The Changing Labour Market An ethnic segmentation of the labour market and a tendency towards confla˚ lund and tion of class and ethnic inequality—a Swedish vertical mosaic (A Schierup 1991, paraphrazing Porter 1968), as it were—is by now long-standing ˚ lund 1985). The contrast between the heyday of the Swedish Model in (see A the 1970s and the intensified exclusion that has materialized since the early 1990s is striking.


207

The organized recruitment of labour in the late 1960s and early 1970s was combined with a policy focused on inclusion in the general welfare system and the regulated labour market. As in other parts of Western Europe, an ethnic division of labour developed with immigrants concentrated in the least attractive sections of industry, and in cleaning, catering, and so forth. This facilitated the mobility of natives into more appealing white-collar professions (Persson 1972). It was connected with discriminatory institutional practices that restrained professional mobility and hindered immigrants from obtaining jobs corresponding to their actual qualifications (Schierup 1994; Frank 2003). Still, full employment and regulated jobs were the rule. As Sweden embarked on a novel multicultural policy of integration, by the mid-1970s immigrants had still a high rate of employment and a below-average rate of unemployment. Due to the union-driven wage policy based on solidarity with low-paid workers, a resultant compressed wage structure combined with full employment and a much higher rate of full-time employment among foreign-born women than among Swedish born, income differentials between immigrants ¨ 1994; Lundh et al. 2002: and natives were comparatively small (Wadensjo 32ff.). While native Swedish women were overwhelmingly employed in typical ‘female’ jobs within the public sector, immigrant women were, like immigrant men, concentrated in full-time jobs in industry. During the 1980s, foreign-born workers came to experience higher rates of unemployment than natives. There were also growing discrepancies in rates of employment (Fig. 8.2). In particular, refugees experienced difficulties in becoming included in the labour market; and there was also a growing incidence of early sickness-related retirement among migrants who had worked for decades in the most strenuous jobs in industry and services (Regionplanekontoret 1985). However, compared with most other northern European countries, including the neighbouring Scandinavian countries (see Schierup 1989, 1993), the overall rate of unemployment among immigrants remained comparatively low, and a major part of the unemployed continued to be drawn into the skills-upgrading system. With the crisis of the 1990s, ethnic divisions on the labour market were to take on wholly new dimensions. The overall rate of open unemployment (as a percentage of the active labour force) went up abruptly from 1.5 per cent in 1989 to 8.2 per cent in 1993, but among foreignborn from 3.5 per cent to 24 per cent during the same period (SCB 2004a) and among foreign born from 2.9 per cent to 15.4 per cent. Disproportions in the level of unemployment are particularly striking for persons born in Africa, Asia, and European countries outside the EU. ‘Africans’ and ‘Asians’ are—everything else equal (education, age, marital status, gender, time of residence in Sweden, and so on)—four times more likely to be unemployed than the nativeborn (Integrationsverket 2002: 32ff.). Premised on long-term redundancy and a changing ALMP system, large groups of foreign-born have increasingly become dependent on means-tested, residual social welfare or low, second-rate, unemployment compensation

208


100 90 80 70 MEN 60

Natives Foreign-born

50 40 30 20 10 0 1960

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

1990

1995

2000

100 90 80 70 60 WOMEN 50

Natives Foreign-born

40 30 20 10 0 1960

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

FIG. 8.2. Age-standardized employment rates for foreign-born and native-born aged 16–64 according to gender, 1960–2000 (%) Source: Bevelander (2004. Based on data from Statistics Sweden).

(discussed by, among other, Lundh et al. 2002: 58ff.). While the proportion of households of foreign-born receiving means-tested social welfare allowances (not including unemployment insurance payments) corresponded, largely,


209

to the Swedish average in the 1970s, it had gone way above the average in the 1990s (Franzeń 2001). Vogel (2002: 54) indicates that, across the 1990s, persons born in the Middle East, and Africa were receiving means-tested social security payments over ten times more often than Swedish-born. This skewed ratio was partially evened out with length of stay, but was still conspicuous after a decade or more of residence in Sweden.58 With a changing orientation of the active labour market policy, strong pressure to take any job available has followed, including casual part-time or occasional agency work and various forms of precarious ‘self-employment’. Thus, OECD (2003: 64) notes an overrepresentation of foreign nationals in temporary and parttime jobs in Sweden, which is more marked than in other northern European countries, and persons with certain immigrant backgrounds are particularly heavily overrepresented. Hjerm (2002: 99)59 records that, for example, persons born in the the Middle East are three and a half times more often employed in temporary jobs than Swedish born persons, and still two and a half times more often after ten or more years of residence. Yet this is only one facet of a growing racialized casualization of the labour market. As the eligibility criteria for receiving means-tested support have become increasingly stringent, ‘hypercasualization’—precarious coping strategies merging diminishing public assistance with income from occasional undeclared work for cash (Jordan 1996: 75)—has gained ground together with a plurality of workfare-like disciplinary practices particularly targeted at immigrants. Conceivably, as, the result of a combination of these factors there is a conspicuous overrepresentation of individuals born in certain regions and countries, other than Sweden, among those living below the Swedish poverty line (Fig. 8.3). Children of immigrants, born in Sweden or having come to Sweden at a very young age—the so-called second generation (except for those with a Nordic background)—are exposed to similar constraints in the labour market as their parents (Integrationsverket 2002: 48 ff.). Young people born abroad who immigrated after seven years of age have a three times higher probability of being unemployed than young native Swedes. Even children born in Sweden to (two) immigrant parents are 40 per cent more likely to be unemployed than children of (two) Swedish-born parents. However, even more worrying than this, from the perspective of politicians, administrators, and urban planners, is that an aggravated class-ethnic-spatial social inequality in Sweden has since the early 1990s produced a substantial category of so-called ‘young people on the outside’ (SOU 2003),60 that is, 58 On the basis of aggregate survey data 1993–2000 from the Survey on Living Conditions (ULF). 59 See previous note. 60 These were categorized as ‘other’ in public statistics, and augmented with 400 per cent for the age group 16–19 and 161 per cent for the age group 20–24 between 1990 and 2002. Altogether ‘young people on the outside’ made up 8–9 per cent of all young people in the age range 16–24.

210


40 35 30 South/Middle America Middle East

Per cent

25

Africa 20

Former Yugoslavia Iran

15

Turkey 10

Sweden

5 0 In total

0-9 Years

10 Years

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