Toward Assimilation and Citizenship: Immigrants in Liberal Nation-States

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Toward Assimilation and Citizenship Immigrants in Liberal Nation-States

Edited by

Christian Joppke and Ewa Morawska

Migration, Minorities and Citizenship General Editors: Zig Layton-Henry, Professor of Politics, University of Warwick; and Danièle Joly, Director, Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick Titles include: Muhammad Anwar, Patrick Roach and Ranjit Sondhi (editors) FROM LEGISLATION TO INTEGRATION? Race Relations in Britain Naomi Carmon (editor) IMMIGRATION AND INTEGRATION IN POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES Theoretical Analysis and Policy-Related Research Malcolm Cross and Robert Moore (editors) GLOBALIZATION AND THE NEW CITY Migrants, Minorities and Urban Transformations in Comparative Perspective Adrian Favell PHILOSOPHIES OF INTEGRATION Immigration and the Idea of Citizenship in France and Britain Sophie Body-Gendrot and Marco Martiniello (editors) MINORITIES IN EUROPEAN CITIES The Dynamics of Social Integration and Social Exclusion at the Neighbourhood Level Simon Holdaway and Anne-Marie Barron RESIGNERS? THE EXPERIENCE OF BLACK AND ASIAN POLICE OFFICERS Danièle Joly GLOBAL CHANGES IN ASYLUM REGIMES Closing Doors HAVEN OR HELL? Asylum Policies and Refugees in Europe SCAPEGOATS AND SOCIAL ACTORS The Exclusion and Integration of Minorities in Western and Eastern Europe Christian Joppke and Ewa Morawska (editors) TOWARD ASSIMILATION AND CITIZENSHIP Immigrants in Liberal Nation-States Atsushi Kondo (editor) CITIZENSHIP IN A GLOBAL WORLD Comparing Citizenship Rights for Aliens Jørgen S. Nielsen TOWARDS A EUROPEAN ISLAM Jan Rath (editor) IMMIGRANT BUSINESSES The Economic, Political and Social Environment

Peter Ratcliffe (editor) THE POLITICS OF SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH ‘Race’, Ethnicity and Social Change John Rex ETHNIC MINORITIES IN THE MODERN NATION STATE Working Papers in the Theory of Multiculturalism and Political Integration Carl-Ulrik Schierup (editor) SCRAMBLE FOR THE BALKANS Nationalism, Globalism and the Political Economy of Reconstruction Steven Vertovec and Ceri Peach (editors) ISLAM IN EUROPE The Politics of Religion and Community Östen Wahlbeck KURDISH DIASPORAS A Comparative Study of Kurdish Refugee Communities John Wrench, Andrea Rea and Nouria Ouali (editors) MIGRANTS, ETHNIC MINORITIES AND THE LABOUR MARKET Integration and Exclusion in Europe

Migration, Minorities and Citizenship Series Standing Order ISBN 0–333–71047–9 (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

Toward Assimilation and Citizenship: Immigrants in Liberal Nation-States Edited by


© Editorial matter and selection © Christian Joppke and Ewa Morawska. Chapters 1–8 © Palgrave Macmillan 2003 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–40390–491–X hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Toward assimilation and citizenship : immigrants in liberal nation-states / edited by Christian Joppke and Ewa Morawska p. cm. — (Migration, minorities, and citizenship) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–40390–491–X 1. Immigrants—Cultural assimilation. 2. Transnationalism. 3. Citizenship—United States. 4. United States—Emigration and immigration—Government policy. 5. Citizenship—Europe, Western. 6. Europe, Western—Emigration and immigration—Government policy. I. Joppke, Christian. II. Morawska, Ewa T. III. Series. JV6342 .T68 2002 305.9′0691—dc21 2002029404 10 9 12 11

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents

Preface

vii

List of Contributors

viii

Acknowledgements

ix

1. Integrating Immigrants in Liberal Nation-States: Policies and Practices Christian Joppke and Ewa Morawska

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Part I: Changing State Policies 2. The Return of Assimilation? Changing Perspectives on Immigration and its Sequels in France, Germany, and the United States Rogers Brubaker 3. The Rise and Fall of Multiculturalism: The Case of the Netherlands Han Entzinger 4. Citizenship and Integration in Europe Randall Hansen 5. Between National and Postnational: Membership in the United States T. Alexander Aleinikoff

Part II: Immigrants between Assimilation and Transnationalism 6. Immigrant Transnationalism and Assimilation: A Variety of Combinations and the Analytic Strategy it Suggests Ewa Morawska v

37

39

59

87

110

131

133

vi Contents

7. Keeping Feet in Both Worlds: Transnational Practices and Immigrant Incorporation in the United States Peggy Levitt 8. How National Citizenship Shapes Transnationalism: Migrant and Minority Claims-making in Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham Index

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195

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Preface This volume is based on the conference Integrating Immigrants in Liberal States, which took place on May 8 and 9, 1998 at the European University Institute, Florence, within the 1997/98 European Forum on International Migrations (directed by Christian Joppke and René Leboutte). We are grateful to Han Entzinger, Ruud Koopmans, and Paul Statham for joining us at a later point. Generous funding by DG XII of the European Commission is happily acknowledged.

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List of Contributors T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Professor of Law at Georgetown Law Center, Washington, DC Rogers Brubaker, Professor of Sociology at UCLA Han Entzinger, Professor of Sociology at Erasmus University, Rotterdam Randall Hansen, Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Merton College, Oxford University Christian Joppke, previously Professor of Sociology at the European University Institute and currently Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, New York Ruud Koopmans, Senior Research Fellow in Sociology, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin Peggy Levitt, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College Ewa Morawska, Professor of Sociology and History, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Paul Statham, Senior Research Fellow in Communication Studies, University of Leeds

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Acknowledgements Thanks are due to Taylor and Francis Ltd (http://www.tandf.co.uk/ journals) for permission to reprint Chapter 2 which first appeared as ‘The Return of Assimilation’ by Brubaker, R. (2001) Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 24(4), pp. 531–48 and to the University of Pennsylvania for permission to reprint Chapter 5 which first appeared as ‘Between National and Post-National: Membership in the United States’ by Alex Aleinikoff, Michigan Journal of Race & Law, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1999, pp. 241–62.

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1 Integrating Immigrants in Liberal Nation-States: Policies and Practices Christian Joppke and Ewa Morawska

This volume surveys a new trend in immigration studies, which one could characterize as a turn away from multicultural and postnational perspectives, toward a renewed emphasis on assimilation and citizenship. Much scholarship in the past fifteen years or so, enticed by the discovery of “globalization,” has looked at contemporary immigration as obliterating and undermining some traditional principles of nation-states, such as the congruence of political and cultural boundaries and citizenship. In this new orthodoxy, multiculturalism had replaced assimilation as a mode of immigrant integration, and post- or transnational identities, affiliations, and protections had devalued, perhaps even rendered obsolete traditional citizenship. Immigrants were thus depicted as harbingers of a new multicultural and postnational world, in which the national fixity of identity, rights, and organizational capacity had dissolved (for influential statements, see Soysal 1994 and Basch et al. 1994). This volume challenges this orthodoxy in two directions. One looks at state policies, the other at immigrant practices and adjustments. Regarding the first, states have responded to immigration by either liberalizing their citizenship regimes or upgrading the rights attached to citizenship vis-à-vis inflated non-citizen membership (or “denizenship”). In both cases, citizenship was reaffirmed as the dominant membership principle, and non-citizen membership was either found insufficient or explicitly devalued. In addition, the scope of official multiculturalism policies and programs has either been exaggerated in public and academic perception, or, where such policies have actually been in place, there has recently been a covert or overt move away from them. Regarding the practices and adjustment of immigrants and their children there is no evidence that assimilation is not occurring. In fact, one can 1

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observe both: adaptation and use of host-society resources and the maintenance of “transnational” linkages with the society of origin. Both trends – the resilience of citizenship along with a scaling-down of multicultural policies, and the simultaneity of assimilation and transnationalism – are explored in this volume through comparisons between Europe and the United States. Let us put more flesh on these propositions. Regarding the revaluation of citizenship, two recent political developments on both sides of the Atlantic force us to rethink the viability of non-citizen membership for immigrants. In its Welfare Reform Act of 1996, the United States has excluded legal immigrants from most means-tested federal welfare programs. 1 This attempt at revaluing citizenship, which has spurred the largest naturalization wave in US history, demonstrates the inherent political vulnerability of “postnational” non-citizen status. In its citizenship reform of 1999, Germany has introduced jus soli citizenship for second-generation immigrants, in a radical departure from its tradition of citizenship by descent and ethnocultural nationhood (see Hansen in this volume). These developments, though opposite in their restrictive versus liberalizing thrusts, contradict the postnational hypothesis of citizenship in decline. Regarding the reversal of multicultural policies, their prevalence in liberal states has always been exaggerated. There is certainly a widespread de facto multiculturalism in liberal states, which is grounded in their commitment to the principles of public neutrality, non-discrimination, and protection of individual rights. However, in the few cases where official multiculturalism policies were put in place, these policies have recently come under pressure, and there has been a move away from them. This trend is explored in this volume in the case of the Netherlands (see the chapter by Entzinger), which had once been one of Europe’s pacesetters for multicultural policies, and is now stressing the importance of Dutch language training and adoption of liberal host-society values. Finally, regarding immigrant practices and adjustments, several studies (particularly in the United States where research on immigration and ethnicity is an established and prolific field across a variety of disciplines) have indicated that immigrants and their children are assimilating on several fronts such as intermarriage, educational attainment, and political behavior. New, however, is that transnational identities and involvements, which immigrants have always been enmeshed in, are now considered legitimate and no longer repressed by nationalizing states. As the chapters in the second part of this volume

Integrating Immigrants in Liberal Nation-States 3

show, this has led to complex amalgam structures and dispositions that combine elements of assimilation and transnationalism. The remainder of this introduction maps out the changing direction of state policies and immigrant practices.

Liberal nation-states respond to immigration The ubiquitous notion of “integrating” immigrants is surprisingly little reflected on (an exception is the subtle discussion by Favell 2000). It rests on the premise of an already integrated, bounded society, which faces the risk of disintegration and unbinding due to immigration. The underlying picture is that of a society composed of domestic individuals and groups (as the antipode to “immigrants”), which are “integrated” normatively by a consensus and organizationally by a state.2 Postclassical sociology, even before the arrival of “globalization,” has shown that such a “society” does nowhere exist, except in the imagination of some (especially political) actors. This is not to deny, invoking W.I. Thomas, that this imagination is real in its consequences. However, an academically more adequate picture of modern society is that of a multiplicity of autonomous and interdependent “fields” (Bourdieu 1989) or “systems” (Luhmann 1997), which engage actors only in specific respects, never in their totality. Politics and the state, which are usually the reference point of “immigrant integration,” is at best one among a variety of such fields or systems; and, because modern societies have “neither peak nor center”, it is not one that could claim to be any more central than the others (Luhmann 1986: 167–82). From such a systemic, decentered view of society, the very notion of immigrant integration disappears, and the underlying concern for “inclusion” takes on entirely new directions (see Bommes 1999). Immigrants, much like everyone else, are always excluded and included at the same time, excluded as whole persons and included as sectoral players or agents with specific assets and habitual dispositions within specific fields or systems. From such a perspective, the intrinsically polemical and value-loaded notion of “immigrant” (positive for cosmopolitans, negative for nationalists) simply disappears, and immigrants are conceptually assimilated to other individuals and groupings with similar positions on some critical indices or indicators (such as education, income, employment, political participation, etc.). In this view, from the territorial nowhere of macrosociology, the non-integrated immigrant is a structural impossibility, because from the day she sets foot in the new society, she is always already “integrated” and engaged in certain

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fields and systems, be it the (in)formal economy, residential area, family, or ethnic group. Accordingly, the notion of immigrant integration is an imposition by the political system, which, unlike all other spheres of society, differentiates the world according to spatial segments (i.e., states), not non-spatial functions, and includes individuals as whole persons (and not just in specific respects) in a mutually exclusive way (usually one cannot be a member of two states at the same time). This is obviously not to suggest that academics stop researching problems of “immigrant integration” – then there would be no point for this book. Instead, the purpose is to make academics aware that one of their presumed analytical categories (“integration”) is really a practical category, taken from the world of politics (on this distinction, see Brubaker 1996).3 Whatever (critical or apologetic) position they may take, in framing their research as one of “integration”, immigration scholars inadvertently contribute to the reproduction of a “regionalist” vision of society as one of bounded nation-states (see Luhmann 1997 I, 166), which is far from the only possible vision, and sociologically even a highly questionable one. Having thus located the non-academic, political origins of the integration concept, it is worthwhile to elaborate on the polemical alternative against which it has been introduced, which is “assimilation.” In a second step, we shall point to the shortcomings of a particularly popular brand of integration research, the distinction between so-called “national models” of integration. Whoever uses the word “integration” wishes to say what is allegedly not meant by it, “assimilation.” 4 The notion of immigrant assimilation was coined during the first wave of industrial-age migration in the late nineteenth century, which occurred against the backdrop of imperialist state rivalry, war, and aggressive nation-building. Assimilation meant that Germans in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, as enemies in World War I, had to give up their fiercely “multicultural” pretensions of retaining their own language, schools, and social habits (Higham 1955); and that ethnically despised Polish labor migrants in the German Ruhr Valley had to trade in their language and “Germanize” their names as the price for their acceptance (Bade 1984). After World War II, Western states desisted from such aggressive nationalizing practices. One reason is that the latter were now epitomized and delegitimized by defeated Nazism; another is that these states were now securely sitting on top of thoroughly nationalized societes, as the combined result of successful industrialization, solidarity-forging wars, and infrastructural incorporation by expanding welfare states. The old


nationalizing and assimilationist idiom, in a kind of “cultural lag” (Ogburn 1957), and with important national variations, was carried along until the 1960s; but it remained largely rhetorical, and was mostly not accompanied by related policies. Only when the problem of “integrating” postcolonial, labor, and new settler migrants, and especially their offspring, seriously emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, was the postwar liberalism and human-rights discourse applied to the immigration domain, and the notion of integration was born. The new notion of integration, as against old-style assimilation, has two connotations. First, integration is seen as always “intransitive” (see Albers 1994). Immigrants are conceived of not as objects of manipulation and control but as subjects of freely willed integration, for which the state can at best set the parameters, but never guarantee a specific result. Secondly, there is no mandate for immigrants to adopt the substantive culture of the receiving society. The essence of old-style assimilation was cultural assimilation, a sort of alchemy through which an immigrant was transformed into a standardized unit of the state-bearing nation. The social movements of the 1960s and following explosion of “life-style enclaves” (Bellah et al. 1985) and “individualization” (Beck 1986) destroyed the old notion of a homogeneous majority population in any given Western state. It is no longer clear what substantive culture is shared in State X by a homosexual, a hooligan, a New Age devotee, or an anti-abortion activist, with the concomitant expectation that the immigrant share it too. From a liberal point of view, which became the point of view in Western states in the second half of the twentieth century, it is a violation of the dignity and autonomy of the individual, citizen or immigrant, to force a substantive culture on her, except the thin and procedural culture of liberalism itself. Perhaps also in confrontation with the Communist alternative, which sought to impose just such a substantive culture (though not a national one) on its subjects, liberal nation-states after World War II did more than ever before to live up to the “liberal” in their name. What, then, does “immigrant integration” consist of in liberal states? A representative answer to this may be found in the newest Report on the Situation of Foreigners in Germany, issued by the Federal Commissioner for Foreigner Affairs (2000). In its section on “integration”, one can read that there is no “German monolithic culture” (deutsche Einheitskultur) that immigrants could be asked to share (p. 228). Instead, German society is said to consist of a “multiplicity of coexisting life styles.” This rules out the possibility that “integration” could mean “assimilation.” When finally turning from what integration is not to what it might be, only

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two “criteria of integration” are mentioned: “Acceptance of the values of the Constitution (Grundgesetz) and knowledge of the German language” (ibid.). These are also the two key criteria for naturalizating immigrants, according to the new Citizenship Law of 1999, which ratified an ongoing (though little noticed) departure from making cultural assimilation a prerequisite for citizenship acquisition (see Joppke 1999: ch. 6). The German case is no outlier. The final report of the US Commission on Immigration Reform (1997), which had incensed many a liberal for reclaiming the tainted notion of Americanization (“But it is our word, and we are taking it back”, p. 26) (see the debate in Pickus 1998), comes to very moderate conclusions as to what “Americanization” consists of: “the cultivation of a shared commitment to the American values of liberty, democracy and equal opportunity” (ibid.), along with a reinforced emphasis on the “rapid acquisition of English” (p. 37). In addition, and in contrast to its tainted predecessor, Americanization this time round is not to be understood as a one-sided imposition of the norms of majority society, but as a mutual and reciprocal process. This implicitly acknowledges that in a liberal context integration cannot but be intransitive: “Immigration presents mutual obligations. Immigrants must accept the obligations we impose – to obey our laws, to pay taxes, to respect other cultures and ethnic groups. At the same time, citizens incur obligations to provide an environment in which newcomers can become fully participating members of our society” (US Commission on Immigration Reform 1997: 28). The German and American examples demonstrate the thin meaning of immigrant integration in liberal nation-states: language acquisition plus a commitment to the political values that constitute a liberal democracy, independently of its concrete territorial incarnation. However, the abhorring of the old, culture-focused “assimilation” approach had one unfortunate consequence. Understood structurally, as the socioeconomic equalization of the life-chances between immigrants and native population (in employment, income, education, etc.), “assimilation” had to remain the normative horizon of immigrant integration. Only, and reinforced by the difference-oriented rhetoric that proliferated in the 1980s and much of the 1990s, there was no language available to articulate this ongoing concern. If recently there has been a “return of assimilation” in a number of Western states (see Brubaker in this volume), this is because the underlying socioeconomic equality concern had never disappeared. The popular notion of national models of immigrant integration has obscured the similarities of integration approaches and assimilation


concerns across liberal states. 5 A particularly popular contrast was the one between French assimilationism and “Anglo-Saxon” multiculturalism. There is not much substance to this line of reasoning, in which academics have simply become captive of political surface rhetoric. As Martin Schain (1999) has convincingly shown, the allegedly assimilationist French state became involved in a de facto politics of multicultural recognition at the local level, driven by the sheer need to find ethnic interlocutors and sounding-boards for its policies. Moreover, in the new “Republican” consensus emerging in the 1990s, the very notion of assimilation has been discredited, and replaced by that of integration. In doing so, France embraced the liberal Western mainstream approach toward immigrant integration, which is to tolerate cultural difference in private and associational life, but refuse to give it public status. This is encapsulated in the definition of integration suggested by the Haut Conseil à l’intégration (which the French government set up in the early 1990s to find ways out of the notorious “foulard affair”, see Favell 1998: ch. 6): “L’intégration consiste à susciter la participation active à la société tout entière de l’ensemble des femmes et des hommes appelés à vivre durablement sur notre sol en acceptant sans arrière-pensées que subsistent des spécificités notamment culturelles, mais en mettant l’accent sur les ressemblances et les convergences dans l’égalité des droits et des devoirs” (Haut Conseil 1993: 8). Admittedly, this amounts to little more than giving a new name to what France had been doing all along (except for a brief interlude of difference-supporting “insertion” in the early 1980s). But the rhetorical move away from the now tainted “assimilation” concept, which France more stubbornly than any other Western state had long subscribed to, is still significant, because its approach now is also nominally indistinguishable from that of most other Western states. 6 On the opposite side, there has never been a uniform “Anglo-Saxon” multiculturalism. Britain (more precisely England) borrowed some of its race-relations framework from the United States, but then crucially transformed the latter’s civil-rights orientation into one of public order, while – among other things – firmly turning its back on US-style affirmative action (see Joppke 1999: ch.7). The United States, which in fact has always taken a hands-off approach in matters of immigrant integration and certainly has never adhered to an explicit “national model”, may appear “multicultural” for the very homegrown and political purposes of a French intellectual (e.g., Todd 1994; and critical Fassin 1999). If compared with explicitly multicultural Canada, the US is often taken as the assimilationist opposite (e.g., Kymlicka 1998: 21). Once we abandon

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the misleading “national model” talk, we discover only the rather thin and uniform “integration” requisites of liberal states, plus a plethora of context-specific ad hoc policies, utterly devoid of an underlying “philosophy” of integration.7 We now turn to a discussion of two important recent changes in liberal states’ integration policies: the scaling-down of official multiculturalism; and the revaluation of citizenship. Decline of official multiculturalism Regarding multicultural policies, one must distinguish between de facto multiculturalism, which is required by the logic of liberal states, and official multiculturalism, in which states have deliberately and explicitly recognized and protected immigrants as distinct ethnic groups. De facto multiculturalism has become a pervasive reality in liberal, immigrantreceiving states. It has many facets, from the principled protection of rights to pragmatic concessions in the interest of public health or security. The individual rights and liberties protected by the constitutions of liberal states have allowed immigrants qua individuals to find recognition and protection for their distinct cultural practices. Independent judiciaries have been instrumental for this. Consider one typical court decision on a particularly sensitive issue, the physical co-education of Muslim girls. In the Swiss canton of Zürich, usual practice was to excuse from co-educational swimming lessons for religious reasons only more mature (high school) female Muslims. Against this, the Swiss Federal Court decided in June 1993 to grant such excuse already for very young (primary school) Muslim girls. As in all such cases, the Court had to balance in its decision opposite legal and moral principles and interests: the religious and educational freedoms protected by the domestic constitution and the international conventions that Switzerland subscribed to; and the state interest in an orderly public education, which entailed the securing of equal chances for everyone, Muslim girls included. The Court reasoning contains striking, but from our perspective predictable, language: Members of other countries and cultures, who reside in Switzerland, are obliged to respect the domestic legal order like any native Swiss. However, there is no legal obligation for them to adopt (Swiss) customs and ways of life. One cannot deduce from the principle of integration a legal rule that forces (immigrants) to restrict their religious or cultural beliefs in a disproportionate (unverhaltnismassig) way (quoted in Albers 1994: 987).


German courts have reached very similar conclusions on exempting Muslim girls from certain public school requirements, attesting to an “intransitive” (in effect, multicultural) understanding of immigrant integration (ibid.). On the pragmatic pole, states have often resorted to de facto multiculturalism in the pursuit of their own interests. Examples are mother-tongue education, which followed the opposite purposes of either keeping the return option open or allowing immigrants to acquire the domestic language and domestic “rules of the game” more easily; foreign language instructions and advisory services in the public health, social service, or penal sectors, for the sake of a smoother public policy implementation; or the recognition and engagement of ethnic organizations as sounding boards for grievances in need of correction by the state (on this, see Schain 1999). Even at the level of political rhetoric, de facto multiculturalism is firmly in place. Consider the case of Quebec, the secessionist French-speaking province of Canada, which shows that in a world of liberal states even an extreme nation-building project must bow to the dominant rhetoric of cultural pluralism (see Carens 2000: ch. 5). Because of its nation-building (and thus monocultural) ambition, Quebec has always rejected the official multiculturalism practiced since the early 1970s by the Canadian government. Moreover, as a partial price for its accommodation within a federal Canada, Quebec has achieved complete authority over policies on immigrant integration. However, the central document underlying Quebec’s integration policy, entitled Vision: A Policy Statement on Immigration and Integration (1990), is rather modest in scope and tone. It expects immigrants to respect the values of “democracy” and “pluralism,” which are obviously not specific to Quebec, but generic to all liberal democracies. This includes the multicultural concession that people in Quebec, immigrant or not, are free to “choose their own lifestyles, opinions, values and allegiances to interest groups within the limits defined by the legal framework” (quoted in Carens 2000: 117). The only expression of Quebec’s “distinct society” pretension is the requirement that immigrants (like all others) adopt French as the common language of public life. However, language acquisition is the small rest of distinctly cultural adaption that every liberal state, not just Quebec, demands of its newcomers. As Joseph Carens concludes from the case of Quebec, “any defensible version of liberal democracy today entails a commitment to pluralism that inevitably opens the door to multiculturalism in some form” (ibid., p. 139).

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Most liberal states have evidently avoided the opposite poles of “extreme differentialism” and “extreme assimilationism” (Zolberg and Woon 1999: 30), settling instead for a middle position of de facto multiculturalism. However, this middle position looks rather different regarding language and religion, perhaps the central multicultural claims in the United States and Europe, respectively. Regarding religion, liberal immigrant-receiving states have shown more inclination toward pluralism than regarding language. The reason is simple: while a differentiation between church and state is possible, and in fact increasingly a reality in liberal states, the state cannot but engage in linguistic choices, leaving less space for pluralism in this domain. At the same time, requiring an immigrant to acquire another language is less demanding than asking her to acquire another religion (or asking her to stop practicing her own), because every individual can speak several languages, but can adhere to only one religion. Language assimilation is therefore more compatible with liberal values than religious assimilation. Liberal states have, in fact, shown themselves adept in providing space for immigrant-imported religions, most importantly Islam, either through prolonging a historically entrenched separation of religion and state (as in France and the United States), or through extending historical church-state linkages to non-Christian religions (as in Germany, the Netherlands, or the United Kingdom) (for Western Europe, see Bauböck 1999). In any case, the accommodation of religious difference epitomizes the inevitable trend toward de facto multiculturalism in liberal states: “(T)he constitutional obligations of liberal regimes to respect religious freedom move contemporary possibilities away from assimilation toward the pluralist pole” (Zolberg and Woon 1999: 14). Official multiculturalism goes beyond de facto multiculturalism in engaging the state in the recognition and protection of immigrants as distinct ethnic groups. In contrast to de facto multiculturalism, which can be found in every liberal state qua liberal state, official multiculturalism has been much less widespread. Prominent examples are Canada, Australia, Sweden, or the Netherlands. Interestingly, the entrenchment of de facto multiculturalism contrasts sharply with the precariousness of official multiculturalism, which has come under pressure everywhere, and in Europe is even at the point of disappearing. A number of reasons is responsible for the precarious nature of official multiculturalism. At the normative level, official multiculturalism is difficult to defend. In Will Kymlicka’s version (1998: 38f ), official multiculturalism is about “renegotiating” the terms of state-imposed integration. But the meaning of this is unclear. For Kymlicka, individuals need “societal cultures” (which


he defines, much like “nations,” by a shared language and territorial rootedness) as context for free and meaningful choices (Kymlicka 1995: 76). States are the guardians of such societal cultures, that is, Gellnerian nation-builders – even today, and even in that part of the world where such nation-building has originated in the age of industrialism, and where it may be presumed to have come to a successful end by now. 8 Key to Kymlicka’s defence of multiculturalism is the argument that, contrary to their complacent self-image, liberal states cannot be culturally neutral; however implicitly, the latter must favor the societal culture of the state-bearing nation (for instance, in their language policies). This amounts to a considerable imposition on immigrants, who carry with them (and seek to stick to) their own societal cultures. Because the state cannot be neutral, fairness commands to grant immigrants certain cultural rights, mostly in the form of exemptions from general laws that bear the mark of the majority culture (such as Sunday closing laws). However, in voluntarily leaving their homelands, immigrants have also “waived” the right to their culture, and they have consented to adopt the one of the receiving state and thus to become “integrated” (ibid., p. 96). As Joseph Carens (2000: 57) has remarked, it is not clear from this position “why immmigrants are entitled to any special rights to maintain their distinctive cultural commitments”. Accordingly, Kymlicka’s defence of cultural rights for immigrants is rather minimalist and ad hoc. This is especially visible in his peculiar defence of Canadian multiculturalism. On the one hand, Canadian multiculturalism policy is presented as “just one small piece of the pie,” while “other policies” (on naturalization, education, job training, human rights and anti-discrimination law, civil service employment, health and safety, etc.) are said to be “the major engines of integration” (Kymlicka 1998: 24). On the other hand, this smallish policy (“a drop in the bucket compared with the billions of dollars spent on policies that directly or indirectly promote integration,” p. 38) is held responsible for everything positive happening in the integration field since the adoption of official multiculturalism in 1971, such as increasing naturalization and intermarriage rates: “The two countries that lead the world in the integration of immigrants (Canada and Australia) are countries with official multiculturalism policies” (p. 21f). It is unclear how a “drop in the bucket” policy could have made Canada a world leader in immigrant integration. At the same time, the pressure that Canadian multiculturalism is currently facing is presented as a mere communication failure by the federal government, which, among other things, has been silent on the

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“limits of tolerance” (ibid., ch. 4). In Kymlicka’s view, Australia has been much better at explicating these limits. The central document of Austrialian multiculturalism, entitled National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia (1989), is indeed framed by an “overriding commitment to the nation” (Zappala and Castles 2000: 52), which includes the duty to accept the Constitution and its underlying values and the recognition of English as the national language. However, this has not prevented a new Liberal-National Party Coalition, after their election victory in 1996, to abolish the government’s Office for Multicultural Affairs, in response to a populist groundswell against multiculturalism. This shows that official multiculturalism’s difficulties must have deeper roots than a communication failure on the part of the government. Overall, Kymlicka’s defence of Canadian multiculturalism is much better at refuting the widespread charge that it has produced ethnic strife and separatism than at showing that it has helped the cause of immigrant integration; this causality, though central to his defence, he does not establish. In assessing why official multiculturalism is everywhere in difficulties, it is important to distinguish its fundamentally different meanings in the new settler nations of Canada and Australia and in Europe. Multiculturalism in Canada and Australia is directed at everyone, not only immigrants. 9 It provides a national self-understanding for former British colonies, which – in contrast to the United States – lack independent founding myths and which faced a void once a self-definition in terms of British heritage and subjectship was no longer viable. This universal thrust of new-settler multiculturalism is visible in Canada’s Multiculturalism Act of 1988, which mandates the government to “recognize and promote the understanding that multiculturalism reflects the cultural and racial diversity of Canadian society and (to acknowledge) the freedom of all members of Canadian society to preserve, enhance and share their cultural heritage” (quoted in Kymlicka 1998: 185; emphasis supplied). Its linkage with national self-understanding helps entrench official multiculturalism against its current opposition. By contrast, in Europe official multiculturalism is targeting immigrants only, seeking to transform them into ethnic minorities. This makes official multiculturalism more vulnerable here than in Canada or Australia. This is not to say that such policies in Europe do not flow from national traditions. On the contrary. In Sweden and the Netherlands, the integration of immigrants as officially designated collectivities simply extended their long-engrained corporatist modes of organizing polity and society. However, hypostasizing these policies as “corporatist


membership models” (Soysal 1994: 36–38) overlooks their significant changes over time, in fact, their eventual abandonment. Sweden started its official multiculturalism policy in 1975, as a highminded and “progressive” departure from continental Europe’s bickering over keeping or sending back its guestworkers. Its three cornerstones were “equality,” “freedom of choice,” and “partnership.” The distinctly multicultural element in this Immigrant and Minority Policy was freedom of choice; it became enshrined in a new paragraph in the constitution, which mandated the state to protect and further the cultural identity of Sweden’s ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities. Every immigrant group whose size exceeded 1000 persons qualified as “ethnic minority,” which secured them mother-tongue education, own TV and radio stations, and state support for ethnic newspapers, periodicals, and other cultural activities. Interestingly, this state support for ethnic minorities centered exclusively on cultural affairs, because with respect to welfare and social services immigrants were included as individuals, not as groups, reflecting the universalism of the Swedish welfare state. The move away from the progressive beginnings occurred in several steps. A parliamentary inquiry in the mid-1980s came to the curious, yet legally correct, conclusion that under international law citizenship status was a prerequisite for official minority status (see the general overview in Jackson Preece 1998). Accordingly, immigrants could be a minority like the native Saami or Lapps only at the price of a radical deviation from international law and practice, which Sweden was not prepared to undertake. This led to the renaming of the Immigrant and Minority Policy as the Immigrant Policy. However, not just legal reasoning was behind this name change. By the mid-1980s, most newcomers were no longer “immigrants” originating from a few Nordic or southern European countries, but “refugees” originating from all corners of the globe. To further increase their already considerable cultural distance from Swedish society by means of state policy came to appear as a strange thing. The parliamentary inquiry therefore concluded that the proper interpretation of the “freedom of choice” clause of the 1975 policy was state neutrality: the state was not to enforce assimilation, but neither was it to oppose such assimilation in principle. At the same time, the source-diversity of the new immigrants led the government to stress the limits of “freedom of choice,” and that it had become necessary “to express more clearly the basic views of Swedish society on a number of issues of principle” (quoted in Soininen 1999: 690). A more decisive turn away from official multiculturalism occurred in the 1990s, against the backdrop of skyrocketing unemployment rates for

14


immigrants and deepening ethnic cleavages10 as well as a general questioning of welfarism and retreat of central state planning. In the wake of a parliamentary review of immigrant policy, a new “integration” policy was put in place, along with a renaming of the “immigrant minister” into “integration minister”. While the new policy rhetorically sticks to the 1975 framework of equality, freedom of choice, and cooperation, the multicultural thrust of the original policy has all but disappeared. Immigrants are no longer to be integrated as a collectivity, but as individuals, colored by a neoliberal discourse of self-sufficiency. Instead of being set apart as an ethnic minority, immigrants are now to “acquire the Swedish tools which can be needed to manage on one’s own in Swedish society” (quoted in Soininen 1999: 692). The message is clear: the earlier stress on cultural pluralism had blatantly ignored the socioeconomic rift opening up between immigrants and the domestic population, and tackling this rift meant making immigrants indistinguishable from the domestic population (in this sense, to “assimilate” them) – witness that the very notion of “immigrant” has practically disappeared in the new Swedish “integration” discourse. The Dutch move away from official multiculturalism occurred somewhat later, but more extreme than in Sweden (see also Entzinger in this volume). The Dutch “ethnic minorities policy” (Minderhedennota) was born in 1983, interestingly, as a simple inversion of the earlier policy to keep the return option open. Eight groups were officially designated as minorities: Turks, Moroccans and Tunisians, Surinamese, Dutch Antilleans, Moluccans, south Europeans, refugees, and Gypsies. Excluding Chinese and Pakistani from this list betrayed the functional nature of this ethnically rather inconsistent mix: only groups “who did not participate on an equal base in Dutch society” (Amersfoort 1999) were included. The key notion in this minority policy was “emancipation”, and not within Dutch society, but – in line with the tradition of pillarization – within separate institutions, such as religious schools and ethnic broadcasting, all financed by the state. However, the pillarization of immigrants – from the start a strange rehash of a long dead mode of social organization (see Lijphart 1968) – did not work as foreseen (see Entzinger 2000: 19f). First, assigning public status to ethnic minorities is fine as long as there are only a few of them. Once the source countries multiplied, particularly after the onset of mass asylum-seeking, it became impossible to provide all of them with an own infrastructure. Moreover, state funding for ethnic minorities only helped feed a small elite of ethnic activists, along with infights and factionalisms, while doing little to improve the lives of ordinary


immigrants. Secondly, the old (and by now defunct) pillarism had rested on elite cooperation, which in turn was enabled by a sense of being members of one nation. This element of consensus-building was neglected by the ethnic minority policy. Accordingly, Dutch official multiculturalism yielded only “segregation” and “exclusion” (Entzinger 2000: 20). As in Sweden, diversifying migrant profiles and increasing socioeconomic disparities moved Dutch policy away from official multiculturalism, toward a “policy of obligatory integration” that by far outpaled the Swedish development (Entzinger 1998: 115). It rests on a new understanding of multiculturalism as a social fact, rather than a goal to be achieved by means of state policy. Instead of being fuelled by statist official multiculturalism, the centrifugal forces of de facto multiculturalism are to be countered by a centripetal emphasis on civic communalities. An expression of this is the Law on the Civic Integration of Newcomers, passed in 1998. Already before that, most programs specifically targeting immigrants were either discontinued, or made accessible to disadvantaged people in general, not only immigrants. Tellingly, the few remaining programs that explicitly target immigrants are not “multicultural”, but designed to insert immigrants in Dutch society. The 1998 law imposes 600 hours of mandatory civics and language classes on all new non-EU migrants. In the words of Han Entzinger, who helped bring it about, the new law reflects the idea “that the multicultural society can only function on the basis of some minimal convictions shared by all of its members” (Entzinger 1998: 116).11 Revaluation of citizenship The Dutch policy of obligatory integration made inburgering, in the sense of civic integration, the focus of state policy regarding immigrants. The German translation of the Dutch word inburgering – Einburgerung – refers to a closely related concern: to make immigrants citizens. For many years, European states, Germany and the Netherlands included, pursued a strategy of approximating the status of alien to that of citizen, thus minimizing the privileges attached to citizenship. In the Netherlands, this was part of the progressive Minderhedennota of 1983, and materializing – among other things – in the granting of local voting rights to foreigners in 1985. In Germany, this strategy was more implicitly and defensively pursued in order to protect its ethnically exclusive citizenship regime (see Joppke 1999: ch. 6). Some scholars have concluded from the upgrading of alien status in postwar European states, to a certain degree also in the United States,

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that national citizenship has become less relevant for the integration of immigrants. 12 In Soysal’s (1994: 3) concise formulation, guestworkers in postwar Europe have become integrated, not as “citizens” but as “persons,” on the basis, not of national norms and legitimatory discourses but of a global human rights regime: “This new model, which I call postnational . .. derive(s) from transnational discourse and structures celebrating human rights as a world-level organizing principle.” While its general assumptions are questionable (see Joppke 1998, 2002), the postnational membership model has a limited empirical relevance for first-generation immigrants, for whom the upgrading of alien status was originally devised, also with an eye on keeping their return option open. And it adequately reflects the spirit in which European states particularly have sought to integrate immigrants through the 1980s. However, once the problem of integrating the second and third generation of settled guestworkers moved to the fore, the deficits of postnational membership became obvious. The violent outbursts against “foreigners” in postunity Germany did not distinguish between asylum-seekers and “Turks” born and raised in Germany. The increasing association between crime and immigration, very much a phenomenon of the 1990s, moved some populist governments, like the conservative Land government of Bavaria, to simply send back inconvenient young delinquents, even though they may have never seen the country they were sent back to – no postnational membership could come to their rescue, because protection from expulsion has everywhere remained the privilege of citizens. In short, the problem of integrating second- and third-generation immigrants has launched a massive trend toward the revaluation of citizenship in European states, which cannot be accommodated within the postnational membership model (see the overview in Hansen and Weil 2001). While happening on both sides of the Atlantic, the current revaluation of citizenship has taken rather opposite directions in each (see Joppke 2000). In the United States, the trend has been toward the tightening of citizenship, in the context of a historically inclusive citizenship regime. One expression of this is the attempt to restrict the access to citizenship – abolish jus soli for the children of illegal immigrants, prohibit dual citizenship, tighten the naturalization requirements, etc. Interestingly, all these campaigns have failed. Why? One reason is that a more exclusive citizenship regime would violate contemporary liberal norms; a second is that exclusive citizenship would mean the uprooting of a national tradition, and challenge America’s self-understanding, uncontested since the mid-1960s, as a nation of immigrants.


More successful has been a second expression of the American trend toward the tightening of citizenship, the tying of more substantive benefits and privileges to the status of citizen. This is the thrust of the 1990s welfare reform, which excludes legal immigrants from most federal (and some state) welfare programs.13 It reverses a universal trend in liberal states toward approximating the status of alien to that of citizen. However, this particular way of revaluing citizenship is specific to the United States, because no other liberal state disposes of an equivalent to the “plenary power” doctrine that immunizes the immigrant-related policies of the federal government from judicial scrutiny. The exclusion of immigrants from welfare is US-specific in yet another sense: it reinvigorates the traditional view of immigrant admission as a “covenant” between immigrant and American society, whose sustained openness is exchanged against requesting immigrants to be self-sufficient. 14 The “deeming” provision of the 1996 Illegal Immigration and Immigrant Responsibility Act is, after all, no novelty of the 1990s, but a (mostly dormant) part of federal immigration law since its inception in the 1880s. In Europe, the revaluation of citizenship has taken the opposite direction, toward more inclusive citizenship, in the context of historically exclusive citizenship laws.15 Throughout the 1990s, most European states have reformed their citizenship laws, to make it easier for long-settled migrants and their children to acquire the citizenship of the host society. With the exception of Austria, Greece, and Luxembourg, all member states of the European Union now provide a right to citizenship for second-generation immigrants (see Hansen 1998). Germany, previously the paragon of “postnational” immigrant integration, had been a member of this club already before its wholesale reform of citizenship law in 1999 (see Joppke 1999: ch. 6). The burgeoning literature on immigration and citizenship is marked by two extreme theoretical positions. Brubaker (1992), who started the entire genre, was an argument in favor of citizenship traditionalism, according to which there was persistent divergence between states’ national citizenship laws and policies. Soysal (1994) argued that national citizenship was in decline everywhere, and that there was convergence across states toward postnational membership schemes. As opposite as they seem, in certain cases (such as pre-unity Germany) both theoretical positions may well complement one another (see Joppke 1999: ch. 6). However, the current revaluation of citizenship, particularly in Europe, proves both of these extreme positions wrong. Instead of simply reaffirming national citizenship traditions or of devaluing citizenship as

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such, the postwar immigration experience (among other factors) has launched a trend toward the de-ethnicization of citizenship. This means that citizenship in Europe is becoming a bit like citizenship in America, attributed by birth on territory and constituted by political values rather than by ethnicity. One element of de-ethnicized citizenship is the resurgence of territorial jus soli citizenship in Europe. Pioneered by revolutionary France, ethnic citizenship, attributed at birth jure sanguinis, had once been associated with the modern invention of democracy and nationhood, replacing the feudal principle of jus soli, according to which the products of the soil, be it crops or people, were the property of the lord. This preference for ethnic citizenship was reinforced in the Age of Empire, in which sending states had an interest in maintaining links with the millions of settlers and emigrants overseas. In the postwar context of immigration, however, jus sanguinis rules, which keep labor migrants out of the citizenry over generations, created a severe deficit of democratic inclusiveness (see Koslowski 2000: ch. 4). This is why previously exclusively jus sanguinis states came to complement their jus sanguinis rules with jus soli rules, examples being Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and most recently Germany. 16 This has important long-term implications for the underlying ideas of nationhood. To the degree that mere birth on territory confers citizenship, the state-constituting citizenry (i.e., the nation) can no longer be conceived of in ethnic terms. Instead, the latter is being transformed into a politically constituted, territorial body, à l’américaine. A second element of de-ethnicized citizenship is the increasing toleration of dual citizenship in Europe. This is expressed in the Council of Europe’s new nationality convention of 1997, which permits the signatory states to tolerate dual nationality in the interest of better immigrant integration. The old nationality convention of 1963, whose outlawing of dual nationality was binding only among its European signatories and thus allowed these states to retain or even build dual nationality provisions with a plethora of extra-European (mostly postcolonial) states, had become patently anachronistic in the age of European unification. It is important to realize, however, that dual citizenship is an ambivalent and contested phenomenon, fiercely rejected by some states (Denmark, Austria), rhetorically rejected but tacitly tolerated by others (Germany, the Netherlands), and openly endorsed by a third group of states (United Kingdom, France). And it is a Janus-faced phenomenon: what appears as de-ethnicization from the perspective of immigrant-receiving states, means re-ethnicization from the perspective of sending states, such as Mexico, Turkey, Columbia, Equador, or the Dominican Republic,


all of which have recently endorsed dual citizenship in order to maintain links with their ethnic diasporas abroad. This ambivalence is well captured by Rey Koslowski: “Dual nationality may just as easily signify the retention of homeland political identity as political incorporation into the host society, just as easily signify the possession of multiple political identities or the lack of any political identity at all” (Koslowski 2000: 154). A third element of de-ethnicized citizenship is the relaxed attitude toward minority identities and ways of life in liberal states, which we discussed above as “de facto multiculturalism.” To be a citizen of a liberal state no longer connotes membership in a particular cultural community; the only “culture” that citizens are asked to share is the “political culture of liberalism itself” (Perry 1995: 114). An expression of this is the “thinning” of naturalization requirements in liberal states. Germany, for instance, which until recently had subjected even its German-born applicants to an excruciating individual assimilation test, in the early 1990s lowered the threshold to certain generic residence and schooling requirements, granting citizenship as-of-right if these requirements were fulfilled. Interestingly, however, the lowering of the hurdle for as-of-right naturalization from fifteen to eight years of residence in the 1999 Citizenship Law was accompanied by a tightening of the language requirements, and advocates of the old assimilation idea – like the state government of Bavaria – have tried to save the latter through making the language hurdle exceedingly difficult to pass. 17 Germany, in fact, which is still today considered by many as the proverbially ethnic state, much like Israel or Japan (e.g., Coleman and Harding 1995: 51), is a prime example of de-ethnicization, introducing conditional jus soli for second-generation immigrants in its new Citizenship Law of 1999, tacitly tolerating dual citizenship in administrative practice (though not in official political discourse), and rejecting the idea of a German Leitkultur (dominant culture) to which immigrants had to adjust. 18 De-ethnicized citizenship is certainly not happening everywhere. It is an exclusively Western phenomenon, reflecting the emergence of a North-Atlantic “security community” (Deutsch et al. 1957). Its true galvanizer is not so much immigration as the transformation of the North-Atlantic region from a Hobbesian zone of war into a Lockean zone of trade. The development of citizenship was historically tied to the development of nations as war-making bodies, and in certain parts of the world (like the Middle East or south-eastern Europe) this linkage has remained disturbingly vital. With the end of war in the Lockean

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zone, the “national” component of national citizenship, rather than disappearing, is undergoing a transformation, from ethnic to civicterritorial. In a word, citizenship is everywhere becoming “Americanized,” constituted by political values rather than by confrontation with a hypostasized Other. Citizenship is one domain in which liberal states are finally getting serious about the “liberal” in their name.

Transnational immigrants: De-anchored or integrating? Turning from state policies to migrant practices and adjustments, we take issue with some claims raised in the recent literature on “transnational” migration. The first is this: “One of the major changes in migration patterns is the growth of transnational populations anchored (socially and culturally as well as physically) neither at their places of origin nor at their places of destination” (Vertovec and Cohen 1999: xiii). According to the proponents of the new transnationalism thesis, present-day immigrants’ regular engagement in social, cultural, and political “transnational spaces” that transcend or escape nation-state boundaries is a phenomemon without precedent in the history of cross-border migrations – the result of, and contributor to, the accelerated globalization of the contemporary world. A second, related claim is that the location of immigrants’ commitments in translocal spaces above and beyond the boundaries of the receiving state effectively undermines the assimilation model of incorporating newcomers and their children (or “ethnics”). Thirdly, this transnationalism “from below” is said to work in tandem with globalizing forces “from above” that have been weakening the controlling and legitimating powers of the receiving state.(Good overviews of these arguments can be found in Vertovec and Cohen 1999 and Hirschman et al. 1999). As we shall demonstrate in the remainder of this chapter, none of these claims raised by the new transnationalists is supported by evidence; or, more accurately, each of them requires a significant qualification that changes the thrust of the argument. First, present-day immigrants’ transnationalism is not as new as its proponents represent it – in fact, in many important aspects it resembles economic, social, and political translocal involvements of past cross-border travelers. Secondly, transnational commitments of immigrants or ethnics do not preclude and actually often coexist with their economic, political, and cultural integration into the host society. Finally, rather than being disempowered by the transnational participation of its foreign-stock population, the


receiving state continues to influence the intensity, forms, and directions of transnationalism. The new-old immigrant transnationalism Although they did not call it “transnationalism,” immigration historians have extensively documented the enduring bi-national socioeconomic and political involvements and cultural identities of nearly all American immigrant groups in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Historical evidence shows that the new transnationalists’ claims about the novelty of multinational connections of present-day immigrants is inaccurate on at least three accounts. First, the view is incorrect that, unlike present-day multiple, circular, and return migrations, turn-of-thetwentieth-century international travels, also across the Atlantic, were singular journeys from one sedentary space to another. Secondly, the perception is unfounded that, as one-way transplants, earlier migrations were permanent ruptures with home-country affairs, irrevocably dividing past and present lives of the immigrants, whereas present-day shuttlers’ lifeworlds span their home and host societies in new transnational spaces. The majority of migrants across the European continent (the bulk of cross-border movement in that period) were repeat seasonal travelers, and no fewer than 35–45 percent of south and east Europeans who crossed the Atlantic returned home at least once (Wyman 1993). Both temporary migrants and those who settled abroad permanently maintained close economic, social, and cultural ties with their homecountry communities. Thirdly, the view is inaccurate that the emergence of these new transnational spaces has created a complex new sphere of politics, supposedly nonexistent in the past, in which political leaders in the home countries and immigrants in the transplanted communities abroad engage each other and the host-country establishment. Turn-ofthe-twentieth-century sending states in south and east Europe actively involved immigrant communities abroad in their nation-building projects: positively by supporting (home) national associations and the encompassing national identity formation, and negatively by attempting to control the emergence of national consciousness and organizations among immigrants. (For these “new transnationalist” claims see, e.g., Basch et al. 1994; also Lie 1995; Portes 1997; for historical rebuttals, see Gerstle 1997; Guttierez 1997; Foner 1997). Although not a new phenomenon in the history of international migration, contemporary immigrant transnationalism, of course, is not an exact replica of the old, but shaped by a different configuration of circumstances. First, because of rapid advances in communication and

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transportation technology – the so-called “global compression of time and space” – present-day transnational connections maintained by immigrants are more dense and intense than those in the past. Second, these connections are much more varied or plural in form and content because contemporary immigrants themselves are much more diverse in regional origin, racial identification, gender, and home-country socioeconomic background. In the host society, immigrants also differ in their legal status, the sector of the economy in which they are employed, and their mode of acculturation to the dominant society. Third, the public discourse and juridical systems of both the sending and receiving states are today much more tolerant of diversity than they were in the past. Earlier-wave immigrants and their children were “closet transnationalists,” subject to exclusionary demands from home and host states regarding their national commitments. By contrast, legitimate “public” options for identities and participation, ranging from global to transnational, national, local, and different combinations thereof, are available to their contemporary successors. Assimilation and transnationalism as coexistent processes Past immigrants’ maintenance of diverse transnational connections with people, symbols, and institutions in their countries of origin did not prevent their gradual integration into the host society (see Morawska 2001a for a review of historical studies). Immigration historians have called this process ethnicization, a mixing and blending of old- and new-country identifications and behaviors, depending on the particular circumstances in which this mixing was taking place (see Greene 1975; Sarna 1978; Morawska 1994). Although it is today more intense and is publicly displayed with much greater ease than in the past, contemporary immigrants’ engagement in transnational spaces has not precluded their identification and involvements with the host society. As they are educated in the host society’s schools, participate in its popular culture, and enter its workforce, native-born children of immigrants become part of the former while they maintain economic, social, or cultural ties with, and political interests in, their parents’ country or region of origin. For contemporary immigrants and ethnics, however, incorporation into the host society has been more varied, twisted and uneven, even within the same immigrant group, than the trajectory prescribed by the conventional assimilation model (which posits the progressive abandonment of old-country ways in favor of the internalization of the dominant mainstream identity and lifestyle of the receiving society).


(On present-day ethnics’ multitrack, “bumpy” assimilation and its “paradoxes,” see Gans 1992; Alba 1999; Perlmann and Waldinger 1999). Depending on citizenship and immigration policies of the receiver countries (see Koopmans and Statham in this volume), the economic location of immigrants and their children in the host society, their racial similarity to the members of the dominant group(s), the “fit” of their sociocultural capital with host life orientations and coping strategies, and the scope and intensity of their in-group involvements, three major integration trajectories can be distinguished. These trajectories include the conventional or upward path into the middle class of the host society; downward or segmented (also called oppositional) assimilation into the lower cultural and economic segments of the host society; and the ethnic or bi-cultural path of integration. (Empirical illustrations of these different paths can be found, e.g., in Waters 1999; Jones-Correra 1998; Rumbaut 1994; Laguerre 1998; Min 1998 for the United States; and Modood et al. 1998; Migration und Emanzipation 1995; Shadid and Van Koningsveld 1996; Van Hear 1998; Rath et al. 2001 for Europe.) In the first type of incorporation immigrants and their children integrate into the mainstream economy, assimilate the host middle-class’s cultural values and lifestyles, develop strong and weak social ties (Granovetter 1973) with the native-born members of the mainstream society, and participate in host political life (citizenship and local involvement). Existing data show steady increases (differently paced for different groups) in host language proficiency, gradual residential dispersion, and naturalization rates among new immigrants, which suggests progress toward rather than a retreat from or stalling of incorporation. Certainly, a large proportion of new immigrants’ children are still too young to fully assess their progress or decline in mainstream receiver societies. But they have the opportunity, unavailable to past immigrants, for effective public action and protest against barriers to integration, which is carried by contemporary ethnic immigrant organizations and sanctioned by the norm of “just pluralism” in most Western societies. In view of these countervailing circumstances, the proponents of mainstream assimilation, understanding the latter as a multitrack, uneven “general direction toward similarity” (Brubaker in this volume) or as a gradual “convergence around the mean” (Perlmann and Waldinger 1997), argue that not enough time has passed for the eventual pattern to reveal itself – that “the judgment is still out”. The second type, downward incorporation, applies mostly to lower-class immigrants’ children who are racially or religiously “othered” by the host society and whose upward mobility is blocked by structural disadvantage

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and racial or religious discrimination by host-country people and institutions. It implies assimilation into the “adversarial culture” of the underclass based on a willful rejection of mainstream sociocultural norms, values, and role models which, in turn, further entraps these people in their circumstances. (See Portes and Zhou 1993 for the paradigmatic statement of the segmented assimilation thesis.) Mexicans in Los Angeles, North African “beurs” in France, or “opt out” groups of young Turkish “denizens” in Germany represent this type of assimilation which incorporates also elements of ethnic adaptation. (See, e.g., Vigil 1988; Leveau 1997; Kastoryano 1996: 133–58, on adversarial cum ethnic assimilation patterns in these three cases.) The third, ethnic path of integration into the host society involves the coexistence or “doubling” (Gans 1997) or fusing into new forms (Foner 1997) of (1) assimilation into common host cultural orientations and behavioral patterns and economic, social and political memberships, and (2) retention or transformation of immigrant traditions and lifestyles, including transnational identities and participation. This pattern of adaptation through intra-group mixing and blending in different proportions of old- and new-country identificational and behavioral elements has been called by historians the ethnicization trajectory, and by immigration sociologists a parallel-path or adhesive assimilation (see, respectively, Sarna 1978; Hurh and Kim 1984). The ethnic trajectory of adaptation has been reported among upwardly mobile immigrants who remain within the boundaries of their ethnic niche in order to better their chances for socioeconomic advancement. It has also appeared as a counter-strategy against downward assimilation whereby, instead of adopting mainstream “underclass” dispositions, immigrants’ children retain ethnic identities and social affiliations as a means of individual or group defence against discrimination and rejection by the host society. (On the former, see Morawska’s 1990 review of studies in the United States; Body-Gendrot and Martiniello 2000 for Europe; on the latter, see Smith and Guarnizo 1998 for the United States; Vertovec and Rogers 1998 for Europe.) An interesting variety of ethnicization is the development of panethnic identities and organizations, e.g., Asian-American, Hispanic or Latino in the United States, North African in France. Based on shared regional origins, language or religion, such encompassing trans-group identities are usually situationally mobilized for purposes of public protest or political lobbying by immigrant/ethnic groups that consider themselves mistreated by the host society (see Espiritu 1992; Itzigsohn and Dore-Cabral 2000; Vertovec and Rogers 1998 for empirical illustrations of panethnic identities and mobilizations).


Each of these different trajectories of integration into the host society can coincide with the maintenance of different forms of identificational and participatory transnationalism. The forms and outcomes of this coexistence depend on specific historical – that is, time- and place-variant – constellations, including the economic and geopolitical positions and interests of sender and receiver countries, their civic-juridical systems and national cultures, and the political, socioeconomic, and racial makeup of particular immigrant groups and their relations with members of the host society. The ethnic pattern of adaptation has fused most naturally and most closely with transnational, old-country involvements of immigrants and their offspring. Mainstream or upward assimilation has coexisted, on the one hand, with the symbolic ethnicity (Gans 1992; Waters 1990) or the voluntary maintenance by otherwise assimilated individuals of regular, active interests and participation in the country of origin’s art, history, cultural customs and events, often combined with repeated visits; on the other hand, it went along with the situational mobilization of sentiments and transnational civic-political involvement in home-country or regional matters (as in the transnational mobilization effects of the Gulf War on the otherwise assimilated middle-class Arab population in France, see Lewis and Schnapper 1994). However, the coexistence of assimilation and sustained transnational identities and participation has often caused tensions in the lives of immigrants and their children. As reported in the United States and in Europe, discomfort has been most common, and most painful, for members of non-white immigrant groups as the result of the contradictory effects of assimilation and racial integration into the host society. For these immigrants and their offspring, integration into the host society entails also loss of the social status associated with non-white racial or non-Western (i.e., Judeo-Christian) religious membership and the blocking rather than opening of advancement opportunities. As Mary Waters observes in the US case, “this turns the basic assumption of the assimilation theories [that host-country identity bestows the higher status] on its head,” because acquiring the identity of the receiving society now implies downward mobility (Waters 1999: 93; for a similar situation in Europe see Wrench and Solomos 1993; Baumgartl and Favell 1995). Immigrants and their children from low-status minority groups can cope with this situation in several ways. They can challenge their predicament, either as an ethnic immigrant group or in solidarity with native nonwhites, under the banner of the host nation’s ideology of just pluralism and equal opportunity for all citizens. They can “retreat” into their

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transnational, homebound identities and participation to ease or avert the loss of status and to relieve the traumas of racial prejudice and discrimination experienced in the host society. They can adopt the dominant host society’s negative stereotypes of native non-whites as a way to distance themselves from this group. Or, as often happens, they can combine these coping strategies. In either case, the intertwined assimilatory and transnational practices are usually accompanied by feelings of hurt or disappointment. (The above-cited studies of undocumented Mexicans in Los Angeles, North African Moslem “beurs” in France, and young Turkish denizens in Germany document these different strategies; see also Morawska 2001a on the tensions between African Americans and black West Indians in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami; Bonilla et al. 1998 on US Latinos; Chin 1996 on Chinatown gangs.) Immigrant transnationalism and the nation-state The new immigrant transnationalism was originally conceptualized as a strategy of resistance “from below” by members of marginalized and underprivileged racial or ethnic groups from (semi-)peripheral parts of the world against the hegemonic powers of the “core” structures of white receiver societies. Immigrants and their offspring born in these societies escape the latter’s control by engaging in transnational spaces, thereby contributing to the general decline of the nation-state’s prerogatives to contain and regulate their economic, political, and symbolic activities and commitments. Recently, calls have appeared in the new transnationalism literature to modify this view and to “bring the [sender and receiver] state back in” as an important influence on the forms and scope of immigrant transnationalism. (For an overview of these arguments, see, for example, Geddes and Favell 1999; Faist 2000; Hollifield 2000). Of concern here, the host nation-state’s policies at both national and local levels are now being recognized as influencing the intensity, endurance, and, importantly, the consequences of transnational engagements for the integration of immigrants and their children into the receiver society. The receiver states’ legal-administrative control of the “belonging and not-belonging” (Barats-Malbrel 1999) of immigrants and their offspring shapes their transnational social and political practices. As Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham (in this volume) demonstrate, different national citizenship regimes in Germany, Great Britain, and the Netherlands differently shape immigrant transnational (homeland-related) politics in the societies of settlement. In particular, the denial of citizenship to immigrants and, in the countries whose citizenship laws and policies


are informed by jus sanguinis, their native-born children sustains their identification with their home countries and constrains, or channels into an oppositional trajectory, their incorporation into the host society. Conversely, the acceptance or, as is more often the case, tacit tolerance of dual citizenship by the receiver state encourages immigrants or ethnics to engage in bi-national practices, contributing simultaneously to their attachment over time to the host society and to the preservation of transnational commitments. (For empirical illustrations of these effects see, e.g., Hagan 1994 ; Van Hear 1998; Faist 2000; Shain 1999.) Next to political rights, participation in social citizenship or inclusion in the economic and welfare life of the receiver polity matters. In highly regulated welfare states, such as Germany, immigrant groups that do not enjoy full citizenship are excluded from participation in policy decisions of vital importance to their advancement opportunities, such as job training programs. More market-based welfare states, such as the United States, where paths from school to work are much less regulated by public policies, allow more space for immigrants to incorporate themselves “on their own” by applying their cultural and social capitals. (See Faist 1995 for a comparative analysis of immigrant social citizenship in Germany and the United States.) Receiver states’ educational policies influence the form and “contents” of cultural assimilation or ethnicization of immigrants (if they arrive young enough to attend receiver-society schools) and their children. The proportioning and representation of national and multicultural components of school programs regulated by public policies can – contingent on immigrant students’ socioeconomic position, political status, and racial membership – either encourage their mainstream symbolic assimilation to the host society or motivate them toward cultural integration along an ethnic or bi-national path. As in the case of social entitlements, the political pressure by immigrant groups on national or, more often, local political institutions on behalf of their interests, can influence the outcomes of these educational policies. (See, for example, Bleich 1999 and Tyack, forthcoming, for illustrations of these effects in Europe and the United States, respectively.) Not only domestic but also foreign policies of the receiver state influence immigrants’ or ethnics’ transnational involvements. The host state’s geopolitical interests have incited or discouraged sustained transnational engagements of some immigrant groups and, thus, legitimized or stigmatized the ethnic or bi-national path of assimilation among their members. For example, because of the US government’s foreign policy interests during the prolonged Cold War with the Soviet Union and,

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specifically, its attempts to weaken the latter on its own territory, it overtly encouraged transnational political lobbying by East European ethnic leaders and organizations to pressure communist governments on human rights issues and persecuted groups or individuals, to broadcast uncensored information and anti-Soviet propaganda into Eastern Europe, to solicit material help for dissident groups, and so on. The Cuban refugee community in Miami received support from the US government for its transnational anti-communist propaganda in Cuba, and the former also received significant assistance by the Cuban Refugee Program and other federal initiatives to facilitate the adaptation of Cuban emigres in the United States. (On “transnational politics” of East European and Cuban Americans and its support by the US government see, e.g., Jacobson 1995; Cohen 1997; Shain 1999; Portes and Stepick 1993.) In comparison, the transnational engagement by Arab Americans in Middle Eastern politics on behalf of Arab interests has met a very different response from the US government. The Middle Eastern conflict and, in particular, the Palestinian intifada in Israeli-occupied territories reinforced panethnic solidarity and mobilized politically a highly diverse and contentious community of Arab Americans. A significant part of this community articulates its support for the Palestinian cause in “assimilatory” terms of American values of human rights, freedom, and self-determination. Even though the Palestinian is thus presented as the patriotic American cause, because of its foreign policy commitments in the Middle East the US government has discouraged, if not stigmatized, this transnational commitment of Arab Americans. As a result, despite the official ideology of pluralism and tolerance for transnational involvements in the United States, American Arabs’ bi- or pan-national commitments have come to resemble the old type of closet transnationalism of earlier immigrants. (For Arab American transnational politics and resulting tensions with US foreign policy interests, see Shain 1999.) Another configuration of receiver state policies, transnationalism and integration characterizes the case of Haitian immigrants in America (see Vickerman 1999; Stepick 1996; Shain 1999). The Haitian American community’s transnational engagement in 1980–81 on behalf of deposed President Aristide’s democratic opposition in Haiti and for the admission of the Haitian boat refugees who had been isolated in camps and threatened with deportation was snubbed by the US government, which viewed Aristide and his supporters as too radical for its foreign-policy interests in the region. The support offered by the African-American leadership (the NAACP), whose political lobbying under the banner of racial solidarity eventually moved the US government to admit the


Haitian refugees, had the effect of enhancing Haitian immigrants’ political association with American black society. It did not eliminate, however, the earlier noted status-distancing by Haitian immigrants from native blacks. The political solidarity of native blacks with Haitian immigrants, combined with the latter’s distance to African Americans in terms of home-country identities and cultural superiority, has yielded among Haitians a unique blend of transnationalism and incorporation, which is different from that of American Arabs.

Overview of the book The first part of this book deals with liberal immigrant-receiving states’ renewed emphasis on citizenship and assimilation, the second with immigrants’ straddling between assimilation and transnationalism. Rogers Brubaker opens the first part with a provocative survey of the “return of assimilation” in France, Germany, and the United States. This is no simple return to the nationalizing state of the past, because “assimilation” has taken on novel features – from cultural to structural, from organic to abstract, from transitive to intransitive. Han Entzinger discusses why one of Europe’s paragons of multiculturalism policies, the Netherlands, has recently turned its back on them. In a comparison of recent nationality reforms and debates in Europe, Randall Hansen shows that immigrant integration remains both nationally bounded and dependent upon national citizenship. Alex Aleinikoff makes a similar argument regarding the United States, where the “postnational perspective” fails to give an accurate depiction of US models of rights and membership. The recognition of rights for non-nationals in the US is not based on “global” norms transcending the nation-state, but is a core attribute of American constitutionalism since the founding period. Ewa Morawska begins the second part of the book with a comparative discussion of the different constellations of transnationalism and assimilation among immigrants and their children in the United States, mapping the different circumstances that generate these varieties, and proposing a three-step research strategy to account for the simultaneity of assimilation and transnationalism. In her multicase study of immigrant communities in Boston, Peggy Levitt demonstrates that increasing numbers of immigrants “keep feet in two worlds,” but the particular forms of their integration into American society and of their transnational engagements vary with the institutional arenas of immigrants’ participation and with their class and life-stage positions. Turning to three European cases (Britain, the Netherlands, and Germany),

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Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham show that national citizenship regimes, instead of being devalued or bypassed by transnationalism, have actually shaped the way transnational migrant claims are expressed. Their data reveal that transnational (“homeland”) claims are strongest in the (until recently) most exclusive citizenship regime, Germany’s. This suggests that, as citizenship regimes in liberal states (including Germany) are becoming more inclusive, transnational claims-making might become “less rather than more frequent . . . in the years to come.”

Notes 1 Access to many of these programs has subsequently been restored (see Freeman 2001). 2 See the good critique of the premises of “normative consensus” and “statecentrism” underlying the notion of immigrant integration by Phalet (2000). 3 The concept of “integration”, of course, has deep roots in the classical sociology from Durkheim to Parsons, which sought to provide answers to the question, “How is social order possible?” However, as such it remained territorially anonymous. In its territorial (or “national”) specificity, the notion of (immigrant) integration is a practical category, originating in the political sphere. 4 Even in France, the notion of assimilation has officially been discarded (see Haut Conseil à l’intégration 1993). But see its academic resurrection by Tribalat (1995), and the discussion by Brubaker (this volume). 5 Examples are Schnapper (1992), or Todd (1994). The most sophisticated versions are Soysal (1994: ch. 3) and Favell (1997). 6 Interestingly, and misleadingly, the Haut Conseil couched its nominal joining of the liberal mainstream in an anachronistic persistence of “national models,” distinguishing the French “logique d’équalité” from the “logique des minorités” allegedly in force in Britain and the Netherlands (Haut Conseil 1993: 35f). For the obsolescence of the “minority” approach in the Netherlands, see Entzinger’s chapter in this volume. 7 This critique of the “national model” notion is not to deny significant institutional variations of integrating immigrants across states, which reflect historically particular state- and nation-building experiences (on this, and their impact on migrants’ “claims-making”, see Koopmans and Statham in this volume). However, these persistent institutional differences are to be distinguished from explicit “philosophies” of integration, which – to the limited degree that they exist at all – are increasingly converging across liberal states (or so is our claim). 8 Our notion of de-ethnicized citizenship (see below) presumes the weakening of nation-building pretensions in contemporary liberal states. 9 This difference is of course nil to the degree that Canada and Australia are nations of immigrants. 10 In 1996, 30.6 percent of non-Nordic citizens were unemployed (as against 7.3 percent unemployment among Swedes) (Soininen 1999: 694).

Integrating Immigrants in Liberal Nation-States 31 11 The Dutch model of mandatory integration courses for newcomers is about to be adopted in Germany as well (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 10 May 2001, p. 4). 12 For Europe, see Soysal (1994); extending this argument to the United States, Jacobson (1996: ch. 5). 13 Yet see note 1. 14 The “covenant” idea is also invoked in the 1997 final report of the US Commission for Immigration Reform: “[T]he ideal of a covenant between immigrant and nation still captures the essence of Americanization” (p. 27). 15 An exception is the United Kingdom, with its common-law based jus soli regime, and former colonial powers (such as, in addition to the UK, France and the Netherlands), with their inclusive and preferential citizenship schemes for the members of their former colonies. 16 Italy’s left-wing government under G. Amato announced a similar reform in December 2000, with the promise of delivering before the next national elections in May 2001 (“Piu facile diventare italiani,” la Repubblica, 22 December 2000, p. 1); predictably, the reform was never heard of since, presumably becoming stalled in Italy’s byzantinic political process. 17 “Sprachtests erschweren die Einburgerung,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 31 December 1999, p. 3. 18 Even the conservative opposition party (CDU), which in the course of Germany’s current reopening toward new labor migration loudly propagated the existence of a German Leitkultur that immigrants would have to adjust to, has in the meantime dropped this contested notion (CDU 2001).

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Integrating Immigrants in Liberal Nation-States 35 ——— (2001b). “Immigrant-Black Dissensions in American Cities: An Argument for Multiple Explanations,” in: Douglas Massey and Elijah Anderson eds. Problem of the Century: Racial Stratification in the United States at Century’s End, New York: Russell Sage. Ogburn, William (1957). “Cultural Lag as Theory,” in: W. Ogburn, On Culture and Social Change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964. Pedraza, Silvia (1996). “Cuba’s Refugees: Manifold Migrations,” in: Silvia Pedraza and Ruben Rumbaut eds. Origins and Destinies: Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity in America, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 263–79. Perlmann, Joel and Roger Waldinger (1997). “Second-Generation Decline” International Migration Review, 31(4): 893–923. Perry, Stephen (1995). “Immigration, Justice, and Culture,” in: Warren Schwartz, Justice in Immigration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Phalet, Karen (2000). Beyond National Integration Paradigms. Paper presented at the 2000 Conference of the Council of European Studies, April 1–3, Chicago. Pickus, Noah, ed. (1998). Immigration and Citizenship in the 21st Century. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Portes, Alejandro (1997). “Immigration Theory for a New Century: Some Problems and Opportunities,” International Migration Review, 31(4): 799–825. Portes, Alejandro and Alex Stepick (1993). City on Edge: The Transformation of Miami. Berkeley: University of California Press. Portes, Alejandro and Min Zhou (1993). “The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and its Variants,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 530: 74–96. Rath, Jan et al. (2001). Western Europe and its Islam. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers. Rumbaut, Ruben (1994). “The Crucible Within: Ethnic Identity, Self-Esteem, and Segmented Assimilation among Children of Immigrants,” International Migration Review, Winter: 748–94. Sarna, Jonathan (1978). “From Immigrants to Ethnics: Toward a New Theory of Ethnicization,” Ethnicity, 5, December: 73–78. Schain, Martin (1999). “Minorities and Immigrant Incorporation in France,” in: C. Joppke and S. Lukes eds., Multicultural Questions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schnapper, Dominique (1992). L’Europe des immigrés. Paris: Editions François Bourin. Shadid, W.A.R. and P.S. Van Koningsveld, eds. (1996). Political Participation and Identities of Muslims in Non-Muslim States. Kampen: Kok Pharos Publishing House. Shain, Yossi (1999). Marketing the American Creed Abroad: Diasporas in the US and Their Homelands. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, Peter and Eduardo Guarnizo, eds. (1998). Transnationalism from Below. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Soininen, Maritta (1999). “The ‘Swedish model’ as an Institutional Framework for Immigrant Membership Rights,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 25(4): 685–702. Soysal, Yasemin (1994). Limits to Citizenship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stepick, Alex (1996). “Pride, Prejudice, and Poverty: Economic, Social, Political, and Cultural Capital among Haitians in Miami,” in Harriet Duleep and Phanindra

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Wunnava Orcutt, eds. Immigrants and Immigration Policy: Individual Skills, Family Ties, and Group Identities. Greenwich, CN: JAI Press, 133–48. Todd, Emmanuel (1994). Le destin des immigrés. Paris: Seuil. Tribalat, Michele (1995). Faire France. Paris: La Découverte. US Commission on Immigration Reform (1997). Becoming an American. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Tyack, Edward (Forthcoming). “School for Citizens: The Politics of Civic Education,” in Gary Gerstle and John Mollenkopf, eds., Immigrants, Civic Culture, and Modes of Political Incorporation, New York: Russell Sage. Van Hear, Nicholas (1998). New Diasporas: The Mass Exodus, Dispersal and Regrouping of Migrant Communities. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. Vertovec, Steven and Robin Cohen, eds. (1999). Migration, Diasporas, and Transnationalism. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Co. Vertovec, Steven and Ceri Peach, eds. (1997). Islam in Europe: The Politics of Religion and Community. London: Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan. Vertovec, Steven and Alisdair Rogers, eds. (1998). Muslim European Youth: Reproducing Ethnicity, Religion, and Culture. Aldershot: Ashgate. Vickerman, Milton (1999). Crosscurrents: West Indian Immigrants and Race. New York: Oxford University Press. Vigil, James Diego (1988). Barrio Gangs: Street Life and Identity in Southern California. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Waters, Mary (1990). Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ——— (1999). Black Identities. West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wrench, John and John Solomos, eds. (1993). Racism and Migration in Western Europe. Oxford: Berg. Wyman, Joseph (1993). Round-Trip to America: The Immigrants Return to Europe, 1880–1930. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Zappala, Gianni, and Stephen Castles (2000). “Citizenship and Immigration in Australia,” in: T.A. Aleinikoff and D. Klusmeyer, eds. From Migrants to Citizens. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Zolberg, Aristide and Long Litt Woon (1999). “Why Islam is Like Spanish,” Politics and Society 27(1): 5–38.

Part I Changing State Policies


2 The Return of Assimilation? Changing Perspectives on Immigration and its Sequels in France, Germany, and the United States Rogers Brubaker

The differentialist turn “The point about the melting pot,” wrote Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the preface to their influential Beyond the Melting Pot, “is that it did not happen.” This “failure to melt” thesis was iconoclastic when the book was published in 1963. But it had become widely accepted already by the end of the decade – well before the post-1965 revival of mass immigration began to transform the American urban landscape. By the 1980s, when the effects of the “new ‘new immigration’” had become unmistakable, earlier conceptions of assimilation seemed to many to have lost all relevance. When Glazer published We Are All Multiculturalists Now in 1997, he was writing as éminence grise, not as iconoclastic intellectual.1 Pluralistic understandings of persisting diversity, once a challenge to the conventional wisdom, had become the conventional wisdom, not only in the US and other classic countries of immigration such as Canada and Australia, but also in much of northern and western Europe. There is obviously a good deal of truth to this conventional wisdom. Public discourse and public policies bearing on the integration of immigrants are indeed vastly more “differentialist” – vastly more sensitive to and supportive of “difference” – today than they were, say, in the period between the two world wars in France or the US, or in the early postwar decades in the US. The 1980s and 90s indeed witnessed an 39

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unprecedented efflorescence of differentialist discourse – and differentialist integration policies – in all Western countries of immigration. This differentialist turn has not been restricted to, or even centered on, the immigration issue. Especially in the US, but in a more limited sense in Western Europe as well, it has been a much broader and more general movement of thought and opinion. It has found expression in movements to preserve or strengthen regional languages and cultures in Europe (Keating 1996); in demands for, and greater recognition of, the autonomy of indigenous peoples in the US, Canada, Australia, Russia, Latin America, and elsewhere (Brøsted et al. 1985; Kymlicka 1995); in Black Power, Afrocentrist, and other anti-assimilationist movements involving African-Americans (Howe 1998); in the shift from an individualist, opportunity-oriented, and color-blind to a collectivist, resultsoriented, and color-conscious interpretation of civil rights legislation in the US (Glazer 1978); in multiculturalist revisions of school and university curricula (Nash et al. 1997; Glazer 1997); in gynocentric or “difference” feminism (Irigaray 1993); in gay pride and other movements based on the public affirmation of alternative sexualities ( Johnston 1973); in claims by other putative cultural communities – including, for example, the deaf (Lane 1992) – for autonomy; in generalized opposition to the homogenizing, centralizing claims of the modern nation-state; in anti-foundationalist understandings of the production of knowledge in bounded, historically and socially situated epistemic communities (Hollinger 1997); in other poststructuralist and postmodernist critiques of the allegedly falsely universal premises of Enlightenment thought; and in the shift from an understanding of politics emphasizing the pursuit of putatively universal interests to one emphasizing the recognition of avowedly particularist identities (Young 1990). Today, however, this massive differentialist turn in social thought, public discourse, and public policy shows signs of having exhausted itself. Differentialist stances have long been a lightning rod for criticism from cultural conservatives (D’Souza 1991) and from the economistic, resolutely anti-identitarian left. In recent years, though, criticism has come increasingly “from within,” that is, from the “cultural left” itself, from persons sympathetic to the claims of cultural difference, yet uncomfortable with their absolutization (Hollinger 1995; Gitlin 1995; Brubaker and Cooper 2000). Opposition to the relativistic, indeed ultimately solipsistic implications of epistemological insiderism; concern over the fragmenting, in certain respects disabling consequences of identity politics; resurgent interest in forms of civic commonality; rethinking of the modalities of and rationale for affirmative action, not

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only on the part of its longstanding critics on the right, but on the part of its longstanding defenders on the left – these and other developments suggest that, in some respects at least, the maximally differentialist moment may have passed. In the domain of immigration, too, there are signs that the differentialist tide may have begun to ebb. Instead of a definitive, unidirectional shift from assimilation to multiculturalism, we have begun to see a shift in the opposite direction. To call this the “return of assimilation” is undoubtedly too grand a label for the relatively modest and uneven shift I will describe; hence the question mark in my title. But it may usefully caution us against overhastily consigning assimilation to the dustbin of history.

Two meanings of “assimilation” What do I mean by the “return of assimilation”? I do not mean a return to the normative expectations, analytical models, public policies, or informal practices associated with the ideal of Anglo-conformity or the increasingly nativist Americanization movement after World War I (Gleason 1980); or to those associated with the schoolteachers of the French Third Republic, notorious for shaming and humiliating those who spoke languages or dialects other than standard French (Weber 1976: 313); or to those associated with the harsh Imperial German effort to “Germanize” its largely Polish-speaking eastern borderlands (Broszat 1972: 129–72); 2 or to any of the many other lamentable instances of harshly homogenizing state projects. This should go without saying, but assimilation has acquired such a bad name in many American differentialist circles that it has come to be associated, as a kind of automatic reflex, with the narrowest understanding of Anglo-conformity or the worst excesses of Americanization campaigns. In Germany, if anything, the word “assimilation” has been even more strongly “contaminated” and disqualified by its association with forcible Germanization. In France, by contrast, the word itself was never so thoroughly discredited. But in France, too, it was tainted by association with the sometimes brutally homogenizing aspirations and practices of Jacobin Republicanism. So what are we talking about when we talk about “assimilation”? What is it that is “returning,” if it is not these normatively and analytically discredited models? To address this question, we must distinguish between two basic meanings of “assimilation.” One is general and abstract; the other is specific and organic. The two meanings are related,

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but they differ sharply in their affective overtones, moral and political connotations, and intellectual respectability. In the general and abstract sense, the core meaning is increasing similarity or likeness. Not identity, but similarity. To assimilate means to become similar (when the word is used intransitively) or to make similar or treat as similar (when it is used transitively). Assimilation is thus the process of becoming similar, or of making similar or treating as similar. In the specific and organic sense, the root meaning is transitive. To assimilate something is to “convert [it] into a substance of its own nature, as the bodily organs convert food into blood, and thence into animal tissue . . .to absorb into the system, [to] incorporate” (Oxford English Dictionary). Assimilation in this sense implies complete absorption. In the general, abstract sense, the accent is on the process, not on some final state, and assimilation is a matter of degree. Assimilation designates a direction of change, not a particular degree of similarity. In the specific, organic sense, by contrast, the accent is on the end state, and assimilation is a matter of either/or, not of degree. It is the connotations chiefly of this organic meaning, with its biological metaphor of incorporation, that have discredited the term, making it seem normatively retrograde (given our contemporary appreciation of “difference” and diversity), analytically disreputable (given its superannuated organismic understanding of society), and empirically wrong (with its implication of complete absorption). In addition, one aspect of the general, abstract meaning has stood out as normatively and analytically problematic. This is the transitive use of “assimilate” to mean “make similar,” which suggests state policies and programs of “forced assimilation,” or at least policies and programs that seek to assimilate people against their will. Such policies and programs have rightly come to be seen as morally and politically repugnant. Abundant historical and comparative evidence, moreover, suggests that they rarely work, and that they are indeed more likely to strengthen than to erode differences, by provoking a reactive mobilization against such assimilatory pressures. Analytically, we may have good reason to speak of assimilationist policies; but such policies need not have assimilationist outcomes.3 Yet when used intransitively in the general, abstract sense of becoming similar – becoming similar in certain respects, which obviously have to be specified – assimilation does not seem to be morally objectionable, analytically useless, or empirically wrong as a conceptual instrument for studying populations of immigrant origin. Indeed the use of some


such notion – if only to pose certain questions about patterns of “integration,” “adaptation,” or “incorporation,” terms that have been preferred to “assimilation” in many recent discussions4 – would seem to be analytically indispensable. I return to this point in the conclusion. Here I simply wish to underscore that it is this intransitive understanding of “assimilation,” this normative and analytical concern with the nature and extent of emerging similarities in particular domains between populations of immigration origin and “host” populations, that I see “returning” in recent years.

Three cases The trend that concerns me has been much stronger in France than in Germany, with the US somewhere in between. This might lead one to think that the “return of assimilation” is simply an artefact of the cases I have chosen, which include the US, historically the paradigmatic country of immigrant assimilation, and France, the European country with the longest, strongest, and most ideologically elaborated tradition of assimilation. There is something to this: had I chosen different cases – for example the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Germany – the trend would have been less clear-cut. Yet the trend cannot be dismissed out of hand as an artefact of the cases selected for discussion here. In the first place, the return of assimilation in France and the US involves a marked return, not simply the persistence of something always present. I want to stress this reactive moment of return, and to situate it in the context of a preceding “differentialist” turn in both France and the US. Moreover, there has been a modest assimilationist turn not only in Germany (which I discuss below) but also in the Netherlands (Koopmans and Statham 2000; Thränhardt 2000) and Sweden (Soininen 1999: 689–91), two other countries with relatively “differentialist” incorporation regimes. Over the longer term, as a third generation of immigrant origin emerges, it is likely that a concern with at least some dimensions of assimilation will become increasingly salient throughout Europe. I obviously cannot give here a comprehensive account of processes of – or ideas about – immigrant integration in France, Germany, and the US, let alone the other countries I have mentioned. Instead, I will briefly sketch three illustrative vignettes, drawn from different countries and from different domains. I discuss the return of assimilation in public discourse in France, in public policy in Germany, and in scholarly research in the US.

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France: From droit à la différence to droit à la resemblance One might think there was not much of a story to be told about France. Why talk of a return of assimilation in a country that has long been the paradigmatic exemplar of assimilation, transforming peasants – and immigrants – into Frenchmen, in what Gérard Noiriel has called le creuset français, the French melting pot (Weber 1976, Noiriel 1988)? But to frame the issue in this way – to focus only on the Jacobin-Republican assimilationist tradition, or assimilationist myth – is to forget the strong differentialist turn that occurred in French public discussion of immigration and other issues in the 1970s and early 1980s, precisely in reaction against the Jacobin and assimilationist tradition. Indeed differentialist discourse received one of its sharpest and most lapidary – if ambiguous – formulations in the characteristic French slogan of those years: the droit à la différence. True, the differentialist turn was much stronger in rhetoric than in reality: differentialism remained largely symbolic (Schnapper 1992: 119) and was embedded only relatively weakly in policies and institutionalized practices – for example, in the program in which foreign instructors, selected and paid by foreign governments as a result of bilateral agreements concluded with the French state, were recruited to offer instruction in so-called “languages and cultures of origin” in French public schools, indeed during regular school hours (Boyzon-Fradet 1992: 155ff). 5 But at the level of public discussion, differentialism was clearly ascendant, indeed triumphant during the early years of the Socialist government in France in the early 1980s. 6 It is important to note that differentialism was gaining ground on the French right as well as the left. The historian and philosopher PierreAndré Taguieff has analyzed the rise of a differentialist – one could even say multiculturalist – “new right” in France in the 1970s and 1980s, clustered around the enigmatic figure of Alain de Benoist. No longer xenophobic but formally “heterophile,” anti-racist, and egalitarian, the new differentialists of the right emphasized, indeed absolutized, cultural difference, seeking to “preserve at any price collective identities, and thus differences between communities, haunted by the danger of their destruction through mixing, physical and cultural” (Taguieff 1994: 66–67). What happened to the ascendant differentialism? In two words: Le Pen. Although Le Pen and the intellectuals associated with him actually belonged to a different segment of the right than the small circle of principled differentialists analyzed by Taguieff, they too adopted a differentialist idiom, adroitly turning it to their own purposes. Droit à la


différence? Mais oui, bien sûr, chez vous. But here, in France – so went the argument – it’s we, the “real” French, who have our own right to be different, our own right to preserve our own “identity” from unwanted admixture. As a result, the moral and political ambiguity, and the exclusionary potential, of culturalist differentialism were brought into sharp focus – indeed much sharper focus in France than elsewhere. It was this political and ideological conjuncture that set the stage for the return of assimilation. The much-vaunted slogan of the droit à la différence disappeared with astonishing rapidity. By the late 1980s, it was scarcely to be heard. One was more likely to hear of the droit à la resemblance, to which Harlem Désir himself appealed in a widely watched TV appearance in 1987 – or of the droit à l’indifférence, in effect the right to be treated like everyone else. In the wake of the differentialist collapse, there was a resurgence of neo-republican, neo-universalist, and at least hesitatingly neo-assimilationist discourse, elaborated by such public intellectuals as Alain Finkielkraut (1987), Taguieff (1996), and especially Emmanuel Todd (1994). Their views do not go unchallenged, of course; there are sophisticated voices such as Michel Wieviorka (1996) who continue to defend a moderately differentialist position; but on the whole, the sudden and virtually complete collapse of simplistic, sloganeering differentialism and the equally sudden resurgence of universalist, assimilationist discourse about immigration is striking. Certainly, no equally sharp shift in the center of gravity of public discourse has occurred elsewhere.

Germany: Rethinking institutionalized separateness While my French vignette concerned public discourse, my German story is about public policy. German policy vis-à-vis immigrants and their descendants has been strongly differentialist – much more so than French policy even during the years of ascendant differentialist rhetoric in France. 7 Consider three indicators of differentialist policy in Germany. First, instruction in languages and cultures of origin has been much more widespread in Germany than in France, and indeed has been part of the obligatory curriculum in some Länder (Castles et al. 1984: 175). (Since education is the responsibility of the individual Länder, this has varied a good deal from state to state; Bavaria, in particular, was long notorious for educating foreigners in segregated, homeland-oriented classes.) Second, there is the peculiar German system of social service provision to populations of immigrant origin. Responsibility for such provision

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was farmed out by the state to the three major nonstate charitable organizations – one affiliated with the Catholic Church, a second with the Evangelical Church, the third with the Social Democratic Party. Jurisdiction was apportioned in such a way that foreigners were allocated to a particular charitable organization on the basis of their national origin, so that all Turks were the responsibility of one organization, all Italians of a second, and so on. As critics have observed (Puskeppeleit and Thränhardt 1990; cf. Älund and Schierup 1991 on the somewhat similar Swedish case), this system not only treats immigrants as passive clients of the charitable organizations, but also tends to reinforce and perpetuate national origin distinctions. The third policy I want to discuss is citizenship. Until its recent liberalization, German citizenship law was well known for its restrictiveness vis-à-vis non-German immigrants. What was and remains less well known is that except for political rights, long-settled non-citizen immigrants have possessed rights virtually identical to those of German citizens. Of course, as immigrant populations became more settled, and as a second and an incipient third generation population developed, the lack of political rights became increasingly anomalous. What was distinctive about the response to this anomaly – and indicative of deep-rooted German differentialism – was that the solution was long seen on the left not in terms of incorporating immigrants and their descendants as full citizens, but rather in terms of extending even political rights – along with social, civil, and economic rights – to resident foreigners. Until the early 1990s, there was little interest in the anomalous formal citizenship status of immigrants, but there was considerable interest in extending voting rights to foreigners in local elections, and a large literature addressing this possibility. This was seen as the “progressive” solution – one that would extend the substantive rights of citizenship to immigrants without questioning their “differentness”, their foreignness, their otherness. 8 Policies in these three domains – schools, social services, and citizenship – and the idioms in which they were rationalized and justified were indicative of a kind of benevolent, paternalistic, and egalitarian (or pseudo-egalitarian) apartheid, an institutionalized separateness, suggested in the oxymoronic phrase “unsere auslandischen Mitburger” – “our foreign fellow citizens” – that has been a leitmotif of well-meaning public discussions of what continues to be called Ausländerpolitik – politics or policies regarding foreigners – in Germany. Left differentialists of course criticized existing policies on various counts; but they too endorsed this separate-but-equal logic.


It is against this background of deep differentialism that signs of a modest “assimilationist turn” can be discerned in the manner in which citizenship has been legally redefined and politically reconceived in recent years (Joppke 1999: 202–208). Naturalization rules were substantially eased in the early 1990s, and naturalization rates of Turks – extraordinarily low until the late 1980s – have soared. In 1999, naturalization rules were further liberalized. More importantly, the rules for the attribution of citizenship at birth were changed as well, supplementing the previously exclusively descent-based law, founded on the principle of jus sanguinis, with the territorial principle of jus soli. Henceforth, citizenship will be attributed at birth to children born in Germany to foreign parents, one of whom has resided legally in Germany at least eight years. This citizenship will, however, be provisional; in most cases, the child will have to choose either the German or the foreign citizenship at maturity, and renounce the other. The legal changes, increasing naturalization rates, and new ways of thinking and talking about citizenship on the part of Germans and foreigners alike are indicative of a limited but significant “assimilationist turn.” Not in the sense that full assimilation is required as a prerequisite for citizenship. To the contrary: the liberalization of naturalization law broke expressly with this principle, previously enshrined in the regulations governing naturalization. The new practices, policies, and discourses surrounding citizenship are assimilationist, rather, in the sense of politically recognizing, legally constituting, and symbolically emphasizing commonality rather than difference. Assimilation, it is worth remembering, means becoming similar, or treating as similar, and this new inflection in the policies and practices of citizenship in the 1990s has involved a modest but significant assimilationist turn in both senses.

The US: Assimilation without “assimilationism” Having discussed public discourse in France and public policy in Germany, I turn to a third domain in which one can discern a return of assimilation in recent years: scholarly research. Here I will focus on the United States, though note that in France, too, researchers have shown a renewed interest in assimilation (Tribalat 1996; Todd 1994). In Germany, by contrast, most scholarly research on immigrant integration continues scrupulously to avoid at least the term assimilation, even when it addresses questions that could be seen as falling under this rubric (exceptions include Esser 1980 and Nauck et al. 1997).

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In the United States, research on immigrant integration was dominated from its beginnings in the 1920s through the mid-1960s by assimilationist perspectives of one kind or another. Then, from about 1965 to 1985, largely under the impact of external events, the historical and sociological literature – at least the more theoretically ambitious strands of that literature – was characterized mainly by pluralist perspectives, emphasizing and documenting ethnic persistence in a variety of ways. 9 Since about 1985, however, one can discern a renewed theoretical concern with assimilation in the scholarly literature (see, for example, Gans 1992; Glazer 1993; Portes and Zhou 1993; Morawska 1994; Kazal 1995; Barkan 1995; Alba and Nee 1997; Rumbaut 1997; Alba 1999). The ethnic persistence literature has made and continues to make valuable contributions. But “a way of seeing,” as Kenneth Burke observed, “is also a way of not seeing” (Burke 1954: 40). Focusing on ethnic communities, on ethnically marked places or ethnic organizations rather than on persons or wider social processes, this literature has missed those who moved out of such ethnically marked places, who “disappeared,” as Ewa Morawska put it (1994: 83). With its “unexamined assumptions that cultural maintenance is always a good thing, that immigrants as a rule tried to preserve as much of their traditional culture as possible, [and] that ethnocentric Anglo-America equally reflexively resisted both cultural transplantations and assimilation,” it has tended to take ethnic communities – places – as opposed to individually experienced adaptation – immigrant lifecourses – as its object of inquiry, and . . . has tended to focus precisely on those kinds of places – areas of concentrated first-generation settlement – where the odds of finding evidence for ethnic maintenance are greatest. It has sought to restore agency to the immigrant actor, but has not always followed that agency into all the varied paths that it could take. In particular . . . by confining its focus to ethnic maintenance it neglects to extend its concern for the immigrant as historical actor to the assessment of the immigrant’s impact upon society as a whole. We have constructed an oppositional history of virtuous, autonomous, ethnic outsiders interacting minimally with others except in the workplace, outsiders who thereby bear, to be sure, little moral responsibility for the sins of the broader nation, but also, by implication, little significance in its broader history (Conzen 1996: 21). Inwardly focused, the ethnic persistence literature has neglected wider social and cultural processes such as the formation of transethnic (but


often racially closed) working class communities in the early part of the century (Kazal 1995); the spatial dispersion that has accompanied post-World War II suburbanization, in which even recent immigrants have been participating (Alba and Nee 1997: 836–37, 857–62); increasing rates of ethnic intermarriage (Spickard 1989; Alba 1999; Qian 1997); and the dynamic renegotiation of ethnic and racial categories and identifications (Rödiger 1991; Ignatiev 1995; Perlman and Waldinger 1997). All of these processes have led to the blurring or shifting of some ethnic boundaries (Zolberg and Long 1999) in ways that undermine stable ethnic enclosures (Hollinger 1999). The new theorists of assimilation do not simply replicate the old, pre-1965 approaches. The older work – even work as sophisticated as Gordon’s – was analytically and normatively Anglo-conformist. It posited, endorsed, and expected assimilation towards an unproblematically conceived white Protestant “core culture.” Recent work on assimilation, by contrast, is agnostic about its directions, degrees, and modalities, and ambivalent about its desirability. There is nothing today comparable to the complacent empirical and normative expectancies of mid-century. Of course, this is partly because the notion of a universally acknowledged “core culture” has lost all its plausibility since the late 1960s. This, in turn, has raised the question of the reference population toward which assimilation is said to occur. Characteristic of the newer literature on assimilation is its willingness to consider multiple reference populations and correspondingly segmented forms of assimilation (Portes and Zhou 1993; Zhou 1997; Waters 1994; Neckerman et al. 1999).10 It is no longer true that assimilation (or integration, a term that often, especially in the European context, refers to much the same thing) is “inevitably” conceptualized as occurring “into one, single, indivisible (national) ‘state’, and one, simple, unitary (national) ‘society’” (Favell 2000). Today, concern with assimilation is not necessarily “assimilationist.” It implies no global belief in the inevitability or desirability of assimilation. This does not mean that the newer literature on assimilation has no normative thrust. Normative concerns about civic commonality do underlie and inform much work on assimilation today (Alba 1999). But they do not entail any blanket endorsement of assimilation. Some forms of assimilation are indeed widely thought to be desirable. One aspect of linguistic assimilation, for example – the intergenerational acquisition of English at levels sufficient to permit success in schooling, occupational mobility, and full participation in public life – is clearly desirable. But note that this in no way entails the desirability of what Portes and Rumbaut (1990: 209–21) call “subtractive” linguistic

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assimilation – the intergenerational loss of competence in the language of origin. Some aspects of socio-economic assimilation are also clearly desirable (Hirschman 1983: 403ff; Alba and Nee 1997). Consider, for example, a population with mean income and education levels well below the respective means for the population at large. Surely, assimilation in these domains – in the sense of a shift in the direction of convergence with the income and educational distributions of the wider society – would be desirable for this population, and it is important to know whether and to what extent it is occurring. But the desirability of assimilation in these respects does not imply its desirability in other respects. It does not imply the desirability of complete acculturation, for example; or of full “identificational assimilation” (the “development of a sense of peoplehood based exclusively on the host society” [Gordon 1964: 71, emphasis added]); or of spatial assimilation through suburbanization and the concomitant decline of ethnic neighborhoods; or of full occupational assimilation and the concomitant decline of ethnic niches, enclaves, and professional specializations; or of the erosion of group boundaries through high rates of intermarriage or what Gordon called structural assimilation (participation in the “social cliques, clubs, and institutions of the core society at the primary group level” [Gordon 1964: 80]). My point is not that assimilation in these respects is necessarily undesirable, though evidence – for example, about better health outcomes of infants born to immigrant than to US-born mothers, even after controlling for ethnicity and a variety of socio-economic factors (Rumbaut 1997) – suggests that certain forms of assimilation may indeed be undesirable. This point is forcefully developed in the segmented assimilation literature, which argues that socio-economic success, for second-generation immigrants in predominantly minority inter-city neighborhoods, may depend on resisting assimilation to the surrounding youth milieu, with its adversarial stance toward mainstream culture (Portes and Zhou 1993; Zhou 1997). The broader point is that one can study assimilation in its various domains and directions without being an “assimilationist”; one may be agnostic about its destinations and ambivalent or even skeptical about its desirability. Assimilation is not a single process of the sort envisioned by “straight-line” accounts. Already by Gordon’s time, a picture had emerged of assimilation as a complex and only partially interlocking set of processes (see also Yinger 1981). Some of these (notably structural assimilation on Gordon’s account and spatial assimilation on some recent accounts [Massey and Denton 1993: 149ff]) bear significantly on


processes in other domains by shaping opportunity structures and contact probabilities. But other domains are at most loosely coupled with one another. Recent accounts are sensitive to the possibilities of different rhythms and trajectories of assimilation – or dissimilation – in different domains (Banton 1983: 144–46). On current understandings, assimilation is always domain-specific and relative to a particular reference population; and the normative stance one takes toward it will also depend on the particular domain and reference population.

Conclusion: A concept transformed In all three countries, what I have called “the return of assimilation” has involved a subtle but significant change in perspective. Analytically, this has involved a shift from an overwhelming focus on persisting difference – and on the mechanisms through which such cultural maintenance occurs – to a broader focus that encompasses emerging commonalities as well. Normatively, it has involved a shift from the automatic valorization of cultural differences to a renewed concern with civic integration. This shift in analytical and normative emphasis does not presage a radical reversal. It does not amount to a return to the bad old days of arrogant assimilationism. For while the term “assimilation” has returned, the concept has been transformed. I sketch in conclusion the main elements of this transformation: 1. A shift from organic understandings of assimilation, focusing on an end state of complete absorption, to abstract understandings of assimilation, focusing on a process of becoming similar (in some respect, to some reference population). 2. A shift from transitive to intransitive understandings of assimilation. The former see populations of immigrant origin as moldable, meltable, objects; the latter see persons comprising such populations as active subjects. As such, to be sure, they are not busy consciously “assimilating.” Assimilating can, of course, be a deliberate, self-conscious activity; and the poignant – and sometimes tragic – ambiguities and ambivalences bound up with it have been movingly explored by novelists, memoirists, essayists, historians, and even a few sociologists (Bauman 1988; Laitin 1995). Yet for most historians and social scientists, assimilation is an emergent tendential property of social processes at an aggregate level, rather than something that happens (consciously or unconsciously) at the level of individual persons.

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As an emergent tendency at the aggregate level, assimilation is largely unintended and often invisible; and when it is made visible, it may be lamented. Yet even when it is lamented, the processual tendency we call “assimilation” is not something done to persons, but rather something accomplished by them, not intentionally, but as an unintended consequence of myriad individual actions and choices in particular social, cultural, economic, and political contexts (cf. Alba 1995: 4). 3. The unit within which change occurs – the unit that undergoes assimilation – is not the person but a multi-generational population. Population-level assimilation can occur without any individual-level assimilation. Linguistic assimilation at the population level, for example, can occur without any adult learning a new language, solely through the acquisition of the language of the reference population by children. Of course this is not what ordinarily happens; we do observe some language shift at the level of individual persons. But key changes (in language and in other domains) occur intergenerationally; they occur not within persons but within abstractly constructed multigenerational populations, as new (genealogical) “members” of the population turn out to be different – dissimilate! – from other, older members of the source population, in ways that make them more similar to members of some reference population. 4. A shift from thinking in terms of homogeneous units to thinking in terms of heterogeneous units. Assimilation does not involve a shift from one homogeneous unit to another. It involves, rather, a shift from one mode of heterogeneity – one distribution of properties – to another mode of heterogeneity, i.e. to a distribution of properties more similar to the distribution prevailing in some reference population. 5. A shift in the focus of normative concern informing research on assimilation from cultural to socioeconomic matters. A general openness to cultural diversity, coupled with confidence among specialists – if not always among the wider public – in the continuing robustness of processes of linguistic acculturation (Portes and Schauffler 1994) has alleviated anxieties about cultural dimensions of assimilation. Yet the bifurcation of recent immigrants into high-skill and low-skill segments – at a moment when macroeconomic changes associated with the “hourglass economy” have decreased the rewards to lowskill, uneducated labor – has generated concerns about long-term structural marginalization (Gans 1992; Portes and Zhou 1993; somewhat more optimistic: Waldinger 1996, Perlman and Waldinger 1997). As a normatively charged concept, assimilation, in this sense,


is opposed not to difference but to segregation, ghettoization, and marginalization. 6. A shift from a holistic approach that conceptualized assimilation towards a taken-for-granted reference population – the “core culture” or “national society” as a whole – to a disaggregated approach that discards the notion of assimilation as a single process, considers multiple reference populations, and envisions distinct processes occurring in different domains. This has entailed a shift from the monodimensional question, “how much assimilation?” to the multidimensional question, “assimilation in what respect, over what period of time, and to what reference population?” It has also entailed a shift from an assimilationist understanding of assimilation – a global empirical expectation and normative endorsement of assimilation – to an agnostic stance, varying by domain and reference population, concerning both the likelihood and the desirability of assimilation. Reformulated in this manner, and divested of its “assimilationist” connotations, the concept of assimilation – if not the term itself – seems not only useful but indispensable. It enables us to ask questions about the domains and degrees of emergent similarities, and persisting differences, between multigenerational populations of immigrant origin and particular reference populations. There are good reasons for us to want to ask such questions, regardless of whether we applaud or lament such emerging similarities. Naturally, to pose such questions is only a beginning. Assimilation is not a theory; it is simply a concept. But it is a concept we can ill do without.

Acknowledgments This chapter first appeared in Ethnic and Racial Studies 24[4]( July 2001): 531–48, © 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd. Thanks to Roger Waldinger for his detailed comments and criticisms on an earlier draft, too many of which remain unaddressed. Thanks also to Andreas Wimmer, Jennifer Lee, Daniel Wolk, and members of my nationalism workshop for helpful comments, and to Christian Joppke, who organized the conference on “Integrating Immigrants in Liberal States” European University Institute, Florence, May 8–9, 1998, for which an initial version of the paper was prepared. Research support from the Comparative Immigration and Integration Program of the Center for German and European Studies at the University of California, Berkeley is gratefully acknowledged.

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Notes 1 Glazer’s title, to be sure, was wry, not celebratory; it was intended to acknowledge, not to endorse, the current ascendancy of multiculturalism. 2 I refer to Imperial Germany rather than Nazi Germany because Nazi policies were, of course, murderously dissimilationist rather than assimilationist. 3 There is another transitive use of “assimilate” that is less problematic, normatively and analytically. This is the use of “assimilate” to mean treat similarly rather than make similar. To assimilate X’s to Y’s in one’s dealings with them is to treat them similarly rather than differently. From a differentialist normative perspective, to be sure, such similarity of treatment can be problematic. But in general “treating similarly” is a transitive meaning of “assimilate” quite distinct from, and normatively and analytically less suspect than, “making similar.” 4 For sophisticated discussions of the idea of integration, see Favell (2000) and Bauböck (2001). 5 Although this program, committed to cultural maintenance in the interest of keeping the option of “return” open to immigrants, is strongly differentialist in orientation, it has not been very popular. Even at the peak differentialist moment, in the early 1980s, only about 20 percent of eligible students participated (Boyzon-Fradet 1992: 158); by 1992–93, only 12 percent of Algerian citizens enrolled in French primary schools – and a considerably smaller proportion of students of Algerian origin – participated (Vermès 1997). 6 Differentialist discourse concerned not only populations of immigrant origin but also regional minority cultures; on the latter see Giordan (1982). 7 German discourse on immigration and its sequels, too, has been strongly differentialist. On the historical roots of this differentialist discursive tradition, see Brubaker (1992: 3–17); for contemporary manifestations, see Joppke (1999: 188–89). 8 On the still more “progressive” differentialist solution – the proposed Niederlassungsgesetz or settlement law that would grant all citizenship rights, including the right to vote in national elections, on the basis of residence rather than formal citizenship – see Joppke (1999: 192–93). 9 A considerable amount of mainstream sociological research, to be sure, continued throughout this period to study processes of assimilation; for reviews see Price (1969), Hirschman (1983). 10 Some earlier literature, while positing acculturation to a single core culture, can be said to have anticipated the notion of segmented assimilation by conceptualizing structural assimilation and intermarriage among European immigrants as occurring within confessional boundaries (Kennedy 1944 [but see also the critique of Peach 1980]; Gordon 1964).

References Alba, Richard D. (1995). “Assimilation’s Quiet Tide.” Public Interest, 119: 3–18. ——— (1999). “Immigration and the American Realities of Assimilation and Multiculturalism.” Sociological Forum 14(1): 3–25. Alba, Richard D. and Victor Nee (1997). “Rethinking Assimilation Theory for a New Era of Immigration.” International Migration Review 31(4): 826–74.

The Return of Assimilation? 55 Älund, Aleksandra and Carl-Ulrik Schierup (1991). Paradoxes of Multiculturalism: Essays on Swedish Society. Aldershot, UK: Avebury. Banton, Michael (1983). Racial and Ethnic Competition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barkan, Elliott R. (1995). “Race, Religion, and Nationality in American Society: A Model of Ethnicity – From Contact to Assimilation.” Journal of American Ethnic History 14(2): 38–101. Bauböck, Rainer (2001). “Integration von Einwanderern – Reflexionen zum Begriff und seine Anwendungsmöglichkeiten.” Die Integration von Einwanderern, vol. 2: Ein Index rechtlicher Diskriminierung, ed. Harald Waldrauch. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag. Bauman, Zygmunt (1988). “Exit Visas and Entry Tickets: Paradoxes of Jewish Assimilation.” Telos, 77: 45–77. Boyzon-Fradet, Danielle (1992). “The French Education System: Springboard or Obstacle to Integration?”, pp. 148–66 in Immigrants in Two Democracies: The French and American Experience, eds. Donald L. Horowitz and Gerard Noiriel. New York: New York University Press. Brøsted, Jens et al. (1985). Native Power: The Quest for Autonomy and Nationhood of Indigenous Peoples. Bergen: Universitetsforlaget. Broszat, Martin (1972). Zweihundert Jahre deutsche Polenpolitik. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Brubaker, Rogers (1992). Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Brubaker, Rogers and Frederick Cooper (2000). “Beyond ‘Identity’.” Theory and Society, 29(1): 1–47. Burke, Kenneth (1954). Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose. Los Altos, CA: Hermes Publications. Castles, Steven, Heather Booth, and Tina Wallace (1984). Here for Good: Western Europe’s New Ethnic Minorities. London: Pluto Press. Conzen, Kathleen N. (1996). “Thomas and Znaniecki and the Historiography of American Immigration.” Journal of American Ethnic History, 16(1): 16–26. D’Souza, Dinesh (1991). Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus. New York: Free Press. Esser, Hartmut (1980). Aspekte der Wanderungssoziologie: Assimilation und Integration von Wanderern, ethnischen Gruppen und Minderheiten: eine handlungstheoretische Analyse. Darmstadt, Neuwied: Luchterhand. Favell, Adrian (2000). “Integration Policy and Integration Research in Europe: A Review and Critique.” Citizenship: Comparisons and Perspectives, eds. Alex Aleinikoff and Doug Klusmeyer. Washington DC: Brookings Institute. Finkielkraut, Alain (1987). La défaite de la pensée. Paris: Gallimard. Gans, Herbert (1992). “Second-Generation Decline: Scenarios for the Economic and Ethnic Features of the Post-1965 American Immigrants.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 15(2): 173–92. Giordan, Henri (1982). Démocratie culturelle et droit à la différence. Paris: La Documentation française. Gitlin, Todd (1995). The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars. New York: Henry Holt. Glazer, Nathan (1978). Affirmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy. New York: Basic Books.

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——— (1993). “Is Assimilation Dead?” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 530: 122–36. ——— (1997). We Are All Multiculturalists Now. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Glazer, Nathan and Daniel P. Moynihan (1963). Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City. Cambridge: MIT Press. Gleason, Philip (1980). “American Identity and Americanization.” pp. 31–58 in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, ed. Stephan Thernstrom. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University. Gordon, Milton M. (1964). Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins. New York: Oxford University Press. Hirschman, Charles (1983). “America’s Melting Pot Reconsidered.” Annual Review of Sociology 9: 397–423. Hollinger, David A. (1995). Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism. New York: Basic Books. ——— (1997). “The Disciplines and the Identity Debates, 1970–1995.” Daedalus 126(1): 333–51. ——— (1999). “Authority, Solidarity, and the Political Economy of Identity: The Case of the United States.” Diacritics 29(4): 116–27. Howe, Stephen (1998). Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes. New York: Verso. Ignatiev, Noel (1995). How the Irish Became White. New York: Routledge. Irigaray, Luce (1993). Je, tu, nous: Toward a Culture of Difference. New York: Routledge. Johnston, Jill (1973). Lesbian Nation. New York: Harper Row. Joppke, Christian (1999). Immigration and the Nation-State: The United States, Germany, and Great Britain. New York: Oxford University Press. Kazal, Russell A. (1995). “Revisiting Assimilation: The Rise, Fall, and Reappraisal of a Concept in American Ethnic History.” The American Historical Review 100(2): 437. Keating, Michael (1996). Nations Against the State: The New Politics of Nationalism in Quebec, Catalonia and Scotland. New York: St Martin’s Press – now Palgrave Macmillan. Kennedy, Ruby J.R. (1944). “Single or Triple Melting Pot? Intermarriage Trends in New Haven, 1870–1940.” American Journal of Sociology 49(4): 331–39. Koopmans, Ruud and Paul Statham (2000). “Migration and Ethnic Relations as a Field of Political Contention: An Opportunity Structure Approach.” Challenging Immigration and Ethnic Relations Politics: Comparative European Perspectives, eds. Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kymlicka, Will (1995). Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Laitin, David D. (1995). “Marginality: A Microperspective.” Rationality and Society 7(1): 31–57. Lane, Harlan (1992). The Mask of Benevolence: Disabling the Deaf Community. New York: A.A. Knopf. Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A. Denton (1993). American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Morawska, Ewa (1994). “In Defense of the Assimilation Model.” Journal of American Ethnic History 13(2): 76–87. Nash, Gary B., Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross E. Dunn (1997). History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past. New York: A.A. Knopf.

The Return of Assimilation? 57 Nauck, Bernhard et al. (1997). “Familiäre Netzwerke, intergenerative Transmission und Assimilationsprozesse bei türkischen Migrantenfamilien.” Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 49(3): 477–99. Neckerman, Kathryn M., Prudence Carter, and Jennifer Lee (1999). “Segmented Assimilation and Minority Cultures of Mobility.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 22(6): 945–65. Noiriel, Gérard (1988). Le creuset français: Histoire de l’immigration XIXe–XXe siècles. Paris: Seuil. Peach, Ceri (1980). “Which Triple Melting Pot? A Re-Examination of Ethnic Intermarriage in New Haven.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 3(1): 1–16. Perlmann, Joel and Roger Waldinger (1997). “Second Generation Decline? Children of Immigrants, Past and Present–A Reconsideration.” International Migration Review 31(4): 893–922. Portes, Alejandro and Rubén G. Rumbaut (1990). Immigrant America: A Portrait. Berkeley: University of California Press. Portes, Alejandro and Richard Schauffler (1994). “Language and the Second Generation: Bilingualism Yesterday and Today.” International Migration Review 28(4): 640–61. Portes, Alejandro and Min Zhou (1993). “The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 530: 74–96. Price, Charles (1969). “The Study of Assimilation.” pp. 181–237 in Migration, ed. J.A. Jackson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Puskeppeleit, Jürgen and Dietrich Thränhardt (1990). Vom betreuten Ausländer zum gleichberechtigten Büger. Freiburg: Lambertus. Qian, Zhenchao (1997). “Breaking the Racial Barriers: Variations in Interracial Marriage Between 1980 and 1990.” Demography 42(2): 263–76. Rödiger, David R. (1991). The Wages of Whiteness. London: Verso. Rumbaut, Rubén G. (1997). “Assimilation and Its Discontents: Between Rhetoric and Reality.” International Migration Review 31(4): 923–60. Schnapper, Dominique (1992). L’Europe des immigrés. Paris: François Bourin. Soininen, Maritta (1999). “The ‘Swedish Model’ as an Institutional Framework for Immigrant Membership Rights.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 25(4): 685–702. Spickard, Paul R. (1989). Mixed Blood. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Taguieff, Pierre-André (1994). Sur la nouvelle droite: jalons d’une analyse critique. Paris: Descartes & Cie. ——— (1996). La République menacée. Paris: Textuel. Thränhardt, Dietrich (2000). “Conflict, Consensus, and Policy Outcomes: Immigration and Integration in Germany and the Netherlands.” Challenging Immigration and Ethnic Relations Politics: Comparative European Perspectives, eds. Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Todd, Emmanuel (1994). Le destin des immigrés: assimilation et ségrégation dans les démocraties occidentales. Jacob, Paris: Seuil. Tribalat, Michèle (1996). De l’immigration à l’assimilation: enquête sur les populations d’origine étrangère en France. Paris: La Découverte. Vermès, Genevieve (1997). “La dynamique interculturelle dans l’éducation en France.” DiversCitéLangues II

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Waldinger, Roger (1996). “Ethnicity and Opportunity in the Plural City.” pp. 445–70 in Ethnic Los Angeles, eds. Roger Waldinger and Mehdi Bozorgmehr. New York: Russel Sage Foundation. Waters, Mary (1994). “Ethnic and Racial Identities of Second-Generation Black Immigrants in New York City.” International Migration Review 28(4): 795–820. Weber, Eugen (1976). Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Wieviorka, Michel (1996). “Culture, société et démocratie.” pp. 11–60 in Une société fragmentée?: le multiculturalisme en débat, ed. Michel Wieviorka. Paris: Editions La Découverte. Yinger, J.M. (1981). “Toward a Theory of Assimilation and Dissimilation.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 4(3): 249–64. Young, Iris M. (1990). Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Zhou, Min (1997). “Segmented Assimilation: Issues, Controversies, and Recent Research on the New Second Generation.” International Migration Review 31(4): 975–1008. Zolberg, Aristide R. and Long L. Woon (1999). “Why Islam Is Like Spanish: Cultural Incorporation in Europe and the United States.” Politics and Society 27(1): 5–38.

3 The Rise and Fall of Multiculturalism: The Case of the Netherlands Han Entzinger

Wake up any expert on immigrant integration in the middle of the night and ask that person to name a country known for its multiculturalism. Ten to one that the answer will be Canada, Australia or the Netherlands. In recent years, however, multiculturalism has come increasingly under fire in all three, but probably most of all in the Netherlands. In this chapter I will first analyze the rise and fall of Dutch multiculturalist policies for immigrants. I will then place the recent turnaround in the perspective of the current debate on citizenship and multiculturalism, the general theme of this book. Can public policy in the Netherlands indeed be seen as an example of a renewed emphasis on citizenship and shared values in response to earlier tendencies towards postnationalism and multiculturalism? If so, what are the reasons for this change, what arguments have been put forward by different sides, and how are current trends likely to evolve further?

Migrants in the Netherlands For all but one of the past 40 years the number of people settling in the Netherlands has been higher than the number of those departing. As a consequence, 1.4 million residents – almost 9 percent of the population – now are foreign born (from parents who themselves are also foreign born). If we include persons born in the Netherlands with one or two foreignborn parents the percentage goes up from 9 to 17. This means that just over one in every six persons living in the country has an immigrant background or a parent to whom this applies. This is not unusual by current West European standards, but not everyone realizes that the level in the United States is roughly the same. The number of foreign passport holders in the Netherlands is considerably lower than the number of 59

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immigrants. Although, on a per capita basis, recent immigration has been above the West European average, the share of foreigners in the population has been oscillating around 5 percent for many years. This is largely an effect of naturalizations keeping pace with new immigration. In the wake of Indonesia’s (1949) and Surinam’s (1975) independence there was also a relatively significant immigration of persons who were already Dutch citizens when they arrived. Dutch passport holders still migrate from the two remaining “overseas parts of the Kingdom:” in the Caribbean, the Netherlands Antilles and – to a much lesser extent – from Aruba. Today’s immigrants to the Netherlands come from all over the world. In the years 1965–70 only six countries accounted for 75 percent of all migrants arriving. Twenty-five years later (1990–94) the corresponding number had risen from six to twenty (Zlotnik 1998: 444). Table 3.1 gives an overview of the resident immigrant population by citizenship as well as by country of origin. The largest numbers of people of migrant

Table 3.1 Residents of immigrant background and foreign citizens in the Netherlands, by country of origin and country of citizenship, January 1, 1999 Country of origin (1) Indonesia Germany Turkey Surinam Morocco Belgium NL Antilles + Aruba United Kingdom Former Yugoslavia Italy Iraq Spain France Poland China Somalia USA All countries

Country of citizenship (2)

(2) as a percentage of (1)

407 000 403 000 300 000 297 000 252 000 112 000 99 000 67 000 63 000 33 000 30 000 30 000 29 000 28 000 28 000 27 000 25 000

8 000 54 000 102 000 10 000 129 000 25 000 – 39 000 22 000 18 000

2 13 34 3 51 22 – 58 35 55

17 000 12 000

56 41

7 000 9 000 13 000

25 33 52

2 699 000

662 000

25

(1) This column shows all residents of the Netherlands who have at least one parent born in the country indicated (first or second generation migrants). (2) This column shows all resident non-citizens of the Netherlands by country of citizenship.

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origin stem from Indonesia, Turkey, Surinam, Morocco, the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba, former Yugoslavia (most recently the quickest riser) and from three nearby countries: Germany, Belgium and the United Kingdom. The migrant communities differ significantly in their proportion of Netherlands citizens as well as in their relative weight of the first and the second generations. Settlement patterns in the Netherlands also vary for the different groups. There is a concentration of migrants in the densely populated West, particularly in the largest cities, and particularly from non-Western countries. Almost one-third of the Amsterdam population, for example, is foreign born, and three in five Amsterdam schoolchildren are of immigrant origin. Corresponding numbers for Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht are only slightly lower.

Temporary residence and preservation of identity It was not until the early 1980s that the Dutch government began to develop a coherent policy to promote immigrant integration. In 1980 the government publicly recognized that most migrants would stay for good. However, prior to that year there was also an active public involvement with immigrants in spite of the assumption that their presence was only temporary, an assumption that, admittedly, was shared by most migrants themselves. In those days in particular, the Netherlands enjoyed a reputation of being the almost prototypical welfare state, in which the government saw it as its task to care for everyone. The objective, of course, could not be integration, but at least the temporary “guests” should be provided with a decent reception and it should be ensured that they could preserve their “cultural identity.” To this purpose special social work agencies were set up for them with public money, which also had a task in organizing cultural manifestations. Rules were laid down which required employers to provide decent accommodation for their foreign workers. Most of the welfare state provisions such as unemployment benefits, public assistance, healthcare and housing subsidies were also made available to the temporary migrants. Later, the first immigrant associations were warmly supported by the state. Mother-tongue teaching for migrant children was introduced in primary schools after family reunion had begun to gain momentum. This would enable the children to retain their cultural identity and it would facilitate their reinsertion upon returning home. As early as 1974 the Law on Primary Education was changed to allow for this. As time went by and as the migrants stayed on, the limitations of this approach became more apparent. Its focus on “identity preservation” did

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not always tally with the needs of most migrants, who increasingly had to cope with Dutch institutional arrangements, but who were not always able to do so. Their numbers went up and concentrations of immigrants began to develop in certain urban districts. A fundamental restructuring of industry around 1980 dramatically reduced the availability of unskilled jobs and pushed up unemployment among migrants. Tensions began to develop between the local population and the newcomers. Racism and discrimination became manifest in a country that until then had believed that such phenomena only existed elsewhere. Unlike Germany, the Netherlands did not encourage large-scale returns of unemployed migrants. This was politically not feasible. The feeling prevailed that one does not send home people to whom the economy owes so much. Yet, something had to be done to prevent the situation from getting worse. A number of terrorist acts, including the hijacking of two trains by Moluccan youngsters created a sense of urgency. Although these youngsters claimed more autonomy for the Indonesian region from which their parents originated, many felt that the real motive for their acts was their inability to cope with the uncertainties of temporary residence and lacking integration perspectives.

The Ethnic Minorities’ policy In 1979 the Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR), a think tank close to the Prime Minister, published its report Ethnic Minorities, which became very influential. On the basis of research evidence and similar experiences in other countries the Council stated that most migrants were going to stay for good even though they might not be aware of it themselves. The Council claimed that a concerted policy effort was needed to promote their incorporation (Scientific Council for Government Policy 1979). A year later the government endorsed the Council’s views. This marked the beginning of what became known as Dutch ethnic minorities’ policy. Under this policy migrants were perceived in terms of their group membership and not primarily as individuals, as in most other European countries. In France, for example, immigrés is the term most commonly used to designate the newcomers; in Germany they are referred to as Ausländer (foreigners). Both terms, though reflecting vastly different perceptions of the permanency of settlement, define migrants as individuals. By contrast, in the Netherlands so much importance was attached to the racial, national or ethnic origin that the migrants were believed to share, that etnische minderheden (ethnic minorities) became the most generally used term to designate them. In sociological terms membership of an ethnic


minority was perceived as a master status, a dominant social characteristic that takes precedence over all other characteristics (Hughes 1994: 146–56). Ethnic minorities’ policy or, briefly, minorities’ policy took shape during the early 1980s. It was then laid down in the Minderhedennota, which was accepted by Parliament in 1983. From its onset, coordination of minorities’ policy has been a task of the Ministry of the Interior, even though other ministries (Education, Employment, Social Welfare, Justice, Housing, etc.) remain fully responsible for their own domains. The rationale of charging the Ministry of the Interior with coordinating tasks is that it supervises local government. Much of minorities’ policy is actually implemented at the local level. Many years later (in 1998) a special Minister for Integration Policy (the current name for this policy area) was appointed. His responsibilities also include Urban Policies and he is equally based in the Ministry of the Interior. The basic assumption of minorities’ policy was that, as a result of immigration, the Netherlands had become a multi-ethnic society in which the majority and minorities should live together in harmony and in mutual respect for each other. There should be equality of opportunity for everyone. The public authorities have a responsibility in creating the necessary conditions for achieving this. The Minderhedennota defines as the formal overall objective of Dutch minorities’ policy: “Achieving a society in which all members of minority groups in the Netherlands, individually and also as groups, are in a situation of equality and have full opportunities for their development” (Minderhedennota 1983: 10). In more colloquial terms the policy’s objective became known, particularly during its early years, as “integration with retention of identity.” Surprisingly, the policy did not apply to all ethnic minorities, but only to those “for whose presence the government felt a special responsibility.” These were mainly groups from former colonies (but not the Eurasians from Indonesia, since they were believed to have assimilated), and groups recruited under the “guest worker” schemes in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Other communities, such as the Chinese or those originating in European countries other than the former recruitment states did not qualify. The three basic objectives of minorities’ policy became: 1. emancipation in a multicultural society; 2. equality before the law; 3. promoting equal opportunity. I will briefly discuss all three.

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Emancipation in a multicultural society The first element, emancipation in a multicultural society, can be seen as a natural successor to the respectful approach towards the migrants’ cultural identity prior to 1980. It reflects the notion that immigration has enriched the country’s cultural diversity. The difference, however, was that preservation of identity was earlier seen as a precondition for a successful return, whereas under the new policy it became an instrument in promoting multiculturalism within the Netherlands. This approach is reminiscent of the Dutch tradition of institutionalized pluralism, known as “pillarization” (verzuiling) (Lijphart 1975). Since the late nineteenth century each of the major religious and ideological communities in the country had been developing their own institutional arrangements (e.g. schools, housing corporations, hospitals, trade unions, newspapers). Such arrangements enabled the members of these communities to live their lives in accordance with the respective communities’ values, and to limit inter-community contacts to a basic minimum, almost exclusively at the top. Hence the metaphor of pillarization, reminiscent of a Greek temple with its roof supported by a number of separate pillars. Within each “pillar” a process of collective emancipation took place, of which schooling constituted a very important element. Gradually, especially since the 1960s, pillarization lost much of its significance in Dutch society as a result of secularization and individualization. However, up to the present day many institutional arrangements in the Netherlands reflect the era of pillarization. The antiquated public broadcasting system is one example. Here, numerous publicly funded private organizations still reflecting pre-World War II ideological diversity are struggling to prevent their viewers from moving over to their commercial competitors. Education is another example. Groups of parents may set up their own school, which will be fully supported with public funds if certain curricular conditions are fulfilled. Only about one-third of all Dutch primary schools are public schools. The other two-thirds are privately run and are mostly based on different religious denominations or on specific educational ideologies. The notion of creating and supporting separate provisions and institutional arrangements as a means of preserving group identity and promoting emancipation simultaneously is also vividly present in the minorities’ policy. It was felt that ethnic minorities should be given a chance to emancipate while preserving and further developing their own cultural identity. Therefore, a generous public support was given to various aspects of immigrant social and cultural life, such as subsidies for ethnic organizations, newspapers and broadcasting facilities. In an effort to


institutionalize the promotion of migrants’ interests, consultative councils for ethnic minorities were set up both at local and national levels. This occurred mostly at the initiative of the authorities seeking to justify their policies, rather than at the migrants’ own request. In primary education, mother-tongue teaching was expanded to a maximum of five hours per week for the more sizeable minorities. During the 1980s the first initiatives developed within the respective communities for the establishment of Muslim and Hindu schools. Even though the authorities often showed a certain reluctance to endorse the plans, there are now well over 30 Muslim and a handful of Hindu schools in the country. These schools function on the same conditions as Protestant, Roman Catholic or Jewish schools (Dwyer and Meyer 1995; Rath et al. 1996). However, the schools attract only a small minority of the Muslim and Hindu population, in spite of research evidence that the academic results of children attending these schools are not different from other schools. Finally, Dutch law does not allow for financial support to churches or mosques, but certain activities organized by the latter (e.g. social work, language training, courses for women) are in fact subsidized with public money. Equality before the law The second element of minorities’ policy was aimed at promoting equality before the law. When the policy was launched in the early 1980s it was stipulated that foreign residents should not be forced to take up Netherlands citizenship or be disadvantaged because of their foreign citizenship. The government considered this to be the most respectful manner of dealing with the growing number of foreign residents. This approach led to a range of measures aimed at gradually eliminating differences in treatment between citizens and non-citizens in almost every field. An example is the lifting of the ban for foreign residents on entering the public service, with only a few exceptions such as the armed forces and the police. Also, the social security system and other social policy instruments were applied to long-term foreign residents in exactly the same way as to Netherlands citizens. All these measures were supplemented by a reinforced anti-discrimination policy. The best known measure in this field has been the granting of voting rights at the local level in 1985. Since then, foreign citizens with a residence record of at least five years have been able to vote and to be elected in local polls. It is relevant to note that the foreign residents did not really ask for this. It was the Dutch political majority that saw this as a logical consequence of changed conditions. An extension of voting rights to the provincial, the national and the European levels has been under discussion

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from time to time. At present it is not very likely to materialize, except for citizens of other EU countries who, under the Amsterdam Treaty, are allowed to vote in European elections. Since immigrants have had the right to vote their turnout at local elections has always been well below the Dutch average. The Turks are an exception to this rule. Nevertheless, the number of elected councillors who are foreign citizens or who are of immigrant origin has been increasing, particularly in the larger cities. At the district council elections in Amsterdam and Rotterdam the ethnic vote has become of great significance, especially in districts with substantial immigrant communities. Contrary to what some may have expected, most migrants cast their vote for the established Dutch political parties, predominantly on the left side of the political spectrum, and not for immigrant or ethnic parties (Tillie 2000). This may be seen from Table 3.2. Again, the Turks constitute an exception to this pattern: at the 1998 municipal elections about 20 percent of the Turkish vote went to parties set up by Turkish migrants, while nearly 30 percent went to the Christian Democrats. The Dutch electoral system is one of proportional representation, where the vote is primarily for a party list and only in the second instance for a specific candidate. Virtually all parties have been stepping up their efforts to put one or more candidates of immigrant origin on their lists, also in national elections. As Table 3.3 indicates, these candidates do indeed attract the ethnic vote, apparently without chasing away Dutch voters. As a consequence, 11 of the 150 members of the Second Chamber of Parliament are now Dutch citizens of immigrant origin. It appears that the immigrant vote is an attractive vote. During the 1980s the conditions for naturalization were gradually eased, in particular for the second generation. A key change occurred in

Table 3.2 Party choice by ethnic group, local elections 1998, five major cities in the Netherlands Labour Democrats Green Christ. Liberal (PvdA) 66 Left Dem (VVD) Turkish Moroc. Surin. Antill NL*

30% 42 62 51 29.0

2 1 4 5 9.0

16 45 11 13 7.3

29 4 5 8 18.4

* National score in parliamentary elections 1998. Source: Tillie (2000: 19).

1 1 2 5 24.7

Christ. Socialists Others Orthodox – – 1 2 3.2

1 1 3 6 3.5

21 5 12 10 4.9

The Rise and Fall of Multiculturalism 67 Table 3.3 Voting for ethnic candidates by ethnic origin of the voter, 1998 local elections in five major cities in the Netherlands Ethnicity voter

Ethnicity candidate Dutch (%)

Turkish (%)

Moroccan (%)

Surinamese (%)

8 42 47 84

83 5 2 1

2 47 1 3

1 2 47 6

Turkish Moroccan Surinamese Antillean

Source: Tillie (2000: 75).

Table 3.4 Naturalizations in the Netherlands by country of previous citizenship, 1990–98

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998

EU

Turkey

Morocco

Yugoslavia (former)

Total

1 190 1 840 1 630 1 390 1 410 2 360 3 520 2 670 2 420

1 950 6 110 11 520 18 000 23 870 33 060 30 700 21 190 13 480

3 030 7 300 7 990 7 750 8 110 13 480 15 600 10 480 11 250

240 520 1 060 2 300 1 880 1 700 2 240 2 830 6 670

12 790 29 110 36 240 43 070 49 450 71 440 82 690 59 830 59 170

Source: Netherlands Statistics.

1992 when the government introduced the possibility of dual citizenship (Van den Bedem 1994). Shortly after that decision the number of naturalizations began to increase dramatically, in particular among Turks, Moroccans and refugees (see Table 3.4). As can be seen from Table 3.1, more than half of all people of Turkish and Moroccan origin living in the Netherlands now hold a Dutch passport. Interestingly, the new measure did not change anything formally for the Moroccans, since the constitution of their country stipulates that a Moroccan can never lose his or her citizenship, not even upon becoming naturalized in another country. Yet, the measure apparently encouraged many Moroccans to apply for a Dutch passport. It seems that the very existence of the option of dual citizenship has an important symbolic value. As we will see later on, the possibilities for dual citizenship were severely reduced in 1997.

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Promoting equal opportunity The third element of Dutch minorities’ policy was the promotion of equal opportunity. The range of measures taken under this heading aimed at guaranteeing minorities an equal share in all relevant institutions in domains such as housing, healthcare, education and employment, a practice well known from the pillarization tradition. The catchword here was “proportionality.” Minorities should participate in the institutions mentioned in proportion to their numerical size, and this should be achieved by making these institutions more accessible to them. In order to achieve proportionality an active policy of equal opportunity had to be pursued. Part of this policy was a review of discriminatory elements in mechanisms used for the distribution of scarce resources, such as in the large public housing sector of the country. This has been quite successful. Over the past two decades the housing conditions of ethnic minorities have become roughly similar to those of the Dutch of comparable socio-economic status (Tesser et al. 1996). Nevertheless, ethnic minorities do tend to be concentrated in the poorer segments of the housing market, as much as they tend to be concentrated in the lower income brackets in general. Less progress has been made in those sectors where the impact of the state on distribution mechanisms is more limited. A good example is the labor market. American-inspired attempts to overcome selective recruitment practices and discrimination by introducing certain forms of preferential treatment, or even quota, were usually faced with an unwillingness of employers to cooperate. Their argument was that it was not (or not primarily) discrimination by employers, but a lack of skills that made immigrant unemployment so high. Until well into the 1990s unemployment for the different minority groups oscillated between 20 and 40 percent, with a particularly bad record for the Turks and the Moroccans, including those of the second generation (Tesser et al. 1999). Thus, special training courses were set up for ethnic minorities. However, these could reach only small numbers of people. Sometimes their very existence was used as an excuse for other courses not to accept members of ethnic minorities. In 1993 a special law was introduced, modeled after the Employment Equity Act in Canada. This law does not set any quota, but it obliges employers to report publicly and on an annual basis on the ethnic minority share in their staff, as well as on their plans to increase that share. Since its introduction the law has been much criticized, mainly by the employers’ associations. The latter consider legislation of this type an attack on their freedom of selection, while claiming that registration of ethnic origin – a condition for a proper


application of the law – violates the privacy of individuals. Initially, only a small minority of employers actually fulfilled their legal obligations. Later, in 1997, the law was modified and simplified. However, recent reports show that its implementation still leaves much to be desired. The government is not very strict in enforcing it and thus implicitly seems to admit that it sees this law largely as symbolic. In education a combination of creating special facilities for ethnic minorities and an intensified use of mainstream policy instruments to overcome deprivation was chosen. Reception classes and remedial teaching for children of immigrant origin, for example, have been going hand-in-hand with changes in the curricula for all pupils, so as to make them reflect the increasingly multicultural nature of society. Generous sums were set apart for intensified education of ethnic minority children. For every such child a school receives 1.9 times the amount that the state pays for most Dutch children. Yet, all these investments have hardly contributed to bringing the ideal of “proportionality” any closer. Ethnic minority children continued to be over-represented in the lower types of secondary education and dropout from school continued to be twice as high as among Dutch students. Had the government chosen the wrong policy instruments, or was it simply too impatient?

Shifting paradigms By the early 1990s, ten years after the launching of the minorities’ policy, several major changes had taken place. First, ethnic minorities had almost doubled in size, roughly from half a million to one million. This was a consequence not only of continuing immigration – largely family reunion – but also of high birth rates among certain groups. In certain neighborhoods minorities were becoming majorities. Secondly, after a few years of low immigration in the early 1980s, immigration gained momentum again after 1985, reaching an unprecedented peak in the early 1990s. In addition to the continuing flows from the “traditional” countries – Turkey, Morocco and Surinam – new flows also began to develop. Some of these consisted largely of refugees and asylum seekers, an effect of the changing geopolitical situation in the world, particularly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Thirdly, within the more established migrant communities a new generation was emerging, partly or fully educated in the Netherlands and much more familiar with that country than their parents. These three developments – growing numbers, proliferation of groups, and more diversity within

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each group – slowly began to challenge the basis of the minorities’ policy. A policy targeted at a limited number of clearly defined “ethnic minorities” becomes more difficult to implement when these minorities become larger, more numerous, and more heterogeneous. Moreover, as we have seen, the social and economic situation of minorities remained bad, in spite of all efforts to improve it. Unemployment was high, programs for training and targeted employment were not very successful, barriers to self-employment were not easily taken, and ethnic minorities became increasingly dependent on public support. Doubts began to develop about the effectiveness of facilitating immigrant cultures and of creating separate provisions for them as key elements of public policy (De Jong 1997). Again, the government turned to the Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) for advice. In its report Allochtonenbeleid (“Immigrant Policy”) the Council stated that in the implementation of its first report the government had put too much weight on facilitating multiculturalism, and too little on promoting immigrant participation in society at large. In the Council’s view, a further continuation of the ethnic minorities’ policy would make the immigrants even more dependent on public support and therefore vulnerable and subject to further marginalization. This should be avoided, particularly in times of economic slowdown and also in times when public responsibilities are transferred to the private sector (Scientific Council for Government Policy 1989). In fact, both trends were clearly present in the years around 1990. As an alternative, the Council recommended putting more emphasis on education, employment policies and Dutch language training so that the migrants would be better qualified to participate in their own capacity. The emphasis on culture in the Council’s second report was only very limited relegating it to a private affair. The government did not seem as willing to endorse the Council’s recommendations as it had been ten years before, but the report certainly generated a series of lively public debates on matters related to immigration and integration. Two themes stood out in particular in these debates, both related to multiculturalism and its limits. The first was mother-tongue teaching, a debate which took place largely in educational and in academic circles (Lucassen and Köbben 1992). Certain linguists and educationalists argued that a child who speaks his mother tongue fluently has less difficulty in learning other languages. Others, however, claimed that, in practice, the five weekly hours of mother-tongue teaching took place while the Dutch children were following their lessons in Dutch and in other core subjects. This seemed


to widen rather than to narrow the gap between both groups. There were also discussions on the contents of what was being taught. The lessons were often amateurish, given by teachers recruited in the countries of origin, and largely inspired by textbooks used in those countries and reflecting their lifestyles and their dominant ideological and political views. Moreover, determining a child’s mother tongue became increasingly problematic for two reasons. First, children of Berber or Kurdish origin who live in the Netherlands did not always speak and understand Arabic or Turkish, the languages in which the lessons were given. Secondly, an increasing number of children born and raised in the Netherlands began to speak Dutch better than what the educational authorities assumed to be their mother tongue. Although mother-tongue teaching had never been compulsory, most ethnic minority children attended it, probably as a result of strong social control within the communities. In the early 1990s it was gradually stripped of its controversial characteristics. Its cultural elements and many references to the country of origin were dropped, so that in fact it became reduced to language training; it was gradually put outside the core curriculum and its voluntary nature was accentuated. Consequently, the number of migrant children attending it decreased dramatically. The second debate was less restricted to experts and much more political. Frits Bolkestein, the then parliamentary leader of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the conservative liberals, triggered it. He had acquired a reputation of not shying away from controversial issues. 1 In a speech to the Liberal International in September 1991 he stated that “Islam” and “Western values” were irreconcilable. Therefore, he claimed, immigrants should adapt to the dominant cultural pattern and observe the existing rules wherever these clash with their own cultural background. He mentioned a few all-too-familiar examples, such as polygamy and the Rushdie affair, to justify his views (Bolkestein 1991). Bolkestein’s statements were fiercely contested by pro-multiculturalists, but he also received support, which he cashed in at subsequent elections. The Netherlands appeared to have a “silent majority,” weary of multiculturalism, but unwilling to speak up until then, probably fearing to be accused of racism. It should be mentioned here that openly racist parties have never played a prominent role in Dutch politics. Anti-immigrant parties, such as the Centrumpartij, have never obtained more than 2 percent of the national vote (but more than that in several of the larger cities) and they are currently not represented in parliament. However, since the VVD was the largest opposition party in those

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days, the success of Bolkestein’s populist intervention was a sign for the government to reconsider the justifiability of specific arrangements for ethnic minorities, the quintessence of its policy. Indeed, shortly before the next elections, in May 1994, the government published its policy document Contourennota integratiebeleid etnische minderheden, which was meant to replace the 1983 Minderhedennota. In the new approach less emphasis was put on promoting and facilitating multiculturalism, while the need for integration was underlined more strongly, in particular through an increased participation in education and labor. The minorities’ policy was rebaptized integration policy. Integration, a term that had been almost a taboo in political circles until then, was defined as “a process leading to the full and equal participation of individuals and groups in society, for which mutual respect for identity is seen as a necessary condition” (Countourennota 1994: 24). With respect to the objectives, the departure from the minorities’ policy is not so extreme, except that the word “mutual” indicates that a more active involvement is expected from the native population. With respect to the policy instruments, however, the Contourennota strongly contrasts with its predecessor. The three main dimensions characterizing the minorities’ policy – the social and economic, the legal and political, and the cultural dimensions – are still to be found within the new integration policy. However, their relative weight has shifted. The emphasis is no longer on culture. Here, the government advocates a freedom of choice: members of minority groups should decide for themselves whether and, if so, to what extent they would like to retain and further develop their cultural identity. This is not seen as a task of the government any longer. Besides, the Contourennota states that it is “important to note that culture is not a static concept, but that it develops in interaction with other cultures.” (Countourennota 1994: 20). In the next paragraphs the change is further illustrated for each of the three dimensions. Social and economic integration Since integration policy no longer limits itself to the immigrant communities, or – as the minorities’ policy did – to an arguable selection of these, it is less easy to describe it systematically. Its major aim is to help overcome social deprivation by providing instruments for anyone who is in a disadvantaged situation, including immigrants. This is the classical social policy approach, with an “ethnic or immigrant zest” wherever this is seen as necessary, for instance in healthcare. Its basic philosophy, however, is that “the ethnic or immigrant factor” should be an integral aspect of public policy in all fields. Consequently, most programs and


policy instruments specifically designed to promote the integration of immigrants in the social and economic area have now been discontinued or, alternatively, made accessible to disadvantaged people of non-immigrant origin alike. Specific educational facilities for immigrant children, for example, have been transformed into “educational priority programs.” Programs for the long-term unemployed have replaced targeted employment projects for ethnic minorities or for people with low skills, many of whom have an immigrant background. Other elements of the minorities’ policy, often at the local level, have been incorporated into policies for “social innovation,” anti-poverty programs and into urban renewal policies. To underline this new approach, known as “mainstreaming,” some local authorities decided to drop the term “ethnic minorities” and to replace it by “(im)migrants” or by the newly created word allochtonen, the opposite of the slightly more familiar term “autochthonous.” These terms can be used much more readily to designate individuals, rather than communities. Moreover, the shift relieves the authorities of the delicate task to decide which groups do and which groups do not qualify for their policy measures. Likewise, it has solved the problem of what to do about the offspring of the increasing number of inter-ethnic alliances, particularly among Surinamese and Antilleans. Half of all Antilleans in the Netherlands and one-third of the Surinamese marry a native Dutch person. This contradicts the idea that ethnic minorities are relatively closed communities, even though intermarriage rates among people of Turkish and Moroccan origins are (still?) much lower. Thus, the group approach, a long-standing characteristic of Dutch migrant policies, has been replaced by a more individual approach. It attempts to open up the existing institutional arrangements to immigrants and non-immigrants alike, rather than aiming at the development of new, parallel institutions. At the same time, people of immigrant origin are expected to participate more fully in these institutions. Thus, integration is increasingly perceived as a two-way process (Contourennota 1994: 6). Providing immigrants with the instruments for a fuller participation in society has replaced the “caring” approach of the 1970s and 1980s. One of the unsolved paradoxes of the new approach remains that, although the emphasis is on providing opportunities for individuals, the effects of this policy can only be measured at a group level. Therefore, the term “ethnic minorities” has not completely disappeared from government rhetoric. The new approach has been further elaborated in the latest policy document of Roger van Boxtel. He took office in 1998 as the first special

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Minister for Urban and Integration Policy. Significantly, the document is called “Providing Opportunities, Seizing Opportunities” (Kansen krijgen, kansen pakken 1998). It re-emphasizes the two-sided character of integration policy, and it chooses stronger terms than its predecessor when it comes down to encouraging immigrants to step up their integration efforts. Members of ethnic minorities can be expected to do their utmost in order to acquire an independent position in our country as soon as possible. This requires them to opt for this society and to take responsibility for making use of the many facilities that our country offers to its new compatriots. Mastering the Dutch language is a crucial aspect of this. (Kansen krijgen, kansen pakken 1998: 1). Van Boxtel’s program distinguishes four priority areas in which concrete policy targets are formulated: (1) youth, including education and delinquency; (2) combating unemployment among older as well as more recent immigrants; (3) preventing and combating prejudice, discrimination and racism; (4) facilitating communication between “partners in integration.” Slowly, but decisively, the nature of integration policy is shifting. There is not the slightest doubt about the legitimacy of the migrants’ presence. Van Boxtel has been the first cabinet member to admit openly that the Netherlands is a country of immigration. However, the respectful, but somewhat distancing objective of institutionalized multiculturalism has been replaced by an integration policy that in practice demands much more effort from the migrants than from the receiving population. The use of the term “our country” – even twice in the last quotation – shows a touch of nationalism that had been absent so far in policy-making in this area. It is too early to say whether the new policy is more successful than its predecessor in achieving its aims. Unemployment among immigrants has gone down rather dramatically in the last few years, even though it is still substantially above the national average, also when controlled for skill level. It is, however, generally assumed that this is primarily due to the recent economic growth. The tight employment situation has encouraged employers to tap new categories in the labor market. No matter what have been its effects, the new approach in the social and economic field undoubtedly reflects the post-welfare state ideologies of the 1990s and beyond. But what has happened to the other elements of the minorities’ policy, the legal and political and the cultural dimensions?


Citizenship and civic integration In the 1994 Contourennota citizenship is a key concept, although the document does not give a precise definition. It means definitely more than encouraging foreign immigrants to obtain a Dutch passport. More than in the past, the need is emphasized for migrants to identify with the political community and to become part of it. As in the social and economic field, this is thought to require an effort from both sides. Of course, naturalization can be a major prerequisite for political participation. As we saw earlier, the option of dual citizenship was introduced in 1992, more or less on an experimental basis. This led to a dramatic increase in the number of applicants for Dutch passports. When the experiment was to be confirmed in 1996 by a change of the Aliens Law, the First Chamber of Parliament, the Senate, did not accept the proposal. The VVD and the Christian Democrats, who held a majority in the First Chamber, but not in the Second, were fiercely opposed. The nationalist arguments that they put forward were almost a novelty in the Dutch political debate on citizenship, which – unlike similar debates in neighboring countries – had been largely instrumental until then. Indeed, the spokespersons of the two parties claimed that most migrants had been obtaining a Dutch passport for pragmatic reasons – easy travelling within the EU – rather than as a sign of loyalty to the Netherlands. The government, not willing to risk a crisis on this, decided to discontinue the dual citizenship option in 1997, but it maintained a considerable number of exceptions. Since then naturalizations have dropped, but not to pre-1992 levels. Meanwhile, most people of Turkish or Moroccan descent hold a Dutch passport. A survey which we recently carried out among Turkish and Moroccan youngsters in Rotterdam indicates that their identification with the Netherlands indeed is very limited. They are much more ready to identify with Turkey or Morocco but, surprisingly, also with the city of Rotterdam (Phalet et al. 2000). In a comparative perspective the Dutch citizenship debate is less unique than the debate on inburgering, which may best be translated as “civic integration.” In a certain way I was at the start of it myself, together with my colleague Arie van der Zwan. Just before the 1994 turnaround, the Minister of the Interior, Ien Dales, asked us to develop new policy incentives that would be more in line with the 1989 Immigrant Policy report of the Scientific Council, to which I had also contributed. On the basis of an assessment of the economic and social situation, as well as of experiences in traditional immigration countries, Van der Zwan and I developed a proposal (Van der Zwan and Entzinger 1994). Our central

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argument was that many immigrants arriving in the Netherlands were not sufficiently qualified to enter the labor market on the requirements set by a highly developed economy. Thus, the labor market problem was not primarily a demand side problem (too little demand, discrimination), but there were also problems on the supply side. We put forward three proposals, of which the first was to create special traineeship positions for newly arrived immigrants with remuneration below the customary level for comparable work. This would enable them to acquire work experience without having to compete with native workers. Our second suggestion was to relax some rules in high immigration areas so as to facilitate residents in setting up their own businesses. Our third recommendation was to organize mandatory language and social skills training for new arrivals. Elements of all three proposals appeared in the program for the coalition cabinet that took office in 1994, but the third proposal was seen as the most prominent one. It gave rise to a vivid public and political debate, largely because of the mandatory nature of the courses. Those who were opposed to mandatory language training claimed that this suggested that immigrants were not willing to learn Dutch. The long waiting lists for optional courses were proof of the opposite. Moreover, requiring mandatory schooling from adult people is highly unusual in a liberal democracy. Why not just improve and expand the courses, and still leave migrants a freedom of choice? Finally, opponents were wondering what would happen to those who would not comply with their obligations. Would they be extradited? This is a rather severe punishment, and in many cases it would mean a violation of international agreements. Our counterarguments were threefold: 1. Mandatory courses not only compel the migrants, but they also force the state to make sure that enough courses of good quality are available. 2. Even though the vast majority of newcomers may be eager to follow a course, its mandatory nature makes it easier to include categories that otherwise can be difficult to reach, such as traditional Muslim women or school dropouts. 3. Finally, we argued that compulsory schooling for a young person normally lasts 12–14 years. Without so many years of schooling it is impossible to function in a highly developed European society. Many newcomers have never had an opportunity to receive so much education. In order to mobilize their potential and to avoid life-long dependency on welfare state provisions, the state must have the right to oblige people to qualify themselves for life and work in the


Netherlands. If they do not do so the risk is that an “ethnic underclass” may develop with all negative effects for social cohesion. In the following years some experiments that already existed were expanded and many new courses were set up. In 1997 Parliament approved the Wet inburgering nieuwkomers (Law on Civic Integration for Newcomers) with a vast majority. The law has been operative since September 1998. It requires migrants who arrive from outside the European Union to report to the local authorities for an interview. Failing to do so will be fined with a maximum of €2269. On the basis of certain criteria (knowledge of Dutch, level of education, age) it is decided whether that person has to attend a course. The course takes 600 hours, of which 500 are for language training (at different levels), and 100 for social and civic skills and labor market orientation. In 1999, the first full year in which the law was operative, more than 17,000 newcomers registered for a course. The budget set aside by the government for that year was €138 million; all courses are free of charge for the participants. One of the biggest practical problems is to make students finish the course. So far, only about half the participants have taken the final test. A rather paradoxical phenomenon is that, given the tight labor market, many students find a job long before the end of the course, while the course was meant to improve their chances in the labor market. However, this is not the only purpose of the course. Its more general ambition is to familiarize all newcomers with the language, culture, and society of the Netherlands, an ambition almost unthinkable under the minorities’ policy. Meanwhile, Finland and Denmark have copied the idea of mandatory civic integration courses and it is being discussed in a number of other countries, including Germany and Belgium. In the Netherlands, pressure is growing to set up similar arrangements for “old” immigrants, but after so many years it seems unrealistic that they can be obliged to attend. The cultural dimension: A return to nationalism? Finally, what has happened to the cultural elements of the ethnic minorities’ policy? The pillarization philosophy under which migrants would have their own institutional arrangements in all major sectors of society, inside which they could emancipate, has been abandoned clearly and decisively. It should be remembered that the Christian Democrats – since long the strongest proponents of pillarization – lost dramatically in the 1994 elections. For the first time since the early twentieth century they did not become part of the new cabinet. The three secular parties that have constituted the government coalition since then (Labour,

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VVD and Democrats 66) have been giving a more modest place to the cultural dimension in their integration efforts. The establishment of ethnic and cultural organizations is primarily considered to be the migrants’ own responsibility. In recent years immigrants have been setting up such organizations in large numbers. They may acquire state subsidies for certain activities, like sports or in the performing arts, but on the same conditions as for any other organization with a social or a cultural objective. In those cases where legal provisions for specific arrangements do exist, such as for schools, the checking of credentials has become stricter. Recently, a newly created Turkish broadcasting organization was not admitted to the public system. An exception to this rule is the perpetuation of the consultative bodies for the different ethnic minorities at the national level. These did already exist prior to the change in 1994. The government consulted them on a regular basis, but it was not until 1996 that these bodies acquired a legal basis. The law now obliges the government to consult ethnic minorities’ representatives on any measure that affects them. The representatives, however, only have an advisory role. Consulting them may help to justify government policies, if not always in the eyes of immigrants then at least in the eyes of politicians. In contrast, many local authorities have abolished their local advisory councils. Often these were dominated by members of the first generation who were not always aware of the major changes occurring in their own communities as a result of the ascent of a new generation with different demands. In the early months of 2000 yet another debate took place, which attracted an unprecedented amount of public attention, and which seems very illustrative for the new thinking on immigrant integration in the Netherlands, particularly on its cultural dimension. It was triggered by a long article entitled “The Multicultural Tragedy” (Het multiculturele drama) in the quality newspaper NRC Handelsblad by Paul Scheffer, a historian, but also a prominent member of the Labour Party (Scheffer 2000). Scheffer voiced the concern that many Dutch people feel about continuing immigration, stagnant integration, increasing segregation and a growing Muslim population. The “tragedy,” in his view, is that an “ethnic underclass” is developing that consists of people who do not feel attached to Dutch culture and society and who are unwilling and unable to integrate. Eventually this will undermine social cohesion and the functioning of the liberal democratic state, particularly because of the supposedly illiberal ideas of Muslims. In Scheffer’s view, the trouble is that the Dutch elite has remained largely indifferent to these developments. Their cosmopolitan ideology and their cultural relativism have


prevented them from demanding the newcomers to adapt. Respect for cultural identity has prevailed over defending the principles of liberal democracy. The only possible answer, in Scheffer’s perception, is a “civilisation offensive,” which includes more obligatory policy efforts to overcome deprivation as well as demanding from the immigrants to adapt to the principles of liberal democracy. Moreover, immigrants should have a much better knowledge of “our” culture and history. Scheffer’s observations, which ten years earlier would have been disposed of as conservative or perhaps even as racist, now generated a lot of support, but also strong criticisms. Significantly, it was a debate among the Dutch elite, in which only very few people of immigrant origin took part. Critics claimed that Scheffer seemed to ignore that the government had already made the move away from multiculturalism, even though this might not always be so easy in practice. They also pointed to the fact that Scheffer appealed to the familiar stereotypes of immigrants. Although many immigrants and people of immigrant origin are not even Muslims at all, the stereotype makes them all sympathize with Muslim fundamentalism and reject liberal democracy. Scheffer has been accused of ignoring the immense diversity among immigrants as well as the educational progress that has been made, particularly among the second generation. He also seems to ignore that cultures are not static, particularly in situations of migration. In our recent Rotterdam survey we have found that Turkish and Moroccan youngsters, like Dutch youngsters, certainly do experience a tension between Islamic and European values, particularly family values (Phalet et al. 2000). However, most young Muslims have a highly personalized or “Westernized” interpretation of Islam and are in full agreement with principles such as individual freedom and equality, which are fundamental for liberal democracies. Besides, as their educational level goes up and their length of residence increases, their ideas become more liberal, and differences with Dutch young people of the same educational background almost disappear. Scheffer seems to be insufficiently aware of the dynamics of integration. Possibly the most significant part of Scheffer’s indictment are his rather strongly nationalist accents, epitomized by the need for immigrants to familiarize themselves with Dutch history. This was not what one might have expected from a prominent member of the Labour Party, which so far had been a prudent supporter of multiculturalism without however wishing to alienate their traditional urban electorate. In 1991 the conservative liberal Frits Bolkestein stopped at signaling a tension between “Muslim” and “Western” values and requiring the Muslims to

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abandon their values wherever a clash would occur. The social democrat Scheffer went beyond that point, when he underlined the need for a shared ideology, which should have its roots not only in liberal democratic principles, but also in Dutch history. By claiming this he seems to turn Bolkestein’s populism into nationalism, but it is a nineteenthcentury nationalism in which the sense of sharing a common history plays a dominant role. Unfortunately, Scheffer does not specify how the teaching of history to immigrants should be arranged. There are numerous controversial episodes in Dutch history, many of which precisely relate to multiculturalism. Thus, whereas the already existing legal obligation to follow Dutch language courses and courses in social and civic skills can be seen as instrumental in promoting a fuller and more independent immigrant participation in major social institutions, Scheffer’s recommendations go beyond that objective. In fact, he points at the need for a shared ideology, which comes much closer to assimilation in its traditional meaning. Although it may be technically difficult to put his recommendations into practice, Scheffer has certainly pointed at the weak underbelly of liberal democracies, which is how to cope with those who do not share a sense of belonging and who may not adhere to the principles of liberal democracy. The problem Scheffer seems to overlook is that a liberal democratic state that pursues an active policy of assimilation will soon clash with its own principles of freedom and tolerance. The tension between striving for multiculturalism and the requirements of liberal democracies cannot be solved as easily as Scheffer suggests, but handling it may be discussed and negotiated, as many immigration countries are beginning to learn. Since the public debate on “the multicultural tragedy” the parameters finally have been defined on both sides of the political and ideological spectrum. The debate has generated a respectable nonracist assimilationist view that can be opposed to the long existing multiculturalist option. It is therefore highly illustrative for the shift in Dutch immigration discourse.

Discussion The Dutch case offers an interesting example of how ideologies of immigrant incorporation may evolve over time, largely under the influence of actual developments. Until well into the 1970s immigration to the Netherlands was defined as temporary. Consequently, all policy measures taken were understood in the light of the migrants’ eventual return, except in the case of those who had come “home” from Indonesia in


the aftermath of decolonization. This made it unnecessary to reflect on modes of integration. Around 1980 awareness developed that many migrants would stay for good. They were defined primarily in terms of their shared origins, and therefore labeled as “ethnic minorities.” The authorities developed an elaborate “ethnic minorities’ policy,” that aimed at promoting their participation in Dutch society without forcing them to abandon their identity as an ethnic group. This approach of institutionalized multiculturalism should be understood in the light of the Dutch tradition of “pillarization.” However, it became more difficult to pursue this approach as the migrant communities began to grow in numbers and in size because of continuing immigration. Most communities also became more differentiated as their length of residence went up. As time went by, it became more obvious that policies of institutionalized multiculturalism have a tendency to freeze cultures, rather than to do justice to their dynamism. This was particularly visible as a second generation, born and raised in the Netherlands, began to come of age. In the early 1990s the multiculturalism as advocated by the Dutch authorities became increasingly under fire, primarily because it had not contributed significantly to overcoming the migrant’s socially deprived position, another major objective of the minorities’ policy. Unemployment figures remained very high, school achievements among the second generation were below expectations, and segregation was increasing. Their prospects for a fuller participation in society remained limited. Fears about a majority backlash were also growing. Then another shift in policy objectives occurred. The major focus moved from facilitating the migrants to preserve their cultural identity to promoting their integration into mainstream institutions. This implied that the initial group approach, which had focused primarily on migrant communities, changed into an approach concentrating on the individual immigrant. The “minorities’ policy” was rebaptized “integration policy,” thus reflecting the idea that the entire society should be an object of policy efforts, not just the immigrants. The new view put a stronger emphasis on what majority and minorities have in common, rather than accentuating differences, as is likely to occur under a multiculturalist approach. Prior to the recent policy change the main debate was on the tension between diversity and equality. What institutional arrangements would do justice to cultural difference without leading to social and economic marginalization? Since the change the major axis of the debate has been on the tension between diversity and unity. What should all members of a society have in common in order to make that society

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function, while at the same time acknowledging differences between groups and individuals? Along with this shift of emphasis policies also became more obliging, particularly towards the migrants. The benevolent attitude of the 1980s, which made immigrants heavily dependent on government support, was replaced by one that appealed to the newcomers to step up their integration efforts and to familiarize themselves more quickly with the language and customs of the Netherlands. The Law on Civic Integration of Newcomers of 1998 is one of the most outspoken examples of this new approach, but not the only one. The new approach has been going hand in hand with a major transformation of the welfare state. In the Netherlands, as in much of Northern and Western Europe, liberalegalitarian views, so dominantly present in public policy making since the post-war years, have gradually been losing ground to other, more neo-conservative ideologies. Where the former tended to stress entitlements, provided by the state to anyone in need, the latter brought individual responsibility and the ability to cope for oneself back to the foreground. The concurrent shift from state to market implied that immigrants could no longer rely on the benefits of public support, but that they had to develop their own human capital. Luckily, in the Netherlands the substantial economic growth during the last decade has helped create more opportunities for immigrants. However, more is happening than just a change in the appreciation and the working of the welfare state. Not only the balance between state and market has changed, but there has been a growing emphasis on communitarian values as well. The extreme cultural relativism, which lay at the basis of Dutch multiculturalism in the 1980s, has lost ground to the notion that there is no universalist idea of justice and that it is the task of the public authorities to protect and defend existing values and practices. Awareness has grown that every society has a built-in cultural bias. Of course, this does not necessarily mean that there is no room for pluralism, but the dominant values clearly set the pace. In this perspective, integration is not just a matter of providing equal opportunity and granting cultural rights, but it also requires a sufficient degree of participation by all members, no matter what their origins are, and it demands their commitment and identification with the society in which they live. For its proper functioning every democratic society needs a certain degree of solidarity, which can develop better if some of the basic values are shared by virtually everyone. The crucial question, of course, is the one about the nature of these values in a society that is becoming increasingly diverse, precisely as a


result of immigration. In many of the societies from which the migrants originate, religion provides a coherent set of dominant values that plays this unifying role, particularly in Muslim societies. In Western democracies, given their separation of church and state, this is not a realistic option. In the Dutch political spectrum only a few small orthodoxCalvinist parties advocate a unifying role for religion. Unavoidably it would require from migrants of a different religious background either to assimilate or to leave (Fermin 1997). This is not to say, however, that religion does not play any role in the debate in immigration and multicultural society in the Netherlands. Quite the contrary, particularly in the case of Islam. As Islam is becoming more institutionalized and as its expressions are becoming more visible, the debate on the reconcilability of certain Muslim and Christian-Humanist values is gaining momentum. This is particularly so where the public recognition of such values is at stake, some of which imply controversial stances on women or homosexuals. An appeal to non-religious values as a basis for common identifications seems more realistic. It is in this context that nationhood has come to the foreground lately. There is ample research evidence that the Dutch are not among the most nationalist peoples of Europe, and that xenophobic and racist ideologies do not appeal to large numbers of Dutch men and women (SORA 2001). Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that classical nationalist considerations, such as the right to protect one’s language and culture, an emphasis on common descent and the importance of a shared history are increasingly heard as arguments to support the need for immigrant incorporation. The majority in the Senate that rejected the option of dual citizenship in 1997 largely based itself on such considerations, as well as on the view that loyalty to a nation-state can only be exclusive. Similar arguments could be heard frequently in the public debate on integration in 2000 that followed Paul Scheffer’s article. The gradual marginalization of mother-tongue teaching in Dutch primary education and the encouragement of migrants to learn Dutch are all recent trends that point in the same direction. It should be kept in mind, however, that other developments, such as the stepping up of European integration as well as omnipresent globalization, are equally seen as threats to national identity by many. Some would label these trends as nationalist, others would rather see them as symptoms of a revival of communitarianism, but whatever label we stick on them, they certainly do not point in the postnational direction to which Soysal has shown us the way (Soysal 1994).

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Citizenship is a third binding force that has played a significant role in the Dutch debate lately. It was first introduced as a central notion in the 1994 Contourennota, in which the government laid down the broad lines of its integration policy that it has been pursuing since then. The problem with citizenship is that it is a complex concept, used in different meanings, while the government has never really made clear how it wishes to understand it itself (Fermin 2000). Some attach primarily or even exclusively a legal meaning to citizenship: citizenship as a status that entails rights. In the liberal democratic perception it is built into the notion of citizenship that all citizens are equal citizens. From this perspective, an active naturalization policy must be pursued in order to avoid inequality of rights. Dutch naturalization policies have never been very rigid, but, as we have seen, attempts to alleviate them by allowing dual citizenship were abandoned in 1997 after a few years of experimenting. Judged by the steep rise in the numbers of applicants during the mid-1990s, the experiment can be qualified as highly successful. However, its opponents argued that most applicants saw citizenship not as an expression of “membership” and identification, but as an instrument, for example to obtain more entitlements or to facilitate intraEuropean travelling. These two views reflect the two other dimensions usually distinguished in the notion of citizenship. One, indeed, is the communitarian dimension, that refers to identification with shared cultural values in a society, and therefore relates to nationalism, as discussed earlier. The other dimension finds its roots in neo-republicanism, and stresses the need for individuals to participate in the political community and in civil society. The public authorities should facilitate this to the largest possible extent. Granting citizenship rights to immigrants is one important aspect of this, but it may not be enough. The compulsory language courses for newcomers, in existence since 1998, have to be seen in this perspective as well. These courses include lessons on social and civic skills. Interestingly, communitarians and neo-republicans tend to agree on the need for such courses as both consider language to be a major vehicle for communication and identification, albeit for different reasons.

Conclusion We may conclude that integration policies in the Netherlands no longer are as outspokenly multiculturalist as they have been in the past. The initial multiculturalist approach was ill conceived. Although it was said to respect cultural diversity and to facilitate the migrants’ emancipation,


in reality it perpetuated their marginalization and their dependency on public support. It also served as an excuse for not sufficiently opening up existing institutional arrangements to newcomers. Dutch multiculturalism was based on a static interpretation of culture, rather than on a dynamic one. Implicitly it served to protect traditional values in Dutch society from new outside impulses. Therefore it can hardly be seen as postnational; conservative seems a more appropriate label. The debate on values that unite or divide society has only begun since Dutch policies have been moving away from multiculturalism in its institutionalized form. It is in this debate that communitarian and neo-republican views are competing with one another. It is much too early to say who will win, but it is for sure that the competition will not stop anytime soon.

Note 1 Since 1999 Mr Bolkestein has been the Dutch member of the European Commission.

References Bolkestein, Frits (1991) Address to the Liberal International Conference at Luzern (6 September); The Hague: VVD. Contourennota integratiebeleid etnische minderheden (1994) Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal, 1993–94, 23 684, Nos. 1–2. Also published in English: Outline Policy Document on the Integration of Ethnic Minorities (1994) Lower House. De Jong, Mart-Jan (1997) “Multiculturalism: Perfume or Poison?”, in: M.J. de Jong and A.C. Zijderveld, eds., The Gift of Society, Nijkerk: Enzo. Dwyer, Claire and Astrid Meyer (1995) “The Institutionalisation of Islam in the Netherlands and in the UK: The Case of Islamic Schools”; New Community 21(1): 37–54. Fermin, Alfons (1997) Nederlandse politieke partijen over minderhedenbeleid, 1977– 1995, Amsterdam: Thesis. ——— (2000) Burgerschap en integratiebeleid, Utrecht: ERCOMER. Hughes, Everett C. (1994) “Dilemmas of Contradictions of Status”, in: Everett C. Hughes (ed.), On Work, Race and the Sociological Imagination, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 146–56. Kansen krijgen, kansen pakken (1998) Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal, 1998–99, 26 333, Nos. 1–2. Lucassen, Leo and André J.F. Köbben (1992) Het partiële gelijk. Controverses over het onderwijs in de eigen taal en cultuur en de rol daarbij van beleid en wetenschap, 1951–1991; Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger. Lijphart, Arend (1975) The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands, Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Minderhedennota (1983) Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal, 1982–83, 16 102, Nos. 20–21. Phalet, Karen, Claudia van Lotringen and Han Entzinger (2000) Islam in de multiculturele samenleving. Opvattingen van jongeren in Rotterdam, Utrecht: ERCOMER. Rath, Jan, Rinus Penninx, Kees Groenendijk and Astrid Meyer (1996) Nederland en zijn islam, Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis. Scheffer, Paul (2000) “Het multiculturele drama”, NRC Handelsblad, January 29. Scientific Council for Government Policy (1979) Ethnic Minorities. The Hague: WRR. ——— (1989) Immigrant Policy. The Hague: WRR. SORA (2001) Attitudes towards Minority Groups in the European Union, Vienna: European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. Soysal, Yasemin N. (1994) The Limits of Citizenship, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tesser, P.T.M., F.A. van Dugteren and A. Merens (1996) Rapportage minderheden 1996, Rijswijk: Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau. Tesser, P.T.M., J.G.F. Merens and C.S. Van Praag (1999) Rapportage minderheden 1999, Den Haag: Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau. Tillie, Jean (2000) De etnische stem; Opkomst en stemgedrag van migranten tijdens gemeenteraadsverkiezingen, 1986–1998, Utrecht: Forum. Van den Bedem, Ruud (1994) “Towards a System of Plural Nationality in the Netherlands. Changes in Regulations and Perceptions”, in: Rainer Bauböck (ed.) From Aliens to Citizens: Redefining the Status of Immigrants in Europe, Avebury: Ashgate, 95–109. Van der Zwan, A. and H.B. Entzinger (1994) Beleidsopvolging minderhedendebat. Den Haag: Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken. Zlotnik, Hania (1998) “International Migration 1965–96: An Overview”, Population and Development Review, 24(3): 429–68.

4 Citizenship and Integration in Europe Randall Hansen

For many scholars, citizenship has been devalued as a tool of integration.1 Large-scale migration, laid against the globalization of capital, commodity and service markets, has undermined the logic of national citizenship by breaking the link between it and the nation-state. 2 As social and economic entitlements are legitimized not by nation-states and national policy but by the discourse of “universal personhood,” international norms and treaties, the traditional association between citizenship and rights, between the national state and the individual, has been broken. The most robust (and least modest) version of the thesis is presented by David Jacobson in Rights Across Borders. According to Jacobson, Transnational migration is steadily eroding the traditional basis of nation-state membership, namely citizenship. As rights have come to be predicated on residency, not citizen status, the distinction between “citizen” and “alien” has eroded. The devaluation of citizenship has contributed to the increasing importance of international human rights codes, with its premise of universal “personhood” . . . Social, civil, economic, and even political rights have come to be predicted on residency, not citizenship (with some national variations). Citizenship, consequently, has been devalued in the host countries: aliens resident in the United States and in Western European countries have not felt any compelling need to naturalise even when it is possible.3 For the postnationalists, integration occurs independently of national citizenship: the complex of social and economic rights enjoyed by permanent residents affords them the opportunity to work, attend school, join political parties and/or other associations, lobby politicians 87

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and so forth without national citizenship. Decentered, rational choosers, they can pick their level of attachment – “Kreuzbergers,” Berliners, Northern Germans, (though it is unlikely) Germans or Europeans – without the psychological, administrative or financial costs of acquiring a national passport. Conversely, they are free to adopt no identity linked with the welcoming state or the larger entity in which it rests (the European Union, North America) and simply to avail themselves of the extensive entitlements afforded legal, and sometimes illegal, permanent residents. Deriving its normative justification from “transnational discourse” and the institutionalization of human rights as a world-level organizing principle, postnational membership “confers upon every person the right and duty of participation in the authority structures and public life of a polity, regardless of their historical or cultural ties to that community. A Turkish guestworker need not have a ‘primordial’ attachment to Berlin (or to Germany, for that matter) to participate in Berlin’s public institutions and make claims on its authority structures.”4 Such arguments refract history’s judgment of German and French nationality law. As Joppke put it with reference to Germany, postnationalists have undertaken a “positive reinterpretation of the guestworker experience, transforming the vice of second-class membership into a virtue.” 5 Germany, the bête noire of nationality law, was in fact ahead of its time, according extensive social and economic rights while being indifferent to political ones. The country was a model of postnationalism in that the socio-economic rights accorded resident third-country nationals were among the most extensive in the world. 6 France, the traditional écolier modèle of nationality law in that it emphasizes assimilation and the liberal grant of citizenship, places excessive emphasis on political citizenship’s importance and, in granting it automatically to Algerians at the second generation, and all others at the third, without their consent, practices a sort of identity imperialism.7 As events of the last decade have caused policymakers and intellectuals to reconsider the basis and aims of nationality law throughout Europe and the US, its trajectory provides the basis for questioning the postnational Orthodoxy. In all cases, there has been what Peter Schuck has called a “revaluation” of citizenship.8 In the United States, France, Germany and Britain, there has been robust public debate about what it means to become American, French, German, or British. In Germany, the debate has been about making citizenship more easy to acquire and about tolerating dual citizenship; 9 in France, about revoking, then restoring, the automatic acquisition of citizenship by an acculturated second generation; in Britain, about imbuing a thin definition of citizenship

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with a more meaningful content (for all three, see below); and, in the United States, about making the possession of American citizenship a prerequisite for social and economic rights. 10 American developments were the most striking, as they seemed to contradict directly the predictions of postnationalism, but all cases attest to the centrality of citizenship in public debate. The fact that people everywhere are reconsidering citizenship is not, in itself, evidence of its importance in integration policy. There are rather two further, and harder, indicators of its importance, one retrospective and one prospective. First, in the German case, postnationalism was an absolute failure; in its original conception, it was premised not on a desire to facilitate social and economic integration but to discourage integration tout court. The result, apparent from the 1980s and growing worse in the 1990s, was an ever-growing number of individuals without national citizenship, without voting rights, and without access to some of the most important occupations. In a shorter time horizon, France’s temporary removal of automaticité in the grant of citizenship to the second generation had broadly similar exclusionary effects. At the same time, varying fertility rates between the German and non-German resident population meant that the country also faced a declining native population. Germany’s restrictive citizenship policy and low naturalization rates pointed, quite literally, to a Germany without, or with fewer and fewer, Germans. As these developments became clear, both nations (re-)turned to integration (Brubaker: this volume). Germany adopted liberalizing citizenship reforms in 1990 and 1993, and in 1998–99 the SPD/Green coalition launched a major reform of that country’s citizenship law. In France, the government reversed restrictive nationality legislation designed to satisfy restrictionist voters and to siphon voters away from the Front National. The restrictionist reform’s consequence was to exclude individuals born in France from political citizenship denying them the right to vote and rendering them eligible for deportation. Following its (somewhat unexpected) victory in the 1997 parliamentary elections, the socialist/green/communist government quickly commissioned a report on nationality law and adopted, within a year, another nationality law reform restoring a right to citizenship for the second generation. Germany turned and France returned to integration through citizenship. In what follows, I briefly trace developments in nationality law in France, Germany, and to a lesser extent the UK. Particular attention is given to Germany, but the other two cases reinforce the point. Germany is especially important because, as noted, if postnationalism had a home

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in Europe, it was a German one, and because Yasemin Soysal’s seminal text on postnationalism11 drew particular inspiration from the experience of Turks in Germany. The UK is added only in a cursory manner at the end, as an illustration of a renewed concern for citizenship beyond the French and German cases.

Germany: The origin of German nationality law The ethnic origins of Germany’s nationality law are well known; indeed, it is one of the few aspects of postwar Germany with which casual observers are familiar. The 1913 Reichs-und Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz provided only one access point to nationality: through birth to a citizen. To understand why the law was maintained after 1945, one has to examine Germany’s Stunde Null. Like so many contemporary German social arrangements, pre-1993 nationality law was a product of the exigencies of the Federal Republic’s early years. Two political aims motivated the decision to maintain the 1913 law, and to incorporate such a definition into Article 116 of the Basic Law. First, the German constitution was adopted during die Vertreibung, when some 12,000,000 Germans were expelled from territories east of the Oder-Neisse line, which were given to Poland, and from Eastern Europe. Nationality law was a formal mechanism legitimizing their entry into the Federal Republic (FRG).12 The very language of Article 116 reflects the concern for expellees: Unless otherwise regulated by law, a German within the meaning of this Basic Law is a person who has German citizenship or who is an expellee or refugee of German descent (Flüchtling oder Vertriebener deutscher Volkszugehörigkeit), or the spouse or descendant of such a person, who has secured access to the pre-31 December 1937 borders of the German Reich (Article 16, my translation).13 Maintaining an ethnic concept of citizenship was a means of supporting the Federal Republic’s claim to be the nation-state of all Germans. Practically, it legitimized the immediate grant of a passport to East Germans who were able to breach the Berlin Wall; symbolically, it served as a constant rejection of the GDR’s claim that it spoke for another German people. As Mary Fulbrook notes, the one policy on which West Germany (FRG) refused to compromise, after two decades of Ostpolitik, was a recognition of East German (GDR) citizenship.14 “Two States, One Nation” was not only a deft formula enabling Brandt to pursue his


Ostpolitik against a skeptical opposition; it reflected an underlying policy, institutionalized in nationality law, that remained unchanged until unification. 15 One of the key impediments to a liberalization of nationality law before unification, which blocked a number of reform proposals, was the divided nation itself. There had been pressure for a liberalization of nationality law before then, but it was checked by the fear that any modification of the 1913 definition of nationality might have touched the issue of FRG versus GDR nationality. 16 There were few reforms to nationality law in postwar Germany; the arrival of guestworkers was, of course, negotiated outside the framework of nationality legislation. Strictly speaking, there was no policy on naturalization, and power over it rested with the Länder. In 1977, the Federal Minister of the Interior issued “guidelines” on naturalization, which are technically only non-enforceable instructions to the Länder.17 These contain the restrictive “requirements” frequently mentioned in the press and scholarly literature. Those applying for naturalization should have lived in the country for at least ten years (s. 2.1); they must have been “voluntarily and lastingly oriented towards Germany” (s. 3.1); they should not have been members of an emigrant political organization; they should not have lived for most of their time in Germany in “alien communities,” such as hostels or hotels allocated to aliens (s. 3.2.1). In all cases, the naturalization had to be in the interest of Germany, not the migrant. In addition, steep fees were charged for naturalization. As these were only guidelines, ultimate discretion rested with the Länder, leading to a bizarre outcome in which acquiring national citizenship was easier in Berlin than Munich. The failure of German postnationalism Whatever the historical justification for Germany’s restrictive nationality law, its consequences were clear by 1990: the country’s naturalization rate was less than 1 percent, one-half that of Britain and one-third lower than that of France.18 The latter two countries’ figures also underestimate the extent of naturalization, as neither France’s double jus soli nor Britain’s 1948–62 extension of British citizenship to its colonies are included. 19 In the context of a continuing migration (Germany accepts 200,000–300,000 net migrants per year),20 and a higher birth rate among foreigners (in 1996, 13.3 percent of all births were to non-citizens), 21 Germany faced a demographic time bomb. From 1971, births to foreigners were disproportionate to their percentage of the population, and from 1990 to 1999 foreigner births in Germany averaged 100,000 per year. 22 In other words, even in the context of zero immigration

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(unthinkable in the German context), Germany’s foreign population would have continued to grow. In the context of substantial yearly net migration, the percentage of foreigners in the country was expected to rise to 20 percent by 2030.23 These figures lay against broader indicators of poor integration. From 1980, the gap between foreigners’ and citizens’ unemployment rates began to grow; from 1993, the figure has hovered between 15 and 20 percent (1997), resting at 16.4 percent in June 2000.24 The rate is approximately double that for Germans (though the same as for East Germans). 25 Breaking the figures down by nationality, Turks had the highest unemployment rate (21.2 percent), followed by Greeks (16.1 percent) and Italians (15.2 percent); Yugoslavs, Spanish and Greek nationals had a rate of over 11 percent. 26 Put another way, the employment rate of non-Germans was 53 percent, compared with a German rate of 67 percent. 27 In 2000, some 26 percent of foreigners received social assistance; the figure for non-EU foreigners in Germany is slightly lower: 23.5 percent.28 The professional difficulties of Germany’s ethnic minority communities are exacerbated by low naturalization rates. The status of Beamter (broadly, civil servant, but imbued with much more meaning in Germany) is restricted to German citizens. The result is that a broad range of the most appealing, secure, prestigious and well-paid positions – as university professors, lawyers, judges and bureaucrats in the Anglo-American sense – are closed off to Germany’s large resident foreign population. 29 In the crucial area of language acquisition, results are also mixed. Although some 87–90 percent of young foreigners in Germany claim to speak German well,30 a more refined look at patterns of language acquisition reveals some worrying trends. A 2000 study by the Deutsches Jugendinstitut (DJI) revealed that only 65 percent of foreigners in the 5–11 age group speak German exclusively with their friends, whereas another 26 percent speak German and their mother tongue.31 Although it might be the case that the latter results in perfect bilingualism, it might also result in a perfectly adequate grasp of spoken German but substandard written German, the latter of which is crucial for academic and professional success. The problem is compounded by the fact that large numbers of German citizens do not speak German: of the hundreds of thousands of Aussiedler entering Germany between 1990 and 1994, only 8 percent speak exclusively German at home.32 When the tendency of migrants to concentrate in cities is added, the effects on language skills is hugely deleterious: a study in Wedding, a central Berlin neighborhood made up of some 30 percent foreigners, showed that a staggering 75 percent


of first-grade students required extra tuition simply in order to keep up; 40 percent required intensive tuition. 33 The result is clear: approximately 25 percent of German Turks leave school without any type of completion certificate, compared with 10 percent of the German citizens. On one level, German policymakers have no one but themselves to blame for these results. From the 1970s until very recently, many German Länder were either relatively indifferent to foreigners’ acquisition of German language skills or actively encouraged the opposite. Language training in the migrants’ mother tongue was provided, and in some cases – such as Saxony – foreigners could take examinations in their native language. The goal, as a report of the Federal Commissioner for Foreigners noted, was to further contact with the homeland and to leave open the possibility of return. 34 Policymakers in Europe’s most advanced postnational state had a distinctly national vision. In sum, Germany’s postnationalism was, by the 1990s, a failure. Restrictive nationality laws meant a demographic trend towards an ever larger number of foreigners in Germany; public policy failed to encourage the acquisition of German language skills; and resident foreigners had disproportionately high levels of unemployment and recourse to social assistance. In all areas, but especially in nationality law, Germany has since reversed its previous policies. Reforming Germany’s nationality law Within a year of unification, the developments leading to the easing of citizenship acquisition were set in motion. Under legislation guided through Parliament by Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, foreigners born in Germany were for the first time granted a privileged channel to naturalization, and an application deadline of December 31, 1995 was set. 35 In 1993, the reform was taken further, and naturalization for those born and educated in the country, and those with substantial periods of residence there, became a legally enforceable entitlement. 36 Aliens resident in Germany between the ages of 16 and 23 had the right to naturalize if they fulfilled the following conditions: (1) the renunciation of previous citizenship; (2) normal residence in the Federal Republic for at least eight years; (3) the completion of six years’ full time education, at least four of which at the secondary level; and (4) an absence of criminal convictions.37 In addition, those ordinarily resident in Germany for 15 years had an entitlement to naturalize if they (1) renounced their previous citizenship; (2) had not been convicted of a criminal offence; and (3) were able to support themselves without claiming unemployment benefit or income support. 38 At the same time, the fee for naturalization

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was reduced from a crushing 5000 marks (2556 euro) to 100 marks (51 euro). The reform received relatively little attention at the time, mostly because interest focused on the decision, taken in the same year, to restrict Germany’s extremely generous asylum laws. There was a certain irony in this, as the asylum reform was tied up with the naturalization reform. As asylum was entrenched in the 1948 Basic Law, its reform required a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag and Bundesrat, and thus the support of the SPD. In the run-up to the 1992 Asylum compromise, the SPD explicitly made its support conditional on an institutionalization of the 1990 provisions on naturalization. 39 The 2000 reform Before unification, in the context of a divided nation, all nationality reform was conducted strictly through the foreigners’ law (Ausländergesetz); there was little question of reforming the 1913 imperial citizenship law (Reichs-und Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz). After 1989, this essential block was removed. At the same time, the focus of nationality reform efforts came to be dual citizenship. There was near consensus among most parties that German nationality law required reform; only sections of the CDU, and above all the CSU, remained adamantly opposed to further reforms to nationality. Dual nationality became a particular concern because the 1990/1993 reforms did not lead to a dramatic increase in the naturalization rate, 40 and because there was widespread recognition that dual citizenship was and is a major obstacle, especially in the first generation, for those contemplating acquiring German citizenship. In 1993, the parliamentary group of the SPD proposed a bill, based on the resolution of the 1992 all-party Congress, amending the 1913 Nationality Act and the Aliens Act.41 When the Greens and the SPD formed a coalition agreement following their victory in the 1998 election, they immediately turned to reforming nationality and aliens’ law on the basis of it. The new measure involved a compromise reform of, first, aliens’ law and, later, nationality law. Its nationality core was made up of three propositions: 1. Granting citizenship at birth to those born of someone born in Germany (double jus soli) or someone with a legal residence permit. 2. Fully accepting dual and multiple nationality. 3. Reducing the residence requirement for naturalization by entitlement, for those living but not educated in Germany, from 15 to 8 years.


The measure was to apply retroactively to anyone living in the country legally for 10 years or more. The parliamentary group argued at the time that such a relaxation of naturalization would promote the full integration of permanent residents living in Germany,42 and this view informed the 1998 proposal. The new law appeared on course for easy passage, until the CDU/CSU, led by the latter and above all the Bavarian premier Edmund Stoiber, launched a cynical and legally meaningless petition against dual nationality,43 the most controversial element of the measure. As late as February 1999, the government was determined to stay on course. 44 That month, however, the SPD lost the Land elections in Hesse, during which the CDU politicized nationality, making opposition to immigration and dual nationality the centerpiece of its campaign. The coalition was thus robbed of its Bundesrat majority and could no longer ensure the legislation’s passage. To the bitter disappointment of the reform’s advocates, and the opposition of the Greens, Chancellor Schröder withdrew the law and sought a compromise. Picking up a FDP proposal of some years ago, the parties agreed on a reform package that extends jus soli but limits dual nationality. From January 2000, individuals born in Germany of individuals resident for eight years and in possession of one of two residence permits are citizens at birth;45 in this sense, the law is as liberal as that of the UK. They will be entitled to acquire a foreign nationality at the same time, but they will be obligated, at the age of 23, to decide between them. The citizenship is thus conditional, a legal status that exists nowhere else in Europe. 46 It is, however, doubtful that this compromise will prove stable, as dual nationality is extremely difficult to control under any circumstances (even now, there are some 2,000,000 dual nationals in Germany), and it is unclear how the renunciation requirement will be enforced when the choice is to be made. Predictions remain dangerous, but it is almost certain that the trend will be towards a further expansion of dual nationality in Germany, and perhaps even its eventual acceptance. A constitutional court challenge, against the whole Bill or simply the dual nationality portion, is also possible.47 The reform reflected a shift, emerging over the last two decades, in Germany towards viewing naturalization as an integrative mechanism. In 1984, responding to a SPD criticism of administrative obstacles to naturalization, the CDU/CSU/FDP government argued that naturalization should not be an instrument of integration, but rather the consequence of its successful completion.48 A decade later, responding to the 1993 SPD parliamentary group Bill, the same government expressed its agreement

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that the facilitation of naturalization promotes integration.49 These shifting strains of thought are above all noticeable in the language of successive legislations. The 1993 law is explicitly aimed at “[s]ecuring, on the basis of clear legal provisions, the integration of these aliens who had been living for a long time in the Federal Republic including Berlin (West) and who wish to stay here.”50 Parliamentary and political debates surrounding this legislation confirm a shift, though not a universal one,51 in favor of the view that integration requires easier naturalization.52 The 2000 measure, both in its substance and aims, confirms and extends this turn to integration. The coalition agreement between the SPD and the Greens devotes a section to “integration” alone, and states that [w]e recognise that an irreversible process of immigration has taken place in the past and set our hopes on the integration of those immigrants who live here on a permanent basis and who accept our constitutional values. The focal point of our integration policy will be the creation of a modern nationality law (emphasis added). 53 The reform was driven in large part by demographic pressures. In conditions under which 7.3 million aliens reside permanently in Germany; under which Frankfurt/Main, Munich and Cologne have a resident alien population of over 30 percent; and under which foreign birth rates are higher than the German rate; under which 50 percent of all foreigners had been in the country for more than a decade; and under which there would otherwise have been a fourth generation in Germany without citizenship, the parties were left with the choice of tolerating such a development or liberalizing nationality law.54 Recognizing that integration would not come by itself, they hesitantly and partially turned, but turned nonetheless, to nationality law as an instrument of immigration. It may not have been, as Rittstieg suggested, Germany’s “first tentative step into the legal recognition of a multiethnic society, whose unity is no longer determined by völkisch homogeneity and exclusion . . . but through the process of political democracy,”55 but it was a definitive break with past practice and modes of thinking. Fitfully and incompletely, Germany is turning to integration, and a key component in integration is the acquisition of national citizenship. The link between citizenship and broader integration concerns has been reinforced by the German government’s subsequent immigration and integration policy efforts. Despite having its fingers burned by the immigration/foreigners issue, the coalition looked in spring 2000 to expanding immigration policy. In May, the government announced its


“Green Card” program granting visas to 20,000 foreign workers over three years. Although modest, relative to American or Canadian programs, it was the first time in over 25 years that the German government welcomed immigrants. In late September 2000, the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Otto Schily, went further and appointed a Commission led by Christian Democrat Rita Süssmuth. The Süssmuth Commission reported in July 2001, and made four key recommendations: 1. Approximately 50,000 economic migrants should be brought to Germany, on the basis of a quota system, per year. 2. An immigration bureau should be instituted at the federal level. 3. The right to asylum should not be touched. 4. Integration efforts should be increased. In early August 2001, Schily announced the government’s plan, hoping to secure a multiparty agreement before presenting legislation. It proposes allowing a set number of skilled applicants to migrate to Germany each year, according to a quota and Canadian-style points system, but avoids specifying any number. The skilled migrants would be offered permanent residence. In an important development, both the commission’s report and the Interior Ministry’s proposal emphasized the importance of ensuring the new migrants’ integration, above all through the acquisition of the German language. 56 At the time of writing (March 2002), the legislation has passed the Bundestag, but there are doubts about whether it will pass the CDU-dominated Bundesrat. Whether it does or not, demographic and economic pressures will force a new openness in immigration policy. Deutschland ist ein Einwanderungsland. The final section turns to developments in France and Britain. Although there has nowhere in Europe been a debate about citizenship and integration as divisive as the German, policy developments in both countries provide evidence for the reinvigorated link between citizenship and integration. In France, they took the form of a failed experiment in decoupling citizenship from integration; in Britain, they involve a debate, currently under way, about imbuing the country’s traditionally thin citizenship with greater substance.

France: Two steps back, one forward Historically, France’s naturalization policy corresponded to a broader philosophy of assimilation. The chief mechanisms were the army and the school, and French citizenship was either granted at birth (to

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third-generation migrants) or at the age of majority (to second-generation migrants).57 According to the assimilationist model, national differences are to disappear by the second generation.58 For second-generation migrants, nationality was attributed after the individual was raised in French society, and following the completion of school and obligatory military service. 59 After a post-revolutionary period of jus sanguinis,60 French nationality law has gradually evolved, leaving aside the Vichy regime,61 in an inclusive direction.62 The centre of these efforts was double jus soli, institutionalized in 1889. By granting citizenship automatically and without right of refusal to those born of people born in France, French nationality law, among other things, ensured that immigrants were subject to the assimilatory influence of both school and army.63 Nationality law and the politics of nationality in the 1980s and 1990s As in the rest of Europe, nationality law was largely a non-issue in the early decades of postwar France. Rapid guestworker and colonial migration created pressing problems of housing and unemployment, and they led to heated debates about the merits of integration versus encouraged (or forced) return,64 but these were not widely perceived to be problems of nationality. If nationality law was given any thought at all, it was assumed that the children of those who stayed would benefit from nationality law and the complex of assimilation mechanisms linked with it. One aspect to explaining why nationality became such a divisive political issue in 1980s France is accounting for why nationality law was thrown off its original integrationist course. Of particular importance were, first, a perception that Muslims present intractable integration problems, and, second, the rise of the Front National. By the 1980s, Islam had challenged French policymakers’ and intellectuals’ heady confidence in their country’s capacity to assimilate aliens through culture, language and national citizenship. Islam threatens assimilation à la républicaine because of its basic commitment to a public role for religion and the obedience of religious dictates, thus violating the core value of laïcité. There is nothing particularly new about this contradiction; it simply spilled out into the public domain in the late 1980s in the affaire du foulard. The affair broke out when three Muslim girls were banned from school for refusing to take off their religious headdress. Coinciding with the bicentenary of the French Revolution, it led to a defiant and quasi-hysterical defence of the Headmaster who expelled the girls and of the republican principles that justified his actions. Intellectuals portrayed nightmarish visions of an Islamic infiltration of France and


enslavement of French women, and five leading figures, including Régis Debray and Alain Finkielkraut, characterized the affair – apparently seriously – in an open letter to le Nouvel Observateur as the “Munich of Republicanism.”65 The affair furthered a shift, already underway in 1989, in favor of a new emphasis on assimilation. 66 A few years later, this belief would be expressed in new voluntarist provisions of nationality law. Of greater importance was the Front National.67 From 1988 until 1998, the Front National’s support nationally stabilized at 15 percent; its fourth mayoral candidate succeeded in 1997,68 and 1998 was a banner year for the Front. In March, five UDF candidates were elected to the presidency of regional councils, on the second ballot, with votes of Front National candidates. Since then, owing to a division fostered by Bruno Mégret, the Front National seems to have gone into decline; from the late 1980s to the late 1990s, however, it terrified France’s center-right.69 The 1993 Pasqua Law The Chirac government, elected in 1986, quickly drafted restrictive nationality legislation. A concerted lobbying effort and President Mitterrand’s tactical intervention against the legislation, along with the government’s contemporaneous difficulties adopting legislation on educational reform, led to the deferral of the measure and the appointment of a Nationality Commission. Reporting in 1988, the Commission put forth a set of recommendations that were similar to those of the government, recommending the introduction of a voluntaristic element into French nationality law. 70 The Bill, published in July 1993 and effective from January 1, 1994, made three main changes: 1. Most importantly, automatic acquisition of French nationality at the age of majority (with a right of refusal one year before naturalization) was ended. To acquire citizenship, second-generation immigrants had to express their willingness (manifester leur volonté) to be French between the ages of 16 and 21. If they did not do so by 21, they could no longer naturalize under Article 44. 2. Double jus soli, the real target of the right-wing reformers, was modified somewhat. To acquire citizenship automatically at birth, third-generation aliens had to be born of parents living in France for five years. 3. The extension, in a 1973 nationality law reform, of double jus soli to all former French colonies was rescinded. The law was accompanied by a series of measures, before and after, designed to restrict immigration. The first Pasqua Law, passed in 1986,

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toughened entry requirements for aliens, including visas on all non-European aliens, 71 and increased police powers to demand identity cards and search suspected aliens on French soil. The menacing policephrase “tes papiers?” is a common feature of everyday life for black residents and citizens of France. The government’s effort to use nationality law to deflect the Front National had to fail. The rise of Front National support was a complex mix of crude racism, a reaction to worsening economic conditions, the absence of alternatives among the mainstream parties and a desire to limit the entry of immigrants (which may or may not itself be racist). None of these factors could be addressed by the nationality reforms. The racist core of the Front National would be satisfied with nothing less than the complete expulsion of France’s non-white citizens and resident aliens. Nationality law obviously could do nothing to remedy France’s economic difficulties. Finally, the reforms could not even seriously reduce the number of aliens entering France, much less those already there. The foundation of the reforms was the demand to manifester la volonté, which served only to discourage the naturalization of aliens who would, in almost all cases, continue to reside in France in any event. The rest could only be tinkering. The Conseil d’Etat had rejected Giscard d’Estaing’s program for removing resident aliens in 1980, and henceforth such programs had to be limited to the offer of aid for those who voluntarily wished to return. No more than 1000 resident aliens volunteered yearly, and increasing the amount offered was unlikely to alter this result. Judged solely with reference to their own aims, reforms to nationality law were a bad idea. They could not limit the Front National’s support – it only fell when the Front itself split – and they served to undermine nationality law’s integrating role. The inadequacy of the 1993 law was recognized by the socialist/ green/communist opposition, and when the gauche plurielle surprised everyone by winning the 1997 parliamentary elections, Jospin’s government quickly sought to reform nationality law. Jospin commissioned Patrick Weil, a historian and sociologist, to write a report that would serve as the basis of the law. Weil identified, broadly speaking, two inadequacies of the 1993 law: those of principle, and those of pragmatism. 72 In the former, the law broke with the tradition of le droit du sol, which held that socialization, as guaranteed by school and military service, was more fundamental to French nationality than an act of will. 73 In the latter, a wide range of anomalies had been created by the law: individuals with a right and interest in expressing their volonté understood the procedures poorly; large numbers who had the right to become

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citizens only learned of it once it was too late; the available information and rate of manifestation de volonté varied greatly between departments. 74 Thus, looking at figures from the department of Alsace alone, Mulhouse recorded a “manifestation rate” of 68 percent, whereas the figure was only 42 percent in Strasbourg; the difference between the two could only be explained by ignorance of the procedure.75 As a result, the law reversed a long tradition of transforming foreigners into Frenchmen, transforming those who were sociologically, linguistically and culturally French into foreigners. The law closely followed the Weil report, abolishing the requirement of a manifestation de volonté and granting second-generation immigrants automatic naturalization at the age of 18, if they have lived in France for at least five years from the age of 11. They can also acquire French nationality at the age of 13 if they have lived in France since the age of 8, though in this case the parents’ consent is required.76 In short, although French nationality law was temporarily blown off its inclusive course, it has returned to its integrationist path.

The United Kingdom: Filling out a thin citizenship The United Kingdom has a liberal, but thin, definition of citizenship. British citizenship as it exists today dates only to 1981. From the seventeenth century until 1948, Britons were simply British subjects, which meant that entitlements flowed from an individual relationship with the monarch rather than the possession of a common citizenship.77 From 1948 until 1981, Britons shared an overarching imperial citizenship with citizens of Britain’s colonies – citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies – though they alone had from 1962 rights we today associate with citizenship. 78 One of the results of this history is that there is little clarity in Britain about the content of British citizenship (many still believe that they are British subjects). Likewise, there are few obligations attached to British citizenship. Military service (which still exists in Germany) ended in the 1950s, and there is no obligation to vote (as in Australia). When naturalizing, there is no citizenship oath, often no interview, and the United Kingdom is perfectly indifferent to dual or multiple citizenship. 79 The British government is now reconsidering its cavalier attitude to integration. Following a series of high-profile riots in Oldham, Burnley and Leeds in the summer of 2001,80 the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, commissioned a White Paper on immigration, nationality and asylum. The White Paper recommends measures to ensure a more robust sense

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of citizenship among naturalizing Britons: more rigorous language tests and training, citizenship oaths and examinations on British history and institutions.81 Arguing that the acquisition of citizenship has until now been little more than a bureaucratic process, the Paper concludes that Becoming British . . . is – or should be – a significant event. It can be seen as an act of commitment to Britain and an important step in the process of achieving integration into our society. Yet, in spite of this, some applicants for naturalisation do not have much practical knowledge about British life or language, possibly leaving them vulnerable and ill-equipped to take an active role in society . . . We need to develop a sense of civil identity and shared values, and knowledge of the English language (or Welsh language or Scottish Gaelic) . . . can undoubtedly support this objective.82 It is too soon to know what sort of measures will make their way into legislation, but the country in Europe that thought least about citizenship is beginning to think more about it today.

Conclusion In Germany, France and the United Kingdom, debates about immigration and integration have become debates about citizenship. They provide an ideal opportunity to reflect on the postnationalism’s claim that political citizenship is largely immaterial to meaningful integration. Before considering this issue, it is worth reflecting on the content of postnational arguments. As I have argued elsewhere,83 postnationalism entails at least two arguments: an empirical and a causal. The empirical argument is that permanent residents enjoy a broad variety of rights without citizenship, such that their lives differ little from those of citizens, and that, as a result, identity and rights have been decoupled: one can be a Berliner without being a German, lobby Congress while holding a Turkish passport, be committed to civic participation in Boston and the Dominican Republic and so on. 84 The causal argument, however, is different: this postnational outcome, so to speak, resulted from an internationalization of human rights legislation and/or from the emergence of a universal human rights discourse (though postnationalists, it should be noted, are often not entirely explicit about causality). The causal claim has been challenged by recent research. A number of scholars have argued that, though it is undeniable that legal residents in Europe enjoy a greater degree of security than previously, the sources of


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this security are domestic, not transnational. Socio-economic rights do not derive from the discourse of universal personhood or from international norms, but rather from the institutions of the liberal democratic state, above all the courts, which articulated, through a series of legal decisions, the rights of residents on the basis of national constitutions. 85 Postnationalism, in effect, got the causality backwards: the rights of the resident qua resident or qua human being were not in the main the product of international treaties, still less of international discourse on human rights; rather, this discourse and these treaties were the (not entirely successful) result of the postwar effort by a handful of Western states to institutionalize their liberal national values at the international level. It is thus unremarkable that the rights of legal aliens (and even those of illegal aliens) are best protected in the liberal West. The empirical argument is on surer, though not perfectly solid, ground. The decoupling of rights and citizenship is a largely postwar development, and it has rendered the once-clear link between citizenship, identity and rights problematic. Still, the argument is robustly applicable only to Europe. In 1996, the US Congress passed a welfare reform measure limiting social rights previously enjoyed by legal permanent residents to citizens.86 Some of these have been restored, but only to individuals who entered the country before 1993. In the US, political citizenship is once again increasingly a precondition of social (though not economic) rights. More importantly, the fact that rights and identity no longer (if they ever did) overlap (one can hold a British passport while “feeling” Jamaican) says little about political citizenship’s importance for integration. This point is supported by the French, German and British cases. In the first two, the demands of integration have forced a reversal of restrictionist nationality measures; in the latter, it is encouraging a revaluation (in Schuck’s words) of citizenship. In Britain, where citizenship had little content, there is an active effort to link citizenship with specific values and obligations. This revaluation of citizenship is intrinsically connected with actual integration challenges; this is clear from both the French and German cases. In France, where citizenship has long had a robust content, the partial and brief turn away from a policy of integration founded on a liberal grant of citizenship violated the tradition of the droit du sol and led to a series of effets pervers: inconsistent information, missed deadlines through ignorance, and sharply varying naturalization rates. It also violated, across generations, basic principles of equality: current, (mostly) non-white migrants’ children were treated in a less privileged manner than previous generations of Italians and Poles. Had the law been maintained, a growing portion of French residents, with

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a technical right to citizenship subject to the manifestation requirement, would have remained foreigners, stripped of political rights. In Germany, postnationalism was by all accounts a failure; Germany’s foreign population was large and destined to increase; non-citizens had higher levels of unemployment, lower levels of education and inadequate German language skills. What’s more, these problems seemed to be getting worse. To be sure, citizenship is but one element in integration, but political and policy developments in the 1990s made clear that Germany needed an active integration policy, and such a policy required an open, inclusive citizenship policy. In constructing their thesis, postnationalists aimed at the wrong target. The fluidity of identities, which has no doubt increased with migration and globalization, does not preclude or even implicate the acquisition of national citizenship. Individuals are free to develop attachments to smaller entities within the nation-state, to larger ones outside it, or even, consistent with the law, to other nation-states. Naturalized citizens may speak a third language at home, send their children to school in their mother tongue and move comfortably between two or more cultures and societies. To the degree that such contacts broaden understanding, encourage respect for other cultures and perhaps promote the liberal state’s values abroad,87 such developments should only be encouraged. To suggest that naturalization in the primary country of residence prevents or even discourages any of these attachments is to make the same mistake as the French center- and far-right in imbuing national citizenship with more meaning than it merits. Rights and identity are decoupled, but citizenship remains a prerequisite to full rights.

Acknowledgments For comments on this chapter, I am grateful to Adrian Favell, Christian Joppke, Michelle Lamont, Jean Leca and the other participants of the EUI European Forum conference on Integrating Immigrants in Liberal States, Florence May 8–9, 1998. I owe a special debt to Simon Green, who provided invaluable advice and data in the original drafting. My thanks also to Jobst Koehler, a graduate student at Oxford University, for comments on an earlier version of this chapter.

Notes 1 In this chapter I define integration as the process through which immigrants and other non-citizens achieve in law and in practice the same entitlements


2

3 4 5 6 7

8

9

10 11 12 13

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as non-citizens, and through which they secure the recognition of and respect for particular religious or cultural requirements. It is a two-way process in that it also requires non-citizens to accept as minimum conditions liberal democratic commitments to political liberalism and procedural tice. In Germany, France and the United States, these commitments are delineated in national constitutions; in the United Kingdom, they are a matter of precedent. M. Feldblum, “Reconfiguring Citizenship in Western Europe,” in C. Joppke ed. Challenge to the Nation-State: Immigration in Western Europe and the United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998; S. Sassen, “The de facto Transnationalizing of Immigration Policy,” in C. Joppke ed. Challenge to the Nation-State; Y.N. Soysal, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). D. Jacobson, Rights Across Borders: Immigration and the Decline of Citizenship (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 9. Soysal, Limits of Citizenship, p. 3. C. Joppke, Challenge to the Nation-State, p. 25. Soysal, Limits of Citizenship, ch. 7. A charge that was made by Algerian migrants and Algeria itself. See A. Sayad, “Les immigrés algériens et la nationalité française,” in S. Lacher, Questions de nationalité (Paris: Editions l’Harmattan, 1987). P. Schuck, “The Re-evaluation of American Citizenship,” in Joppke, ed. Challenge to the Nation-State; Schuck, “Plural Citizenships,” in R. Hansen and P. Weil eds., Dual Nationality, Social Rights and Federal Citizenship in the US and Europe (Oxford: Berghahn, 2002). S. Green, “Beyond Ethnoculturalism? German Citizenship in the New Millennium,” German Politics, 9/3 (2000), 105–24; Green, “Citizenship Policy in Germany: The Case of Ethnicity over Residence,” in R. Hansen and P. Weil, Towards a European Nationality: Citizenship, Immigration and Nationality Law in the EU (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001). S. Martin, “Social Rights and Naturalization: The U.S. Experience,” in R. Hansen and P. Weil eds., Dual Nationality. Soysal, Limits of Citizenship. S. Green, “Citizenship Policy.” This reading is confirmed by G. Neuman, “Nationality Law in the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany: Structure and Current Problems,” in R. Münz and P. Schuck, Paths to Inclusion: The Integration of Migrants in the United States and Germany (Providence, RI: Berghan Books, 1998), 269–70. An early postwar study of German nationality law placed great emphasis on the importance of Article 116 for German expellees from east of the OderNeisse line. See Franz Maβfeller, Deutsches Staatsangehörigkeitsrecht von 1870 bis zur Gegenwart (Frankfurt: Alfred Metzner Verlag, 1957). M. Fulbrook, “Germany for the Germans? Citizenship and Nationality in a Divided Nation?” in D. Cesarani and M. Fulbrook, Citizenship, Nationality and Migration in Europe (London: Routledge, 1996). Brubaker discusses both the expellees and the question of a single German citizenship, but views them both as a confirmation of the ethnocultural basis of German nationality. See Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 168–71.

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16 C. Martini, Citizenship and Naturalisation in Germany: Legislation, Political Discussion and Administration Practice 1870–1995 (Report prepared for the Centre d’Études de la politique d’immigration, d’intégration et de la citoyenneté, IEP, Paris, July 1995), part 3, 13. Thus, when an MP proposed a wholesale reform of nationality law during 1955 discussions surrounding the repeal of collective naturalizations executed by the Nazis, he was told by the Interior Minister that questions of nationality could not be discussed under the conditions of a divided Germany (ibid., 14). 17 Guidelines on Naturalization, Circular of the Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs, July 1, 1977. 18 Soysal, Limits of Citizenship, 25. 19 On this, see R. Hansen, Citizenship and Immigration in Postwar Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), ch. 2. 20 P. Martin, “Germany: Reluctant Land of Immigration,” undated, http://www. agecon.ucdavis.edu/faculty_ pages/martin/Germany/Germany.htm (consulted February 15, 2002). 21 Green, “Citizenship Policy,” 29. 22 Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Ausländerfragen (2000a), “Geburten,” website: http://www.bundesauslaenderbeauftragte.de/daten /tab7.pdf (consulted February 20, 2002). 23 Martin, “Germany.” 24 Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Ausländerfragen (2000b), “Entwicklung der Ausländerarbeitslosigkeit und Ausländerbeschäftigung,” http:// www.bundesauslaenderbeauftragte.de/daten /index.stm (consulted February 20, 2002). 25 The figures illustrate sharp fluctuations both upwards and downwards, broadly coinciding with boom (1990/1991) and bust (1981) years in Germany. 26 R. Süssmuth, Zuwanderung gestalten, Integration fördern. Bericht der Unabhängigen Kommission Zuwanderung (Berlin: Bundesministerium des Innern, 2001), 219. 27 W. Seifert, Geschlossene Grenzen – offene Gesellschaften? Migrations- und Integrationsprozesse in westlichen Industrienationen (Frankfurt/New York: Campus, 2000), 179. 28 Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Ausländerfragen (2000c), “Sozialversicherungspflichtig-beschäftigte Ausländer in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland nach Staats- und EU-Angehörigkeit” http://www.bundesauslaenderbeauftragte.de/ daten/tab24.pdf (consulted February 20, 2002). 29 I owe this point to Simon Green. 30 R. Süssmuth, Zuwanderung, 212. 31 R. Süssmuth, Zuwanderung, 212. 32 R. Süssmuth, Zuwanderung, 212. 33 R. Süssmuth, Zuwanderung, 213. 34 Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Ausländerfragen (2001), “Mehrsprachigkeit an deutschen Schulen: ein Länderüberblick.” 35 Green, “Citizenship.” 36 Green, “Citizenship.” 37 s. 85, 1993 Ausländergesetz; Green, “Citizenship.”


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38 s. 86, 1993 Ausländergesetz. In 1994, following the center-right’s victory in the elections, a further reform was proposed: third-generation immigrants born in Germany of parents who had lived there for ten years were given the status of Kinderstaatszugehörigkeit. This gave them most of the rights of German citizens, if their parents had lived in the country for ten years and were without criminal records. At the age of 18, they would have to decide between their nationality and that of their parents (Martini, Citizenship, 14). 39 Interview with an official from the Bundesministerium des Innern, Bonn, February 1999. 40 Although increasing three-fold from 1990–96, it rested at a modest 1.5 percent in 1998. Green, “Beyond Ethnoculturalism?”, 106. 41 Doc. 12/4533, 10.3 1993. 42 Martini, Citizenship, 17. 43 Though not all CDU members were in favor of it. See “In Kreuzberg fallen die Strassenaktionen aus. Die geplante Volksbefragung der CDU zur doppelten Staatsbürgerschaft stösst bei der Parteibasis auf Skepsis,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 12, 1999. 44 Interview with an official from the Bundesministerium des Innern, Bonn, February 1999. 45 Either an unlimited residence permit (unbefristete Aufenhaltserlaubnis) or a residence entitlement (Aufenhaltsberechtigung). The former available after five years, the latter after eight. As Green points out, only 38 percent of foreigners hold these permits (though 56 percent have been in the country for more than eight years). Green, “Beyond Ethnoculturalism,” 114. Nonetheless, 40 percent of foreigners will now give birth to German citizens, a substantial improvement on past practice. 46 I owe this point to a conversation with Patrick Weil. 47 Subject to the usual caveats about predictions, it is highly possible that a challenge against the dual nationality provisions would strike down the renunciation requirement at 23; it is difficult to imagine the Bundesverfassungsgericht upholding legislation stripping individuals of German citizenship. The ghosts of the 1930s walk through the court, as they do through all of Germany. 48 Martini, Citizenship, 16. 49 Martini, Citizenship, 18. 50 Bill on the Regulation of Aliens Law, Legislative Intent (Slightly Abridged Version), Section II. 51 Manfred Kanther recently claimed, rather implausibly, that nationality was liberally reformed in 1993 because of the success of integration; naturalization cannot, he argues, improve integration. Rede von Bundesinnenminister Manfred Kanther im Deutschen Bundestag zum Thema “Staatsanehörigkeit” (Bonn: Das Bundesministerium des Innern, 9. 2. 1995). 52 See, for example, the argument presented in A. Böger, Die Diskussion über ein Einwanderungsgesetz (Bonn: Wissenschaftliche Dienste des Deutschen Bundestages), especially section 3. 53 “Coalition agreement between the SPD and the Alliance 90/Greens,” signed in Bonn on October 20, 1998 (official translation). I thank the German interior ministry for providing me with a copy of the agreement.

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54 Statistics taken from Survey of the Policy and Law Concerning Foreigners in the Federal Republic of Germany (Bonn: Federal Ministry of the Interior, March 1998) [official translation], 12–26. 55 H. Rittstieg, “Dual citizenship: Legal and Political Aspects in the German Context,” in: R. Bauböck, ed. From Aliens to Citizens (Avebury: Gower, 1994). 56 Süssmuth, Zuwanderung, 199–265, especially at 217. 57 E. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France (London: Ghatto & Windus, 1977). 58 P. Weil and J. Crowley, “Integration in Theory and Practice: A Comparison of France and Britain,” in M. Baldwin-Edwards and M. Schain (eds.), The Politics of Immigration in Western Europe (London: Frank Cass, 1994), 111; P. Lagarde, “Le droit français de la nationalité,” in B. Nascimbene (ed.), Nationality Laws in the European Union/Le droit de la nationalité dans l’union européenne (London: Butterworths, 1996), 313. 59 F. Dubet and D. Martucelli, À l’école: une sociologie de l’expérience scolaire (Paris: Seuil, 1996). Military service played an important role in socialization earlier this century, but has recently been viewed as less effective [M. Long, Affaiblissement du lien social. Enfermement dans les particularismes et intégration dans la cité, Rapport du Haut Conseil à l’Intégration (Paris: la documentation francaise, 1997)]. 60 Marceau Long, Etre français aujourd’hui et demain (Paris: La documentation française, 1988), p. 21, Jacques Trémolet de Villers et al., Immigration et nationalité: quelles réponses? (Paris: ICTUS, 1990), 18. 61 Paul Lagarde, “Le droit français de la nationalité,” in B. Nascimbene (ed.), Nationality Laws in the European Union/Le droit de la nationalité dans l’union européenne (London: Butterworths, 1996), 313. Legislation in 1940 required the administrative review of naturalization, resulting in the denaturalization of some 15,000 individuals, including 6000 Jews. Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany, 215 (fn 120). 62 The lois du 7 février 1851, du 16 juillet 1874, du 14 février 1882, du 26 juin 1889 and du 22 juillet 1889 re-introduced ius soli as a basic element in French nationality law. Other reforms have addressed discrimination against women in nationality law: the loi du août 1927 allowed French women marrying an alien resident in France to retain her French nationality, while the loi du 9 janvier 1973 abolished all distinctions between men and women for the acquisition, attribution and retention of French nationality. Lagarde, “Le droit français de la nationalité,” 310–12. 63 Brubaker, Citizenship, 108. 64 R. Schor, Histoire de l’immigration en France: de la fin du XIXe siècle à nos jours (Paris: Armand Collin, 1996), ch. 9; P. Weil, La France et ses ètrangers: l’aventure d’une politique de l’immigration de 1938 à nos jours (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), especially ch. 2–4. 65 Adrian Favell, Philosophies of Integration: Immigration and the Idea of Citizenship in France and Britain (Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), 154. 66 See R. Brubaker, this volume, and Favell, Philosophies, ch. 3 and 5. 67 Interview with Paul Lagarde, member of the Conseil d’état, Paris, April 9, 1999. 68 Toulon, Orange, Marignane and Vitrolles.


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69 For a discussion of the sources of FN support, see A. G. Hargreaves, Immigration, “Race” and Ethnicity in Contemporary France (London: Routledge, 1995), P. Perrineau, Le symptôme Le Pen: Radiographie des électeurs du Front National (Paris: Fayard, 1997), and M. Schain, “The National Front in France and the Construction of Political Legitimacy,” West European Politics, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1987), 229–52. 70 Long, Être français. On the whole, the Commission was more liberal than the original bill. The requirement of an oath of allegiance, for example, was rejected by the Commission as an American import alien to the French democratic tradition. 71 These visas were easily obtained by Americans and Canadians, but were obtained only with great difficulty by Africans (Weil, La France). They were later dropped altogether for North Americans. 72 P. Weil, Mission d’ étude de la législation de l’immigration et de la nationalité française (Paris: la documentation française, 1997). 73 Weil, Mission, 19–20. 74 Weil, Mission, 26–30. 75 Weil, Mission, 29. 76 For visitors needing visas, the law also replaced the controversial requirement, adopted by a 1997 law of a lodging certificate (certificat d’hébergement) signed by the Mayor with a letter of invitation (attestation d’accueil) from the individual lodging the visitors. See Le Monde, “Les dispositions adoptées en première lecture,” December 1, 1997 and “La majorité se divise sur l’immigration,” December 19, 1997. 77 See R. Hansen, Citizenship, ch. 2. 78 Hansen, Citzenship. 79 R. Hansen, “From Subjects to Citizens,” in Hansen and Weil eds., Towards a European Nationality; Hansen, “The Dog that didn’t Bark: Dual Citizenship in the United Kingdom,” in R. Hansen and P. Weil eds, Dual Nationality. 80 Simon Parker, “Race Riots Sparked by ‘Public Service Failures’,” The Guardian, December 11, 2001. 81 Secure Borders, Safe Haven: Integration with Diversity in Modern Britain (London: HMSO,CM 5387, 2002), ch. 2. 82 Secure Borders, 32. 83 R. Hansen, “Migration, Citizenship and Race in Europe: Between Incorporation and Exclusion,” European Journal of Political Research 35 (1999), 415–44. 84 Levitt, this volume, Soysal, Limits of Citizenship. 85 See G. Freeman, “Modes of Immigration Politics in Liberal Democratic States,” International Migration Review, 29(4), 1995, 881–902; G. Freeman, “The Decline of Sovereignty?,” in C. Joppke (ed.) Challenge to the NationState; C. Joppke, “Why Liberal States Accept Unwanted Immigration,” World Politics, 50(2), 1988, 266–93; C. Joppke, Immigration and the Nation-State: the United States, Germany, and Great Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); see also Hansen, “Migration”. 86 S. Martin, “Social Rights”. 87 On the last point, see P. J. Spiro, “Dual Nationality and the Meaning of Citizenship,” Emory Law Journal, 46/4 (1997), 1412ff.

5 Between National and Postnational: Membership in the United States T. Alexander Aleinikoff

In this chapter, I will consider the applicability and relevance of the “postnational perspective” to the American concept of membership and sovereignty. By “postnational perspective” I mean the view that “national citizenship is losing ground to a more universal model of membership, anchored in deterritorialized notions of persons’ rights.”1 The postnational perspective centers around the following claims: 1. rights and privileges once reserved for citizens (the “national perspective”) are now recognized on the basis of personhood; 2. migration has been a motivating factor in this reconceptualization of rights (placing non-members in a position to assert newly defined membership claims); 3. these rights claims find their source beyond the nation-state in international human rights norms and structures; 4. the result is “deterritorialized” membership; 5. the basis of state legitimacy is shifting from notions of (national) popular will to the state’s respect for international human rights norms.2 Together, these descriptions are understood to support a progressive narrative of the expansion of human rights to previously marginalized groups. The postnational perspective has implications at the personal level as well. Traditionally, individuals have seen themselves primarily as members of one polity; but today, migration and the assertion of non-state-based rights are producing transnational or supranational identities. Thus we are said to be witnessing “the emergence of membership that is multiple in the sense of spanning local, regional, and global identities, and which accommodates intersecting complexes of rights, duties and loyalties.”3 110

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Deterritorialized identities are usually seen as liberating, creating opportunities for new connections and communities and establishing universal norms of just treatment. I will argue that the postnational perspective is not an accurate depiction of US models of rights and membership. To some degree there is an overlap between postnational models and the American tradition: in the United States, rights and privileges have always extended to resident non-nationals. But the recognition of rights for non-nationals has not been based on norms that transcend the nation-state; rather, it is a core attribute of American constitutionalism, deeply embedded in the idea of the American state. International human rights norms play a surprisingly small role in US discourse and jurisprudence. (The postnational claim is correct to see migration as the wedge for the assertion of such rights, but such human rights discourses have had almost no traction in the US) Finally, US models of membership that extend rights to non-citizens are largely territorialized, making “denizenship”4 a more accurate rendering of the American structure of rights than postnationalism. I will conclude with some comments on postnationalism at the personal level – suggesting that while personal identities are becoming more transnational, such multiplicity is articulated primarily in the context of the nation-state (giving rise to an “inter-nationality” more than a postnationality.)

Source of rights and class of beneficiaries: The Breard case and beyond On April 14, 1998, the State of Virginia executed by lethal injection Angel Francisco Breard, a 32-year-old citizen of Paraguay who had been residing in Virginia for 12 years. In 1992, Breard had been convicted of a brutal murder, stabbing his victim five times in the neck during a sexual assault. He testified at his trial that he had killed his victim because he had been under the influence of a satanic curse. The United States is virtually alone among Western states in its preservation of the death penalty; and imposition of the death penalty raises significant human rights issues. A decade ago, the European Court of Human Rights held that it would be a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights for the United Kingdom to extradite Soering, a West German, to stand trial in Virginia in a capital case. 5 The UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions has called for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty in the US following an investigative visit in 1997. 6 And Amnesty International, in

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a 1998 report on human rights abuses in the United States, singled out the death penalty for particularly harsh criticism.7 But Breard’s appeal of his conviction and sentence did not assert a violation of international human rights norms. The American death penalty appears immune to such challenges.8 Breard did, however, eventually make a claim based on international law. In 1996, his lawyers filed a habeas corpus action in the federal court asserting that his rights under the Vienna Convention on Consular Affairs had been violated because Paraguay had not been informed at the time of his arrest. 9 His argument was that consular officials might have urged him to accept a plea agreement that would have given him a life sentence, rather than going to trial and receiving a death sentence. The federal court rejected this claim, saying that he had waived his right to raise it during his appeal in state court. Meanwhile, Paraguay brought its own action against Virginia in the federal court based on the Vienna Convention. It asked the court to return the situation to the status quo ante – that is, to nullify the conviction and the sentence. The lower court held that a provision in the federal Constitution prohibited a foreign country from suing a state in the federal court. 10 Following its loss in the lower court and receiving no help from the State Department in getting Virginia to change its decision (although the Department conceded that the treaty had been violated), Paraguay filed an action before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on April 3, 1998. Six days later, the ICJ issued an order stating that the United States “should take all measures at its disposal to ensure that Angel Francisco Breard is not executed pending the final decision in these proceedings.” 11 The Legal Adviser to the State Department brought the order to the attention of the Governor of Virginia, and in an extraordinary letter the Secretary of State personally requested the Governor to stay the execution pending the ICJ’s consideration of the case.12 Meanwhile, Breard and Paraguay had appealed their cases to the US Supreme Court. By the time the high court considered the cases, the ICJ had issued its order and Breard had been scheduled to be executed. The US government, although not a party to the actions, filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to reject the appeals. This was contemporaneous with the Secretary of State’s request to the Governor of Virginia that the execution be stayed. The Government began its argument in the Supreme Court by noting that it took seriously its obligations under the Vienna Convention; it then asserted that the Convention did not provide a remedy of nullifying state criminal convictions, that consular


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notification would in all likelihood not have changed the result, that Breard had waived the claim in any event, and that the matter should be handled state-to-state without Court intervention.13 The government further stated that the Department of State had accorded Paraguay “the traditional remedy among nations for failure of consular notification: it has investigated the facts, determined there was a breach, formally apologized on behalf of the United States, and undertaken to improve compliance.”14 This “remedy,” of course, provided little solace to Mr Breard. The Supreme Court denied the appeals. In a brief opinion, it held that Breard had defaulted his claim (assuming he had one); and even if the claim had been timely raised, it was “extremely doubtful” that the violation should result in overturning the conviction. The Court noted that “it is unfortunate that this matter comes before us while proceedings are pending before the ICJ that might have been brought to that court earlier.” 15 Nonetheless, it concluded that Breard was not entitled to a remedy from US courts. The Court duly noted Secretary Albright’s letter to the Governor of Virginia and closed by saying: “If the Governor wishes to wait for the decision of the ICJ, that is his prerogative. But nothing in our existing case law allows us to make that choice for him.” 16 The Governor did not wish to wait. He told the press: “As governor of Virginia, it is my first duty to ensure that those who reside within our borders – both American citizens and foreign nationals – may conduct their lives free from the fear of crime . . . . In this case Mr. Breard received all of the procedural safeguards that any American citizen would receive.” Delaying the execution “would have the practical effect of transferring responsibility from the courts of the Commonwealth and the United States to the International Court.”17 So Breard was put to death on the day the Supreme Court issued its opinion, and just five days after the ICJ order requesting a stay. There are different ways to read this narrative pertinent to the postnational claim. At first glance, the story is a flat denial of the claim: here a state had violated international law and then ignored an order of the international court, producing the gravest of consequences – execution of a human being. The federal government – charged with enforcing international obligations – is left pleading with one of its own subunits (Virginia) to respect the ICJ. The Governor of Virginia states that to respect international law would have been to violate his duties to the residents of Virginia, and would have actually given Breard more rights than the citizens of the United States (who cannot appeal

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to a foreign sovereign in the course of a criminal proceeding). The US government’s inability to command fidelity to international law and the Governor’s assertion that the legal claim based on international law was illegitimate and discriminatory is hardly a ringing endorsement of the postnational perspective. But arguably there is something more here. Breard did raise in the federal courts a claim grounded in international law; and the United States government did not argue in the Supreme Court that international law did not apply or had not been violated. Furthermore, the Secretary of State specifically sought to forestall the execution on the ground that proceeding with the execution in the face of the ICJ order could “be seen as a denial by the United States of the significance of international law and the Court processes.”18 These are important concessions regarding the possible trumping power of international law. On this view, Breard’s execution was not a failure to recognize international norms but rather a disagreement about their scope. But this more sanguine narrative merits closer scrutiny. What, after all, was the basis of the US government’s position that the Vienna Convention must be respected? According to the Secretary of State, the government was concerned that disrespect would have endangered US citizens abroad who themselves might seek the protection of the Convention. On this view, the international law norm affirmed in the government’s argument was not a human rights norm (it certainly was not the claim that the death penalty as practiced in the United States violates human rights law) but rather a means by which sovereign states order their affairs and protect their citizens in the pursuit of state interests. The Breard case does not “disprove” the postnational claim. But it is powerful testimony on the extent to which rights remain nationally based and defined; and even those rights whose source is a “transnational community” frequently represent national interests more than the rights of personhood. To say this, however, is not to accept the nationalist claim – that rights and privileges are extended only to full members (i.e., citizens) of the American polity. Rather, American practice has long extended rights and privileges to non-nationals residing on US territory. The Bill of Rights ostentatiously fails to apply its protections solely to citizens. It uses the words “person” or “the people” or other terms not tied to citizenship, such as “the accused,” to define the beneficiaries of protection. The Supreme Court has regularly affirmed that most of the Constitution’s protections extend to non-citizens.19 After a careful examination of the


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role of citizenship in the American conception of rights and constitutionalism, Alexander Bickel has concluded: I find it gratifying .. .that we live under a Constitution to which the concept of citizenship matters very little, that prescribes decencies and wise modalities of government quite without regard to the concept of citizenship. It subsumes important obligations and functions of the individual which have other sources – moral, political, and traditional – sources more complex than the simple contractarian notion of citizenship. 20 While this constitutional tradition casts a long shadow on the nationalist claim, it does not lend support to the postnational claim because these rights and privileges find their source in national documents and institutions. Soysal is correct to note that “[o]riginally individual rights were defined and codified within schemes of national citizenship.” 21 The Declaration of Independence affirmed as “self-evident” the proposition that “all men are.. .endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” But her claim that “[t]oday . . . individual rights [are] expansively redefined as human rights on a universalistic basis and legitimized at the transnational level”22 does not seem applicable to the United States. The rights of non-citizens are primarily based directly on the US Constitution or statutory law. I say primarily because international law – both treaty law and customary law – does play a role in the US legal system. The Constitution declares that “all Treaties made . . . under the Authority of the United States shall be the supreme Law of the Land”;23 and federal courts stand ready to enforce treaty rights against state and private action. But to be enforceable in court, such treaties must be “self-executing” or Congress must have adopted legislation that makes the treaties applicable in US courts. Human rights treaties are rarely held to be self-executing, and Congress in recent years has not chosen to make them enforceable in federal courts. 24 US ratifications of human rights conventions have been accompanied by express declarations that state (1) that the convention is not self-executing, 25 and (2) that the US accepts no obligations under the convention beyond protections already afforded by US constitutional and statutory law.26 As a result, as Thomas Burgenthal has noted, “it is becoming more and more difficult in the United States fully to transform international human rights obligations into directly applicable domestic law” – a trend that runs counter to developments in other Western states.27

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Customary international law is potentially a source of human rights protection in domestic US courts. Supreme Court decisions in the past appeared to provide generous reception of international law. Nearly a century ago, the Court ruled that: International Law is part of our law, and must be ascertained and administered by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction, as often as questions of right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination. For this purpose where there is no treaty, and no controlling executive or legislative act or judicial decision, resort must be had to the customs and usages of civilized nations . . . 28 Furthermore, the Court has applied a general intepretive norm, dating from an 1804 decision by Chief Justice Marshall, that “an act of Congress ought never to be construed to violate the law of nations if any other possible construction remains.”29 But in modern times courts have rarely concluded that international human rights norms are applicable or binding as a formal legal matter, particularly when they conflict with statutory law. 30 Soysal and Jacobson are correct to suggest that international human rights law claims have generally arisen in cases involving non-nationals. In the US context this is so because the Supreme Court has not applied general constitutional norms to most immigration regulation. 31 So from time to time non-citizens have sought to invoke international human rights protections in challenges to US immigration policies. These cases have raised claims regarding, for example, conditions of detention, 32 forcible abduction of non-citizens outside the US for trial in the US, 33 and refugee protection.34 But such claims have generally not received sympathetic treatment by the courts. Indeed, as Professor Jordan Paust has noted, the modern approach of denying the applicability of customary international law has received its strongest statement in cases involving aliens – a development that turns the postnational claim on its head.35 An example is a case involving Cuban nationals in the US who had been convicted of criminal offenses and whom the United States sought to deport to Cuba at the end of their terms of incarceration. Cuba would not accept their return, so they had spent a number of years in INS detention. The Cuban nationals claimed that their long-term detention by INS violated customary international human rights law. But a federal court of appeals rejected the claim, agreeing with several other courts of appeals that had ruled in similar circumstances that “international law is not


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controlling because federal executive, legislative, and judicial actions supersede the application of these principles of international law.” 36 A notable exception to the argument that international human rights norms are of limited utility in US courts involves claims brought under the Alien Tort Claim Act (ACTA).37 This statute, enacted in 1789, grants federal district courts jurisdiction to hear civil cases brought by an alien for “a tort . . . committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” The statute lay dormant for almost two centuries until the watershed case of Filartiga v. Pena-Irala.38 In that case, Dr Filartiga and his daughter – citizens of Paraguay living in the United States – brought a damage action against Pena-Irala, who had been Inspector General of Police in Asuncion, Paraguay and was then present in the United States. The Filartigas alleged that the police had kidnapped and tortured to death Filartiga’s 17-year-old son in retaliation for Filartiga’s political activities. The court held that the “law of nations” included customary international law and that official torture, under modern standards, violated customary international law. Thus the court permitted the case to proceed, concluding that “[o]ur holding today, giving effect to a jurisdictional provision enacted by our First Congress, is a small but important step in the fulfillment of the ageless dream to free all people from brutal violence.”39 Filartiga was viewed by many scholars as a breakthrough in the application of human rights norms in domestic cases. 40 But the extravagant hopes have largely gone unfulfilled.41 Courts have been hesitant to declare most international human rights part of an enforceable customary international law.42 More importantly, it is not obvious how the Filartiga case advances the postnational claim. The case involved a suit by a noncitizen against a non-citizen for events that happened outside the United States. The fact that a federal court permitted the lawsuit to proceed says little about the basis of legitimacy of the American state vis-à-vis its treatment of residents of its territory. In sum, non-citizens enjoy a wide array of constitutional and statutory rights in the United States that are frequently asserted in US courts. But international human rights law plays, at best, a limited role in the protection of the rights of persons – aliens or citizens – in the United States. The controversy surrounding California’s Proposition 187 nicely illustrates the point. Frustrated by years of lax federal enforcement, concerned about rising welfare and education costs, and worried about the race and ethnicity of immigrants, the people of California adopted the Proposition on November 9, 1994, with the intent of deterring the

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entry and residence of undocumented aliens in the state. The provisions of the Proposition barred undocumented migrants from public schools (in direct contravention of a Supreme Court decision 43), prohibited them from receiving most forms of social welfare, and mandated that state law enforcement officers, teachers, doctors, and other social workers notify the Immigration and Naturalization Service if they believed a person to be in the United States illegally. Opponents strenuously objected to nativist and racist statements made in support of Proposition 187. 44 Some immigrant groups and religious organizations argued that the measure violated notions of human dignity and constituted unjust treatment of undocumented migrants. But this was not a position pressed by most of the opponents.45 And in the ensuing litigation challenging Proposition 187, human rights talk was nowhere to be found. Rather, the lawyers appealed to traditional constitutional grounds of equal protection and federal pre-emption and persuaded a court to issue an injunction preventing the Proposition’s implementation.46 One answer to the argument made in this section is that in focusing on the enforceability of legal norms, I have missed the discursive power of human rights talk – in terms of constituting political movements and motivating government action.47 Harold Koh,48 for example, provides ample evidence of this in his discussion of the Alvarez-Machain case.49 In that case, the Supreme Court had held that Alvarez-Machain’s forced abduction from Mexican territory by US agents did not divest US courts of jurisdiction to try him. The decision prompted severe criticism, triggering congressional hearings, a Department of Justice review of procedures, and OAS and UN opinions that the conduct violated international law. Alvarez-Machain was acquitted of the criminal charges, and thereafter filed a civil suit against the federal officers who had kidnapped him. Eventually, the US and Mexico reached an agreement to amend their extradition treaty to prohibit trans-border kidnapping. 50 Other examples of NGO reports, press conferences, and public demonstrations abound. Of particular note is the release of an Amnesty International report in October 1998 on human rights abuses in the United States. The Amnesty report does not simply focus on the treatment of non-citizens (although it devotes more than a few pages to those issues). It condemns police brutality, prison conditions, and the death penalty as a violation of the human rights of American citizens. 51 While these examples are well known and significant in terms of shaping public perceptions and, sometimes, government conduct, they are still a far way from proving the postnational claim that the legitimacy


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of the state is now conceived of in terms of its respect for international human rights. Perhaps the Breard case shows that the federal government takes seriously its international law obligations, even if it was unable to persuade the governor of Virginia to take seriously an order from the International Court of Justice. But respect for international law is not the same as a shift in the basis of state legitimacy. Indeed, if anything, the Breard case appears to demonstrate the dominance of nationally based legal norms (which, as has been described, include protections for aliens) over international standards and processes.

The claim of deterritorialized membership In the preceding section, I have suggested that non-citizens receive significant rights protections based on domestic legal sources. These protections apply to aliens present in the United States. 52 Furthermore, permanent resident aliens (“greencard holders”) are generally protected by federal and state labor and health laws and are eligible for a wide array of social programs in the United States (although they were excluded from means-tested programs by the 1996 immigration legislation, described below). Thus, the membership rights of aliens under US law are largely territorially based.53 This is surely a broader conception of rights than the citizens-only view of the nationalist model, but it does not fit easily with the “deterritorialized” membership claims of the postnational perspective. As Soysal notes, Tomas Hammar and others have referred to this territorially based membership model as “denizenship.” 54 But she suggests that this concept, which “remain[s] within the confines of the nationstate model,” is an inadequate description: [T]he incorporation of guestworkers is no mere expansion of the scope of national citizenship, nor is it an irregularity. Rather, it reveals a profound transformation in the institution of citizenship, both in its institutional logic and the way it is legitimated. To locate the changes, we need to go beyond the nation-state.55 Again, from the national perspective, it is true that the extension of rights to non-citizens represents a fundamental shift in approach. But the “incorporation” of immigrants in terms of membership rights has been and continues to be the rule – the logic, if you will – of the American membership system. At least since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, immigrants have been protected by the Constitution and

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federal laws against unfriendly state regulation. And the welfare state established in the twentieth century had generally been understood to benefit lawful immigrants as well as citizens56 – at least until the round of anti-immigrant legislation enacted in the mid-1990s. Indeed, that legislation, disentitling lawful immigrants from most means-tested social programs, shows that if any movement is taking place in US membership models, it is a drift more towards the nationalist model than towards the postnational model. 57 Soysal recognizes that the politics in Western states in the 1990s seems to run counter to the postnational claim. 58 She argues that: [t]hese seemingly paradoxical affinities articulate an underlying dialectic of the postwar global system: While nation-states and their boundaries are reified through assertions of border controls and appeals to nationhood, a new mode of membership, anchored in the universalistic rights of personhood, transgresses the national order of things.59 She further notes that the national order of things is also destabilized by sub-national groups asserting “nationhood.” Together these “recontextualizations of ‘nationness’ within the universalistic discourse of human rights” are said to “blur the meanings and boundaries attached to the nation and the nation-state.” 60 There is much to this description. The boundaries of nation and nation-state are blurring to some degree, and the reassertion of aggressive nationalism may well, in part, be a response to challenges to the state from above and below, an increase in dual nationality, and diasporic politics played by governments of “sending” countries. But it is difficult to describe developments in the United States as a reaction to the pressure of human rights discourse. Rather, the controversy in the United States plays out largely in terms of multiculturalism and assimilationism, fractionalization and unity. This is a fight that goes on primarily among native (citizen) groups, although immigration is commonly alleged to contribute to the “balkanization” of America. Thus rightwing politics stresses a revaluation of citizenship as a way to command assimilation to a common (read: Anglo/white) culture, attempting to redefine the American model of membership from denizenship to citizenship. Notions of personhood play a role in the resistance to such a move; but it is a personhood rooted in and protected by constitutional norms and American traditions, not an international human rights regime.


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Postnational Americans? The blurring of borders may occur at the individual as well as the state level, producing a sort of postmodern malaise of unrootedness and “ambiguously identified” persons. 61 “In immigrant societies,” Michael Walzer writes, “. . . people have begun to experience what we might think of as a life without clear boundaries and without secure or singular identities.”62 Frequent movement across borders or the existence of communities with a continual flood of newcomers may challenge the creation of stable, rooted associations. Individuals may end up living in what is in effect a transnational community, one that straddles two worlds but is at home in neither; or they may find no community at all, being simply the sum of their own particularistic circumstances, attachments and proclivities. Do these bleak depictions accurately capture the (admittedly complicated) nature of modern identities? It is certainly true that many (most) of us have multiple attachments and many of these attachments cross national borders. It is not obvious, however, that this state of affairs produces anomie or a postmodern neurosis. On the contrary, it appears that human beings are rather adept at living in more than one world, bringing the insights of one to bear on another, or compartmentalizing their lives into separate spheres. Let me give an example. About a year ago, friends of mine traveled to Russia to adopt a Russian baby in an orphanage. They brought the baby home, and soon thereafter had a ceremony in their home. It was a double ceremony, commemorating her entry into two communities: membership in the Jewish people and citizenship in the US. The first ceremony (brit habat) was presided over by a rabbi, who noted that in recent years Jewish parents of daughters felt the need for a ceremony similar to the traditional brit milah (ritual circumcision) accorded Jewish boys. Brit translates as “covenant;” the ceremony signifies entry into the Jewish community and the taking on of the responsibilities that that entails. So the baby was blessed and given a Jewish name – named after a number of ancestors of the parents, some of whom had come to the US from Russia several generations before. Then a second ceremony began. The US Commissioner for Immigration, a friend of the parents, performed a naturalization ceremony, making the baby a citizen of the US. Said the Commissioner to the baby: the naturalization oath is like making a promise, a promise to be loyal to this country and obey her laws. In return, America promises

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to welcome you as an equal member of the whole family of American citizens who enjoy the freedoms, rights, privileges and protections of the Constitution and the laws of this great land. The baby was asked to raise her right hand and repeat the following words (she clasped a tiny American flag in her left): “I will love and be true to the United States; I will support its Constitution; Obey its laws; Respect its flag; and defend it against all enemies.” Here were two ceremonies, two covenants, two different kinds of extended family created at the same time. The example, I think, shows that the opposite of a single, fixed identity is not necessarily a loss of bearings or radical personal confusion. The two identities – Jew and US citizen – are deeply significant to their relevant communities; but the assembled family and friends did not see a contradiction (or even a tension) between them. Rather, there was a sense of double rootedness, a sense of the strengthening of individual identity by making it “thicker.”

The future? The future is likely to look like the present, only more so. Immigration to the United States is likely to remain at or around record levels; crossborder ties among immigrant and ethnic groups will continue to flourish; the number of dual citizens will continue to increase; foreign states will increasingly seek to influence or respond to their diasporas present in the United States. Immigration will have a significant impact on US demographics, pushing Hispanics ahead of African-Americans as the largest minority group in the near future and more than doubling the Asian American population over the next half century. These trends may appear troubling to some, portending a further weakening of US sovereignty and an undermining of a cohesive citizenship. But I think the nation-state (at least the American nation-state) is not at risk. Rather than witnessing the dawning of a postnational era, we are more likely to see the growth of what I will term “inter-nationalism.” By this I mean a thickening of relations between domestic and foreign populations (through immigration, dual nationality, freer trade and travel, the communications revolution) that will occur within the regime of nation-states. States will remain the primary locus of law – including international law, which will be enforced through national legal organs. My concept of inter-nationalism is to some degree analogous to Anne-Marie Slaughter’s theory of “transgovernmentalism.”63 She contrasts transgovernmentalism with the models of liberal internationalists


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(who see the rise of world government, with centralized rulemaking, hierarchical authority, universal membership) and, to use her term, the “new medievalists” (who see an end of the nation-state, stressing the rise of supra-, sub- and non-state actors). Slaughter’s transgovernmentalism recognizes the continuing primacy of states, but sees states as “disaggregating into [their] separate, functionally distinct parts” – courts, regulatory agencies, executive departments – that “network . . . with their counterparts abroad, creating a dense web of relations that constitutes a new, transgovernmental order.” 64 Inter-nationalism points to similar cross-border relations on the personal level. The resulting “dense web of [human] relations” is likely to have important implications for states, some welcomed and others not. On the positive side, such ties may foster trade and commerce, may support diversity in the arts, cuisine and ideas, may reduce international tensions by increasing contact and understanding. Inter-nationalism is also likely to give strength to claims for recognizing the rights of immigrants, as insider/outsider lines become less clear and states come to recognize that they are both senders and receivers of immigrants. 65 Less helpfully, a thickening of ties among cross-border populations can create tensions between states. For example, states may be concerned about dual citizens voting in two countries, or may seek to act to protect the interests of their nationals residing in other states. Resolving such issues will require state-to-state negotiation and coordination, and perhaps the establishment of international norms and new supranational arrangements. While international human rights may play a significant role in these developments – fostering both domestic and international rights talk – there is little reason to believe that the traditional basis for state legitimacy is, or will be, shifting. Neither transgovernmentalism nor inter-nationalism suggests the need for new models of legitimacy or membership. Governmental powers and individual rights may continue to be articulated within a national structure, even as those structures adapt to thicker cross-national relations. Inter-nationalism is likely to produce two policy strategies in the United States. Those on the right will increase their demands that immigrants “go national”; thus, they will push an anti-multicultural, anti-bilingual education agenda and perhaps seek to stem increases in levels of dual nationality. Those on the left will urge new incorporation programs, such as English and job training, and will support stronger anti-discrimination measures. Ethnic communities in the United States are likely to push for greater rights for co-ethnic immigrant populations

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here. Importantly, none of these strategies represents a “national” or “postnational” model. The basis of individual rights – which will continue to extend to resident aliens – will be presence in US territory, and the definition of those rights will be found in domestic legal documents. On the personal level, individuals will not see themselves as citizens of the world or as citizens of only their own solipsistic private domains – although they may well affirm ties to several communities (including, perhaps, more than one national community). Inter-nationalism means that these relationships will be structured within the regime of states; and indeed such relationships may put pressure on that regime to be more open to plurality and movement across borders. To return to the conversion/naturalization narrative, it appears that dual, overlapping memberships are possible and can be mutually supporting. Thus, there is nothing inevitable about either the hopelessness of postmodernism or the out-of-state experience of postnationality. Put another way, to be bilingual is neither to speak Esperanto nor a private language that no one else can understand. The future may not be a postnational world, but it will be a rich one, full of interesting and complicated relations in which states will remain the primary authorities.

Notes This chapter first appeared in Michigan Journal of Race and Law, (1999) 4(2), 241–62. 1 See Yasemin Nuhoglu Soysal, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994) 12. See also David Jacobson, Rights Across Borders: Immigration and the Decline of Citizenship (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) 2–3. 2 See Jacobson, n. 1 above, at 2–3: In the Euro-Atlantic core of the world order, in North America and Western Europe, the basis of state legitimacy is shifting from principles of sovereignty and national self-determination to international human rights. Increasingly, territorially delimited nations are not the only carriers of “universal humanity.” All residents, noncitizens as well as citizens, can claim their human rights. In this process the state is becoming less constituted by “the people” while becoming increasingly constituted by international human rights codes and institutions. The state is becoming less a sovereign agent and more an institutional forum for a larger international and constitutional order based on human rights. 3 Soysal, n. 1 above, at 166. 4 See Tomas Hammar, Democracy and the Nation State: Aliens, Denizens and Citizens in a World of International Migration (Aldershot: Avebury, 1990) 106–24; Rainer Bauböck, Transnational Citizenship: Membership and Rights in International Migration (Aldershot: Edward Elgar 1994) 65.


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5 Soering v. United Kingdom, 161 Eur. Ct. H.R. (ser. A) (1989) (Court held that “death row phenonemon” – i.e., long wait and uncertainty of punishment – violated Convention’s protection against inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment). See also The Netherlands v. Short, HR 30 March 1990, NJ 249 (A.H.J. Swart) (denying extradition request by US for trial of US serviceman who killed his wife in the Netherlands to prevent defendant’s possible exposure to death penalty). For a discussion on human rights and extradition, see John Dugard and Christine Van Den Wyngaert, Reconciling Extradition with Human Rights, 92 Am. J. Int’l L. 187 (1998). 6 See UN Doc. E/CN.4/68/1998/Add.3., 22 January 1998, para. 148, cited in Amnesty International, United States of America Rights For All 120 (1998). See also Report of the Human Rights Committee, Official Records of the General Assembly, Fiftieth Sess., Supp. No. 40 (A/50/40) para. 266–304 (deploring the expansion of the death penalty at the federal level, and continued prevalence at the state level). 7 See Amnesty International, n. 6 above, at 99 (1998) (“International human rights standards seek to restrict the scope of the death penalty. They forbid its use against juvenile offenders, see it as an unacceptable punishment for the mentally impaired, and demand the highest legal safeguards for all capital trials. The USA fails to meet these minimum standards on all counts.”). 8 For a case in which such a claim was raised – and failed – see State v. Steffen, 1994 WL 176906, *4, *10 (Ohio App. 1994). There the court stated: In his fourth claim for relief, Steffen contended that his convictions and sentences were void or voidable because the Ohio death penalty is in violation of international law. Specifically, Steffen cited Articles 1, 2, 18, 25 and 26 of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, to which the United States is a signatory. We have reviewed the various provisions of the American Declaration to which Steffen referred and find that the record does not demonstrate their violation. We note, moreover, that Steffen has presented absolutely no evidence and made no colorable argument supported by precedent from any human rights forum that his arrest, incarceration, trial and sentence violated international human rights norms to which the United States is bound either by customary international law, i.e., rights having acquired the status of jus cogens, or treaty. The trial court’s dismissal of Steffen’s fourth claim for relief was thus appropriate. Ibid. at *4. 9 See Breard v. Greene, 118 S.Ct. 1352, 1354 (1998). 10 See ibid. at 1354. See also Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908) (allowing exception to 11th Amendment for continuing violation of federal law). 11 See Breard, 118 S.Ct. 1352, 1354 (1998). 12 See Letter from Madeleine K. Albright, The Secretary of State, to James S. Gilmore III, Governor of Virginia (April 13, 1998). 13 See Brief for the United States as Amicus Curiae at 12–13, Breard v. Greene, 118 S.Ct. 1352 (1998) (Nos. 97–1390 & 97–8214). 14 Ibid. at 13. 15 See Breard, 118 S.Ct. at 1356.

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16 Ibid. 17 See Brooke A. Masters and Joan Biskupic, “Killer Executed Despite Pleas: World Tribunal, State Department Had Urged Delay,” Washington Post, April 15, 1998, at B1. 18 See Letter from Madeleine K. Albright, n. 12 above. 19 See T. Alexander Aleinikoff, “The Tightening Circle of Membership,” 22 Hastings Const. L. Q. 915, 918–19 (1995). See also Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U.S. 228, 238 (1896) (Fifth Amendment protection for non-citizens); United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873 (1975) (Fourth Amendment protection for non-citizens). 20 Alexander M. Bickel, The Morality of Consent (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975) 53–54. 21 See Soysal, n. 1 above, at 164. 22 Ibid. 23 US Const. Art. VI, § 2. 24 See Nadine Strossen, “Recent U.S. and International Judicial Protection of Individual Rights: A Comparative Legal Process Analysis and Proposed Synthesis,” 41 Hastings L. J. 805, 813 (1990); Sei Fujii v. California, 38 Cal.2d 718 (1952) (UN Charter not self-executing, and therefore not binding on the court); United States v. Aguilar, 883 F.2d 662, 680 (9th Cir. 1989), cert. denied, 498 US 1046 (1991) (Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees not self-executing); Bertrand v. Sava, 684 F.2d 204, 218–19 (2d Cir. 1982) (same). On meaning of self-execution, see Carlos Manuel Vazquez, “The Four Doctrines of Self-Executing Treaties,” 89 Am. J. Int’l L. 695 (1995). 25 See, e.g., 136 Cong. Rec. S17486-01; S17491 (Oct. 27, 1990) (stating that the provisions of United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment are not self-executing); 138 Cong.Rec. S4781-01, S4783 (stating that ICCPR is not self-executing). 26 See, e.g., Ratification statement regarding Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, 140 Cong. Rec. S7634-02 ( June 24, 1994); United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment, 136 Cong. Rec. S17491 (Oct. 27, 1990) (“The United States considers itself bound . . . only insofar as the term ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’ means the cruel, unusual, and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and/or Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.”). A 1993 Human Rights Watch and American Civil Liberties Union report on US compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights concluded that the US declarations, reservations and understandings to the Convention rendered ratification “an empty act for Americans: the endorsement of the most important treaty for the protection of civil rights yielded not a single additional enforceable right to citizens and residents of the United States.” Human Rights Watch and American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Violations in the United States: A Report on US Compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 2 (1993), quoted in Nkechi Taifa, “Codification or Castration? The Applicability of the International Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Racial Discrimination to the US Criminal Justice System,” 40 How. L.J. 641, 653 (1997).


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27 Thomas Burgenthal, “Modern Constitutions and Human Rights Treaties,” 36 Colum. J. Transnat’l L. 211 (1997). See Louis Henkin, “US Ratification of Human Rights Conventions: The Ghost of Senator Bricker,” 89 Am. J. Int’l. L. 341 (1995). Treaties have had greater influence in aiding the interpretation of statutes. See Curtis A. Bradley, “The Charming Betsy Canon and Separation of Powers: Rethinking the Interpretive Role of International Law,” 86 Geo. L.J. 479, 495–97 (1998). 28 The Paquette Habana, 175 U.S. 677, 700 (1900). 29 Murray v. The Schooner Charming Betsy, 6 U.S. (2 Cranch) 64, 118 (1804). 30 See, e.g., Bertrand v. Sava, 684 F.2d 204, 218–19 (2d. Cir. 1982). For some rare examples in domestic areas where international human rights norms have been held applicable, see Jama v. U.S.I.N.S., 1198 U.S.Dist. LEXIS 15454 (D.N.J. Oct. 1, 1998) (permitting suit against INS officials based on customary international law); Fernandez v. Wilkinson, 505 F.Supp. 787 (D.Kan. 1980). The most important example, discussed below, is Filartiga v. Pena-Irala, 630 F.2d 876 (2d Cir. 1980) (permitting suit by Paraguayans in the United States against their torturer under 1789 Alien Torts Claim Act for violation of customary international law condemning torture). 31 See T. Alexander Aleinikoff, “Federal Regulation of Aliens and the Constitution,” 83 Am. J. Int’l L. 862 (1989). 32 See Jama v. USINS, 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 15454 (D.N.J. Oct. 1, 1998); Fernandez v. Wilkinson, 505 F.Supp. 787 (D.Kan. 1980). 33 See United States v. Alvarez-Machain, 504 U.S. 655 (1992). 34 See Sale v. Haitian Centers Council, Inc., 509 U.S. 155 (1993). See also United Mexican States v. Woods, 126 F.3d 1220 (9th Cir. 1997) (criminal conviction of Mexican national for murder challenged for violation of Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, violation of Bilateral Consular Convention, and a violation of ICCPR). 35 See Jordan J. Paust, “Customary International Law in the United States: Clean and Dirty Laundry,” 40 German Yrbk. of Int’l L. 78 (1998). 36 Gisbert v. United States Attorney General, 988 F.2d 1437, 1447–48, amended, 997 F.2d 1122 (5th Cir. 1993). See Galo-Garcia v. INS, 86 F.3d 916, 918 (9th Cir. 1996) (customary international law regarding safe haven inapplicable in proceeding before US immigration authorities, given comprehensive federal scheme of regulation). For a lower court case willing to apply customary international law in immigration proceedings, see Caballero v. Caplinger, 914 F. Supp. 1374, 1379 (E.D. La. 1996) (using international law against arbitrary detentions to interpret Constitution to prohibit indefinite detention of aliens). 37 See 28 U.S.C. § 1350. 38 630 F.2d 876 (2d Cir. 1980). 39 Ibid. at 890. 40 See, e.g., Richard B. Lillich, “Invoking International Human Rights Law in Domestic Courts,” 54 U. Cin. L.R. 367 (1985). 41 See Strossen, n. 24 above, at 822: “Despite some predictions that Filartiga heralded a trend toward wholesale domestic incorporation of customary international human rights law, that development has not yet materialized.” (Footnotes omitted.)

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42 See, e.g., Jean v. Nelson, 727 F.2d 957, 964 n.4 (11th Cir. 1984); Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, 726 F.2d 774, 795–96 (D.C.Cir. 1984) (court rejected a claim based on international common law brought by survivors of an attack on a bus by members of the PLO; the violation of international common law did not provide a cause of action). In an important development, a district court has permitted a case to proceed under the ACTA brought by alien detainees against INS officials for cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. See Jama v. USINS, 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 15454 (Oct. 1, 1998). The court dismissed a claim against the INS on grounds of sovereign immunity, but it let the case go ahead against individual INS officers. The case is significant because it is use of the ACTA against the federal government, not a foreign official. It remains to be seen whether it will survive on appeal. 43 See Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982). 44 See Kevin R. Johnson, “An Essay on Immigration Politics, Popular Democracy, and California’s Proposition 187: The Political Relevance and Legal Irrelevance of Race,” 70 Wash. L. Rev. 629 (1995). 45 See Linda Bosniak, “Opposing Prop. 187: Undocumented Immigrants and the National Imagination,” 28 Conn. L. Rev. 555, 567–69 (1996). 46 See LULAC v. Wilson, 908 F.Supp. 755 (C.D. Calif. 1995); LULAC v. Wilson, 997 F.Supp. 1244 (C.D. Cal. 1997). 47 Furthermore, the fact that a treaty is not self-executing means primarily that it is not enforceable in courts. Under international law, a duly ratified treaty is binding on the executive branch. Thus, although the Torture Convention is a non-self-executing treaty, the Department of Justice has recognized that it is bound by its provisions prohibiting return of person to country where he or she is likely to be tortured. See 62 Fed. Reg. 10,312, 10,316 (1997); Office of Gen. Counsel memo, May 14, 1997, reprinted in 75 Interp. Rel. 375 (Mar. 16, 1998). 48 See Harold Hongju Koh, “The ‘Haiti Paradigm’ in United States Human Rights Policy,” 103 Yale L.J. 2391 (1994). 49 504 U.S. 655 (1992). 50 See Koh, n. 49 above, at 2405–406. 51 See Amnesty International, n. 6 above (1998). 52 See United States v. Balsys, 119 F.3d 122 (2d Cir. 1997); Gerald L. Neuman, Strangers to the Constitution: Immigrants, Borders, and Fundamental Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). 53 Perhaps the high-water mark of protection of resident aliens is Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982)(Texas law barring resident undocumented children from public schools violates equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment). 54 Soysal, n. 1 above, at 138–39. See Hammar, n. 4 above, at 135–47; William Rogers Brubaker, “Membership without Citizenship: The Economic and Social Rights of Noncitizens”, in: Immigration and the Politics of Citizenship in Europe and North America (William R. Brubaker ed.) (Lanham: University Press of America, 1989). See also Bauböck, n. 4 above, at 65. 55 See Soysal, n. 1 above, at 139. 56 See Graham v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 365 (1971). 57 See Aleinikoff, “Tightening Circle of Membership”, n. 19 above.

Between National and Postnational 58 59 60 61 62 63

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See Soysal, n. 1 above, at 156. Ibid. at 159. Ibid. at 162. See Michael Walzer, On Toleration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997) 87. Ibid. See Anne-Marie Slaughter, “The Real New World Order,” Foreign Affairs, September–October 1997, at 183, 184. 64 Ibid. at 184. 65 See Bauböck, n. 4 above, at 65.


Part II Immigrants between Assimilation and Transnationalism


6 Immigrant Transnationalism and Assimilation: A Variety of Combinations and the Analytic Strategy it Suggests Ewa Morawska

Studies of the “new transnationalism” and the assimilation of immigrants and their children into the host society – the two major concerns informing American studies of immigration and ethnicity since the early 1990s – have developed parallel to rather than in a dialogue with each other. In the prevailing view the development of “transnational spaces” as the habitat of contemporary immigrants either deanchors them from both sender and receiver societies or produces “bifocal” identities and commitments – an in-vogue but vague concept in need of empirical testing. (See, e.g., Vertovec and Cohen 1999; Kearney 1995 for the former approach and Rouse 1992; Portes 1999 for the latter.) The few empirical studies that recognize both home- and host-country engagements of immigrants focus on one of these developments without examining its relationship with the other. (For recent exceptions to this tendency that may signal a “turn” toward simultaneous treatment of these two phenomena, see Waters 1999; Levitt 2001; Faist 2000; Pessar and Graham forthcoming.) I argue that transnational involvements of immigrants and their children and their assimilation into the host society typically are concurrent. Different constellations of macro- and micro-level circumstances produce different varieties of transnationalism-with-assimilation combinations. These claims are illustrated by a comparative examination of five empirical cases representing different contexts and combinations of transnational involvements and assimilation (T/A) in the lives of 133

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immigrants in the contemporary United States and an overview of the variations “practiced” by their American-born children. The purpose of this analysis is to initiate theoretically informed, comparative investigations of various forms and social contingencies of the relationship between transnational and local, in this case, host-country identities and commitments of contemporary immigrants not only in the United States but also in Europe where research devoted to the adaptation of millions of new immigrants has only recently become a recognized scholarly pursuit (see Faist 2000 for a different execution of a similar project). The main concepts informing this discussion, which are assigned different meanings in immigration studies, require clarification. Transnationalism denotes sustained regular or situationally mobilized involvements of immigrants and their children in a few or several economic, political, social, and cultural (symbolic and material) affairs of their home countries at different, national or local (households, informal communities, institutions) levels. (For a similar understanding of transnationalism and a review of literature on this issue, see Portes et al. 1999; also Faist 2000; Kivisto 2001; Cordero-Guzman et al. 2001, Introduction.) Assimilation is likewise a multipath process involving the incorporation of immigrants and their offspring into the economic, political and social institutions, and culture of different segments of the host society: mainstream middle- and rising lower class (so-called upward assimilation), struggling lower- and underclass (downward assimilation), or immigrant/ethnic enclave (also called adhesive [Hurh and Kim 1984] assimilation, which can also follow the intragroup middle- or lower-class pattern). Depending on the circumstances in which particular groups find themselves, their assimilation – both mainstream (upward or downward) and ethnic-community (adhesive) – contains different proportions and constellations of economic, political, and sociocultural orientations and practices transplanted from the home country and shaped by the receiver society. In each mode the process of assimilation evolves in a context-contingent and, thus, nonlinear and multipace fashion. (For a similar understanding of the assimilation process, see Gans 1997; Rumbaut 1997; for a review of the recent literature on this issue see Morawska forthcoming.) The term ethnic is used in this discussion with two meanings: to refer to an immigrant-community intragroup mode of assimilation and to social relations and cultural involvement with and/or political participation on behalf of fellow immigrants/ethnics in the receiver society. More than 100 studies of transnational engagements and integration into the host society of contemporary immigrants and their children in

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the United States, including sociodemographic and opinion survey analyses and ethnographic studies, have been the source base of this analysis. To get a clearer insight into the issues of particular concern for my project, such as the constellations of factors responsible for specific “compositions” of transnationalism and mainstream or intragroup ethnic assimilation of immigrants and their children, I contacted 18 authors of the studies I examined (see the appendix). When compiling the information on particular cases – groups illustrating a variant of transnationalism cum assimilation, I applied the criterion of “saturation” used by ethnographers: when additional readings ceased to bring new or different insights and my author-informers did not suggest new research venues, I closed the case file. Although satisfactory as a rule of thumb when the information-gathering net, like this one, has been cast wide, this method of collecting evidence does not produce representative samples; surely many more T/A variations have been left unexamined. Because of space constraints, only a few of the cases I examined are presented here, selected to emphasize the context-dependent, polymorphic nature of the concomitance of transnationalism and assimilation. (Other cases that represent variants similar to those presented here and relevant bibliographic sources are identified in the notes.) In the remainder of this chapter I first consider some more and less common variations of transnationalism cum assimilation in the immigrant generation and the constellations of circumstances that generate them, then the main T/A variations among immigrants’ native-born American children. In the conclusion, I propose a multistep research strategy to explore further this diversity and, next, to identify the common patterns of T/A coexistence and divergence.

The immigrant generation The first three T/A variations – quite common, as studies indicate, among non-white new immigrants located at the opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum in the American stratification system – are examined via examples of highly educated, middle-class Asian Indians in the United States and lower-class Dominican and upwardly mobile Jamaican immigrants in New York. The remaining two cases – undocumented Chinese immigrants in New York’s Chinatown and first-wave (1960s) Cuban political refugees in Miami – represent interesting but uncommon T/A forms. They are included in this discussion to emphasize the configurational, multifactor mechanisms of the dynamics of transnationalism-and-assimilation processes.

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Middle-class Asian Indians A majority, about 60 percent, of 450,000 foreign-born Asian Indians recorded in the 1990 census arrived in the United States during the 1980s, and another 30 percent during the 1970s. The same census reported more than 60 percent of Indian immigrants with college degrees and 65 percent in middle-class occupations (45 percent in professional and managerial positions and 20 percent in administrative support and sales employment). (Sheth 1997; Foner 2000; Fong 1998; Bhardwaj and Rao 1990). A constellation of economic, cultural, and political factors combined with rpid advances in communication technology has sustained multiple engagements of middle-class Indian immigrants in the affairs of their home country. Bound by traditional norms of familial obligation and loyalty strongly sanctioned in the Indian culture, immigrants in the United States maintain transnational households with their kin in the home country by sending remittances and regularly exchanging current news and making family decisions through the internet (if accessible to home-country folk), phone calls, and videos depicting family events on both sides of the world (Lessinger 1995, 2001; Ali 2000; Helweg and Helweg 1990). Although maintaining transnational households has been the primary form of transnational engagement by Indian immigrants, they have also sustained many other connections. Since the early 1980s the economic investment in India by its nationals abroad has significantly increased. It was initially a response to the liberalization by the Indian government of laws pertaining to foreign investment and, especially, to special tax incentives it offered to expatriate or, as they are officially called, Non-Resident Indians (NRIs). Over time, based on capital resources accumulated through primary-sector employment of middle-class Indian immigrants, this “investment from within the Indian immigrant community took on a life of its own” (Lessinger 1992: 55). During the late 1980s, NRIs invested some $250 million, about one-third from North America, in light industries and medical centers in India, and more than $10 billion in bonds and saving accounts issued by the State Bank of India. The introduction by the Indian government in 1999 of the “Persons of Indian Origin Card,” enabling Indians abroad to visit India without visas and to own property, further facilitated their economic involvement in the home country (Lessinger 1992; see also Shukla 1999/2000; Foner 2000). Middle-class Indian immigrants have also been reported as sustaining an intense involvement in home-country politics. In the immigrant press in America (India Abroad and News India-Times weeklies and Samar


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and Massala magazines provide information and commentary about events in India) and, increasingly, on the internet (at soc.culture.indian), the particulars of current political affairs in India are fervently discussed. Middle-class NRI organizations in America have repeatedly (but thus far unsuccessfully) petitioned the Indian government for dual citizenship, which would not only facilitate transnational capital operations of Indians living abroad but also give them voting rights and, thus, a direct influence on Indian politics (Gopalakrishnan 1989; Lessinger 1992, 2001; Mitra 1997). Middle-class Indian immigrants’ educational and capital resources – the former “imported” from the home country, the latter derived from employment in the primary sector of the American economy – make transnational economic engagements possible and greatly facilitate political involvements. Both are supported by immigrants’ strong personal identification with and commitment to India characteristic of the elites of countries in the process of modern nation-state formation. The intense emotional investment in India and availability of practical means to express it prompt immigrants to visit their home country frequently and to partake in a thriving Indian “consumer industry” in America that offers home-country food, clothing, jewelry, films, music, and cultural events. In cities with large Indian populations this industry occupies a discrete territory, such as the “Indian shopping mall” in Jackson Heights, New York (Lesinger 1995; Shukla 1999/2000; Sheth 1997; Helweg and Helweg 1990). Motivated by political, economic, and cultural interests, and the emotional commitment to “Indianness,” transnational engagements of Indian immigrants sustain, in turn, their Indian identity. It is further enhanced from the homeland by the Indian government’s appeals to immigrants to maintain a “love for their motherland” and in the host society by middle-class Indian organizations, and by immigrants and their children experiencing marginalization or open racial discrimination (Lessinger 1992, 1995; DasGupta 1997). Multiple transnational involvements have not hindered the ongoing assimilation of middle-class Indian immigrants into several areas of American life. A cluster of facilitating circumstances have contributed to this process. Interestingly, some of these factors, such as the high educational and occupational status of immigrants and deeply habituated values of hard work and achievement, have also sustained their transnational activities. In addition, “advance acculturation” of the middleclass Indians, in particular, their knowledge of English and familiarity with Western ways of business, their residential and occupational

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dispersion in the receiver country 1 and, despite an intense emotional commitment to their homeland, the absence of a “myth of return” (Jones-Correa 1998) or a social-psychological syndrome that has prevented other immigrant groups from putting down firmer roots in the host country, have all eased their incorporation into the American society (Shukla 1999/2000; Helweg and Helweg 1990; Ali 2000; DasGupta 1997; Alarcon 2000). Middle-class Indian immigrants’ integration into the host society has involved several areas with different compositions of home- and hostcountry elements. In the economic sphere this assimilation has followed the mainstream American-in-the-global-era pattern as Indian immigrants as transnational investors have forged extensive business ties with US global capitalists. In their social lives assimilation has combined mainstream and ethnic involvement. Immigrant middle-class occupations and residential dispersion have facilitated social relations with members of mainstream American society – primarily “weak ties” (Granovetter 1985) in the workplace and neighborhood (close personal friendships are mainly with fellow Indians and the rate of exogamous marriages has been about 15 percent; see Fong 1998: 227). 2 Indians’ political assimilation, too, has represented a mix of middle-class mainstream American and ethnic elements. More than 70 percent of middle-class Indian immigrants are American citizens and, through the Political Action Committee (PAC) of Asian Americans of Indian descent and other Indian-American organizations3, they have been active in mainstream political campaigns and issues concerning US-Indian relations. Their bicultural identities resemble, in Nirvana Man’s (1997: 153) metaphor, a “salad bowl” composed of a dominant Indian ingredient and other American elements, some of which the immigrants incorporate themselves and others that they absorb unselfconsciously. These selfincorporated American ingredients include evocations of the American dream: its values and realization of achievement in immigrants’ self-representations; American professional culture and other elements of American lifestyles and self-perceptions (including those concerning female identities and gender relations; see below). Other elements of the Americanization of immigrants’ demeanor and ideas, particularly self-assertiveness in body language and opinion, are noticed and commented on negatively as “different” by native Indians during NRI visits in India (Helweg and Helweg 1990; Lesinger 1992, 2001; Shukla 1999/2000; personal communication from Syed Ali, 10/1/00). The coexistence of transnational involvements and assimilation into American society in the lives of middle-class Indian immigrants is not


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without tensions, however, as continued discussions in the Indian immigrant press document the meanings of Indianness in America. Uncomplimentary comments by fellow nationals in India about the Americanization of visiting NRIs make bi-culturalism an ambivalent experience for many immigrants who cultivate their home-country ties.4 The already mentioned encounters with racial discrimination by host-country institutions, especially marginalization and “glass ceilings” experience in immigrants’ mainstream professional careers, enhance the Indian ingredient of their bicultural identities but at the same time mobilize their sense of membership in American society which they express by taking a public stance for a “just pluralism” as an ethnic group at local and national levels. Other tensions reflected in everyday lives of Indian American families have derived from conflicts in gender and intergenerational relations. Like many immigrant women from societies with patriarchical gender relations, Indian women have been reported to welcome American notions of individual autonomy and gender equality more eagerly than have men, which has caused tensions in marriages and in transnational encounters with India and its ingrained sociocultural habits. At the same time, an even greater cultural Americanization of the concept of self and personal autonomy among immigrants’ native-born American children has generated frequent intergenerational conflicts in Indian families and brought another tension into the experience of simultaneous participation in Indian and American ways of life. (On Indian women’s more rapid acculturation to the American middle-class culture of personal autonomy and gender equality and on gender and intergenerational conflicts in Indian immigrant families, see Lessinger 1995; Sheth 1997; DasGupta 1997; Gonsalves-Pinto 1997; on similar tensions in family gender relations in other immigrant groups, see Min 2001.) Lower-class Dominicans in New york A different constellation of circumstances of transnational involvement and assimilation of lower-class Dominicans with legal immigrant status in New York produces a T/A combination that differs from the middleclass Indian variant. Nearly two-thirds of 350,000 foreign-born Dominicans reported in the 1990 US Census have settled in New York. More than 50 percent immigrated to the United States in the 1980s, and about 30 percent in the 1970s. The proportion of immigrant “Dominicanyorks” (Guarnizo 1994) over 25 who did not complete high school was 55 percent in that year; 45 percent were employed in manual occupations, primarily in secondary and informal sectors of New York’s

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economy; and 30 percent lived on incomes at or below the poverty rate (In 1990, 60 percent of employed Dominican immigrants in New York worked in such niches). More than 50 percent of immigrants did not speak English at all or very little at the time of the census (Rumbaut 1996a; Grassmuck and Pessar 1991, 1996; Hernandez and Rivera-Batiz 1997; Waldinger 1996; Smith 1997; Foner 2000; Abu-Lughod 1999). In comparison with those of middle-class Indians, transnational involvements of Dominican immigrants have been more encompassing and more intense in several areas while the pace of their assimilation has been slower and had a more ethnic (adhesive or parallel) rather than mainstream character. A constellation of circumstances makes the lives of a great many Dominican immigrants intensely transnational also in a “physical” sense: an unusually high proportion, 12 percent, of the population of the Dominican Republic residing in the United States and the economic dependence of a very large number of Dominican households on the earnings of their kin in America,5 a sojourner mentality in the majority of immigrants who see their futures in their home country, and its geographic proximity to the United States allowing them to travel back and forth and to manage both parts of their households at the same time. Immigrants increasingly invest their American savings in small-scale enterprises in their hometowns and villages, often as joint ventures with family members or acquaintances there that they personally supervise through frequent visits (in comparison, among NRI investors in much more remote India, absentee owners of larger and institutionally managed enterprises are more common). Financial contributions to public projects in their hometowns or villages (church renovations, new school buildings, road repairs) and frequent visits there by Dominican immigrants sustain as well their ongoing involvement with their local communities (Guarnizo 1992; Grassmuck and Pessar 1996; Hirschman 1996; Smith 1997; Foner 2000; Levitt 2001; Portes et al. 2001). The solicitation of Dominican expatriates in America by their homecountry government has likewise been much more vigorous than in the Indian case because of the proportionately much higher numbers of Dominicans in the United States and the direct economic dependence on their earnings of a large segment of the DR’s population. In addition, immigrants living in the United States are in an excellent position to lobby for the economic and political interests of the Dominican government in its efforts to cooperate with the United States in the Republic’s development. Thus, an amendment to the DR constitution implemented in 1996 allowed Dominican immigrants to hold dual


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citizenship, including the right to vote in national elections. (The right to vote from abroad, in the DR consulates, was approved in 1997 but has not yet been implemented.) Since this constitutional change, DR political contenders have regularly come to New York to win votes and to raise funds, and major Dominican parties hold political rallies and public forums there to espouse their causes ( Jones-Correa 1998; Pessar and Graham, forthcoming). All these combined circumstances – frequent travels of Dominican immigrants between New York and the Dominican Republic, their sustained management of transnational households and investments in native communities, sojourner mentalities oriented toward futures back in their home-country, the implementation of dual citizenship with the right to vote in the Dominican Republic, and the activities of homecountry politicians in Dominican neighborhoods in New York – make residents feel they are part of a transnational Dominican society and nation-state even as they live in a different country. (Smith 1997; JonesCorrea 1998; Foner 2000; Pessar and Graham forthcoming; on immigrants’ transnational identities see also Duany 1994; Georges 1990; Levitt 2001; on their preoccupation with home-country politics, see Graham 1997.) The encompassing, “physical” transnationalism of Dominicanyorks, moving back and forth between their host and home countries, has slowed the process of their assimilation to American society. Other factors have contributed to this slow pace; in particular, immigrants’ low educational attainment and their incorporation into the lowest tiers of the New York labor market (especially manufacturing, which has sharply declined in the 1990s) and the resulting high rate of poverty among Dominican households, and the inability to speak English of a large segment of the immigrant population (Grassmuck and Pessar 1996; Rumbaut 1996a; Hernandez and Rivera-Batiz 1997; Waldinger 1996; Gibertson and Gurak 1993). Albeit slowly, immigrant assimilation has nevertheless been progressing on several fronts. Two indicators, in particular, of their assimilation into mainstream American patterns have been reported: a gradual shift out of manual occupations into self- and public-sector employment and the related increase of earnings over time, 6 and a positive correlation between the time spent in the United States by Dominican immigrants and the persistence in school of their native-American born children, which indicates change or Americanization of parental values regarding socioeconomic achievement and the best channels to realize it (Raijman and Tienda 1999; Alba and Nee 1999; Waldinger 1996; Pessar and

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Grassmuck 1996; Hernandez and Rivera-Batiz 1997). For the most part, however, in contrast to the trajectory of residentially and occupationally dispersed middle-class Asian Indians, the assimilation of Dominican immigrants in New York has evolved within the ethnic group and through ethnic channels. A high concentration of Dominicans in Washington Heights, a multitude of immigrant associations and clubs, and the continuous influx of food, films, and music brought from the home-country have sustained there a vibrant social and cultural life and immigrants’ Dominican identity. According to an ethnographic study in this neighborhood, the majority of immigrants watch or listen to mostly Dominican or Spanish TV, radio, and music, read mostly in Spanish, and celebrate mostly Dominican events. At the same time, however, a considerable proportion, more than 30 percent, participate also in American popular culture, which contributes to a gradual development of a bicultural, ethnic identity. 7 The integration of Dominican immigrants into political structures in New York City during the 1990s has been, thus far, the most extensively documented ethnic path of their assimilation. The reapportionment of the city’s electoral districts, devised partially with the goal of increasing Latino and Asian representation,8 has created in Washington Heights a Dominican-dominated electoral district, which facilitated the election in 1991 of Dominican-born Guillermo Linares to the city council as the first non-Puerto Rican representative of the Hispanic population.9 The mobilization of New York Dominicans that preceded this event and the new assertiveness that followed it focused immigrants’ attention on local American politics. The desire that their ethnic group be represented in American public life has been expressed not only in the political but also in the cultural arena. Dominican parents demanded to have local schools in Washington Heights renamed after major figures in Dominican history (a request that reflected at the same time their continued transnational commitments). The shared sense of ethnic assertiveness, pragmatic considerations dictated by anti-immigrant legislation of the US Congress restricting the social services available to non-naturalized residents, the possibility of holding dual citizenship and the encouragement to do so by the Dominican government have prompted an increase in naturalization among immigrant Dominicanyorks during the 1990s (it was a low 22 percent in 1990). (Information compiled from Jones-Correa 1998; Singer and Gilbertson 2000; Pessar and Graham 2001; see also Guarnizo 1998; Graham 2001.)


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Shared public cultural events sponsored by Dominican and other Hispanic groups and joint political initiatives on behalf of New York City’s Latino population represent another, pan-ethnic form of immigrant assimilation.10 The development of a pan-ethnic, Hispanic identity among Dominican immigrants does not, however, replace their sense of transnational-cum-ethnic American “Dominicanness” but further expands or “pluralizes” their self-perceptions11 (Jones-Correa 1998; Itzigsohn and Dore-Cabral 2000; Pessar and Graham 2001; on the panethnic identity formation among racial minority immigrant/ethnic groups in America see Espiritu 1992; among Hispanic groups, specifically, see Padilla 1985; Oboler 1995). As in the case of Indian immigrants, the coexistence of sustained transnational participation and assimilation into the host society in Dominican lives has been riddled with tensions. In this case, too, problems of race and racial discrimination, and gender relations have generated the most strain. Regarding the issue of race, multiple contradictions deriving simultaneously from the home- and host-society and the fact that Dominican immigrants remain physically immersed in both worlds at the same time have made the effects of forces pulling in opposite directions more uncomfortable for Dominicans than for Indians. The limited opportunities for socioeconomic advancement of Dominican immigrants in New York have exacerbated their discomfort and have deprived them of an “escape” from or desensitization to such conflicts through individual and group self-esteem associated with the professional success that has been possible for middle-class Indians (Torres-Saillant 1998; Levitt 2001). Multiple superimposed contradictions regarding racial identification and its consequences have made T/A coexistence problematic for Dominican immigrants. The conception of race they bring to the United States, which is sustained by their transnational immersion in the life of their home country, has been burdened by the enduring contradiction, deeply embedded in Dominican history, between the “negrophobic discourse” informing Dominican state ideology and politics and the “decolorized,” or race-neutral popular consciousness of Dominicans, the majority of whom fall in between the black-and-white color divide. (The terms in quotation marks are Torres-Saillant’s [1998], whose historical sociological analysis of the race predicament of Dominicans has been particularly succinct.) In the United States, where race membership has been perceived in zero-sum terms, the mulatto identification of the majority (about 60 percent) of Dominican immigrants is not recognized, and they are seen

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as black, which adds to the confusion of people thus labeled. Separating them as “other” from the dominant white society creates an additional hindrance to their assimilation into the mainstream receiver society (Grassmuck and Pessar 1996). An ethnic path of assimilation through the assumption of black identity and identification with African-Americans is not without costs either, in both transnationalism and assimilation arenas. As studies have shown and immigrants have been aware of, Dominicans who identify themselves as black fare worse socioeconomically in New York than do their mulatto fellow nationals (in 1990 the married household poverty rate in the former group was 37 percent while it was 16 percent for Dominicans who identified themselves as mulattos and 11 percent for those who saw themselves as whites; see Grassmuck and Pessar 1996: 285). In addition, Dominican (and other Latino) immigrants in New York have been fiercely competing with African-Americans for jobs in the public sector (Waldinger 1996; Hamermesh and Bean 1998; Smith and Edmonston 1997). And, on the transnational front, immigrants coming back from America to the Dominican Republic with “blackened” identities have been met with antipathy and scorn by locals (Torres-Saillant 1998; see also Duany 1998). As in the Indian case, gender-related tensions between Dominican immigrants’ transnational involvements and their assimilation of American lifestyles have been produced by the increased independence of women. But because of the difference in household characteristics and socioeconomic positions of these two groups and the more directly and densely transnational lives of Dominican immigrants, tensions for Dominican women between their assimilation and transnational involvements may be more acute than those for their Indian counterparts. (Tensions in gender relations deriving from immigrants’ transnational involvements have, thus far, been studied very little, so there is no evidential basis for a stronger comparative statement.) More than 90 percent of lower-class adult Dominican immigrant women (as compared with less than 50 percent of females in Indian middle-class households) work outside of the house, triple the rate of female employment in the Dominican Republic. At the same time, more than 40 percent of Dominican immigrant households in New York are headed by females (as compared with 3 percent of Indian ones12) of which close to 70 percent subsist at or below the poverty level and receive public assistance (Grassmuck and Pessar 1996; Bueno 1997; Jones-Correa 1998). Work outside of the house, however menial, and independently earned income, however low, give immigrant women a new sense of independence. Involvement with the American institutions of women


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on welfare and as heads of households with children provides a large number of immigrant females an opportunity to learn how to adapt to the ways of the receiver society that immigrant men do not have and, thus, reinforces their sense of empowerment. Because of pragmatic considerations (the need for public assistance) and the newly gained and enjoyed sense of independence, Dominican women have been more eager than men to become American citizens and have been more ready to abandon the sojourner mentality (Jones-Correa 1998; see also Georges 1992; Pessar and Graham forthcoming). These expressions of women’s Americanization, especially their new assertiveness, cause conflicts not only with men in the host country, but also with family and friends at home with whom immigrant women maintain close transnational contacts and whose opinion and image of themselves is also part of their self-perceptions. Upwardly mobile Jamaicans in New York Although they contain some similar elements in both the contributing circumstances and their outcomes, in comparison with the Dominicans, transnational involvements and assimilation in the lives of Jamaican immigrants in the same city make up a differently composed combination. In 1990 New York was home to about 40 percent of the total of 334,000 foreign-born Jamaicans in the United States, about one-half of whom came to America during the 1980s and one-third during the 1970s. Most of them lived in the Crown Heights and East Flatbush neighborhoods of Brooklyn and in parts of Queens and the Bronx (Rumbaut 1996a; Vickerman 1999). Intense transnational engagements of Jamaican immigrants have been similar to those of Dominicanyorks in several dimensions. The proximity of their home country has allowed frequent visits and multiple migrations. Transnational household management, remittances sent home regularly, sponsorship and kin and facilitation of acquaintance migration to the United States, and investments by (im)migrants’ of their American savings in small businesses at home have characterized the Jamaican no less than the Dominican group. 13 A vibrant cultural life and a Jamaican shopping district in Crown Heights sustained by a continuous influx of things and people from the home country have also resembled the Dominican case (Kasinitz 1992; Vickerman 1999; Chevannes and Ricketts 1997). Jamaican immigrants’ transnationalism, however, has been different from or less intense than the Dominican one in the political dimension. Although the former’s home-country government also recognizes dual citizenship, it has solicited immigrants’ loyalties much less than has its

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Dominican counterpart, probably because the Jamaican emigré group in America is smaller relative to the home population and its direct impact on the home-country economy is less pronounced. Since the political turmoil that rocked Jamaica in the 1970s quieted in the 1980s, Jamaican immigrants, too, have been less preoccupied than Dominicans with their home-country politics. Rather than remaining on “permanent alert,” their attention to and involvement in Jamaica’s political affairs has fluctuated with specific events (personal communication, September 2000; Nancy Foner, personal communication, November 2000). Whereas transnational involvements of these two immigrant groups have been similar in several respects, New York Jamaicans have had better resources for mainstream (middle-class) assimilation than have Dominicans in the same city. As native English speakers (94 percent), better educated (the mean of school years completed in 1990 in these two groups was, respectively, 12 and 9), and with a much smaller proportion of immigrants employed in lower blue-collar occupations (11 percent versus about 30 percent), Jamaican immigrants have adapted more quickly to New York’s postindustrial economy than have their Dominican counterparts. In the same year the poverty rate among Dominicans was 30 percent as compared with 12 percent among Jamaicans, and the median household income of the latter, $31,000, was almost double the figure for Dominicans, $18,000. In addition, Jamaican immigrants’ occupational-niche concentration has been considerably less than in the case of Dominicans (statistical figures compiled from Rumbaut 1996a; Vickerman 1999; Waldinger 1996; Kasinitz and Vickerman 2001). The political incorporation into American society of Jamaican immigrants has also moved at a quicker pace, even though in 1990 the proportions of recent (1980s) arrivals were about equal in both groups. Thirty-eight percent of Jamaicans compared with 22 percent of Dominicans were naturalized US citizens in that year. Until most recently, Jamaican involvement in New York politics has also been more visible and more effective in terms of numbers of elected officials than that of Dominicans. Besides the class (especially education) factor, two circumstances have contributed to this situation, both related to the issue of race. Together with other English-speaking West Indian groups Jamaicans have been contesting under the banner of “ethnic politics” the distribution of local political offices, which in their opinion unfairly privileges African-Americans. This perception dates back to the 1960s when a new generation of civil rights leaders began to replace the older cohort, in


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which the English-speaking West Indian political refugees, a large proportion of whom were professionals, occupied a prominent place. The endurance of this perception adds “fuel” to the contestation. At the same time, because they dilute the race (black-white) issue, West Indian ethnic politics have been openly encouraged by New York white politicians who deliberately redistricted for the New York City Council to create two predominantly West Indian districts in Brooklyn (Kasinitz 1992; Foner 1998; Vickerman 1999). As central in the lives of New York Jamaicans as in the experience of the majority of Dominican immigrants, the issue of race shaping the T/A combination has been negotiated differently by each group. As in the Dominicans’ homeland, the problem of color in Jamaica has been historically associated with class position in that “white” has indicated wealth and privilege. Although in Jamaica there has been no established tradition of a tri-color (white-mixed-black) spectrum of racial identification, lower-class black Jamaicans have also thought of themselves primarily in class and not in racial terms (Kasinitz 1992; Vickerman 1999, 2001). In an important difference from the Dominican Republic, however, since it gained independence from Britain in 1962, Jamaica’s multiracial, merit-based official ideology institutionalized in the country’s laws and political and educational systems has supported the formation of a popular culture of individual achievement and a sizeable black middle class even though it has not eliminated the embedded “raceclass” (to play on Milton Gordon’s [1963] renowned concept of “ethclass”) divisions. (See Vickerman 1999; Waters 1999; Kasinitz 1992; Foner 1998; Bashi Bobb 2001.) The realization that their blackness – obvious but socioculturally irrelevant at home – has become the primary and negative determinant of how they are perceived in the United States has been difficult to accept for Jamaican immigrants. As one New York immigrant put it, “I wasn’t aware of my color ‘till I got here” (after Foner 1998: 175). Even more upsetting has been the prospect that, despite their socioeconomic resources for upward mobility and cultural capital or values and ambitions to accomplish it if not in the first than in the second generation, their American success story will be undermined by the color of their skins and that their assimilation in this country actually means loss of status regardless of their behavior. Strong ethnic (primarily Jamaican and, second, Jamaican-American) identities of the majority of New York Jamaicans and a shared preference for their “own,” ethnic path of assimilation infused with transnational practices have been expressions of immigrants’ natural need for

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familiarity and togetherness as well as defense strategies against racial barriers to upward mobility and their association with “unambitious” African-Americans and threats to their individual and collective selfesteem. As it becomes obvious that, unlike in Jamaica, success in America does not “whiten” skins and that their ethnic distancing notwithstanding they will remain black (even if a “better black”) in the eyes of white Americans, Jamaican immigrants develop a situational public solidarity with African-Americans, especially in black-white conflicts. This civicpolitical racial solidarity adds another dimension to the assimilation of Jamaican immigrants, in the sense of added distance from their native society in which they were “not aware of their color”.14 The Americanization of women’s gender identities and the tensions it creates in immigrants’ transnational households appear to have been common in all immigrant groups. The case of Jamaican families has differed somewhat from that of Dominicans because of different traditions of gender relations in their respective home-countries. In comparison with the Latino Caribbeans, the socioeconomic position of women in the West Indies has been significantly more independent.15 Jamaican immigrant women’s American experience changes their self-definitions and expectations regarding first and foremost gender roles in the household. This has been reported as the primary sphere of tensions between husbands and wives living together in New York or, as often, in transnational relationships, and between immigrant women and their home-country kin and acquaintances (Foner 1994; Waters 1999; Vickerman 1999). Undocumented Chinese in New York Chinatown The estimated number of Chinese smuggled into the United States during the early 1990s was about 100,000. Most of them (80 percent) were men, and the majority were “deposited” in New York City’s Chinatown. The scope of this international human smuggling has been on the increase. The clandestine transit from China to the United States costs about $30,000 per person, of which the downpayment of $800–$1,000 is provided before departure by the smuggled migrant’s family or local community. The rest must be paid either in full upon arrival in the United States by the smuggled person’s relatives in America or in China or reimbursed with interest in installments paid from the immigrant’s earnings. Immigrants’ heavy indebtedness to their relatives or to the “snakeheads” (Chinese expatriates who invest money in and oversee the smuggling operation), puts them in virtual bondage for a number of years. But even


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after they pay off the smuggling costs, their illegal status, lack of English, and their enclosure in Chinatown, whose “extraterritorial status” (Chin 1999) because of its language, sociocultural inwardness, and institutional completeness makes it more impenetrable than any other ethnic neighborhood in America, effectively cut them off from the outside world. (Information compiled from US Senate Report 1992; Kwong 1994, 1997; 1998; Chin 1999; Skeldon 1994a; Liang 2001; see also Waldinger 1996.) Undocumented, heavily indebted, enclosed within an impervious ethnic niche, and working more than twelve hours a day six days a week for little money, smuggled Chinese immigrants have little time, energy, or financial resources to participate in either transnational or American (even ethnic) “spaces.” The frequent contacts by phone and visits in the home-country, regular remittances, and economic investments that have constituted the base of transnational involvements of Dominican and Jamaican immigrants in New York are impossible for smuggled Chinese: phone calls are expensive and are often considered risky; visits are impossible; and immigrants, encumbered by large sums of money owed to the snakeheads who arranged for their smuggling, for a prolonged time are debtors, not providers to their kin and acquaintances at home. Business investments solicited by the reformist government of communist China where most smuggled immigrants come from are, of course, not within their reach, nor are the political activities for democracy in China that engage educated emigré dissidents in America. Thus, their transnational participation has been limited to occasional phone conversations and mainly indirect contacts with their families and friends at home via established kin and acquaintances in America; watching TV news, films, and entertainment from China available through satellite and, increasingly, digital networks (Karim 1998), which can be watched in ethnic clubs and ethnic association rooms in Chinatown; and consuming food and other material goods imported from China. Practically the only channels for the assimilation of mainstream American ways available to undocumented Chinese enclosed in Chinatown have been ethnic: Chinese-language newspapers, radio, and TV in New York that provide information about the American economy and political and cultural events and images of American lifestyles and American visitors in Chinatown shops and restaurants observed from a distance. But these ethnic avenues of assimilation have also been reduced to the minimum. Because of immigrants’ unlawful illegal status in the United States and the thus far feeble voice of Chinese Americans in New York City’s civic-political structures, ethnic political participation – the increasingly important channel for the integration of Dominicans into

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the New York City political system – has been nonexistent. ChineseAmerican ethnic media and cultural festivals, several ethnic Chinese organizations in Chinatown, and contacts with longer- and legally established Chinese Americans provide the main occasions for withingroup ethnic (adhesive) assimilation of these immigrants, but their long working hours and minimal financial resources have limited these channels of participation. Enclosed within an impenetrable ethnic enclave and badly exploited by their fellow nationals, undocumented Chinese have at least been spared INS police harassment, unemployment resulting from the reduction of the city manufacturing jobs that have sustained Dominican immigrants, and racial mistreatment by the dominant white American society as experienced by Dominican and Jamaican immigrants. Interestingly, however – although I found only one comment on this issue in the existing studies on smuggled Chinese immigrants – despite their harsh situations, women have been more eager to remain in America permanently than have men, citing “freedom” (a symptom of Americanization?) as one of the main reasons (Chin 1999).16 First-wave (1960s) Cuban refugees in Miami If the specific configuration of political, economic, cultural and residential circumstances of undocumented Chinese immigrants in New York depressed both their transnational involvements and assimilation, a very different constellation of circumstances of first-wave Cuban political refugees in the Miami area has had the opposite effect of enhancing, although asymmetrically, these two processes. Most of the approximately 220,000 political refugees who fled Cuba during the first years (1959–64) of the communist revolution in that country were members of the (white) Cuban professional and managerial elite and affluent middle class. The majority of them, almost 70 percent, settled in the Miami area. The sustained multifaceted support Cuban refugees have received from the US government motivated by its foreign policy interests in the cold war era 17 and the proximity of communist Cuba to US borders has been unique in American immigration history. It has significantly influenced both transnational involvements and the assimilation of Cuban exiles in Miami. (On subsequent waves of Cuban immigration to the United States, see Amaro and Portes 1972; Pedraza 1985, 1996.) Like most middle-class political refugee groups (see Shain 1999), as soon as they arrived, first-wave Cuban emigres engaged in passionate exile politics, which they sustained for the next thirty years. Cuban exiles’


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preoccupation with Cuba, informed by intransigent anti-communism, 18 represents a “monothematic,” in this case, political-ideological, transnational involvement that has been largely symbolic since they could not, like Dominican immigrants, either retain citizenship, vote, or otherwise participate in the civic affairs of their home country. Unlike most refugee groups, however, from the failed invasion attempt in the Bay of Pigs in 1961 to the establishment of Radio Marti transmitting anti-communist propaganda into Cuba in 1985, they have received active support, open encouragement even, by the US government for transnational activities aimed at subverting the Castro regime in Cuba.19 The impact of shifts from thaws (Il Dialogo under the Carter administration) to freezes (under the Reagan presidency) in US relations with Castro’s Cuba on the possibility of visiting and sending remittances to Cuba further illustrates the dependency of this immigrant group’s transnational engagements on the receiver state’s foreign policy (Fox 1996; Torres 1998; Pedraza 1996). US government support for Cuban exiles has also facilitated their assimilation into American society. Their settlement and initial adaptation has been assisted by the Cuban Refugee Program and other federal initiatives, including direct cash assistance, guaranteed healthcare and food subsidies for the needy, college loans for students, (re)training programs for professionals, English-language instruction, and financial assistance for immigrants starting small businesses. This multiform assistance from the receiver state combined with Cuban refugee residential concentration in one area and their educational and economic resources transplanted from the home country and supported by social capital or pre-communist intragroup and transcontinental business networks with North American, primarily Floridian, and South American financiers and industrialists, permitted the impressive socioeconomic success of this group in the fifteen years since their arrival in Miami. Subsequent waves of lower-middle- and lower-class Cuban immigrants into the Miami area supplied the same-language, same-culture work force with diverse skills for the formation of a thriving ethnic economic enclave (Stepick 1994; Portes and Stepick 1993; Bowie and Stepick 1998; Perez-Stable and Uriarte 1997). The ethnic-enclave mode of economic assimilation of Cuban refugees over time gave way to the glocal power of first-wave emigré financiers and manufacturers as Miami became a global city with virtual control of South–North American trade. (On glocalization as a process of local embodiments of global trends, see Robertson 1992; on Miami as a global city, see Sassen 1993.) Cuban exiles’ sociocultural activities, however, have

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remained confined to their institutionally complete ethnic community with a multitude of ethnic associations, press, radio and TV stations, meeting places, and cultural events. To the extent that the culture created by first-wave Cuban exiles in their Miami enclave has been, as described by its students, la cultura conjelada, a transplantation from the home country frozen in time and impervious to innovation (Torres 1998), participation in it by immigrants could not be classified as an ethnic mode of assimilation as defined in the introduction, that is, as a process of mixing home- and host-country orientations and practices. (In Chinatown, recent undocumented immigrants do not create their own but assimilate into the long-established ethnic culture.) Rather, it would represent an unusual variant of the adhesive model with almost unpermeable boundaries between immigrant and host cultures except for the indirect influence of the latter via the Spanish-language media, and, of course, American consumer goods. Cuban refugees’ political assimilation has been still different from the modes of their economic and sociocultural adaptation to the host society in that it has fused mainstream and ethnic elements – the convergence reflecting the common anti-communist ideology and interests of coldwar US foreign policy and the 1960s exile community in Miami. As they realized that their hopes for a quick collapse of the Castro government and a return home were unrealistic, first-wave Cuban refugees naturalized in high numbers. They have engaged in American politics at several levels, including, at the national level, vigorous anti-communist lobbying by the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) in Washington, DC, and active involvement in right-wing Republican state and local politics, in both of which their influence has been significant because of the block-voting concentration of Cubans in Florida and in Dade County. Because of the critical number of Florida electoral votes in presidential elections, this influence has been used by Cuban exiliados in shaping US policy toward Cuba during the cold war era. (See Fox 1996; Torres 1998; personal communication from Ruben Rumbaut, September 2000.) The ideological-political involvement and, specifically, obstinate anticommunist and anti-Castro phobia has been the primary vector of both the transnationalism and assimilation of first-wave Cuban refugees, and both were articulated through the support of the US government. This predominant vested interest of the Cuban exile community in Miami has also become the main source of T/A tensions within it. The downfall of Soviet-dominated communism in East Europe and the dismemberment of the Soviet Union have led to the end of the cold war era and, with it,


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the long-standing priorities of US foreign policy. The failure of the CANF and its supporters to win the Elian case in American courts in 1999– 2000 has been symptomatic of this change and, thus, of the disintegration of the foundation of Cuban exiles’ transnational and domestic (American) politics. Two other factors contributed to this tension on assimilation and transnationalism issues, respectively. The growing diversity of the Latino population in Miami has undermined Cuban exiles’ claims to exclusive political representation and the political-ideological interests that have informed it. At the same time, in the context of current uncertainties about Cuba’s future, young second-generation Cuban Americans have proposed “competitive” forms of transnational political involvement on behalf of democracy in the post-Castro era that are less intransigent and more cooperative with Cubans in the homeland than are the transnational politics of first-wave refugees (Perez-Stable and Uriarte 1997; Torres 1998). Although outside employment of middle-class married Cubanas departed from the traditional role model of a housewife provided for by her well-to-do husband, a large proportion of first-wave refugee women engaged in such work soon after their arrival in Miami. Perceived at that time as an “obligation to the family” in difficult times of rupture and resettlement, such employment was approved by the male heads of households. Over time, however, as with women in other immigrant groups, work outside of the home and the income it brought created among female Cuban emigrés a sense of autonomy and increased assertiveness. It has been enhanced by the influence of struggles for gender equality in American civic-political institutions and the media during the 1960s and 1970s on middle-class Cuban women involved in American politics and human rights groups (unlike male-dominated intragroup exile politics, these external venues of civic engagement were open to and appropriated by educated Cuban females) and the echo it had in Cuban women’s immigrant organizations. Transplanted into emigré homes, however, this new assertiveness of women – an assimilation of American self-perceptions and representations of gender roles that has not had an equivalent in their male partners – has created considerable tension about the division of labor and authority in the household. Regarding transnational involvement, the disparity between men’s and women’s activities has been more implicit. More pragmatic than their ideologically driven husbands, it has been mainly Cuban immigrant “women who travel to Cuba to visit families, send money, medicine, etc., while men continue to publicly

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denounce the embargo their wives violate” (email communication from Uva de Aragon, November 21, 2000).

The second (native-born American) generation Rather than by examining specific cases, the coexistence of incorporation into American society and transnational engagements in the lives of immigrants’ children is demonstrated by an overview of its different modes as identified in studies. (These modes are identified with specific second-generation groups when the latter’s particular circumstances make it impossible “anonymously” to account for T/A composition). It should be emphasized that, generally, assimilation has been much more central in the lives of the second than in those of the first (foreign-born) generation and that probably not even a majority of native-born American children of immigrants have maintained active transnational involvements. But significant numbers of them do engage in different forms of transnationalism parallel to their progressive incorporation into American society. This enduring coexistence is worth consideration even if it is impossible now to predict whether and how long it will last as these second-generation Americans mature and assume family and work responsibilities. (The few studies that address this issue suggest that the endurance of these transnational involvements may depend primarily on life-cycle, economic investment, or professional engagement in the community/region of national origin, and racial exclusion in the home country, the United States; see, e.g., Waters and Levitt 2002; Smith 2002; Min and Kim 1999; Thai 1999; personal communications of Min Zhou, Pyong Min, and Robert Smith to this author, November 2000). 20 I classified these identifiable T/A combinations into main types (with subvariants) according to the assimilation trajectories as specified in the introduction: the mainstream middle-class/upwardly mobile and lowerclass/underclass and their corresponding trajectories in the adhesive (within ethnic enclave) form of assimilation. The first T/A variety in the mainstream middle-class category involves, on the assimilation side, bicultural identities, practices and orientations such as fluency in and preference for English combined with fair capacity to communicate in the language of national origin, hyphenated identity (Korean- or Indian-American, and sometimes also pan-ethnic, such as Asian-American), participation in American and (pan)ethnic-group organized and informal activities and popular cultures, and “fused”


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American/national origin values of hard work and educational (and later professional) achievement. In this category the most common form of transnational involvement has been cultural: “imported” entertainment (music, videos), occasional visits in the national-origin country, usually for vacations or to participate in cultural-educational programs. Studies also report maintenance by immigrants’ native-born American offspring of transnational relations with their kin and friendships with their peers, as well as situational engagements, particularly by children of political refugees, in transnational politics on behalf of their national-origin countries. (On the second generation’s linguistic and identificational assimilation, their school performance, and aspirations, see Portes and Rumbaut 2001; Rumbaut 1997, 1999; also Portes and Schauffler 1996; on this T/A variations among second-generation Korean Americans, see Min 1998; Park 1997; Vietnamese Americans, see Zhou and Bankston 1998; Freeman 1995; Indian Americans, see DasGupta 1997; Rangaswamy 2000; on middle-class and upwardly mobile Asian Americans, see Fong 1998; Kibria 1999; also communications to this author of Syed Ali, Sandhya Shukla, Min Zhou, and Pyong Min in November 2000.) The major factors sustaining this T/A combination include permanent and legal (documented) resettlement of the parents; residence in mixed (rather than ethnically homogeneous) neighborhoods facilitating contacts with native-born Americans; middle-class or upwardly mobile status of parental households and the pressure exerted by parents (and accepted by children) on their offspring’s high performance in school and, at the same time, the retention of the cultural traditions of their national-origin countries (immigrant parents’ professional status reportedly increases the likelihood that their children will have national-origin identities and, presumably, an interest in national-origin cultures; see Rumbaut 1996b). Very important, too, has been a relatively hospitable reception or (at least) absence of exclusion by the mainstream American society. The alteration in this latter circumstance, namely, as Mary Waters (1996) phrased it, a shift from “difference” to “exclusion,” changes the T/A configuration in the second common variant in the upward assimilation category. It has been represented most distinctly among American-born children of upwardly mobile immigrants: Jamaican, Haitian, other Caribbean and African, whose skin color – black – puts them on the “wrong” side of the American racial dichotomy and threatens their integration into the mainstream middle-class American society. The intensified national-origin identities and cultural reference frameworks that weaken American ones reported in these second-generation groups

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serve, as in the case of their immigrant parents (and probably following their coping strategies), as an escape or a means of preserving self-esteem and social status – an oppositional rather than optional transnationalism of the first group.21 (On this T/A variation and the dilemmas of race that articulate it among American-born West Indians, see Vickerman 1999; Foner, 1998, 2000; Waters 1999; in African families, see Nwadiora 1996; also Kamya 1997; Arthur 2000; the oppositional and optional transnationalisms are plays on Ogbu’s [1991] “oppositional assimilation” and Waters’ [1990] “optional ethnicity”.) In the mainstream lower-class assimilation category one more common and one less common (to be discussed together with its “adhesive” equivalent) T/A variation can be identified, primarily in studies of second generation Latino Americans who reside in clusters or in proximity to their fellow ethnics (but not in large ethnic enclaves like the Mexican mega-barrio in Los Angeles or Cuban Miami – see below). In both cases the frequent movement of immigrant parents between host and home communities and the maintenance of close relations between American and sender-country households combined with second-generation experience of limited advancement opportunities in the United States because of their class position and the racial perceptions/discrimination of mainstream Americans have constituted the main factors shaping the combination of assimilation and transnationalism. Like their peers in the first category, immigrant children in this group are fluent in English, which is also their preferred language of communication, and equally “fluent” in the American popular culture of their age groups. The majority are proficient in the native-origin languages used in their homes. Available studies suggest three differences between middle- and lower-class second generations regarding channels of their assimilation and, specifically, the proportioning therein of American and national/regional-origin elements. One is the absence of parental pressure on the retention of national-origin cultures in the lower-class assimilation trajectory group; the fact that immigrants’ children often travel with their parents to their hometowns or villages or frequently visit them by themselves may well make this retention “natural,” in the experiential (as opposed to high-culture/history symbolic) sense, anyway. The second difference is the composition of social relations of the two groups: whereas both report ethnically mixed friends, the middle-class second generation, primarily because of their residence, has more “mainstream” American acquaintances than lower-class youth whose outgroup contacts consist for the most part of peers from other immigrant/ethnic groups.


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The third difference concerns second-generation identities: although a majority in both groups declares a bicultural (hyphenated or nationalorigin/American) identity, considerably larger proportions of lower-class immigrants’ children seem to perceive themselves as either simply “American” or in pan-ethnic terms (as Hispanic or Latino Americans). I have not found a satisfactory explanation in the available studies of the former phenomenon: it may express either immigrant children’s mainstream American success aspirations against the odds of their class-race position or, the opposite, their oppositional racial identification with black Americans with whom darker-skinned Latinos are often identified by whites. Over time, as studies indicate, and apparently as a self-/status defense strategy against racial discrimination similar to that used by black West Indians, second-generation Latino Americans tend to identify increasingly in terms of their national origins. Interesting questions whether these “converts” are earlier “Americans” or “pan-ethnics” and whether these identificational trajectories correlate with shifts in transnational involvements must wait, however, for further studies. (Information compiled from Lopez 1999; Portes and Schauffler 1996; Portes 1996; Rumbaut 1996b, 1999; Fernandez Kelly and Schauffler 1996; Grassmuck and Pessar 1996.) The transnational participation of immigrants’ children in a mainstream lower-class assimilation trajectory has involved both formal (organized) and informal activities, both of which have been largely more regular and more encompassing than similar involvements of their middle-class peers. Besides the already mentioned frequent visits in national-origin communities for vacations, family occasions, and local religious and cultural rituals and celebrations, this participation involves sustained transnational friendships and, among young adults, management of (often inherited) parental houses in the immigrants’ hometowns or villages. In addition, native-born American children of immigrants in this category have been reported to participate in organized religious and charity groups in their parents’ native communities. (Adolescents tend to withdraw from this organized form of transnational activities as they enter adulthood and assume its work and family responsibilities; see Smith 2001.) These multiple transnational involvements of second-generation Americans in the mainstream lower-class adaptation trajectory have differed from similar engagements of their middle-class, mainly Asian American peers in two aspects. First, besides for vacations and reinforcement of the national-origin part of their identities, which have been common for both groups, they provide an important space into which

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they can escape from the class and racial frustrations of their actual American experience and display their American status and achievements in their parents’ native communities where they are perceived as genuine. Second, because their transnational engagements closely follow those of their back-and-forth traveling parents, they have been primarily local or community focused, whereas the transnationalism of the middleclass group – except those, like some Jamaicans, for example, whose national-origin countries are geographically close to the United States and whose parents frequently visit their home countries – has been more “national” (culture, history, visiting tours, educational programs) in orientation. (See Smith 1996; Vickerman (2001); and Waters and Levitt (2002) on this group’s transnationalism.) Whereas the adhesive assimilation trajectory also contains a spectrum of middle-, lower- and underclass/outcast T/A combinations, their vectors and compositions are not the same as in the mainstream varieties, reflecting instead particular circumstances of second-generation Americans whose incorporation into American society occurs within large ethnic enclaves and among large numbers of foreign-language speakers. Two different middle-class T/A combinations reported in studies have involved on the one hand a specifically focused transnational engagement and, on the other hand, an encompassing array of transnational activities. Each of them has derived from the particular circumstances of the second-generation group it involves: respectively, Cuban Americanborn offspring of first-wave immigrants in Miami and their Mexican counterparts in the Los Angeles mega-barrio. In both variants, however, the main difference in assimilation between the native-born American second generation whose incorporation evolves along the adhesive within-enclave trajectory and those who follow the mainstream path has been significantly higher proportions of fluent foreign-language speakers who also use it at home in the former than in the latter group (between 70 and 75 percent as compared with 35 to 50 percent, respectively), and the immersion of the adhesive-path groups in the bilingual everyday “public life” in the media, public education, workplaces, shopping malls, banks, professional services, etc., which has had no equivalent in the situation of their mainstream-trajectory counterparts (Lopez 1996; Vigil 1997). The predominance of bicultural, or “hyphenated,” personal identities among enclave middle-class Cubans of the second generation and, reflecting their location in the ethnic political enclave with a specific history, the shift of their public collective identity from “exile” to “Cuban American” have been expressions of assimilation and at the


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same time opposition to their immigrant parents’ intransigent public stance and diasporic mentality. The same “oppositional assimilation” has informed, the domestic (American and Floridian) and already mentioned transnational engagements of second-generation CubanAmericans in Miami: organized activities on behalf of a democratic transition in post-Castro Cuba, visits in that country (if allowed), and contacts with its political opposition. (Information compiled from Rumbaut 1996b; Grenier and Perez 1996; Portes and Schauffler 1996; Torres 1998.) In comparison, the T/A combination of middle-class native-born American Mexicans in Los Angeles (a stratum proportionally much smaller than its Cuban equivalent but growing) has been shaped by different circumstances. The close proximity of the semi-open border, facilitating a continuous back-and-forth flow of migrants between Mexico and the Los Angeles region, their rapidly increasing numbers (between 1970 and 1990 the “official” or documented Mexican population in the Los Angeles region more than tripled from 1 million to more than 3 million) and their increasing residential segregation and related social isolation have created a vast “transnational enclave” that in 1990 housed nearly 2 million American-born Mexicans. (Information compiled from Sabagh and Bozorgmehr 1996; Clark 1996; Massey and Denton 1998; Ong and Lawrence 1992; Grant et al. 1996; on the undocumented Mexican population in the Los Angeles region, see Chavez 1996.) Second-generation middle-class Mexican Americans have maintained more encompassing transnational involvements with their national-origin country than have the Cubans through frequent visits, family relations, friendships, and economic investments and, among the ethnic leadership, through contacts with representatives of the Mexican government that is eager (like other Latin American governments) to cultivate good relations with a large Mexican-origin community on the other side of the border. Although, like middle-class Cubans, second-generation Mexican Americans are bilingual, because of their immersion in the encompassing enclave with streets and public institutions where Spanish is spoken, their everyday use of English has been more limited than that of young professional Cubans. At the same time, unlike the Miami Cubans who have perceived themselves as distinct from (and often superior to) other Latino groups and have participated in American politics as Cuban Americans, as the representatives of the largest Hispanic group in the region, Mexican American middle-class leaders view themselves as the speakers for the civic-political rights of Los Angeles Latinos at large. In doing so they have engaged in the American politics under the banner

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of a pan-ethnic or Chicano or multiple – including Indian, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American rather than “simply” bicultural – identity, contesting long-standing discrimination by white Los Angelenos (lately mobilized by enhanced anti-immigration nativist sentiments) and increased competition with African-Americans for jobs and public offices (Rumbaut 1999; Ortiz 1996; Waldinger 1996; Romo 1996; Lopez et al. 1996; on the Chicano movement and identities, see Vigil 1998). The T/A combination in the lower-class adhesive assimilation trajectory – we use the same example of the Mexican mega-barrio in Los Angeles – is basically similar in composition to that of the middle class in this enclave, except for the lower proportion of fluent English speakers (reflecting lower educational levels in this group). The lower-class native-born Mexican Americans – the majority of the second-generation population in the Los Angeles region – live in their everyday lives what their middleclass leaders represent in the public forum: the majority of them (75 percent in 1990) report either pan-ethnic or Chicano identities, and the majority report having experienced some forms of discrimination. They also compete with African-Americans for secondary- and public-sector service jobs. Perhaps more interesting have been differently nuanced assimilation and transnationalism components in the lower-class adhesive as compared with the mainstream trajectory discussed earlier. With respect to assimilation, the adhesive T/A combination is characterized by a more frequent use of the national-origin language and the primacy of panethnic over bicultural identities. It may be (the issue needs further study) that the context of a large enclave with the numerical superiority and vocal leadership of one ethnic group with an established tradition of contestation of civil rights’ violations readily channels frustrations from discriminatory treatment into pan-ethnic responses, whereas ethnic fragmentation and the absence of an organized pan-ethnic forum for the expression of grievances makes escapes into transnational (bicultural) identities more likely. Transnational involvements of the adhesivetrajectory lower-class Mexican Americans of the second generation have been primarily local, like those of their mainstream path counterparts, and as encompassing, but because of the geographic proximity of the national-origin country they have been more intense (Lopez 1996; Ortiz 1996; Scott 1996; Rumbaut 1996b). A downward or outcast variant of the lower-class T/A combination among second-generation immigrants represented by transnational youth gangs, has been basically similar in both the adhesive and mainstream assimilation categories and, therefore, it is discussed jointly. (It should


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be noted, again, that second-generation “domestic” gangs without transnational connections, either constrained within the ethnic communities or assimilated into the American, usually Afro-American, underclass, have been more common than the T/A ones.) Formed in immigrant neighborhoods in American cities in response to the multiple marginality (Vigil 1998) of their young members vis-à-vis the mainstream American society and the dominant culture of their ethnic communities, these gangs have been the ethnicized – “choloized” from the Mexican American term cholo for the oppositional subculture – version of American street gangs imbued with an immigrant/ethnic cast. (In the notorious Chicano gangs in Los Angeles, this American influence has been filtered through a long tradition going back to the 1940s of “native” Mexican gangs, the style, spirit, and networks of which are still viable.) These gangs have been transplanted to their members’ communities of national origin during the second generation’s frequent visits there for shorter and longer sojourns either with their parents or on their own. Upon his return to the town of national origin of Mexican American transnational gang members he was studying, a researcher was struck by the ubiquitous signs of cholismo (or pandillerismo as this style has been called in the idiom of Mexican gang members in New York, the site of research): “grafitti on public buildings, houses, and newly paved streets; ‘fade’ haircuts with gang initials sculpted into the cut; baggy jeans and gang style clothing; and an exclusiveness and reluctance to participate in many of the traditional events of the town” (Smith forthcoming, 11; personal communications to this author from Ruben Hernandez Leon, December 2000; see also Vigil and Long 1990; Vigil 1998; Moore 1991; on Chinese and Vietnamese youth’s ethnic gangs without transnational connections, see Zhou and Bankston 1998; Vigil and Chong Yon 1998; Chin 1990, 1996; on “assimilated” second-generation gangs that deliberately abandon ethnic connections and do not forge transnational ones, see Hazlehurst and Hazlehurst 1998; Kelly et al. 1994; personal communications to this author from Ko-lin Chin, September 2000, and Robert Smith, December 2000).

Conclusion The preceding discussion permits three conclusions. First, assimilation and transnationalism often coexist in the lives of immigrants and their offspring and, therefore, a greater epistemic gain should derive from examining the conditions of this coexistence than from the continued advocacy for either one or the other as the dominant mode of adaptation

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of present-day immigrants and their children. Second, these two processes form differently textured combinations as each of them takes different forms: mainstream or adhesive, “upward” and “downward” or oppositional assimilation, optional or oppositional transnationalism with an encompassing or focused range of engagements, and so on. And third, these particular forms and “contents” of T/A combinations are context-dependent, that is, contingent on different constellations of features of the economies, politics, and cultures of sender and receiver societies and local communities and of the immigrants (or the second generation) themselves. The five cases of immigrant and six modes of second-generation T/A variations examined here have revealed more than 40 factors that in different and changing constellations shape these combinations. They are presented in Table 6.1 below, grouped into features of the (1) sender and receiver societies, (2) outer (surrounding) and inner (intragroup) local environments of immigrants in the host

Table 6.1

Factors influencing assimilation and transnationalism*

Sending country

Receiving country

• geographic proximity to receiving country • transportation and communication technology • dynamics of economic development • penetration by global (American) culture • civic-political culture, especially exclusive vs. inclusive (civic) national membership and loyalty • stage of nation-building process and national culture and collective identity (exclusive/inclusive)* • government interest in cooperation (economic, political) with receiving country • government attitudes/behavior toward (e)migres in receiving country • significance of race in culture and social stratification • political system/political causes of emigration*

• transportation and communication technology • state-national model of civicpolitical integration* • civic culture/practice of inclusion or exclusion of “others,” in particular racial “others”* • state policy toward immigrants (undocumented status, double citizenship and other transnational activitities) • state policy toward/relations with sending country • structure and dynamics of the economy


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Local conditions in immigrants’ place of settlement in receiving country External

Intragroup

• structure and dynamics of the economy • degree and institutional embeddedness of ethnic/racial segregation/concentration • civic-political culture and practice regarding immigrants, particularly of different race* • openness/closure of local political system • native perceptions of/behavior toward immigrants, especially of different race • degree of inter-group social exclusion/inclusion

• group size and residential concentration/segregation from native-born Americans • proportions of foreign- and American-borns • group socioeconomic characteristics • immigrant/ethnic community’s institutional completeness • degree of sociocultural enclosure • sojourn/diasporic collective mentality* • internal organization and leadership (T, A, T/A orientations and activities) • group sense of civic entitlement in host society

Characteristics of (individual) immigrants

Factors specific for second-generation T/A

• cultural capital (education, occupational skills, access to technological resources, advance acculturation, life goals and values) • social capital (networks of information and assistance) • race • gender • socioeconomic position and prospects of mobility* • residential/work isolation or contact with native-born Americans • number of years spent in receiving country* • sojourn or permanent (im)migration* • presence/number of economically dependent family members in home country and/or real estate/ other possessions • intensity of ideological and/oremotional attachment to home country*

• socioeconomic status of parental home • parental pressure toward assimilation or/and transnational involvement* • intergenerational conflicts (at home and in ethnic community) • position in life-cycle*

* Factors affecting simultaneously transnationalism and assimilation are marked with the asterisks.

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country; (3) immigrants themselves, and (4) the additional factors specific for T/A modes among the second generation. In view of the context-dependency and, thus, variability of T/A combinations as demonstrated in this chapter and the fact that forms of coexistence of transnationalism and assimilation among contemporary immigrants and their children have not been examined thus far by immigration scholars, a three-step research strategy seems appropriate to explore and eventually to theorize this relationship. The first step should involve what Charles Ragin (1994) has called exploring diversity: a systematic gathering of information on the existing forms of T/A combinations, their generating and sustaining mechanisms, and the consequences for (mal)adaptation of immigrants and their offspring in different settings. (Several studies exist of either assimilation or transnationalism of the same immigrant/ethnic groups and, considering the apparently pending reconciliation between these two research emphases, a crop of new T/A studies may be expected.) In this phase, research would be informed by a flexible analytic frame or a set of theoretical concepts used as heuristic guideposts and adjusted as the evidence accumulates, rather than by the pre-existing theoretical models. In the second phase, the research task would be to identify patterns of similarities and differences in T/A combinations (or absence thereof) revealed in the evidence gathered in previous investigations. The purpose of the examination of patterns of similarities and differences is “to identify causal links – how different configurations of causes [factors influencing T/A and ~T/A – E.M.] produce different outcomes across the range of cases included in a study” (Ragin 1994: 114). In John Hall’s (1999) discussion of different “cultures of inquiry” or strategies of sociohistorical research – sociohistorical meaning the treatment of social phenomena, in this case, transnationalism and assimilation, as processes over time rather than as isolated events – the configurational analysis performs a similar purpose of abstracting the interplay of diverse converging/ diverging phenomena in a way that transcends empirical connections among these phenomena themselves (see also Skocpol 1984 on identifying causal regularities as a research strategy in sociohistorical analysis).22 It is important to keep in mind, however, that, if T/A combinations have been assumed to be context-dependent, these identified patterns of similarities and differences should be treated as “transitory regularities” – time/place specific or historical. (The chapter of Koopmans and Statham in this volume provides an exemplary analysis of the covariance “over time” of immigrants’ integration and transnationalism as shaped by changing national citizenship regimes of three receiver states.)


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Finally, in the third phase of research, coherent theoretical models to explain the generating, sustaining, and transforming mechanisms of the T/A phenomenon can be constructed from the information gathered in the preceding phases. These will be middle-range theoretical models (Merton 1968; also Hall 1999), inductively constructed from the context-dependent empirical T/A combinations and transitory causal patterns abstracted from them, and, thus, they will be checked and modified as the transnationalism and assimilation processes and their environments transform over time. The purpose of this first-step overview of identifiable T/A varieties and their contexts is to encourage further research toward step-by-step construction of satisfactory theoretical accounts of the coexistence or disjunction of transnationalism and assimilation in the lives of immigrants and their offspring.

Notes 1 The index of residential dissimilarity (segregation) of Asian Indians, 26 percent average for 22 selected MSAs in 1985, was the lowest among all Asian groups in the United States (Bhardwaj and Rao 1990: 210). 2 Studies of the activities of affluent business-class Chinese in America suggest a generally similar pattern of coexistence of plural transnational involvements and multi-track assimilation of this group. A constellation of circumstances shaping T/A in this group has differed, however, from the Indian case mainly in the residential and occupational concentration of Chinese American transnational capitalists in America’s major Chinatowns, and in the absence among them of an intense nationalism characteristic of the elites, including Indians, of countries in the nation-building process. (See Zhou 1992; Dirlik 1996; Ong and Nonini 1997; Lin 1998; Hu Dehart 1999; Ong 1993; Wong 1995.) 3 Forum for Political Education, and the National Association of Asian Americans of Indian origin. These organizations include the Federation of Indian Associations in America, later renamed as the National Federation of Indian-American Associations, the Association of Indians in America, the India League of America, the Indian American descent. 4 Personal communication to this author from Syed Ali, October 2000. 5 One recent study reported 27 percent of the households in Santo Domingo receiving financial support at least once a month from a family abroad (after Grassmuck and Pessar 1996: 287). Wages earned by Dominican immigrants in the United States are about ten times higher than those in their home country. 6 It should be noted, however, that as the result of the decline of manufacturing jobs during the 1990s in New York City’s secondary sector that provided employment to a majority of Dominican immigrants, earnings of the Dominicanyork households in general declined by more than 20 percent between 1990 and 1996 (Hernandez and Rivera-Batiz 1997).

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7 I calculated the proportions of immigrants who watch, listen to, read, and observe other – presumably mainstream American – than Dominican/Spanish programs, books, and celebrations from statistical figures on “Cultural Practices of Dominican Households” provided by Jorge Duany in his monograph The Transnational Identity of Dominicans in Washington Heights (1994: 37). Duany’s purpose in presenting these figures (and the main thesis of his study) is to demonstrate strong transnationalism among Dominicans; he does not comment on a large proportion of “other than (Dominican/Spanish)” answers. 8 On the developments leading to this event, see Guarnizo 1994; Graham 1997; also Graham 2001. 9 Puerto Ricans have been the earliest Latino settlers in New York and their political representation of the Hispanic population in the city has only recently been challenged by other groups, the Dominicans in particular. 10 The development of Hispanic panethnicity in New York City, facilitated by their common language and religion, has not been without tensions springing from class and racial differences within and between participant groups, and from the competition among them for jobs and political offices (see Waldinger 1996; Jones-Correa 1998). 11 Studies of Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles suggest a similar variety of T/A combination, but with the “enhanced” features of both components in comparison with the case of Dominicanyorks: even more intense “ongoing” transnationalism and even slower assimilation because of the proximity of the border, very much larger numbers of (1) undocumented and (2) backand-forth moving migrants, and their high occupational and residential concentration in the host location. (See Waldinger and Bozorgmehr 1996; Rumbaut 1996b; Romo 1996; Chavez 1996; Rouse 1992; Bonilla et al. 1998; Jones-Correa 1998; Raijman and Tienda 1999.) 12 The figure for the Indian group is nationwide. 13 I have not been able to establish whether much more frequent mentions of child fostering at home for the duration of a migrant’s sojourn in America in studies of Jamaican rather than Dominican immigrants’ transnational practices indicate the actual cultural difference between these groups or a somewhat different foci of the studies (but see n. 15 below). 14 “Straightforward” assimilation into American black society and culture has been reported among the poor, lower blue-collar segment of the Jamaican immigrant population in New York – see Waters 1999. On tensions and mutual stereotyping between West Indians and African Americans in New York, see Morawska, forthcoming. A T/A combination by and large similar to that informing the lives of Jamaican immigrants and informed primarily by the push-and-pull impact of race has been reported among Haitian immigrants in New York, except that their much greater preoccupation with Haitian politics makes their transnationalism more intense which, in turn, enhances the distance from African-Americans. See Charles 1992; Laguerre 1998; Glick Schiller and Fouron 1998. 15 On West Indian matrifocal family/culture, see Clarke 1999; Smith 1996; on the patriarchal cultures in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean societies, see Bueno 1997; Georges 1992. In her book, The Transnational Villagers (2001), Peggy Levitt demonstrates, however, that beneath the surface of subordination, the Dominican women practice a considerable authority.


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16 It may be, however, that immigrant men, the majority of whom are married with wives and children left in China, express the intention to return because of family obligations. Smuggled Chinese females are usually young single women. 17 The US government extended a similar support also to the next wave of Cuban refugees, composed mostly of petite bourgeoisie: employees, craftsmen, small merchants, and skilled workers, who arrived in the following decade of 1965–74 (Pedraza 1996). 18 Cuban refugees of the 1960s have actually represented different shades of anti-Castro attitudes, from the most intransigent views of the Batistas to more “reasonably” critical orientations of liberal and socialist exiles disappointed with Castro’s totalitarian policies (on the turbulent Cuban exile politics in Miami, see Fox 1996). 19 US government supported also, although to a much lesser degree, anticommunist propaganda activities of East European exiles aimed at the Soviet-block countries (see Shain 1999). 20 Although, as in the case of immigrants, the adaptation of their children has typically been studied from either assimilationist or transnationalist perspectives, the few recent studies acknowledging both processes suggest an approaching recognition of their simultaneity; for a review of literature on second-generation assimilation or transnationalism, see Morawska forthcoming. 21 “Escape into Islam” seems to perform a similar defense function among secondgeneration Turkish, North African, and Pakistani and Bangladeshi youth in Western Europe – see Vertovec and Rogers 1998; Vertovec and Peach 1997; Schiffauer 1999; Shadid and Van Koningsveld 1996. 22 It should be noted, however, that in Hall’s conceptualization this abstracting procedure is informed by a theoretical model, while in the phase discussed here it is the analysis guided by theoretical concepts and perhaps causal propositions but not yet by a full-fledged theory.

Appendix The following people served as important sources of information on different aspects of assimilation, transnational engagements, and the combinations thereof: Syed Ali; Uva de Aragon; Ko-lin Chin; Nancy Foner; Pamela Graham; Luis Guarnizo; Wang Gungwu; Ruben Hernandez Leon; Philip Kasinitz; Peggy Levitt; Pyong Min; Silvia Pedraza; Patricia Pessar; Ruben Rumbaut; Sandhya Shukla; Robert Smith; Milton Vickerman; Min Zhou.

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Singer, Audrey and Greta Gilbertson (2000). “Naturalization in the Wake of AntiImmigrant Legislation: Dominicans in New York City.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace International Migration Policy Program, Working Paper #10. Skeldon, Ronald (1994a). “Hong Kong in an International Migration System.” In Reluctant Exiles? Migrations from Hong Kong and the New Overseas Chinese. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 21–51. ——— ed. (1994b). Reluctant Exiles? Migration from Hong Kong and the New Overseas Chinese. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Skocpol, Theda (1984). “Emergent Agendas and Recurrent Strategies in Historical Sociology,” in Theda Skocpol, ed., Vision and Method in Historical Sociology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 368–91. Smith, James and Barry Edmonston, eds. (1997). The New Americans. Economic, Demographic and Fiscal Effects of Immigration. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Smith, Michael and Luis Guarnizo, eds. (1998). Transnationalism from Below. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Smith, Raymond (1996). The Matrifocal Family: Power, Pluralism, and Politics. New York: Routledge. Smith, Robert (1997). “Transnational Migration, Assimilation, and Political Community.” In The City and the World, eds. Margaret Crahan and Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush. New York: Council on Foreign Relations Book, 110–32. ——— (2002). “Social Location, Generation, and Life Course as Social Processes Shaping – Second Generation Transnational Life.” In The Changing Face of Home: The Transnational Lives of the Second Generation, eds. Mary Waters and Peggy Levitt. New York: Russell Sage, 145–67. Stepick, Alex (1994). “Miami: Capital of Latin America.” In Newcomers in the Workplace, eds. Louise Lamphere et al. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 129–44. Sutton, Constance and Susan Makiesky (1975). “Migration and West Indian Racial and Ethnic Consciousness.” In Migration and Ethnicity, eds. Helen Safa and Brian du Toit. The Hague: Mouton. Thai, Hung (1999). “Splitting Things in Half is so White!,” Amerasia Journal, 25: 53–88. Torres, Maria de los Angeles (1998). “Encuentros y Encontronazos: Homeland in the Politics and Identity of the Cuban Diaspora”. In The Latino Studies Reader: Culture, Economy, and Society, eds. Antonia Darder and Rodolfo Torres. New York: Blackwell, 43–62. Torres-Saillant, Silvio (1998). “The Tribulations of Blackness: Stages in Dominican Racial Identity,” Latin American Perspectives, 25: 126–46. US Senate (1992). Asian Organized Crime. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Vertovec, Steven and Robin Cohen, eds. (1999). Migration, Diasporas, and Transnationalism. Cheltenham, UK: Elgar Reference Collection. Vertovec, Steven and Ceri Peach, eds. (1997). Islam in Europe: The Politics of Religion and Community. London: Macmillan Press – now Palgrave. Vertovec, Steven and Alisdair Rogers, eds. (1998). Muslim European Youth. Aldershot: Ashgate.

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Vickerman, Milton (1999). Crosscurrents: West Indian Immigrants and Race. New York: Oxford University Press. ——— (2001). “Tweaking a Monolith: The West Indian Immigrant Encounter with ‘Blackness’.” In Islands in the City. West Indian Migration to New York, ed. Nancy Foner. Berkeley: University of California Press, 237–56. Vigil, James Diego (1997). Personas Mexicanas. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace. ——— (1998). From Indians to Chicanos: The Dynamics of Mexican-American Culture. Propsect Highs, IL: Waveland Press. Vigil, James Diego and Steve Chong Yon (1998). “Vietnamese Youth Gangs in the Context of Multiple Marginality and the Los Angeles Youth Gang Phenomenon.” In Gangs and Youth Subcultures, eds. Kayleen Hazlehurst and Cameron Hazlehurst. New Brunswick, NJ: Transcation Publishers, 117–40. Vigil, James Diego and John Long (1990). “Emic and Etic Perspectives on Gang Culture: The Chicano Case.” In Gangs in America, ed. Ronald Huff. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 55–70. Waldinger, Roger (1996). Still the Promised City? African-Americans and New Immigrants in Postindustrial New York. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Waldinger, Roger and Mehdi Bozorgmehr, eds. (1996). Ethnic Los Angeles. New York: Russell Sage. Waters, Mary (1990). Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America. Berkeley: University of California Press. ——— (1996). “Ethnic and Racial Identities of Second-Generaton Black Immigrants in New York City.” In The New Second Generation, ed. Alejandro Portes. New York: Russell Sage, 171–96. ——— (1999). Black Identities: West Indian Dreams and American Realities. New York: Russell Sage. Waters, Mary and Peggy Levitt, eds. (2002). The Changing Face of Home: The Transnational Lives of the Second Generation. New York: Russell Sage. Wong, Sau-Ling (1995). “Denationalization Reconsidered: Asian American Cultural Criticism at a Theoretical Crossroads,” Amerasia Journal, 21(1 & 2): 1–27. Zhou, Min (1992). Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of an Urban Enclave. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ——— (1999). “Coming of Age: The Current Situation of Asian American Children,” Amerasia Journal, 25: 1–27. Zhou, Min and Carl Bankston (1998). Growing Up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States. New York: Russell Sage.

7 Keeping Feet in Both Worlds: Transnational Practices and Immigrant Incorporation in the United States Peggy Levitt

A visit to the website, Miraflores.com, provides striking evidence of the ways in which contemporary social and economic life transcends national boundaries.1 Close to two-thirds of the households in Miraflores, a small village in the south of the Dominican Republic, have relatives living in the greater Boston Metropolitan area. Nearly one-quarter of those who stay behind receive more than two-thirds of their income from the United States. Migrants and non-migrants maintain such close social and economic ties to one another that community life seems to take place in two settings (Levitt 2001a). The Miraflores website speaks to these dynamics. The first page provides weather reports for Miraflores and Massachusetts. A second page entitled Nuestra Historia (Our History), which tells how the community was founded, includes an account of the creation of its “satellite” in Boston. And a third page shows photos of the funeral home, baseball stadium, and health clinic funded by the Miraflores Development Committee, so that migrant and non-migrant members can both celebrate the fruits of their labor. The Dominican case is far from unique. Rather than cutting off their social and economic attachments, and exchanging one political membership for another, increasing numbers of migrants keep feet in two worlds. They engage in transnational practices or economic, political, and sociocultural occupations and activities that require regular, long-term contacts across borders for their success (Portes et al. 1999). The migrant entrepreneur who travels regularly to his ancestral home to get the money 177

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and goods he needs for his business is engaged in transnational practices. The political party official whose job is to coordinate support in the home and host country or the migrant parent who raises children via long distance with help from grandparents who stay behind are also transnational actors. Many scholars, as well as members of the public at large, believe that long-term transnational involvements and assimilation are incompatible and that migrants must choose one place to belong if they want to get ahead. Two views of assimilation characterize these debates. Segmented assimilation theory proposes three patterns of adaptation for contemporary migrants and their children. One path involves increasing acculturation and subsequent integration into the white middle class. A second path predicts downward mobility and incorporation into the underclass. And a third pattern involves rapid economic advancement through the preservation of unique ethnic traits (Zhou 1999). An alternative view of the assimilation process revisits earlier ideas about straight-line assimilation which viewed integration as linear, generationally driven, and a necessary prerequisite for successful incorporation into the US. It emphasizes the agency of social actors in negotiating the incorporation process and stresses the influence of contextual factors. From this perspective, assimilation is an interactive, bumpy journey along multiple non-linear pathways (Morawska forthcoming; Rumbaut 1997; Alba and Nee 1999; Gans 1992). In this chapter, I employ this second approach to assimilation and view segmented assimilation as one set of possible outcomes included under its broader umbrella. I argue that the false dichotomy between assimilation and transnational practices arises because what is meant by transnational engagements has not been clearly defined. Highlighting variations in scope, intensity, and goals brings to light the multiple ways that migrants combine transnational and assimilative strategies and the diverse outcomes these produce with respect to home and host-country mobility. The relationship between transnational involvements and assimilation is shaped by the kinds of activities migrants participate in, the institutional arenas where these activities take place, and the class and lifecycle stage of individual migrants. Some migrants continue to take part actively in the economic, political, and religious lives of their homelands and achieve mobility in both contexts. Others engage in transnational practices but advance only in a single setting. Still others engage in a set of transnational practices inhibiting their mobility in either context (For further discussion of assimilation/transnationalism debates, see Morawska in this volume).

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My comments are based on findings from an ongoing research project on transnational migration among Dominican, Irish, Indian, Brazilian, Lebanese, and Israeli migrants to the greater Boston Metropolitan area. 2 I emphasize the ways in which sustained commitments to sending countries influence the balance between home and host-country mobility. I delineate the ways in which various types of cross-border engagements combine with broad indicators of incorporation to shape mobility trajectories that are transnationally constituted. I begin by offering a brief conceptual framework for understanding the field of transnational migration. I describe the ways in which cross-border practices vary by scope, intensity, goals, institutional context, and the socioeconomic characteristics of those who pursue them. I then present three cases of migrants who sustain transnational commitments at the same time that they are integrated into their host country. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of my findings.

Transnational migration and assimilation When the magnitude, duration, and impact of migration is sufficiently strong, transnational social fields or public spheres spanning the sending and receiving country emerge (Mahler 1998; Fraser 1991). Both the migrants and non-migrants who live within transnational social fields are exposed to a set of social expectations, cultural values, and patterns of human interaction shaped by at least two, if not more, social, economic, and political systems. They have access to social and institutional resources that imbue them with the potential to remain active in two worlds. Movement is not a prerequisite for transnational activism. There are those who travel regularly to carry out their routine affairs, whom some researchers call transmigrants (England 1999; Guarnizo 1997). There are also individuals whose lives are rooted primarily in a single sending or receiving-country setting, who move infrequently, but whose lives integrally involve resources, contacts, and people who are far away. And there are those who do not move but who live their lives within a context that has become transnationalized. Frequent travelers, periodic movers, and those who stay in one place engage in a wide variety of transnational practices. Guarnizo (2000) defines core transnationalism as those activities that form an integral part of the individual’s habitual life, are undertaken on a regular basis, and are patterned and therefore somewhat predictable. Expanded transnationalism,

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in contrast, includes migrants who engage in occasional transnational practices, such as responses to political crises or natural disasters. Itzigsohn et al. (1999) characterize broad transnational practices as those that are not well institutionalized, involve only occasional participation, and require only sporadic movement. He and his colleagues contrast these with narrow transnational practices that are highly institutionalized, constant, and involve regular travel. These scholars make important strides toward defining transnational activism. To gain a better understanding of the relationship between crossborder involvements and assimilation, these must be expanded upon. Here, I propose several additional dimensions and build on those already in place, to demonstrate the many ways in which home and host country involvements combine to produce diverse mobility outcomes. First, the dimensions of transnational practices do not vary as a package. For example, frequency does not necessarily vary at the same level and rate as predictability. An individual can move sporadically but participate regularly across borders. The migrant adult child who supports and cares for an aging parent via long distance or the migrant investor who receives daily reports from the manager of his farm or store are engaged in frequent cross-border contacts despite their limited movement. The believer who returns to her homeland only once a year but who consults weekly with her religious leader also participates in regular, patterned transnational activities. Thus, despite strong, meaningful, predictable participation in their sending communities, these individuals conduct most of their social and economic life in the host country context. Some level of assimilation is likely to occur. The same is true of variations in the institutionalization of transnational practices. Regular transnational practices do not necessarily imply greater institutionalization. Individuals carry out transnational practices in formal and informal settings. Families raising children across borders engage in regular, predictable contacts occurring completely outside organized contexts. Despite this, their households involve people and resources that are physically distant but whose lives are lived in coordination with one another. In contrast, few well-established practices guide other kinds of cross-border partnerships. For instance, every time Doña Nelcida and her migrant sister thought they had established a routine for running their small business in their Dominican sending community, problems arose with their financiers or suppliers that forced them to begin again. Though they had daily contact with one another, and earned their livelihoods transnationally, their activities involved little systemization.


Differences in institutionalization affect the assimilation/transnational dynamic in several ways. On the one hand, less institutionalization may make it harder for migrants to participate in formal sending-country economics and politics because they are constantly forced to reinvent the wheel. They may ultimately abandon their efforts and redirect their energies toward host country life. On the other hand, less institutionalization allows migrants more flexibility with which to combine transnational and assimilative strategies. It is easier to mix occasional supplementary income-generating schemes, like selling clothes and toys one “imports” in a suitcase, with host-country employment than to mount a full-scale business. Likewise, it may be easier for political party operatives to mobilize naturalized citizens around specific, targeted sending-country campaigns than to expect them to participate regularly in party activities. Numerous cross-border activities are carried out within organizational contexts. To the extent that these activities become a scripted, ritualized part of daily organizational life, they enable participation across borders. Here again, the result may be activism in both settings rather than an either/or dynamic. The three principal political parties in the Dominican Republic, for example, changed the way they raised funds, recruited supporters, and their expectations of their members when they realized how much money migrants contributed to their campaigns and how strongly they influenced non-migrant family members’ political preferences. They implemented strategies in support of a dual agenda, encouraging migrants to integrate politically into the US and to continue to be active on the island (Levitt 2001a). The fact that cross-border political mobilization became integral to party strategy, and party members actively encouraged activism in both settings, promoted both assimilation and transnational commitments rather than a zero-sum game. Transnational practices vary not only by degree of movement and institutionalization but also by scope. Multiple civic, political, and religious organizations provide institutional arenas allowing migrants to participate transnationally. The Brazilian transnational social field for example, is constituted by an array of organizations that are horizontally and vertically connected to one another at the local, regional, and national levels in Boston and Governador Valdares (Levitt 2001a). These arenas make it possible for migrants to engage in selective transnational activities involving a single activity, or to participate in a comprehensive range of activities involving multiple spheres (Levitt 2001b). The member of a sending-country political party who devotes every weekend to the group, may earn his living, participate in civic

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organizations, and worship solely in the host country. His selective transnational practices, directed at the political sphere, have less influence on his assimilation. In contrast, the activities of the individual who is comprehensively involved in cross-border economic, political, and religious arenas exert a greater impact on her assimilation. The nature of the tasks in which migrants are engaged also influences the ways in which individuals balance assimilation and transnational engagements. Some transnational practices mix more easily with assimilation strategies than others. The resulting combinations involve few conflicting pulls or contradictory values. For example, economic activities in the home and host country may mutually reinforce each other because business owners can use earnings and resources from one setting to offset slow periods in the other. Juan and Franklin Cabral, two brothers who own a record store in Boston and a grocery store in the Dominican Republic, manage a joint business account which supports their operations in both settings. In contrast, transnational religious membership often aims at impeding acculturation. Some migrants join religious groups, in part, to stem the tide of host-country value adaptation. In such cases, transnational practices and acculturation run counter to one another. Members of a Four Square Brazilian church in Boston, for example, claimed they chose to join their church because it reinforced their connections to Brazil and protected them from US immorality. They had few social contacts with those outside their religious community because they spent so much of their time at church. Transnational practices also differ with respect to goals. Some activities are enacted across borders to achieve objectives in a single setting. Others are meant to be implemented in and affect both contexts, though they may fall short of their goal. For example, most hometown associations mobilize resources and support in the host country to help their sending communities. They are not designed to help members cope with the immigrant experience. The Bhaghat Samaj and the Devotional Associates of Yogeshwar (or the Swadhyaya movement), two Hindu groups, are led and structured transnationally though their goals are to keep members strongly committed to religious leaders in India. In contrast, the Catholic Church acts and achieves goals transnationally. The institution’s perception of itself as a universal church, whose leader positions himself as a spokesperson for humanity, reinforces Catholics’ sense of belonging wherever they are. The cross-border connections emerging between Irish, Brazilian, and Dominican migrant and non-migrant parishioners extend, deepen, and customize what is already a global religious system, thereby enabling dual membership.


Finally, the relationship between transnational practices and incorporation varies according to the socioeconomic characteristics of the individuals carrying them out. Class and lifecycle stage are particularly salient. Whether keeping feet in two worlds results in socioeconomic gains or downward mobility in both settings is largely determined by class. Those who have more income, education, and language skills are more likely to be able to choose transnational activism, while those with less social and cultural capital are more likely to be forced into it. Highly educated Indian, Chinese, and Korean college students, for example, expressed interest in establishing ties to their ancestral homes because they realized that someday these might serve them professionally. They also sensed these connections might help them circumvent the occupational glass ceilings they anticipated they would encounter due to racism (Kibria 1998; Louie 1998). In contrast, young Mirafloreños were pressed into transnational lifestyles. Because the majority did not complete high school and their English was poor, they could not gain a secure economic foothold in the US. After each attempt, they returned to Miraflores and found themselves increasingly ill-at-ease, having grown accustomed to life in Boston. They too encountered racism, but unlike their more educated peers, they did not have the same resources to combat it. Class, then, shapes one’s ability to engage in transnational practices and strongly influences how the relationship between assimilation and transnational practices ultimately plays out. Migrants’ desire and ability to participate transnationally also varies across the life cycle. Though many Brazilians arrived in the US as target earners who planned to return to Brazil, large numbers appear to be reorienting themselves to the US where they have begun to buy homes. Such changes do not necessarily signal they have entirely abandoned their transnational projects. Instead, some claim they bought rental properties so they could live off the income when they retire to Brazil. They plan to turn these investments over to their children, who will manage them and send them money each month. These ebbs and flows of activism are also evident among the second generation. It makes sense that the children of immigrants born in the US, or who spend most of their formative years in this country, would feel their strongest ties to their family’s new home. Their primary socialization occurs in the US. Even if they travel frequently to their parents’ countries of origin or host relatives during numerous visits, the air they breathe, the food they eat, and their primary social contacts are with North Americans (Kasinitz et al. 1998; Rumbaut 1998).

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It may be premature, though, to conclude definitively that most children of immigrants will not engage in some kind of transnational practices, though they are likely to be less frequent and more selective in scope. Other studies indicate some degree of activism among the second generation. Vásquez et al. (2001), for example, discovered connections between adolescent gang members in El Salvador and Los Angeles that were later transformed when members in the US converted to Pentecostalism and began using these ties to save souls in Central America. Smith (1998) also found that second generation Mexicans in New York participated actively in their parents’ sending communities during adolescence but that their activities declined during young adulthood. He is unsure whether their transnational practices will increase again as his respondents grow older, particularly as they approach their childbearing years. Finally, as I argue below, some of the Irish in my study did not discover their transnational attachments until they reached middle age. These variations lend credence to the view that transnational engagements are not fixed packages that remain constant over the lifecycle. Instead, migrants put together a constellation of strategies at different stages of their lives and combine these with host-country integration strategies. The resulting configurations produce different mixes of upward and downward mobility in both contexts. The following section describes three individuals who combine sending-country involvement and hostcountry incorporation with varying degrees of success.

Eduardo: Keeping feet in both worlds and not knowing which way is up Shortly after they married, Marcela and her husband, Diómedes, decided to try their hand at life in the US. Though Diómedes’ family had land in the Dominican Republic, it was getting harder and harder to make a good living by farming. Diómedes left for Boston first and Marcela began the long wait for her visa. She finally got one when baby Eduardo was 6 months old. Since she could not get a visa for her infant and she had already been waiting two years, Marcela decided to leave Eduardo with her mother and sister. Though she tried to come back regularly, Marcela missed his baptism, his first steps, and his first tooth. By the time he joined his mother and father in Boston five years later, Eduardo’s parents were divorced. Marcela soon remarried and started a new family. Though he knew that his mother and stepfather cared for him, and he was pleased to be with them again, Eduardo also felt


forcibly uprooted from the place he loved. He did not like the cold or that children could not play outside because they had to be kept safe from the dangers of the neighborhood. Though he tried to fit in, he always seemed to get into trouble at school, unable to get along with other students or teachers. He fell behind in his schoolwork and was fluent in neither Spanish nor English. His parents decided he would be better off living on the island. They put in place what would become a recurrent strategy – sending Eduardo back to live with his grandmother, with the hope that things would improve, and then bringing him back to Boston when he became too much for her to handle. Though things usually got better when Eduardo first arrived, and it looked like he might settle down, problems always resurfaced. After each move, Eduardo felt more and more that he was not truly comfortable anywhere. Eduardo is now 18. He has been back and forth between Boston and Miraflores five times. His grandmother says she is too old to take care of him, throwing her hands in the air to express how overwhelmed she feels. Because Eduardo disobeys her when she tells him to be home by midnight, she waits up half the night to make sure he comes back in one piece. His aunt, who was responsible for his day-to-day care when he was an infant, now has a son of her own. It pains her that she cannot reach him anymore since she was the one who changed his diapers and shared his bed when he was little. She tries to talk to him about staying in school and about staying away from the delicuentes (delinquents) in the village. Though he promises to change, the next day he is back at it again, doing the same things. This hurts her, she says, but she is just not the person responsible any more. Back in Boston, Marcela is also at her wit’s end. Eduardo no longer fits easily into the new family she has created. She grew tired of the constant phone calls she received from teachers at school. She has a job and three other children to take care of. Eduardo recently returned to live in Boston after a year-and-a-half on the island. It is now time for him to look for a job and to start earning his own money. Every weekend, she and her husband cajole, scream, and implore him to “get his life together” but he just spends his days lying on the couch and watching TV. Even when she found a job for him at a hospital cafeteria just a bus ride away, he complained about the hours and the commute and quit after only two days on the job. Marcela feels that, like so many youth in Miraflores, he has become accustomed to the dole of the migration check arriving each month from Boston. He has never had to work to put food on the table and now he expects that it will magically appear.

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Eduardo’s transnational childhood produced neither successful integration nor enduring membership in his home community. Because his English and Spanish are poor and he has not completed high school in Boston or in the Dominican Republic, Eduardo is fast becoming part of the Dominican and US underclass. To date, Eduardo’s mix of transnational practices and host-country involvements has resulted in social and economic marginality in both settings.

Thomas: Discovering “home” at middle age Many of the Irish who came to the United States in the 1920s wanted desperately to forget the communities they left behind. They had been raised on farms producing so little there was barely enough to feed the family. Extra children were sometimes loaned out to other farmers, sometimes kin and sometimes not, because they would be too much of a burden if they stayed home. Before someone migrated, the community often held what they called an American wake, symbolic of the expectation that migrants would never come back. When these migrants had children of their own, they told them little about Ireland, except that their lives had been full of hardship. They wanted to forget the bleak, cold, “you couldn’t imagine that something could grow there” landscape and wanted their offspring to be firmly established in the US. There was little talk of the old-country in the household in which Thomas Byrnes, a 54 year-old second generation Irish-American, grew up. Though he lived in a neighborhood surrounded by other Irish, Thomas says that his own parents, and his friends’ parents, spoke little about their former lives. “You knew they remembered it and that their memories ran deep,” he said, “but it was like they could not bring themselves to talk about the poverty and misery they escaped from.” As a result, during his childhood and young adult years, Thomas learned little about his family’s history. He knew that letters came regularly from his unmarried aunt who still lived in the family home on the Inishowen Peninsula in County Donegal. He knew that his mother always sent packages filled with the old clothes that he and his brothers had outgrown. But that was as far as it went. His images of Ireland, he says, were the same stereotypical ones held by most Americans – potatoes, thatched-roof cottages, green fog-filled rocky meadows, and Irish brogues. Nothing challenged these ideas as he completed his college degree at a predominantly Catholic college, trained as a lawyer, and moved his wife and first-born child to an Irish lower middle-class


suburb just outside of Boston. Work, baseball practice and parish activities consumed his life. But the letters that Thomas’ parents, and others like them, wrote and received on a regular basis, kept their emotional ties to Ireland strong. Normally, one sibling among the many who journeyed to the US continued to write letters, wire money, or send packages of clothing, often containing dollars tucked away in a pocket, as John Doherty, a middleaged, second generation lawyer, described: Well, see there was a lot of transmittal of information back and forth. Someone had left the village 35 years before but they were not forgotten, at least among their contemporaries. They would always get drips and drabs of information from people who were visiting, either coming over here, or coming over there, to live. They were always very interested in people and what they were doing. The good thing about village life, is that it was very personal in terms of people keeping track of people and knowing what people were doing and people talking about other people. The bad thing is if you’re living there everyone knows your life, what you’re doing, what you’re not doing, your sins. There’s no anonymity in these Irish villages. In addition, when Inishoweners saw each other at church, in the pub, at kitchen rackets, or wakes they would also exchange news and gossip about what went on at home. Like many of the other groups in this study, though few returned or participated via long-distance in the economic or political life of their villages in Ireland, among families and within these informal settings, the social and emotional connections between Inishowen and Boston were not allowed to die. That Inishoweners sustained these connections, albeit weakly and sporadically, enabled the second generation to rekindle them when they reached a stage in their lives when they were able and interested in doing so. At middle age, with enough time and money to travel, many members of the second generation became curious and eager to understand the mystery that was their parents’ lives. They were taken completely by surprise to discover a community that despite never having laid eyes on them, was quick to know who they were and welcome them “home.” They, in a sense, reaped the fruits of the transnational seeds their parents had planted, without ever having known they had been sown. For example, when Maureen and her brother Bob, both in their sixties and raised in the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston, made their first trip over, they stopped in a pub before heading back to the Bed and

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Breakfast (B&B) where they were staying. After talking with them, the pub owner realized that their cousin lived just up the road. He told them this but they thought little of it, thinking they did not want to bother a stranger. Later that evening, their cousin came to find them, and demanded to know why they had not come to visit before. Thomas Byrne was also baffled the first time he traveled to Ireland. He began thinking about his Irish roots when he reached 45. He had a successful law practice. He now lived in a comfortable home in a middle class community. One of his children had finished college and the other was soon to graduate. When he found a box in his attic filled with the letters his mother and her sister had written to each other, he realized how much and how often his mother thought about her relatives back home. Though she never returned, and her sister never visited Boston, they wrote frequent letters revealing a rich narrative of small-town life in Ireland that his mother somehow remained part of. Thomas decided to visit Ireland. He finally had enough money, time, and stability to be able to do so. He was completely unprepared for what he found and how it transformed his life. “It’s amazing,” he says, When I go up to Malin Head, it’s “Welcome home Tom.” Down in Mayo, where there are lots of family, an old timer, late 70s or early 80s, all bent over on the cane and problems with his back, was running out the door to see me! It’s humbling. But that’s what it’s like to go there. That’s why I can’t wait to go back. (Tears stream down Tom’s face and he tries to pull himself together) Sorry I get carried away with it. It doesn’t at all feel like I’m an American, you know, there’s a family party some place and I go just like anybody else. “He’s one of us.” In fact, one of my cousins is over there and we happened to be talking about the first time I went over there, in ’83 and there was a party at their father’s house. “But Tom do you remember the first night we were at that party?” Oh God, remember, I’ll never forget it, it was one of the greatest times I ever had in my life! “And I’ll never forget,” he says, “Remember, we were pouring the booze on you pretty good that night.” I said I don’t remember it was just me, I thought it was everybody. “Oh yeah, we were,” he said. Somebody comes out with the accordion, the guitar, two sons all play the guitar, and people start singing, and so I started singing. And he told me how his father told him, give him plenty to drink, give him plenty to drink. So once the night was over and I had got up and sang a few songs his father said


to him “By God he’s one of us.” Pretty powerful stuff. I can almost sense it walking there, something just comes over me. Like I’ve been, I was there sometime before. Before this life. Just have a sense of it. Good. Wonderful. Many of Thomas’ contemporaries have also made similar “roots journeys.” They begin to go back to Ireland on vacation every year. Each time, they meet new members of their extended family and systematically fill in the links of the puzzle that is their past. For others, like Thomas, their return transforms them in much more fundamental ways. Their relatives’ “Welcome Home” greeting resonates somewhere deeply within them. They feel they have discovered a missing piece of who they are but had never really known was lacking. “When I went back to Ireland for the first time” Clare Murphy recalls, I understood why I am a Democrat, why I have spent so much of my life fighting for liberal values. I realized that these had somehow been transmitted to me from Ireland – caring for your family, a concern for others, responsibility to the community. I felt like I finally understood myself. That for all these years I had somehow been outof-sync with everyone around me and that all of a sudden I felt like I completely fit. Though Thomas has no plans to move back to Ireland, like Clare, he became a transnational activist once he began traveling there. He felt such a strong connection to the family and friends he became “re-acquainted” with in his mother’s hometown, that he began working on community development projects. He, and several other “sons of Inishowen,” raised money to build a soccer field. He has also joined forces with a local group in Malinhead to promote tourism to the area. His activities include lobbying the Irish American community and Irish elected officials to approve plans he helped develop for a visitors’ center at Ireland’s most northern point. Second generation individuals like Thomas are paradigmatic examples of straight-line assimilation. Though his parents arrived with little, Thomas exhibits many of the traditional markers of social, economic and cultural assimilation. This, in fact, is precisely what gave Thomas the resources and time he needed to become a transnational actor. In Thomas’ case, assimilation enabled transnational participation and, at least so far, these two allegiances peacefully coexist.

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Pratik: Moving up in the US and in India It has been three years since Pratik left Bodeli, a town of approximately 35,000 located 70 kilometers from the Indian city of Baroda, to come to the United States. Pratik is a Bhaghat, a sub-caste of Patels or Patidars, who are a traditional farming community from a particular group of villages in Gujarat State. Bhaghats are supposed to marry only within this endogamous marriage circle. They also belong to the Uda Bhakta Society, whose religious leader Jivanji Maharaj has his Ghadi, or throne, in the region. Though Pratik’s family moved to town when Pratik and his sister entered high school, they are still strongly tied to their land and village where they also have a home. Pratik received his BA in computer science. Before migrating, he and his cousin invested in a computer-school franchise which they managed together. Six years ago, Pratik married Deepa, also a Bhaghat, who had moved with her parents to the US when she was 16. She went to high school in Lowell, Massachusetts and then went on to work for a computer manufacturing company, rising gradually to the position of a quality assurance supervisor. They had to wait for three years after their arranged marriage before Pratik received his visa and could move to the US. Pratik and Deepa are an example of those who systematically pursue and achieve economic gains in the US while they maintain strong economic and religious connections to India. They now live in a garden apartment, along with their two-year-old daughter and Deepa’s parents. They have many Gujarati neighbors. Pratik was recently promoted from manufacturing to a position as engineer at the telecommunications firm where he has worked since he arrived. He is taking classes toward his Masters at a nearby university. His mother-in-law, who speaks little English, found a job preparing food at the local Pizza Hut. Pratik and his family are slowly but steadily furnishing their apartment with the accoutrements of US middle class life. A large screen TV is the centerpiece of one wall of their living room. They have a new Honda Accord. With their new camcorder, they videotape footage of their daughter so Pratik’s parents in India can begin to know their new grandchild. Their savings, however, are also devoted to investments and improvements in India. Pratik is still a partner in the computer school. His cousin purchased five more computers with money Pratik sent from the US. Furthermore, Pratik and Deepa added a second story to the family home, including their own separate bedroom suite and a Western-style bathroom they are now accustomed to using.


It is common practice for joint families in India to pool their income. Pratik and Deepa, along with their extended family members, however, are doing this across space. They are pursuing a long-term economic strategy, using resources accrued through farming, computer school fees, and jobs in engineering and telecommunications to create homes in the US and in India. Unlike Eduardo, they are successful in both places because they bring job and language skills that are in demand. Though it took some time, Pratik eventually parlayed his engineering background and English language skills into a professional job that matched his position in India. Religious life also keeps Pratik and Deepa strongly tied to India. The Bhaghat community’s strong tradition of endogamy means that many parents still look to India to find partners for their children. Even if, and when, there is a critical mass of Bhaghats in the US to choose from, their attachment to their “homeplace” will be reinforced by the continued tradition of marrying within this village circle. Furthermore, that many Bhaghats still see India as the source of their religious leadership and guidance also strengthens their homeland ties. Bhaghats in the United Kingdom and in the US contributed a large portion of the funds to the new marriage hall built in Bodeli. Jivanji Maharaj, the leader of the group, acknowledges the importance of those living outside of India. In fact, the monthly outreach magazine he publishes to maintain ties to his emigrant members includes a message to the English-speaking second generation from his son and successor, Shri Premjivan Swami, urging them to stay loyal and active. “My young friends, the expectations of the Indian Bhagat Society are very high for you. Please don’t ignore their feelings.” Pratik, then, successfully combines selective assimilation and transnational involvements to advance in both settings. He is not interested in participating in Indian or US politics. He has assimilated into mainstream economic life in the US but rejects membership in its cultural and religious institutions. And at the same time, he is active in the economic and religious life of his sending community. He purposefully picks and chooses where and what he will be involved in, so far achieving mobility in both contexts.

Conclusion Some of the liveliest debates among contemporary migration scholars concern the nature of assimilation, particularly for the second generation, the strength of migrants’ enduring ties to their countries of origin, and

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the interaction between the two. One reason these discussions are so difficult to resolve is that how we define assimilation and transnational practices is not always clear. In this chapter, I focused on the transnational side of the equation. By highlighting variations in the scope, institutionalization, nature, and goals of transnational practices, and in the class and lifecycle stage of those who engage in them, I argued that transnational practices are not incompatible with assimilation. Our study suggests that there are many ways to be a transnational actor. Some respondents engage only periodically in transnational practices. Others participate selectively, in just one, rather than multiple transnational arenas. Some are not interested in transnational activism until they reach a particular lifecycle stage. The socioeconomic outcomes resulting from assimilation and transnational engagement depend upon the sending and receiving-country context, migrants’ socioeconomic characteristics, and the particular constellation of sending and receiving country practices they put together. Eduardo, Thomas, and Pratik all combined assimilation with transnational practices. For Eduardo, this resulted in social marginality in both settings. Thomas’ successful assimilation later enabled his transnational participation. And Pratik’s strategy of partial assimilation and selective transnational involvements has, thus far, allowed him to advance in his home and host communities.

Acknowledgments My thanks to Erin Collins, Rafael de la Dehesa, Waldo Cesar, Breda Gray, Deborah Hatch, and N. Rajaram for their work on this project. Thanks also to Ewa Morawska and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

Notes 1 Miraflores and Miraflores.com are pseudonyms. 2 All the groups in this study were selected because large numbers of migrants left a particular sending-country village, city or state and settled near one another in Massachusetts. Findings from our work on Dominicans from the village of Miraflores who live in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, Irish from the Inishowen Peninsula who live in Dorchester, Indians from Gujarat State who have settled around the city of Lowell, and Brazilians from Governador Valadares who live in Framingham are discussed in this chapter. Our research team includes myself, colleagues in each sending country, and a group of graduate and undergraduate researchers. In the United States, we collect data by interviewing first and second-generation individuals and

Keeping Feet in Both Worlds 193 organizational leaders, observing meetings and special events, and reviewing pertinent documents. After each interview in Boston, we ask for the names of non-migrant family members to contact. We then conduct a parallel set of interviews with individuals and organizational leaders in sending communities at the local, regional, and national level. Two hundred and forty interviews have been conducted among first and second generation Irish, Indian, Dominican, and Brazilian migrants. In addition, 76 leaders of religious, political, and social organizations have been interviewed. Field work was also carried out in Ireland, Brazil, and India among migrants’ family members and with organizational leaders at the local, regional, and national levels in 1997–2001. Field work in the Dominican Republic was conducted between 1992–1994 and in 1997.

References Alba, Richard and Victor Nee (1999). “Rethinking Assimilation Theory for a New Era of Immigration.” In The Handbook of International Migration, edited by Charles Hirschman, Philip Kasinitz, and Josh Dewind. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 137–60. England, Sarah (1999). “Negotiating Race and Place in the Garifuna Diaspora: Identity Formation and Transnational Grassroots Politics in New York City and Honduras.” Identities, 6(1): 5–53. Fraser , Nancy (1991). “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” In Habernas and the Public Sphere, edited by Craig Calhoun. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gans, Herbert. 1992. “Comment: Ethnic Invention and Acculturation: A BumpyLine Approach.” Journal of American Ethnic History, 11(1, Fall): 42–52. Guarnizo, Luis (1997). “The Emergence of a Transnational Social Formation and the Mirage of Return among Dominican Transmigrants.” Identities, 4: 281–322. ——— (2000). “Notes on Transnational.” Paper presented at Transnational Migration: Comparative Theory and Research Perspectives Conference. Oxford, England, June 2000. Itzigsohn, José, Carlos Dore Cabral, Esther Hernández Medina and Obed Vázquez (1999). “Mapping Dominican Transnationalism: Narrow and Broad Transnational Practices.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22(2): 2316–340. Kasinitz, Philip, Mary Waters, and John Mollenkopf (1998). “Transnationalism and Children of Immigrants in the Contemporary United States: What are the Issues?” Paper Presented at Transnationalism and the Second Generation Conference, Harvard University, April. Kibria, Nazli (1998). “The Ties of Blood and Homeland Trips: Transnationalism and Identity Among Second Generation Chinese and Korean Americans.” Paper presented at Transnationalism and the Second Generation Conference, Harvard University, April. Levitt, Peggy (2001a). The Transnational Villagers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ——— (2001b). “Transnational Migration: Taking Stock and Future Directions.” Global Networks, 1(3): 195–216.

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Louie, Andrea (1998). “Still Transnational After All These Years: Chinese Americans and the Chinese Motherland.” Paper presented at Transnationalism and The Second Generation Conference, Harvard University, April. Mahler, Sarah (1996). American Dreaming. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Morawska, Ewa (Forthcoming). “The Sociology and History of Immigration: Reflections of a Practitioner.” In Reflections on Migration Research: Promises of Interdisciplinarity, edited by Michael Bommes and Ewa Morawska. Avebury: Ashgate. Portes, Alejandro, Luis Guarnizo, and Patricia Landolt (1999). “Introduction: Pitfalls and Promise of an Emergent Research Field”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22: 463–78. Rumbaut, Rubén (1997). “Ties that Bind: Immigration and Immigrant Families in the United States.” In Immigration and the Family, edited by Alan Booth, Ann C. Crouter, and Nancy Landale. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ——— (1998). “Severed or Sustained Attachments? Language, Identity, and Imagined Communities in the Post-Immigrant Generation.” Paper presented at Transnationalsim and the Second Generation Conference, Harvard University, April 1998. Smith, Robert (1998). “Social Location, Generation and Life Course as Social Processes Shaping Second Generation Transnational Life.” Paper presented at Transnationalism and The Second Generation Conference, Harvard University, April 1998. US Bureau of the Census (1992). Census of the Population: General Social and Economic Characteristics. PC(1)-C23.1. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Vásquez, Manuel et al. (2001). “Saving Souls Transnationally: Pentecostalism and Gangs in El Salvador and the United States.” In Christianity, Social Change, and Globalization in the Americas, edited by Anna Peterson, Philip Williams, and Manuel Vásquez. New Brunswick, NJ: Rudgers University Press. Zhou, Min (1999). “Segmented Assimilation.” In The Handbook of International Migration, edited by Charles Hirschman, Philip Kasinitz, and Josh Dewind. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 196–211.

8 How National Citizenship Shapes Transnationalism: Migrant and Minority Claims-making in Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham

Introduction In general studies of globalization, as well as in the more specific literature on transnational migration, the nation-state and national citizenship are not exactly en vogue. Anything beyond (“postnationalism”), below (“the local,” “devolution”), above (“global discourses,” “supranational institutions”), between (“transnational communities”), or circumventing (“glocalism,” “global cities”) nation-states has the warm attention of the academic community. By contrast, the nation-state, if not ignored altogether, usually appears attached to prefixes such as “post-”, “trans-” and “supra-”, suggesting its actual or upcoming demise. We do not want to deny that the (actual or potential) new trends that are addressed by these strands of research do not deserve attention. To some extent it is legitimate to pay more attention to what is new than to that which remains the same. What we take issue with, is the tendency in the literature to rely on one-sided and often unsystematic evidence for supposedly new trends that undermine the nation-state. It is not difficult at all to find examples that fit postnational, transnational and other alternatives to the nation-state centered model. However, it is not warranted to derive far-ranging claims about the future of the nation-state or a fundamental transformation of global politics from such examples if we do not know how representative they are. Only theoretical and empirical approaches that do not 195

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relegate the nation-state to the domain of insignificance a priori can tell us something about the comparative extent of new trends, but equally important perhaps, only they can show us how the nationstate interacts with globalization. Even staunch postnationalists tend to admit that the global to an important extent manifests itself within the nation-state, and that nation-states are important actors promoting and shaping globalization and supranationalization on the international scene. If there are still important differences among nation-states – which some authors contest, including, regarding citizenship, the editors of this book – it follows that we may find global trends such as increased transnational migration, trade and communication or the growing role of supranational institutions such as the UN or the EU, processed very differently by individual nation-states and resulting in diverging outcomes. In other words, although there can be little doubt that globalization affects the nation-state, it cannot be assumed a priori that the nation-state becomes any less important, nor that cross-national differences become necessarily homogenized. In this paper, we want to focus on one particular development in the migration field that is said to challenge the nation-state, namely the formation of transnational communities and diasporas. We will deal in particular with the public dimension of transnationalism by focusing on the claims-making and participation of ethnic minorities of migrant origin in the public sphere. This is arguably one of the most important aspects of transnationalism in that it involves an inter-penetration of the public spheres and the political identities, organizations, issues, and conflicts of the sending country and the country of settlement, with potentially important consequences for both polities. It should be clear from the start, however, that our analysis will not allow us to say much about other forms of transnationalism, such as networks of reciprocity among family members and co-villagers, or business connections between the country of settlement and the homeland. Our analysis and data will allow us, however, to gauge the extent to which such transnational ties extend beyond the private or market spheres, become publicly contested and politicized, and affect the behavior and identities of migrants and ethnic minorities as citizens in the public sphere. A second limitation of our analysis which we have to mention from the start is that we focus on the transformations transnationalism may bring about in the country of settlement. Our data do not speak to the extent and forms in which transnationalism transforms the public spheres and political processes of the sending

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countries, which may well be different from its impact on the country of settlement.1 In an attempt to avoid the pitfall of studying transnationalism by looking only at examples of transnationalism, we place our analysis in a systematic comparative framework.2 First, we put (different forms of ) transnational claims-making into perspective by comparing them to such claims-making by migrants which is fully embedded within the national context of the country of settlement. Second, we compare transnational claims-making across three countries, Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands, which display considerable variation in citizenship and migrant integration approaches. This allows us to see if and how the extent and forms of transnationalism vary as a result of different national political opportunity structures for migrant claimsmaking. In order to control for the possibility that the cross-national differences that we may find are caused by differences among ethnic groups rather than by national opportunity structures, we, thirdly, compare similar migrant groups in different national settings, as well as different migrant groups within the same national setting. Before moving to our analysis of transnational claims-making, we will first, in the next section, briefly discuss some of our earlier results regarding two other theoretical issues in the migration field, which are often linked to the concept of transnational communities. These are the claim of an emerging “postnational” membership of migrants that renders national citizenship largely irrelevant, on the one hand, and the claim that migrants increasingly claim “multicultural” group rights, on the other.

Postnational membership and multicultural claims: some earlier findings A number of authors have identified the emergence of a new form of “postnational” citizenship or membership whereby rights now extend across borders, and supranational institutions and global legitimating discourses have superimposed their authority over the nation-state, with the effect of rendering national citizenship increasingly irrelevant as a source of rights to migrants (Jacobson 1996; Soysal 1994; Sassen 1998). In the European context, the postnational argument draws on the empirical case of the experience of guestworkers, many of whom stayed on and brought their families over after recruitment programs ground to a halt and restrictive immigration controls became the Western

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European norm. Although most former guestworkers did not take up national citizenship in the receiving country, they nonetheless over time came to enjoy many of the same civil and social, though not political, rights as full national citizens (Bauböck 1994). Postnationalists have taken the existence of these rights given to non-citizens as proof of the erosion of national citizenship as the main source of rights. They argue that migrants no longer even need to naturalize in the receiving country, but can successfully sustain their claims to residence and welfare by referring to universal rights of “personhood” that have superseded national citizenship as the guarantor of migrant rights. The link of this argument to the discussion on transnationalism is that postnational rights obviously make it easier for migrants to move in transnational spaces: the more their rights are guaranteed and legitimated on the global level, and the less they depend on belonging to a particular nation, then the more freely migrants can move in between national contexts without the risk of losing claims to rights and entitlements. The postnational argument has not gone uncontested. Important counterarguments are that (a) the codification and enforcement of supranational rights has not gone nearly as far as postnationalists claim (e.g., Guild 2001);3 (b) human rights are not something that has been imposed from the outside on nation-states, but they originate in the constitutions of liberal democracies themselves ( Joppke 1998); (c) supranational regulation in the migration field is a long way from automatically implying a strengthening of migrants’ rights (e.g., the EU’s Schengen and Dublin Accords aim at co-ordinating border controls and exchanging information on illegal immigrants and asylum seekers); and (d) even if there is some truth in the postnationalists’ argument that citizenship today is first and foremost about identity, the symbolic inclusion or exclusion of migrants through citizenship may have important material consequences, including the (de-)legitimization of xenophobia and the (de-)marking of groups for discrimination and racism (Koopmans 1999a). Ultimately, however, the dispute over postnational membership rights needs to be settled empirically. In an earlier paper (Koopmans and Statham 1999a) we set out to test the validity of the postnational thesis by examining data on claims-making by migrants and minorities in Germany and Great Britain. According to the postnational thesis, one would expect migrants to – not exclusively, but certainly to a substantial extent – organize supra- and transnationally, and/or to direct demands at supranational actors and institutions, and/or to make claims on the nation-state referring to supranational rights, conventions and


discourses. However, we found little, if any, support for the postnational thesis. Only a very few percent of all migrant and minority claims in both countries displayed such characteristics. Particularly the European Union, often championed as a prime example by postnationalists, was almost completely absent as an arena for migrant organizing or addressing framing their demands (see also Favell and Geddes 2000). In her version of the postnational argument, Soysal (2000) claims that postnational conventions and discourses provide an important legitimating framework for migrant claims to retain their own cultural identity. Thus, she links up with the second theoretical issue that we briefly want to discuss, namely that of multicultural rights. This perspective asserts that recent waves of non-European migration – and Muslims in particular – have created strong pressures for granting migrants special rights, or exemptions from duties on the basis of their cultural and religious difference from the rest of society. Thus, migration undercuts the vision of a unitary citizenship on the basis of equal individual rights on which the liberal nation-state rests4 – a development which is alternatively seen as a necessary correction to “white” cultural hegemony, or as a threat to social cohesion and solidarity. For understanding transnationalism, multicultural rights are important because they imply a weakening of nation-states’ claims on migrants to assimilate to the national culture and of pressures to sever ties to their countries and cultures of origin. Oft-cited examples of such multicultural challenges by migrant groups are the French foulard and British Rushdie cases, but again, to what extent such spectacular cases are representative remains unclear. Our comparative analysis of migrant claims-making in Germany and Great Britain revealed that, although both countries have about equally important Muslim populations, claims for multicultural group rights were almost absent in Germany, but played an important role in Britain. We argued that this difference must be explained by the availability of an extensive race relations and anti-discrimination framework in the latter country, which moreover officially defines itself as a “multicultural society.” This provides opportunities for claims to rights for migrants in general, and for cultural rights in particular. In Germany, by contrast, migrants are excluded as “foreigners” from the political community and also in other respects have few channels of access to make claims on the state or on other actors, such as employers. This suggests that pressures for multicultural rights depend at least partly on conceptions of citizenship and national identity in a particular setting and are not

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a quasi-automatic consequence of the cultural difference of today’s migrants.

Theoretical perspectives on transnational communities and diasporas Arguments about the emergence of transnational communities and diasporas are often underpinned by referring to postnational rights that enable migrants to move more freely, on one side, and to a growing acceptance of receiving states for multicultural difference which allows migrants to retain strong ties to their countries of origin, on the other. However, the transnational communities argument is not reducible to the effects of postnationalism plus multiculturalism. In particular, increasingly globalized capital accumulation and transfer, the increasing speed of communications, and the affordability of long distance travel have been identified as structural developments that favor the emergence of transnational communities and diasporas. Transnational migrants, according to this view, are able to use these facilities to a greater degree than ever before to establish ties that transcend national boundaries, and by crossing and re-crossing them physically, electronically and financially, they increasingly produce a transnational social, cultural, political and economic world. Transnational migrants do not leave their origins and pasts behind, they take them with them, and by maintaining their networks, they begin to act as conduits between the two or more nations where they have connections. The transnational communities approach is often based on the findings of ethnographic and anthropological studies of migrant behavior which observe the increasing political, social, cultural and economic stakes that these groups have in several places across the globe, and the hybrid forms of identity which they use both in relation to their homelands, countries of settlement, and scattered kith and kin (Basch et al. 1994, Portes 1998, Portes et al. 1999). In this view, then, it is not so much the transformation of the basis of citizenship which is eroding the capacity of nation-states to politically shape migrants in their national image, but the de facto behavior of migrants. The concept of transnationalism is sometimes used so broadly as to encompass migration and immigrants per se. However, in a more meaningful and widely accepted definition, transnationalism consists of “the processes by which immigrants forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement. We call these processes transnationalism to emphasize that many


immigrants today build social fields that cross geographic, cultural, and political borders. An essential element is the multiplicity of involvement that transmigrants sustain in both home and host societies” (Basch et al. 1994: 6). This includes phenomena as diverse as import/ export immigrant businesses, investments by migrants in the country of origin, sustained links among family members and co-villagers in the countries of origin and settlement, homeland-based cultural and religious organizations that set up branches in the country of settlement, as well as the mobilization of migrants by homeland political parties and social movements or the diffusion of homeland-based conflicts to the migrant community abroad. The defining characteristic of transnationalism in this sense, are sustained relations between one or more countries of settlement and a country or region of origin. Thus, the presence of ethnic minorities of migrant origin does not in itself constitute transnationalism, if these groups do not maintain significant and sustained interactions with their homelands. Religious belonging as such cannot be considered transnationalism, either, unless a religion is tied to one specific ethnic group from a specific origin, as is the case for Jews and Sikhs. Although some authors talk about “transnational religious membership” (e.g. Levitt in this volume), including Catholicism and Islam, this stretches the transnational communities concept so much that it becomes useless for analyzing the impacts of migration in the modern world. As Vertovec (2000: 11) argues, the great religions are “world traditions that span many ethnic groups and nationalities that have been spread by many other means than migration and displacement”. The revived concept of diaspora likewise is often used in an excessively loose way, as in Marienstras’ definition as “any community that has emigrated whose numbers make it visible in the host community” (1989: 125). Used more precisely, diaspora denotes a particular kind of transnational community that originates in massive emigration and dispersal – forced or at least propelled by considerable distress – of a group from a homeland to two or more other countries (Van Haer 1998). Compared to other types of transnational community, diasporas thus tend to be characterized by a strong orientation towards the homeland, coupled with a longing to return once the homeland has been achieved, or independence restored, or its present regime has been overthrown. Beyond the classical template of the Jewish diaspora, examples include the Armenians, Palestinians, Tibetans, Kurds, Tamils or Mollucans, as well as regime opponents from Iran, Afghanistan or Cuba. 5 Given the preoccupation of diasporas with nation (re)building, it should not come

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as a surprise that hard-core postnationalists such as Soysal cannot mobilize warm feelings for the concept: The category of diaspora is an extension of the nation-state model, in that it assumes a congruence between a territorial state and the national community, and by implication a congruence between territory, culture and identity . . . Focusing peculiarly on the ethnic axis of homelands and abroad, the theories of diaspora overlook the transgressions of national boundaries and collectives and forget the new ways by which immigrants experience and enact their membership (2000: 3, 10–11). Some approaches to transnationalism in the more general sense likewise acknowledge the persistence of an international world order run by nation-states (e.g., Rex 1996, Castles 2000). Indeed transnationalism may even become a way for nation-states to extend their international influence. Receiving states may come to see resident migrants as important opportunities and conduits for establishing links with the sending country and seek to further secure their allegiance by reducing the criteria for naturalization. Conversely, sending states may loosen their direct claims of allegiance on emigrants – for example, by accepting dual citizenship – as a way of establishing a bulkhead in a wealthier receiving state, with the aim of stimulating a continued flow of economic resources and political connections from the center to the periphery (Freeman and Oegelman 1998). Against this view, another set of authors condemn the institutional framework of the nation-state to the dustbin of history. They define the particularistic group identity claims of minorities and migrants as the important driving force in the creation of a new world order populated by unlimited numbers of “diasporas” – in the loosest sense of the word – who celebrate their ethnicity at the gates of postmodernity (e.g. Tölöyan 1996). In a less cultural studies vein, others have made similar claims about “diasporas” challenging the nation-state (e.g. Cohen 1997; Vertovec 2000). Against the globalization trends propelled “from above” by transnational capitalism and nation-states’ efforts at supranational (de)regulation, several authors see migrant communities as a counter-force of “transnationalism from below” (e.g. Portes 1997; Basch et al. 1994; Smith 2001). Ultimately, such “transnationalism from below” processes are often defined as acts of resistance and appropriation that occur in the face of global capital accumulation, whereby transnational migrants


acquire a privileged political status as a group with resources to resist the onslaught of global capitalism.

A theoretical framework for understanding transnational claims-making In line with the perspective advocated in the introduction to this volume, as well as in Morawska’s contribution, we argue for an intermediate position that sees transnationalism neither as a mere auxiliary to, nor as a gravedigger of the nation-state world order. We endorse Guarnizo and Smith’s (1998: 12–13) criticism of the idea of transmigrants as unbounded actors: we wish to underline the actual mooring, and, thus, boundedness of transnationalism by the opportunities and constraints found in particular locations where transnational practices occur . . . the fit between specific kinds of migrants and specific local and national contexts abroad shapes not only the likelihood of generating, maintaining or forsaking transnational ties, but also the very nature of the ties that migrants can forge with their place of origin. In contrast to the polemical opposition of national citizenship and national approaches to migrant integration, on one side, and an unbounded transnationalism, on the other, our perspective focuses our attention on the interaction between the two. In particular, we propose to investigate how the extent and forms of transnational and diasporic claims-making are affected by the political opportunities and constraints set by the specific citizenship and integration regimes of Germany, Great Britain, and the Netherlands. Much also depends on the specific triadic relation between migrants, their homelands, and the country of settlement, and whether migration was enforced by political oppression, occurred willingly for economic betterment under the guestworker model, or was shaped in part by colonial allegiance and a past adherence to an empire that spanned several continents. In addition, characteristics of the migrating group and their attachment to a particular religion or to specific political aspirations and ideologies may play a role. As a result of such factors, some migrant groups may fit the ideal type of a transnational community more closely than others. The basic features of the theoretical model which we want to follow for analyzing the claims-making of migrant communities is depicted in Figure 8.1. Following the triadic conceptualization of transnationalism,

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National citizenship and integration regimes 1 5

3

Collective identities of migrants

6

4

Migrant claims-making

2

Homeland influences

Figure 8.1 Theoretical framework for the analysis of migrant claims-making

we see migrant claims-making determined by the interplay of three factors. First, we expect the opportunities and constraints set by national citizenship regimes and integration models to influence the type of migrant claims-making (arrow 1). Generally speaking, we expect migrants to be more inclined to make claims regarding their situation in the country of settlement where the state provides opportunities for them and their organizations to do so. Perhaps the most important factor here is whether migrants have the right to vote (which largely depends on them holding citizenship), but in addition such factors as the existence of equal opportunity and anti-discrimination legislation, state subvention and consultation of migrant organizations, or the availability of cultural group rights in domains such as education and the media play a role. We elaborate on these factors in the next section. Here we turn to the second determinant of migrant claims-making in Figure 8.1, which we have broadly labeled as “homeland influences” (arrow 2). As a corollary to citizenship and integration regimes on the country of settlement side, this includes the sending country’s policies with regard to its emigrants. While some sending countries stimulate their (former) subjects to assimilate to the host society, most have an interest in retaining their emigrants’ allegiance, if only in order not to lose the yearly inflow of remittances on which many sending countries’


economies heavily depend. One such instrument is not allowing the loss of the sending countries’ citizenship or making such loss costly to migrants (e.g., when they lose inheritance or land ownership rights), another is the direct control over emigrants by way of sending-state or sending-state-sponsored organizations in the country of settlement, such as the branches of the Turkish Ministry of Religion or the Maghrebian Amicales in many Western European countries. Furthermore, the category of homeland influences includes the actual political situation in migrants’ country of origin. It may be expected, for instance, that independence struggles of ethnic groups (e.g., of the Kurds and Tamils), other intra-ethnic conflicts (e.g., among Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs in India), foreign occupation (e.g., Palestine, Tibet), civil war (e.g., Algeria, Bosnia), or oppressive dictatorships in the country of origin (e.g., China, Iran) provide fuel for homeland-directed claims-making among “diaspora” communities of migrants from these countries. Apart from the direct “pull” such homeland conflicts exert on migrants, such conflicts have often also been the “push” factor behind the flight or exile of politically active migrants. Thus, migrant communities from countries with a high level of internal political strife or oppression often harbor a disproportionate number of ideologically, ethnically or religiously “conscious” members, who hold a diasporic identity and wish to remain involved in the homeland “struggle” from a (safer) distance. If the sending and receiving country share an interest in retaining migrants’ ties to their homelands, the activities of sending-country organizations in the country of settlement may be institutionally sponsored by both. For example, the Bavarian and Turkish governments have together set up Turkish-Islamic classes in Bavarian public schools for “guestworker” children, which are given in the Turkish language by teachers sent over by the Turkish Ministry of Religion. This is one example of the ways in which the relation between the country of settlement and the sending country may influence both sides’ policies with regard to immigrants or emigrants, respectively (arrow 3 in Figure 8.1). The Bavarian example illustrates the guestworker type of relationship, which was usually based on bilateral agreements and based on the – as it turned out – flawed idea of temporary labor migration. A second important type of relationship is that between former imperial powers and their former or remaining colonies. Migrants from former colonies often enjoy – at least for a transitional period after independence – a right to citizenship in the “mother” country, or in some other cases (e.g., Spain vis-à-vis its former South American possessions) can obtain citizenship more easily. In addition, of course, there are important

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pre-existing cultural linkages, most importantly the fact that many colonial migrants already know the language, which may make it easier for migrants to integrate into the host society. The other side of the coin is that the legacy of colonialism may include deep-seated racism and paternalism with regard to former colonial subjects, which may counterbalance the integrative effects of cultural linkages. A final crucial type of sending-receiving country relationship in the European context is the case of intra-EU migration. Migrants from other EU countries nowadays hold largely similar rights (e.g., freedom of movement and access to the labor market) as native citizens of a member state and are in many respects privileged vis-à-vis less well-seen “third-country nationals” or “extracomunitari”, not least in public discourse. The only exception are voting rights (of course, an important one), which intra-EU migrants enjoy at the local and European levels, but not in regional and national elections. The third and final component of the triad of determinants of migrant claims-making are the collective identities of migrant groups themselves (arrow 4 in Figure 8.1). This includes migrants’ belonging in a specific ethnic group, their religious affiliation, their identification in terms of a particular “race” (e.g., black), and, of course, their degree of attachment to their country of origin. In some of the literature on transnational communities, and particularly in work on diasporas, we find an almost primordialist conception, which takes such collective identities as fixed and stable attributes, which migrants take with them and insert into the country of settlement. We believe that such identities are to a considerable extent influenced by both other explanatory variables in our model, the receiving state’s integration and citizenship regime (arrow 5), on one side, and the conglomerate of homeland influences which we have alluded to above (arrow 6), on the other. Receiving states may influence migrant identities directly by offering and sponsoring new categories of identification, which were unknown in the country of origin, e.g., the categories of “immigrant,” “foreigner,” “ethnic minority,” or “asylum seeker.” At least as important, however, is the possibility that the receiving state’s policies alter the balance among diverse identifications that migrants bring along. Contrary to the sometimes overly one-dimensional conception of migrant identities in the literature, most migrants do not arrive with just one identity, but with several overlapping, cross-cutting and competing ones. Immigrants from Surinam, for instance, may see themselves as Surinamese, but also as Dutch, Hindu, Muslim, Indian, Javanese, Chinese, Christian, Jewish, Creole or black, depending on which ethnic, religious, or racial group


in Surinam they belong to, or which of their multiple identities they hold as the most important.6 By sponsoring and rewarding some of these migrant identities, and discouraging others, receiving states may alter the balance among such multiple identities and switch migrants’ primary allegiance from, for argument’s sake, Christian into black, Javanese into Muslim, Creole into Surinamese, and so on. Before we proceed to our analysis of migrant claims-making in Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands on the basis of this theoretical model, we present in the next section some necessary background on the different approaches to citizenship and migrant integration in these three countries, as well as on the composition of their migrant populations.

Citizenship and migration in Germany, Great Britain, and the Netherlands Following Brubaker (1992), several authors have emphasised the continuing importance of historically grounded definitions of national identity and citizenship for the integration of minorities of migrant origin (Castles 1995; Freeman 1995; Joppke 1997, 1998; Guiraudon 1998; Favell 1998). Thus Germany’s “foreigners’ politics” (Ausländerpolitik) was until recently strongly shaped by an ethno-cultural notion of national identity and citizenship, while France deals with its “immigrants” (immigrés) along the lines of the civic ideals of Jacobin republicanism. Among other things, Brubaker’s study shows that these different national traditions affect naturalization rates among migrants and the ways in which migration and integration appear in the public discourse. In a similar vein, other authors have drawn on the social movements literature and have explicitly referred to these institutional frameworks for extending citizenship and the discourses around them as “political opportunity structures” which shape the patterns and levels of migrant and minority mobilization in different countries (Ireland 1994; Koopmans and Kriesi 1997; Statham 1999; Rosenhek 1999; Koopmans 1999b; Bousetta 1997). These “political opportunity structures” define the availability and relative attractiveness of different options for collective action that challenger groups face (see e.g., Koopmans 1999b; Tarrow 1998; McAdam et al. 1996). In our own research, we have argued that this general concept can be best translated into a form that is relevant for the claims-making of migrants and ethnic minorities, by focussing on notions of national identity and citizenship and their concrete reflection in policies of minority integration, which we define as the relevant set of opportunity structures for explaining migrant claims-making.7 Two basic dimensions

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of these “national models of citizenship” can be distinguished. First, following Brubaker (1992), national citizenship may be conceived of as either an ascriptive, ethno-cultural community of descent and common cultural traditions (akin to jus sangunis), or alternatively, as a civic community defined by adherence to common political values and institutions, and residence on the state territory, (akin to jus soli). The second dimension of citizenship relates to the cultural obligations which a country places on defining access to citizenship. Such requirements range from assimilationist to cultural pluralist approaches, which differ in the degree of cultural homogeneity that is demanded by a nation-state for attributing full rights. Here assimilationism is more demanding, as requires that potential new members undergo full conversion to the dominant national culture as the single and unitary focus of identity (at least in the public domain). In contrast, cultural pluralism is more accepting, as here the receiving nation recognizes, or even facilitates, the right of migrants to retain their ethnic or religious difference. Combining the two citizenship dimensions, we arrive at four idealtypical national models. Ethno-cultural assimilationism, which until very recently was best approached by Germany, makes access to the political community relatively difficult for migrants of foreign origin, and such possibilities as do exist are tied to the precondition that the candidate assimilates to the culture of the country of residence. Even foreigners who do not want to naturalize are expected to behave as “good guests” and adapt to the cultural requirements of their “host” country. A second model, ethno-cultural pluralism, for which Switzerland may be taken as a European example, shares the formal ethno-cultural basis of citizenship with Germany, but does not require migrants to adapt to one clearly circumscribed cultural model. This of course follows from the high level of cultural heterogeneity that characterizes Switzerland as a nation. Nevertheless, there remains a clear hierarchy between the cultures traditionally recognized within the context of Swiss federalism and the newcomer cultures of migrant origin. The third ideal type, civic assimilationism, is best approached by France, which provides for open access to citizenship, among other things, through its jus soli attribution to French-born children, but imposes a unitary cultural mode of conduct for citizens in the public sphere. Thus, the French state does not recognize the existence of ethno-cultural groups as public actors, not even those of native origin such as the Bretons or the Corsicans. Until 1981, the right to form associations on an ethnic or cultural basis was even formally prohibited to migrants. In addition, France strictly adheres to the principle of laicité, which implies a clear-cut separation of religion


and state, which severely limits the possibilities for the recognition of religious groups and identities in the public sphere (e.g., in the school system or in the media). Lastly, Britain, Sweden, and the Netherlands are different variations of a fourth type, civic pluralism. Here, as in France, access to the political community for migrants and their descendants is relatively easy through jus soli and/or an active, open naturalization policy. However, such access is not conditional upon assimilation and new citizens are allowed to retain their cultural identities and express them and the interests related to them in the public sphere, including core institutions such as the school system, the military, and the media. Forms of civic pluralism which extend even further than this, and may be labelled “multiculturalist”, could even provide for special, formal rights and exemptions from obligations for cultural groups. Of course, none of the countries mentioned conforms fully to one of the four ideal types, and the migrant/minority politics of each one of them usually constitutes varying “mixes” of all four types, with, however, clear emphases in the direction of some ideal-typical positions and not others. Moreover, although historical traditions of national identity and citizenship may affect the legal and discursive boundaries of a country’s minority politics, such boundaries only circumscribe a broad terrain within which important policy shifts are possible, the accumulated weight of which may ultimately push a country into the realm of a quite distinct ideal type. To put at least some flesh on the bones of these schematic characterizations, we now look briefly at some contemporary aspects of the respective citizenship regimes, patterns and forms of immigration and migrant backgrounds, as well as different policy approaches to integration.8 Historically, Germany, Britain, and the Netherlands have gone through broadly comparable waves of immigration. All experienced significantly large-scale foreign immigration due to labor shortages from the 1950s until the economic crisis in the early 1970s, when restrictive immigration controls were implemented and maintained. Many of the migrants in Germany were actively recruited, coming as a result of the “guestworker” system for importing foreign labor. This produced an official policy that assumed that these “guests” would one day return to their homelands, and so policies for integration were minimal. In contrast, many of the migrants to Britain were already subjects of the British Commonwealth and until 1971 they automatically received equal political and social rights. Since 1965, Race Relations policies in Britain have officially taken measures to combat racism and discrimination and promote social integration, thus acknowledging that political equality has not led to full

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equal treatment. Between these two poles of immigration experience, significant numbers of migrants came to the Netherlands, both as colonial subjects, especially from Indonesia, Surinam and the Dutch Antilles, and were recruited as “guestworkers,” largely from Turkey and Morocco, up until 1974, when labor recruitment programs were shut down. As in the British case, those postcolonial migrants who came, stayed and wished to gain nationality faced few barriers to Dutch citizenship. However, in contrast to the German experience, the “guestworkers” who stayed on faced a more facilitating system of incorporation in the shape of the Dutch “pillarization” model for including ethnic groups in the national polity, as we outline below. In 1994, the percentage of foreign immigrants relative to total population amounted to 85 people per thousand in Germany, compared to 51 per thousand in the Netherlands, and only 35 per thousand in Britain (Table 8.1). The higher proportion of foreigners relative to nationals in Germany compared to the Netherlands and Britain, illustrates an important outcome of the different citizenship regimes. In Germany, most migrants and their offspring have remained foreigners, as high restrictions were placed on naturalization compared to Britain and the Netherlands. These restrictions in Germany are aptly demonstrated by the fact that in 1997 the number of “foreigners” increased, despite conditions of negative net immigration – the net gain of new “foreigners” were born in Germany of migrant parentage. During the same period, as a result of high numbers of naturalizations, the number of foreigners declined in the Netherlands, in spite of positive net immigration. As a result of these differences, the percentage of foreigners in Britain and the Netherlands strongly underestimates the size of the minority population, as Table 8.1 makes clear. In fact, Britain, the Netherlands and Germany have broadly similar populations of migrant origin, with the Netherlands surpassing Germany when we include migrants who are Dutch nationals, and Britain coming a close third. Turning to the countries of origin of the minority populations as displayed in Table 8.1, we note stark differences between the countries. All have significant numbers of European migrant populations, but Germany’s migrant population is by far the most dominated by Europeans (even if one counts Turkey under Asia as we have done in the table). Today in Germany, the main “foreigner” groups are from Turkey (almost 30 percent of foreigners), former Yugoslavia (one-sixth), Italy, Greece and Poland. In Britain, a large proportion of the “minorities” are Britishborn, with more than one-third coming from the Indian sub-continent and about 12 percent from the Caribbean. The Netherlands has significant

How National Citizenship Shapes Transnationalism 211 Table 8.1 Composition of the population of migrant and minority origin in Germany, Great Britain, and the Netherlands, in promilles (n per thousand) of the total population Germany a

Great Britain b

Netherlands c

EU countries Ex-Yugoslavia Other Europe Total Europe

22.62 14.45 10.12 47.19

14.05 0.16 1.94 16.15

11.64 3.45 1.30 16.39

Turkey Iran India Pakistan Bangladesh China Indonesia Other Asiad Total Asia

24.99 1.42 0.42 0.47 * 0.52 0.13 7.06 35.01

0.52 0.33 15.3 8.7 3.0 2.9 * 2.8 33.4

17.89 0.43 0.22 0.26 * 1.41 15.98 2.32 38.51

0.99 0.67 1.99 3.65

0.17 0.04 3.8 4.0

14.95 0.22 2.02 17.19

1.50 * 1.00 0.12 89.38 *

2.69 9.1 * 1.20 66.70 74.94

0.97 20.97 0.57 0.17 94.77 121.76

84.56 * * *

35.39 16.4–27.3 5.5–9.1 7.3–10.0

50.83 40.71 * 4.81

Morocco Other North Africae Other Africa Total Africa North America Caribbean Other Latin America f Australia and Oceania Sum total Total including persons with acquired citizenship through naturalization or jus soli for all groupsg Foreigners as of January 1, 1994 h Muslimsi Sikhs Hindus a

The German data are based on the official statistics regarding the foreign population (Statistisches Bundesamt 2000) and refer to the situation on December 31, 1999. These data do not include naturalized persons of foreign descent for which no cumulative statistics are available. However, due to an until recently very restrictive naturalization regime, the actual number of naturalized foreigners is still very low in Germany. E.g., in the 13-year period between 1980 and 1992 only 230,000 foreigners were naturalized (which amounts to 0.3 percent of the total German population). b British data are taken from the Official Census data 1991 (Owen 1992, cited in Mason 1995), which include a question on ethnic background and so include naturalized migrants. From the categories in the Census it is possible to arrive at accurate estimates for the following categories: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, Other Asia, Other Africa (derived from Black African), Caribbean. In addition, to these there are two other categories “Black Other”

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and “Other Other” ethnic groups which capture the remainder of the “ethnic” population. Europeans and North Americans are categorized as “Whites” in the Census data, and can therefore not be distinguished from native Britons. As in the case of the Netherlands, we have drawn data for the remaining categories from Eurostat 1994, which, however, only includes foreign nationals and excludes naturalized persons from these regions and countries. c Data for people of Turkish, Moroccan, ex-Yugoslav, Carribean, and Indonesian origin, as well as the total figure for the population of migrant origin were taken from Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau (1999: 28). They include all persons born outside the Netherlands to foreign parents, as well as people born in the Netherlands of which both parents were born outside the Netherlands. Persons born in the Netherlands out of “mixed” marriages have not been included, nor persons born abroad to Dutch parents. The figure for Chinese is based on the same definition and was taken from the Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau (1997: 19). Figures for all other categories are 1992 figures based on Eurostat (1994: 8–9), where necessary in combination with data from the CBS (1996: 52). Because the 1992 figures are relatively old and do not include naturalized persons, the sum of all group figures (next to last table row) is substantially lower than the total population of migrant origin as calculated in SCP data (final table row). d For Germany and the Netherlands, “other Asia” includes (a very small number of) Bangladeshi. For Britain, the figure has been taken from the census category “Other Asian”, substracting the Eurostat figures for Turks and Iranians. e For the Netherlands and Britain, excludes (small numbers of) Libyans and Egyptians. f For Germany, “other Latin America” includes (a very small number of) persons from Carribean countries. g The British figure is an estimate based on the total non-white population data from the 1991 Census, adding the Eurostat figures for nationals of other European countries, North America, Australia and New Zealand. h Taken from Lederer (1997: 35–37). i Dutch figures as of January 1, 1995 from CBS (1996: 53). For Britain, figures for the 2001 Census which will also include a question on religion are not available yet. The range estimates for Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus in the table are taken from the current literature (Poulter 1998: 197, 238, 282; Rex 1996).

numbers of Turkish migrants in common with Germany, and significant numbers of Caribbean migrants like Britain, and so there are important equivalent groups that can be compared. In addition, the Netherlands have large numbers of people of Moroccan and Indonesian origin, which are hardly found in the two other countries. Lastly, it should be pointed out that both migrant populations contain religious groups that allow for comparison. Both the large Turkish community in Germany, the Moroccan and Turkish communities in the Netherlands, and the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in Britain are predominantly Muslims, and make up roughly comparable percentages of the population. Major differences between the countries are found in their political strategies for incorporating migrants, which reflect their type of citizenship attribution. Parallel to, and partly as a direct result of their exclusion from formal citizenship, migrants and their organizations – as foreigners – play a marginal role in the German political process. Germany has maintained a policy approach where migrants are excluded from political


participation. Apart from the powerless and marginal foreigners’ councils (Ausländerbeiräte) on the local level, foreigners in Germany have no institutionalized channels of access to the political process. The German state does not provide the kind of facilitation to migrant organizations that many of their British and Dutch counterparts receive. There is no institutional focus for minority claims in the form of an official minority, racial equality, or anti-discrimination politics, which might legitimate migrant demands and identify responsible authorities for their implementation. The official mantra that “Germany is not an immigration country,” which German governments until very recently adhered to, has therefore had real consequences for the opportunities for minority claims-making. In contrast to Germany, migrant organization and political participation – as ethnic or racial minorities – is facilitated by the British state, particularly at the local level. In Britain, a state-sponsored “race relations” industry has emerged, backed by anti-discrimination legislation and the authority of the Commission for Racial Equality and local bodies to report and advise on practices for ensuring equal treatment, in particular in the labor market. It is worth emphasizing, that “race” is a category that British political élites adopted when attempting to address the disadvantage of minority populations caused by discrimination. This “racialization” of policy measures in part reflected the fear of political élites that British “race riots” might escalate to the crisis point of those experienced in the United States. An outcome of this is that British policies were more tailored to the integration of Afro-Caribbeans under the generic umbrella term “black,” than the relatively later inflows of migrants from the Indian sub-continent, and in particular Pakistan (Rex 1991). Race relations politics has been extended to Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis under the generic term “Asian,” which implies that groups with a self-identification that is non-racial, the prime example being groups with a Muslim identity, have been served relatively less well by the institutional apparatus (Modood 1997). Another point worth making about the British case is that the constituency-based electoral system has provided the large concentrations of minority communities in specific towns and regions with a considerable resource-base of voting power for influencing individual Members of Parliament, and has in turn led political parties to take up issues relating to ethnic minorities. At the local level of politics, minorities have also made a considerable impact in specific regions (e.g., Solomos and Back 1995). Lastly, turning to our third case, the Netherlands recognized relatively early that many migrants would remain, and reacted through the

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inclusive Minderhedennota of 1983, based on the principle that “Dutch society will permanently have a multicultural character” (see Duyvené de Wit and Koopmans 2001). In line with the Dutch tradition of pillarization, the government’s policies provided for a large degree of autonomy for “ethnic minorities” in the cultural sphere, and incorporated minority elites into the policy process through subsidization of representative organizations and their inclusion in the policy deliberation and implementation processes. In the Netherlands, and in stark contrast to the German situation, the state even opened up civil service positions and local voting rights to foreign residents. In addition, Dutch cultural pluralism did not provide the “racialized” straightjacket for minority identities of the British variant. Rather than requiring resident former colonial subjects to become racial minorities to achieve rights, the Dutch view integration as best accomplished through confident subcultures, thus making the preservation of minority cultures an essential part of incorporation. Although Dutch minority policy moved away from this idealist undiluted multiculturalism of the 1980s, and toward a more British-style focus on socio-economic parity in the 1990s, when the realism set in that maintaining group diversity could also mean structuring disadvantage for those groups (see Entzinger in this volume), it still retains important distinctive characteristics. The continued relevance of the institutional inheritance of pillarization still makes the Netherlands unrivalled by Britain in the range of cultural opportunities that are provided. While the issue of Muslim schools is highly contested in Britain, with the first non-primary school being given state funding in 2001, there have already been dozens of state-funded Muslim and Hindu schools in the Netherlands for some years. Just as the “old” Christian and Protestant pillars had their own state-sponsored semi-autonomous institutions in education, health, welfare and the public media, such rights cannot be denied to the new cultural and religious minorities of migrant communities. This Dutch multiculturalism avant la lettre, adding minorities and foreigners on as another “pillar in the polder,” is important to our current discussion, as the Dutch cultural pluralist approach provided incentives for migrants – both former guestworkers and resident colonial subjects – to keep their heads, at least through cultural identification, in both the homeland and receiving societies, while at the same time gaining a significant degree of access to political and social rights. This makes the Dutch trajectory different from Germany’s, where the political exclusion of former guestworkers under the banner “Germany is not a country of immigration” left migrants looking homewards, and different from Britain’s where the “racialization” of cultural


pluralism shaped postcolonial migrants into inward-looking British racial minorities.

Data collection9 To investigate the public claims-making of migrants and ethnic minorities in Germany, Britain, and the Netherlands, we use data drawn from content analyses of daily newspapers in the three countries. In contrast to many media content analyses, we are not primarily interested in the way in which the media frame events. On the contrary, our focus is on the news coverage of mobilization, public statements and other forms of claims-making by non-media actors. Taking a cue from “protest event analysis” in the study of social movements (Tarrow 1989; Olzak 1989; Rucht et al. 1998), our units of analysis are not articles, but individual instances of claims-making. Instances of claims-making have been included irrespective of their form, and range from violent attacks on other groups, public demonstrations and legal action, to public statements. Acts were included in the data if they involved demands, criticisms, or proposals related to the regulation or evaluation of immigration, minority integration, or xenophobia. Because of our special interest in minority claims-making, we included acts by resident ethnic minorities even if they were not related to these issues – provided, of course, that they involved some political claim – which in particular allowed us to include the claims-making of migrants related to the politics of their homelands.10 Regarding territorial criteria we included all acts in Britain 11, the Netherlands, and Germany, respectively, even if they were addressed to foreign or supranational authorities, or made by organizations (primarily) based outside our countries of study. All these types of acts were considered to be claims in the British, Dutch or German public spheres. There are obviously limitations to our data. First, the data-set excludes claims-making outside the public sphere (e.g., insider lobbying), as well as claims-making in partial public spheres (e.g., claims directed at school boards by parents, or purely local issues). However, it should be pointed out that once such claims become controversial, they too tend eventually to be reported in the nationwide press, and would then be picked up by our sources. Second, we do not, of course, through this method collect information on the claims-making in the public sphere of the sending countries. Third, for an article on transnationalism, one may object that our focus on national public spheres introduces a bias in our

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results to the detriment of trans- and supranational actors and claims. This would be true if there was such a thing as an international or European public sphere. In the absence of supranational media or transnational public debates of importance, the public claims-making of supranational actors (or claims-making addressed to supranational actors) and transnational claims-making has to be mediated through national public spheres in order to be effective and visible. At present the modest beginnings of an international public sphere in the form of television networks cannot compete in terms of audience or resonance with national media, not least because of the language factor. Thus if they are to be politically meaningful, supra- and transnational claims-making will be found in national public spheres. For the comparative analysis here, we use data drawn from every second issue (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) of the Guardian for Britain, the Frankfurter Rundschau for Germany, and the NRC/Handelsblad for the Netherlands. 12 These papers were chosen because they are of a comparable, moderately left-liberal political affiliation, and because, compared to other national quality newspapers, they have the most encompassing coverage of the specific issues of interest. The data cover slightly different periods in the three countries: 1990–99 for Germany, 1990–mid 1998 for Britain, and 1992–mid 1999 for the Netherlands. Of course, when using newspapers as a source one has to deal with the problem of selection – not all events that occur receive coverage – and description bias – events may get covered in a distorted way (McCarthy et al. 1996). We have tried to minimize the problem of description bias by explicitly basing the coding only on the factual coverage of statements and events in newspaper articles, and leaving out any comments and evaluations made by reporters or editors. In any case, quality newspapers have to protect their reputation and cannot afford to quote claims patently incorrectly. Since our interest here lies with public claims-making, the problem of selection bias is less aggravating here than in some other contexts, because acts of claims-making become relevant – and potentially controversial – only when they reach the public sphere.13

The collective identities of migrants in the public sphere The first aspect of migrant claims-making we want to investigate are their collective identities as expressed in the public sphere. We distinguish four main types of collective identities here. First, migrants may identify along the status categories offered by the receiving state’s immigration and integration policies, e.g., as “foreigners,” “minorities,”


(illegal) “immigrants,” “asylum seekers,” etc. As indicated in the last section, the favored policy categories in our three countries differ considerably in this respect: German policies are centered around the category of “foreigners,” whereas in Britain the “minorities” category predominates. Given its partial guestworker legacy and its – compared to Britain – more recent turn towards a civic conception of citizenship, Dutch policy categories are to some extent a combination of the “foreigners” (buitenlanders, vreemdelingen) and “minorities” (minderheden) idioms. Secondly, migrants may identify with a certain “racial” group, such as “blacks” or “Asians.” As we have seen above, this type of collective identity is officially sponsored only in Great Britain, where racial categorizations form the cornerstone of race relations and equal opportunities policies. Therefore, we expect such identities to be more prominent in Britain than in the other two countries. Beyond an adaptation to an opportunity structure which favors claims made in racial terms, racial identities such as black may also be seen as to some extent prior to, or otherwise independent from, the respective groups’ insertion into the receiving society. In this view, cherished by many black activists, there exists a transnational “black nation,” which connects people of color around the world through bonds of shared destiny and identity. If this view holds true, we should find a considerable amount of racial claimsmaking also in the Netherlands, which has a large Caribbean population of African descent, and even to some extent in Germany, although in that country the potential constituency for such identities is limited to a relatively small number of African immigrants. Thirdly, migrants may identify with their religion, for example as Muslim, Hindu or Orthodox. This type of collective identity is facilitated, as we have indicated above, to a certain extent by the state in Britain, where migrants’ religious difference comes under the umbrella of officially sponsored multiculturalism, and even more so in the Netherlands, where migrant religious communities can refer to the institutional framework and precedent of pillarization to claim rights and privileges. In Germany, by contrast – with the notable exception of Jews – the state has thus far offered little recognition, policy access, and concessions to minority religious communities, and to Muslims in particular. Therefore, we expect religious identities to be more prominent in Britain and the Netherlands than in Germany. However, here too, we must take into account the assertion made by some religious activists – particularly Muslims – and by several students of transnationalism, that religious identifications are transnational phenomena, which are independent from, prior to, and to some extent in direct conflict with

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migrants’ integration into the host society. If this is the case, we should find migrants of Muslim belief to be inclined to identify along religious lines largely independent from the national context of the country of immigration. Fourthly, migrants may (continue to) identify with their ethnicity and the nationality of their countries of origin, for example as Turks, Pakistani or Surinamese. The transnational, and even more so the diaspora perspective, see the prevalence and endurance of such collective identities as an important characteristic of the modern migrant experience. A focus on the opportunity structures set by national citizenship and integration regimes, however, would predict important differences among our three countries. Identifications along national and ethnic lines should be most prominent in Germany, where high hurdles to obtaining citizenship until recently prevented migrants from joining the national community and migrants to some extent still continue to be seen as citizens of their countries of origin (e.g., integration policies insofar as they exist are still dealt with by “Foreigners’ Commissioners” – Ausländerbeauftragte). Britain, with its strong civic tradition of citizenship and imperial tradition, provides the clearest contrast, while the Netherlands come somewhere in between. Although the Dutch system offers minorities at least as much recognition and policy access as in Britain, it does so – although much less outspokenly than during the 1980s – on the basis of a classification of, and resource allocation to, minorities on the basis of ethnicity (with Turks, Moroccans, Surinamese, and Antilleans as the four main officially recognized minorities). Finally, we include one hybrid identity category in our analysis for ethno-religious groups such as Jews and Sikhs, for which religion and ethnicity are indistinguishable. Sikhs are only a relevant immigrant category in Britain, so there is little to compare here. As regards Jews, we can expect them to fall into the general pattern for Britain and the Netherlands, but to deviate from other groups in the German case. As a result of policies of reconciliation and compensation for the crimes of the Nazi regime, Jews are highly privileged in Germany compared to other migrant groups, both regarding immigration rights, access to citizenship, and special cultural rights and sponsorship (see Laurence 2001). To some extent this also holds for the category of Roma and Sinti, which we include among the ethnic groups, who were also victims of the Nazi regime. In Table 8.2, we present the distribution of migrant claims in the three countries across these five types of collective identities, as well as across relevant subcategories.14 The results in the table clearly underline the


importance of national citizenship and integration regimes in shaping the collective identities of migrant communities. Status identities based on the receiving states’ policy categories are generally more prominent in Britain and the Netherlands than in Germany. Apart from the category of asylum seekers, which is relevant in all three countries, claims-making on the basis of a minority status is limited to Britain, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, to the Netherlands. While in the Netherlands and Germany the status identity of foreigner plays a considerable role, this identification is completely absent in Britain. Surprisingly, the foreigner identity is even more prevalent in the Netherlands than in Germany. The high score for the Netherlands here is almost entirely due to one very prominent organization, the Dutch Center for Foreigners (Nederlands Centrum Buitenlanders) – a state-subsidized organization that was set up in the guestworker era to assist and represent the interests of labor migrants. Although this organization has long broadened its scope to include issues of integration and multiculturalism, its prominence is still indicative of the hybrid nature of the Dutch integration model, with its partial roots in a German-style guestworker regime, on one side, and a civic, pluralist tradition rooted in pillarization and colonialism, on the other. The results for racial identities are extremely clear-cut: racial – particularly black – identities are by far the most important type of collective identity among migrants in Britain, but they are virtually absent in the two other countries. This may not be so striking for the German case, but it is so for the Netherlands, which has a population of African descent with “black” phenotypic features that is at least as important as

Table 8.2 Collective identities in public claims-making by migrants and minorities in Germany, Great Britain, and the Netherlands

Policy-status identities Foreigners Minorities Immigrants Asylum seekers Illegal immigrants Other Racial identities Black Asian Other

Germany

Great Britain

Netherlands

11.1 4.3 0.1 0.9 5.3 – –

18.5 – 8.3 – 9.3 0.3 0.6

24.6 9.0 4.1 0.3 7.0 2.6 1.7

0.2 0.2 – –

38.6 28.1 9.6 0.9

1.2 1.2 – –

220


Religious identities Muslim Hindu Other

2.5 1.5 – 1.0

22.8 21.9 0.3 0.6

18.0 15.9 1.2 0.9

Ethno-religious identities Jewish Sikh

20.4 20.4 –

6.8 4.6 2.2

5.2 5.2 –

Ethnic and national identities EU countries Ex-Yugoslav ethnicities Sinti and Roma Other European Total Europe

67.3 0.6 2.9 8.3 1.0 12.8

20.5 1.9 0.6 0.3 0.9 3.7

56.7 0.3 2.3 0.6 1.4 4.6

18.1 30.3 2.9

0.3 0.9 1.2

15.9 11.9 1.4

–

5.5

–

0.3 – 1.5 53.1

0.9 – 2.2 11.0

1.4 2.6 1.2 34.4

Morocco Other North African Other African Total Africa

– 0.2 1.0 1.2

– 0.9 3.1 4.0

8.4 0.9 4.6 13.9

Caribbean Latin American Total Americas

– 0.2 0.2

1.5 0.3 1.8

3.8 – 3.8

101.5% 1,297

107.2% 324

104.5% 345

Turkish Kurdish Iranian Indian subcontinent ethnicities and nationalities Chinese Indonesian/Mollucan Other Asian Total Asia

Sum totala N=

– denotes no cases a The sum total adds up to more than 100% because of possibilities of multiple identifications, e.g., the Union of Turkish Immigrants, which would get two identity codes: “Turkish” and “immigrant”.

in Britain. Moreover, the majority of Dutch “blacks” come from the same geographical area, the Caribbean, as their British counterparts, and share the same history of deportation, slavery, and racism. This example shows in a very powerful way how important national opportunity structures are for shaping collective identities in an immigration context. The prominence of race in Britain’s integration regime has


offered a formidable opportunity to Caribbean immigrants to achieve a presence in the public sphere that is unrivalled by their Dutch counterparts, and has also put them in a privileged position vis-à-vis other minorities in Britain. If we look downward in the table among the ethnic and national identities, we see that Caribbean nationalities are somewhat more prominently represented in the Netherlands than in Britain (3.8 percent versus 1.5 percent), but this is a very meager compensation for the 28 percent of black claims in Britain. Proceeding to collective identities on a religious basis, we again find a striking contrast, this time between Britain and the Netherlands, on the one side, and Germany, on the other. Although Germany has a Muslim population that is comparable to Britain and the Netherlands, Muslims are almost completely absent from the German public sphere. Contrary to the view of Islam as a transnational collective identity, we see that German Muslims have little inclination to make claims on the basis of their religion. This is not to say that migrants of Muslim belief are not active claims-makers in Germany. However, as we shall shortly see, they make such claims on the basis of their ethnicity and nationality rather than their religion. We contend that this is so partly because the German state offers few opportunities for such claims-making. In addition, as long as migrants in Germany mirror the state’s view by not seeing themselves as part of the German community, religious rights and equality are not a salient political issue for them. Once a large number of Muslims, as in Britain and the Netherlands, have become citizens, they both have improved opportunities for making claims and will feel more strongly entitled to fully equal rights and treatment to those enjoyed by Christian (and sometimes also Jewish) denominations. We can also, however, find an indication in the data on religious identifications for inter-group differences that seem to be unrelated to the receiving state’s integration policies. Compared to Muslims, we find Hindus to be much less prominent in the public sphere. While in the Netherlands this difference can at least partly be explained by the fact that there are about nine times more Muslims than Hindus there, this explanation certainly does not hold for Britain with its large population of Indian origin. We suspect that this difference may be due to the different nature of the two religions, particularly the fact that Islam – at least in its recent manifestations around the world – is much more a public religion than Hinduism. If this view is correct, it would explain why Muslims have made more claims for religious rights than Hindus, and also why Islam is singled out as a threat to Western values much more than Hinduism is.

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Turning now to the ethno-religious identities, we see that indeed there is an enormous contrast between the invisibility of Muslims in Germany and the highly prominent position of Jews in the public sphere. As a result of their status as victims of the Holocaust, Jews are considered as highly legitimate speakers on issues of racism and xenophobia, which account for the majority of Jewish claims in Germany. However, alone the number of claims for religious rights by Jewish groups is larger than all Muslim claims taken together – even though there are more than forty times less Jews than Muslims in Germany. This is another striking example of how diverging state integration approaches and the symbolic inclusion or exclusion of groups in political discourse can have enormous consequences for these groups’ collective identities and mobilization opportunities. Finally, in the lower part of the table, we look at different national and ethnic identities, which we have ordered as much as possible similar to the categories used in Table 8.1. As could be expected on the basis of our discussion of national citizenship and integration approaches, such collective identifications are most prominent among migrants in Germany, where more than two-thirds of all claims were made in the name of national or ethnic collectivities. In line with the by now familiar pattern, we find ethnic and national identifications to be least prominent in the British case, where only about one-fifth of identities were of this type. The Netherlands (57 percent) are again in between, but perhaps surprisingly again, much closer to Germany than to Britain. Again, we must interpret this partially as a legacy of the guestworker era. Perhaps more important is that the particular Dutch form of multiculturalism extended rights and incorporated migrant organizations into the policy process on the basis of ethnicity, and not race as in Britain or immigrant status as in France. In addition, the extreme form of multiculturalism that prevailed in the Netherlands until quite recently put a heavy emphasis on migrants retaining their “cultural identity,” and exerted little pressure on migrants to adapt to Dutch society, for instance by mastering the Dutch language (Duyvené de Wit and Koopmans 2001). If we look more in detail at the different ethnic and national groups present in the claims-making, we of course find these to reflect to an important extent the composition of the migrant population in the various countries. However, there are some clear under- and overrepresentations of groups that deserve our attention (compare Table 8.2 to Table 8.1 above). The clearest case of under-representation in all three countries are migrants from other EU countries. With their secure residence status, full labor market access, freedom of movement, and


partial political rights, these migrants have almost the same legal status as natives. In addition, compared to many other migrant groups, they are little subjected to discrimination, and they are not (any longer) perceived as culturally very different from the native population. On the contrary, EU migrants tend to have a very positive public image, and it is politically virtually a taboo to say anything negative about their presence. Thus, EU migrants simply have little need for making claims on their host societies. The same is true in the Netherlands and Britain for certain categories of colonial migrants, who have been socioeconomically successful and are culturally perceived as adapted and unobtrusive. In Britain, this may explain the low level of mobilization of Indians (Statham 1999), and in the Netherlands the absence of a large number of claims by people of Indonesian origin. All “Indonesian” claims in the Netherlands were in fact made by Mollucans, who are a distinct group which still strives for independence of its homeland from Indonesia, and who have long cherished a myth of return that has prevented them from integrating into Dutch society. It is less clear, however, why the number of claims by Caribbeans (Surinamese and Antilleans), who make up about one-sixth of the total population of migrant origin, is so low in the Netherlands. Certainly, this cannot be explained by these groups’ having already achieved full equality, since their living conditions (unemployment, schooling, housing, etc.) are still considerably worse than those of the native Dutch (although generally better than those of Turks and Moroccans). Research done by Fennema and Tillie (1999) comparing the organizational networks of ethnic groups in Amsterdam suggests that this low level of mobilization of Surinamese and Antilleans may be due to the fact that, compared to Moroccans and especially Turks, these groups have weakly developed ethnic community networks. The group that is most outspokenly over-represented are the Kurds, who account for perhaps some 20 percent of migrants from Turkey, but who are responsible for 12 percent of all claims-making in the Netherlands, and as much as 30 percent in Germany. Of course, this has much to do with the Kurdish independence struggle, which went through a particularly “hot” phase during the 1990s. On a lower level, similar homeland influences account for the over-representation of Iranian claims in all three countries. A final group that is clearly over-represented are the Roma and Sinti in Germany (8 percent of all claims). As indicated above, this is related to this group’s status as Holocaust victims and the public legitimacy and to some extent the privileged treatment by the German state that this entails.

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All in all, these results provide strong and suggestive evidence for the importance of national citizenship and integration regimes in shaping migrant mobilization. These “national” factors go a long away toward explaining cross-national differences, and also account for some of the inter-group differences within countries (e.g., the low mobilization levels of EU migrants everywhere, or the special position of Jews and Roma in Germany). However, in line with the conceptual model we have outlined above, we also need to take homeland influences into account, such as the political conflicts in Kurdistan and Iran. Finally, there remain inter-group differences that can be explained neither by national nor by homeland influences, and point to specific nonreducible characteristics of migrant groups. The independence dream of the Mollucans – which has always been more of an issue for the exiled group than for the Mollucans in Indonesia – and the weak community networks of Caribbean migrants in the Netherlands are examples of such group-specific factors.

Transnational and national claims-making and how they relate to migrant identities and national citizenship We now turn to the overall structure of migrant claims, and how they reflect national, homeland, or hybrid orientations. We distinguish three types of transnational claims-making. The first type might be called “transplanted homeland politics.” In this type, claims are made by migrants in the country of settlement, but they refer in all other respects to the country of residence. A typical example are claims made by exile groups or branches of homeland-based organizations,15 directed at or against the homeland regime, or targeting homeland regime representatives or institutions in the country of settlement. In the case of homeland-based interethnic or religious conflicts (e.g., between Serbians and Albanians), such claims may also take the form of conflicts between the involved ethnic groups in the country of settlement. The other types of claims-making are more substantively transnational in the sense that they are a hybrid of homeland-directed and country of settlement orientations. The second type consists of claims whose ultimate political aim is oriented towards the homeland, but which mobilize country of settlement-based organizational networks or political opportunities to these ends. A typical example would be claims-making by ethnic organizations originating in and addressed to the government of the country of settlement, asking the latter to intervene with the homeland government on behalf of the group’s interests (e.g., a demand by the


Council of German Roma and Sinti on the German government to pressure East European governments to combat anti-gypsy violence 16). Thirdly, the claim structure may also be the reverse, namely when homeland-based groups mobilize homeland-based organizational resources and opportunities to intervene on behalf of the group’s interests in the country of settlement (e.g., when Milli Görüs sets up an Islamic Center in Germany). In Table 8.3, we contrast these three forms of transnational claims-making with such claims-making by migrants and minorities which stays entirely within the political context and the public sphere of the country of settlement, that is, where organizations originating in the country of settlement advance claims on authorities in the country of settlement in order to further the interests of a constituency in the country of settlement (e.g., a letter by the National Federation of Chinese Organizations to the Dutch government calling on it to pay more attention to social problems within the Chinese community). Table 8.3 shows that in all three countries, purely national claims are the largest category. However, in line with the expectation we can derive from its exclusive citizenship and integration regime, we find in Germany a sizeable amount of transplanted homeland politics (28 percent), much more than in the other two countries. In Great Britain and the Netherlands, transplanted homeland politics is the smallest among the four types of claims-making (3 percent and 10 percent of all claims, respectively). The most frequent type of transnational claims in these two countries are those that mobilize homeland-based resources and opportunities to further the group’s interest in the country of

Table 8.3 Distribution of migrant and minority claims across four basic types of claims-making Germany Transplanted homeland politics Homeland-directed transnationalism Country of residence-directed transnationalism Purely national claims Unknown/other Total N=

Great Britain

Netherlands

27.5

2.5

9.9

16.1

4.0

8.1

3.8

6.5

10.1

50.1 2.5 100.0% 1,297

83.3 3.7 100.0% 324

71.0 0.9 100.0% 345

226


settlement (10 percent in the Netherlands and 7 percent in Britain). In Germany, by contrast, this is the least important form of transnationalism (4 percent). A large percentage of claims in this country are of the type “mobilizing country of settlement resources and opportunities for homeland-related ends” (16 percent). Compared to the results on migrant identities (Table 8.2), the Netherlands here display a pattern that is much closer to Britain. This reflects that while the Dutch integration model to some extent favors the retention of ethnic and national identities by migrants, it simultaneously incorporates ethnic migrant organizations into the policy process and thereby focuses their claimsmaking on issues pertaining to migrants’ integration into Dutch society. This in contrast to Germany, where the classification of migrants as foreigners and their exclusion from citizenship and the policy process go hand in hand. While these results point towards an overriding role for the national citizenship and integration regimes of the country of settlement in explaining patterns of migrant claims-making, we have seen above in our discussion of collective identities that homeland influences and specific characteristics of migrant groups may also play a role. To what extent can such factors explain the cross-national differences in homeland-directed versus country of settlement-directed claims-making? To investigate this question, Table 8.4 displays for each of the identity groups which we have distinguished, the percentage of its claims that were oriented towards aims in the group’s country or region of origin. If we first concentrate on the four main identity types, we note that status and racial identities correlate with low numbers of homeland-oriented claims and a concomitantly strong orientation towards the country of settlement. The same is generally true for religious identities, although the percentage of homeland-directed claims tends to be a bit higher here, and is in Britain even higher than for national and ethnic identity groups.17 National and ethnic identities usually go together with a stronger homeland-orientation, but there is quite some variation among groups here. In the Netherlands and even more so in Britain, there are several ethno-national groups who made no homeland-directed claims at all (including Caribbeans, Chinese, North Africans, and in Britain even Kurds and Turks) and others who made very few such claims (Moroccans, black Africans). The same is true for EU citizens and Roma and Sinti in all three countries. On the other side of the spectrum there are a number of ethno-national groups with a strong homeland-orientation: Kurds, Iranians, ex-Yugoslavs, Turks, and other Asians (e.g., Arabs, Afghans,

How National Citizenship Shapes Transnationalism 227 Table 8.4

Percentage of homeland-oriented claims by identity group Germany

Policy-status identities Foreigners Minorities Immigrants Asylum seekers Illegal immigrants Other

Great Britain

Netherlands

13.2 18.0 (0) 0 8.3 – 50.0

6.5 – 3.7 – 7.1 (0) (0)

2.8 0 7.1 (0) 4.3 0 0

(0) (0) – –

0 0 0 (0)

(0) (0) – –

27.3 15.0 – 46.2

15.7 16.4 (0) (0)

10.3 10.9 (0) (0)

2.3 2.3 –

9.1 6.7 14.3

11.1 11.1 –

Ethnic and national identities EU countries Ex-Yugoslav ethnicities Roma and Sinti Other European Total Europe

48.7 12.5 78.4 9.3 53.9 23.0

7.1 0 (0) (0) (0) 0

26.9 (0) 37.5 (0) (20.0) 25.0

Turkish Kurdish Iranian Indian subcontinent ethnicities and nationalities Chinese Indonesian/Mollucan Other Asian Total Asia

39.4 90.6 97.3 –

(0) (0) (50.0) 11.8

26.9 73.2 (20.0) –

(100.0) – 61.1 73.4

(0) – 28.6 8.8

(0) 55.6 (25.0) 41.1

Morocco Other North African Other African Total Africa

– (66.7) 15.4 25.0

– (0) 10.0 7.7

6.9 (0) 0 4.2

Caribbean Latin American Total Americas

– (50.0) (50.0)

(0) (0) 0

0 – 0

All claims N=

44.7% 1,265

6.7% 312

18.1% 342

Racial identities Black Asian Other Religious identities Muslim Hindu Other Ethno-religious identities Jewish Sikh

– denotes no cases; figures in brackets are based on 5 or less cases.

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Lebanese). The explanation for these high levels of homeland-orientation lies of course in the violent political conflicts and/or oppressive regimes in these migrant groups’ homelands, which obviously are a cause for concern for those originating in these countries, if only because friends and relatives might be affected by them. To what extent do these inter-group differences force us to relativize the explanatory power of cross-national differences in citizenship and integration regimes? While we do not want to deny that homeland influences and intrinsic characteristics of migrant groups play a certain role, we think there are three important reasons why these inter-group differences are peripheral rather than central to understanding patterns of migrant claims-making. The first and most direct reason can be directly read from the table: cross-national differences are not explained away by the different composition of a country’s migrant population and the varying inclination of groups to engage in homeland-oriented claims-making. The national and ethnic-identities part of Table 8.4 contains 11 ethnicities, nationalities or groups of nationalities for which we have cases available in all three countries: EU citizens, Ex-Yugoslavs, Roma and Sinti, Other Europeans, Turks, Kurds, Iranians, Chinese, Other Asians, Other North Africans, and Other Africans. For every single one of these groups, the level of homeland-orientation is highest in Germany. Thus, it cannot be argued that the strong homeland-orientation of German migrants is the result of an “unlucky” composition of this country’s migrant population. To an important extent, it is the German context that sustains, revives, and perhaps even produces strong homeland-identifications among a wide variety of migrant groups. Kurds, Turks, or ex-Yugoslavs may be inclined to make homeland-oriented claims more than the average, but they are especially likely to do so in a political context that reinforces such homeland identifications by putting up high material and symbolic barriers to migrants’ entry into the host society’s political community.18 The second reason why we should be careful not to give too much weight to these inter-group differences is that we are here to some extent “sampling on the dependent variable”: we see high levels of homelandorientation among Kurds and Iranians, and say these are “obviously” explained by homeland conflicts. But what about the negative cases, where we have intense homeland conflicts without much repercussions in the claims-making of emigrants from these countries? Were not Pakistan and India several times on the brink of war in recent years, and did not Muslims and Hindus (e.g., Ayodhya), and Sikhs and Hindus (e.g., Amritsar) clash violently in India on several occasions during the period of our study? And are not Pakistan or China equally oppressive


regimes as Iran? Therefore, it is not very convincing to point out that Britain has simply been “lucky” to have the majority of its migrants come from quiet regions where no significant homeland conflicts occurred that could have spurred mobilization on British soil by migrants who originate in these countries. The third and analytically most important reason why we should not overestimate the role of interethnic differences – and here we have to refer back to the discussion of Table 8.2 above – is that inclusive citizenship regimes such as those of Britain and the Netherlands not only affect the degree to which certain identity groups make homelandoriented claims, but shape the very identities of these groups. As a result, Turks, Moroccans, or Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the Netherlands and Britain to an important extent are no longer visible in the public sphere as such, but appear as Muslims, general speakers for minorities, or, in the British case, as representatives of the racial group of Asians. Similarly, most claims by migrants from the Caribbean in Britain are made under the label of blacks, and not under the flags of Jamaica, Trinidad or the West Indies. By bending collective identities in this way, or shifting the emphasis from one to another of migrants’ multiple identities, inclusive citizenship regimes direct migrant identities away from the national and ethnic categories of their homelands. Therefore an honest comparison between the claims-making of Turks in the Netherlands and in Germany should not only look at claims made under the label of Turks, but also look at claims made by non-ethnic Muslim or minority organizations in which members of the Turkish community also participate. As Table 8.2 indicates, this is not likely to produce a very different picture for Germany, but it certainly would alter the perspective for the Netherlands, and would result in a greater difference in the level of homeland-orientation between German and Dutch Turks than the one found on the basis of the ethnic identification alone. Of course, since Turks become publicly invisible as Turks and indistinguishable from other Muslims or minorities as soon as they mobilize under a different collective identity 19 we cannot give exact figures for such a comparison, but the direction in which the result would go should be clear.

Conclusion Our leading question in this article was to investigate the key claims made by those authors in the migration field who have argued that transnational communities and diasporas are carriers of new trends

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toward globalization, and that they threaten the authority of the nation-state as the primary unit of social organization. Contrary to this extreme image of people joining hands across the globe and thereby displacing the nation-state to the dustbin of history, our empirical findings regarding migrant claims-making in Germany, Britain and the Netherlands fall strongly on the side that sees nation-states as the dominant factor in shaping migrant claims-making in general, and the potential for, and patterns of, transnational claims-making in particular. If transnational community and diaspora formation is to be read as an emergent trend – which for the moment remains more of an assertion than an established fact – then contextual explanation is required to show the patterns by which it is emerging, and why it is emerging in some receiving countries more than others, and among some types of migrant groups more than others. This is not to claim that the emergence of transnational claims-making is insignificant, but that its significance can only be explained in context. Instead of opposing the national and transnational, we set out specifically to show how they interact. Our findings comparing claims-making in Germany, Britain, and the Netherlands illustrate many examples that populate the transnational communities and diasporas literature. Without repeating the detailed arguments that have been made in the body of the article, it is important to repeat here the main finding. There are significant cross-national differences between the levels and forms of transnational claimsmaking by migrants and minorities, and these are best explained by the type of citizenship which a country uses for politically including migrants in its national community. Thus ethnic exclusionist Germany defines its former guestworker migrants as “foreigners,” and this is how they see themselves, directing their energies into “transplanted homeland” affairs, much more than their British and Dutch counterparts. In contrast, cultural pluralist Britain has made significant efforts to shape its resident former colonial subjects into nationalized “minorities,” and they have responded by voicing their demands for further material and symbolic political gains on the nation-state. The case of the Netherlands sits between Germany and Britain, but strongly underwrites our primary thesis that transnational claims-making is best understood as a dependent variable of national citizenship. In the Netherlands, a guestworker hangover plus a state sponsorship of ethnicity and nationality as the basis for incorporation of (and resource allocation to) minorities, has led Dutch minorities to retain strong identifications with their ethnicities and nationalities, albeit to a lesser extent than in Germany.


At the same time, regarding the direction of the claims of Dutch minorities, they are much closer to their British counterparts, and focus strongly on their position in the country of settlement. Interestingly then, we find transnational claims-making to be most prevalent in cases such as Germany, where the receiving state offers little opportunities to migrants to influence the policy process and symbolically excludes them from the national community. By contrast, transnational forms of claims-making were least prevalent in Britain, where the state has strongly assimilated migrants to the “racial minority” categories of its integration regime. Seen from this perspective, transnationalism is not a sign of resistance against receiving nation-states’ efforts at integration and assimilation, but something that confronts those nation-states who themselves resist making migrants into citizens. The comparison of Britain and the Netherlands shows, in addition, that it matters how nation-states make migrants into citizens. The more outspokenly multicultural approach of the Netherlands has provided for a more favorable environment for transnational types of identities and claims-making than in Britain. Thus, multiculturalism to some extent invites transnationalism, but the turn away from this approach by the Netherlands indicates that this may not be the future trend. Ethnicitybased multiculturalism has not only led more than in Britain to the retention of homeland-directed orientations in the political sphere, but has also meant a low degree of cultural adaptation in other domains, most important of all acquisition of the Dutch language and labor-market skills. Given both Germany’s and the Netherlands’ policy changes away from their former approaches to migrant integration, we may expect the patterns of migrant claims-making in these countries in the future to move closer to the British pattern – although certainly with remaining national differences. This implies that we may expect transnational claimsmaking to become less, rather than more frequent in these countries in the years to come. For these reasons, the urge within much of the transnational communities and diasporas literature, to see transnationalism as coming “from below” and driven “bottom-up” by migrant identity formations, really needs to be strongly relativized and made more systematic. This could be achieved by conceptual approaches that relate such processes to the “top-down” institutional and ideological frameworks which define their significance, meaning and representativeness, along the lines of the triadic model which we have developed above. At least such an approach would allow a space for analysis to come in, a development that ought to be welcomed, in a body of literature that has so far been

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high on inflationary rhetoric and rather low on critical theoretical reflection and systematic empirical evidence. While they are not completely irrelevant, our analysis shows that homeland influences or primordial attachments to ethnic, national, religious, or racial “transnational communities,” are relatively marginal to understanding patterns of migrant claims-making. Our argument for the retention of national citizenship approaches here is not a normative one, but a factually based one. Our evidence shows simply that national citizenship shapes transnationalism.

Acknowledgments The data used in this paper were gathered in the context of the project “Mobilization on Ethnic Difference, Citizenship and Immigration” (MERCI). The German and British data were collected by the authors with support from the Research Group Political Communication and Mobilization of the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, the Institute of Communication Studies at the University of Leeds, and a grant of the British Economic and Social Research Council (R000236558, R000239221). The Dutch data were gathered by Thom Duyvené de Wit with support from the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies of the University of Amsterdam. The authors gratefully acknowledge Thom Duyvené de Wit’s permission to use the Dutch data for this paper, as well as his support in analyzing and interpreting the Dutch data. Information on the Dutch case in this paper draws to an important extent on Duyvené de Wit and Koopmans (2001). An earlier version of this paper appears in the Transnational Communities Working Paper Series. WPTC-01–10. Oxford: ESRC/University of Oxford, http://www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk.

Notes 1 Among other things, this relative impact will depend on numbers and resources. Small countries (e.g., in the Caribbean) with weak domestic economies and which have sent relatively large numbers of migrants abroad, will be strongly affected by transnational economic, cultural and political flows. 2 The need for more comparative work on transnationalism has been forcefully emphasized by Guernizo and Smith (1998: 27–28). 3 E.g., what did postnational guestworker rights count for, where was the power of international conventions and discourses when the Bavarian government expelled a 14 year-old German-born boy of Turkish origin “back to Turkey” and thus separated him from his parents who had lived in Germany for 30 years?


4

5

6

7

8

9 10

11

12

Note from the editors: “Mehmet” has since been allowed to return, following a July 2002 rule by the Bundesverwaltungsgericht in Berlin. Whether this is a very realistic depiction of the typical nation-state in its pristine state is debatable. Group rights in the form of federal and corporatist arrangements or the preferential treatment of particular (state) religions can be found in many, if not most nation-states. A sizeable proportion of “multicultural” claims by migrants consist of little else than the demand to apply such group rights equally to all groups, e.g., to give Muslims the right to their own schools when Christian or Jewish denominations also have such rights. Strictly speaking, the Mollucan and Cuban examples do not completely fit the definition since these groups are largely concentrated in just one receiving state, the Netherlands and the USA, respectively. Of course, the issue is even more complex, because migrants additionally may hold identifications along gender, class, caste or occupational lines, which we ignore here for the sake of brevity and simplicity. A more detailed exposition of our approach for combining national versions of citizenship with political opportunities is outlined in Koopmans and Statham (2000). Due to space limitations, the version here will be a much briefer caricature of the basic contours of this approach. Here we offer only a few background details of the country cases to assist interpretation of the data. More substantive contemporary overviews can be found in Bade (1994), Münz et al. (1997) and Thränhardt (1992) for Germany; Layton-Henry (1994), Solomos (1993) and Mason (1995) for Britain; and Duyvené de Wit and Koopmans (2001) for the Netherlands. A more detailed exposition on the methodological approach is given in Koopmans and Statham (1999b). This excludes acts of international terrorism that could not be plausibly interpreted as part of the claims-making of a particular resident ethnic community, for instance, most forms of Middle Eastern terrorism. Acts by terrorist groups were included, however, if they were significantly linked to a resident ethnic community, e.g., the Kurdish PKK in Germany, or the planting of a car bomb by Islamic fundamentalists outside the Israeli embassy in Britain. Britain here does not refer to the whole of the United Kingdom, but to the main island; events in Northern Ireland were excluded. Moreover, because Scotland has its own press, our data include few Scottish events. If we talk about Britain, therefore, we are in fact mainly implying England and Wales – which is where more than 90 percent of the total population and an even larger percentage of ethnic minorities in the UK live. Data were coded from microfilm and CD-ROM versions of the newspapers by trained coding assistants on the basis of a standardized codebook. All articles in the home news section of the newspapers were checked for relevant acts, i.e. the search was not limited to articles containing certain key words. For the main variables in the analysis (actors, addressees, aims, etc.) open category lists were used, which allow us to retain the detail of the original reports in the analysis. In addition, hard copies of the original articles were kept to allow us to go back to the original reports if information was needed that had not been captured by the variables and categories included in the

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codebook (codebooks are available from the authors on request). The use of very detailed open category systems including hundreds of different actors and claims entails that conventional measures of inter-coder reliability are not applicable to these variables. Anyway, the categorizations used in the present analyses are not based on coder decisions, but are the result of aggregations of raw codes by the authors (for a similar two-stage procedure of content analysis, see Shapiro and Markoff 1998: 73ff, 199ff). 13 However, it may be that our sources have specific biases that make the data drawn from them unrepresentative for the print-media landscape at large. To check for such biases, we have in two of the countries, Germany and Britain, drawn additional samples from other newspaper sources. In Germany, we coded two years of the right-wing tabloid Bild Zeitung, one year of the German-published edition of the Turkish daily Hürriyet, as well as four-month samples from three different local dailies. In Britain we have a cross-section of six national newspapers for the year 1995: The Times, Daily Express, Daily Mirror, The Sun, and Daily Mail, in addition to the Guardian. Comparisons among these sources confirm that our main sources give relatively broad coverage to issues of immigration and ethnic relations. Importantly, the sometimes large differences in coverage rates do not lead to very different distributions of acts on important variables. For the present purpose, the comparison of the Frankfurter Rundschau to the Hürriyet for the year 1995 is particularly relevant. As a mainstream newspaper with a readership drawn mainly from the majority culture, the Rundschau of course does not cover claims-making by ethnic minorities to the same extent as the Hürriyet, which caters specifically to the Turkish immigrant community. Indeed, the number of ethnic minority claims reported was about three times higher in the Hürriyet, with, of course, a heavy bias toward claimsmaking by Turkish and Kurdish groups. However, this difference in the quantity of coverage hardly affects the distributions among types of claims. As we will see further on, the most striking characteristic of German minority claims-making is the predominance of homeland-related claims. The comparison with the Hürriyet shows that this result is not the product of a construction by German mainstream media, who would ignore claims-making by minorities for rights in Germany and focus disproportionally on conflicts imported from migrants’ homelands. For the year 1995, the percentages of homeland-related claims in the two newspapers are very close: 67 percent in the Rundschau and 60 percent in the Hürriyet. Information on similar checks for comparing the other German and British newspapers are available from the authors on request. 14 This analysis is based on all claims recorded from our newspaper sources. To control for the possibility that the collective identities measured simply reflect the ascription of identities to migrants by journalist, and not migrants’ self-identifications, we have separately analyzed the subsample of claims for which we know the full name of the organization which made the claim. Organizational names are important vehicles for the self-presentation of groups towards both their constituency and the wider society, and can therefore be taken as a valid indicator of the group’s collective identity. The results for this subsample are very similar to the ones reported here, with one exception: in the British case, the racial category of “Asian” was not


15

16 17

18

19

used in any organizational name, suggesting that this official label for migrants from the Indian subcontinent is a state construct that has little significance to the group it is meant to cover (see further, Statham 1999; Koopmans and Statham 1999a: 675–79). We count exile organizations (e.g., the National Resistance Council of Iran) and branches of homeland organizations (e.g., the PKK’s, Milli Görüs’ or the FIS’ various European branches) as homeland-based organizations, even if these organizations may sometimes be formally banned in the homeland. All examples in the text are actual cases drawn from our data on claims-making. The relatively high figure for Germany is, as Table 8.4 shows, due to the “Other” category and particularly to a number of homeland-directed claims by Alevites, a liberal Turkish Islamic current, which during the 1990s was on several occasions violently attacked by Muslim fundamentalist groups in Turkey. This provoked related claims in Germany. Differences in the strength of homeland orientations between the Netherlands and Britain can be partly explained, however, by inter-group differences. Among the 11 categories mentioned in the text, there is no clear rank order between Britain and the Netherlands; depending on the group, the level of homeland-orientation is higher in the Netherlands or in Britain, or is equally low in both countries. Except in a few cases where they mobilize a double identity such as Turkish Mulims.

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Index alien status, 15–16 Americanization, 6, 20 Amnesty International, 111–12, 118 apartheid, 46 Asian Indians (in the United States), arrival of, 136; assimilation of, 137–8; bicultural identities of, 138; educational/capital resources, 137; and everyday tensions, 138–9; and gender acculturation, 139; integration of, 138; and intergenerational conflict, 139; involvement in home-country politics, 136–7; transnational households of, 136–7, 165n assimilation, 1, 2, 30n, 120; American, 47–51; Anglo-Saxon model, 7–8; complexity of, 49–50–1; contradictory effects of, 25–6; cultural/socioeconomic shift, 52–3; discredited models of, 41; examples of, 43; French, 7, 44–5; general/abstract sense, 42; German, 45–7, 54n; holistic/disaggregated shift, 53; homogenous/heterogenous shift, 52; linear, 178; as multipath process, 134, 178; notion of, 39, 41–3; organic/abstract shift, 51; parallel-path/adhesive, 24, 134, 154, 156, 158; patterns of, 134, 178; population-level, 52; in public discourse, 44–5; in public policy, 45–7; return of, 43; in scholarly research, 47–51; segmentation of, 54n; selective/successful, 190–1; straight-line, 186–9; transformation of meaning, 51–3; transitive/intransitive shift, 42–3, 51–2, 54n; and transnational identity, 22–6;

(un)desirability of, 49–50, see also transnational involvements and assimilation (T/A) asylum-seekers, 14, 16, 69 Bickel, A., 115 Bolkestein, F., 79 Boxtel, R. van, 73–4 Brubaker, R., 17 Burgenthal, T., 115 Burke, K., 48 Carens, J., 9, 11 Chinese (in the United States), assimilation of, 149–50; ethnic impenetrability of, 150; and home country indebtedness, 148–9,165n, 167n; numbers of, 148 citizenship, 1–2; American trends, 16–17; anti-discrimination policy, 65–7; assimilationist turn, 47; automatic acquisition of, 88; and civic assimilationism, 208–9; and civic integration, 75–7, 84; and civic pluralism, 209; country regimes/differences, 209–15, 233n; and cultural obligations, 208; de-ethnicization of, 18–20, 30n; definitions of, 207; denial of, 26–7; descent or territory-based, 208; differentialist policy, 46; dual, 67, 83, 88, 121–2; ethnic concept of, 90–1; and ethno-cultural assimilationism, 208; and ethno-cultural pluralism, 208; European trends, 17–18; exclusion from, 212–13; inclusive position on, 17; indifference to, 101; and integration, 87–8; lack of, 89; laws of, 17, 21n; liberal definition of, 101; link with integration, 96–7; link with state, 87, 104n–5n; national, 232; political, 26–7, 88, 102–3, 212–13; re-thinking on, 101–2; 239

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Index

citizenship – continued reform of entitlement, 93–7, 107n; restrictionist reforms, 89; revaluation of, 2, 15–20, 88, 103–4; and rights/identity, 103; social inclusion, 27; and social/economic rights, 89; status of, 13; tightening up of, 16–17; types of, 230; voting rights, 66 claims-making, by status/religion, 226; and collective identity in public sphere, 206–7, 216–24; cross-country distribution, 218–19; cross-national differences, 230–1; data collection, 198–9, 215–16, 233n–5n; effect of political opportunities/constraints on, 203; ethnic organizations, 224–5; factors effecting, 203–4; framework for, 204; group representation, 222–3; homeland, 203, 204–6, 226–8; inter-group differences, 228–9; national, 225–6; and national identity/citizenship, 207–8, 233n; opportunity structures for, 207; structure of, 224; transnational, 230–2 communitarianism, 83 cross-border engagements, 179; frequency of, 180; organizational contexts, 181; populations, 123 Cubans (in the United States), cultural assimilation of, 151–2; gender acculturation, 153–4; ideologicalpolitical assimilation of, 152–3; relationship with host country, 151; transnationalism of, 150–1, 167n cultural rights, 10–11 cultural values, 71–2; adaptation to, 78–9; and consultative bodies, 78; and Muslim fundamentalism, 79; nationalist tendencies, 79–80; nature of, 82–3; non-religious, 83; and pillarization philosophy, 77–8, 81, 210, 214; respect for, 104; and setting-up of immigrant organizations, 78 denizenship, 1, 111, 119–20 diasporas, 200, 201–2, 229, 231

differentialism, application of, 40; ascendancy of, 44, 54n; and citizenship, 46; as conventional, 39–40; criticism of, 40–1; and droit à la différence, 44–5; ebbing of, 41; and language/culture, 45; and social service provision, 45–6 Dominicanyorks, assimilation of, 141–3; dual citizenship of, 140–1; education/employment of, 139–40, 141; and everyday tensions, 143; frequent movement between home/host countries, 141; and gender involvement, 144–5; integration of, 142; and investment in home country, 140; and racial identity, 143–4; sojourner mentality of, 141; transnational involvements of, 140, 165n, 166n education, 27, 123; differentialist policy, 45; Dutch system, 64, 83; mandatory nature of, 76–7; special facilities for, 69, 73 Entzinger, H., 15 ethnic minorities, 13, 14–15; concentration of, 213; diversity within, 69; Dutch policy for, 62–9; and education, 69; housing conditions, 68; increase in, 69; labor market, 68–9; and race relations, 209–10, 213, 214–16; social/economic situation of, 70 ethnicization process, 22, 24 Finkielkraut, A., 45 Fulbrook, M., 90 Glazer, N., 39 Gordon, M., 49 Green Card system, 97 Guarnizo, L., 179 guestworkers, 16, 63, 88, 91, 98, 197–8, 209–10, 219, 230, 232n Hammar, T., 119 human rights, 122; acceptance of international claims, 115–17;

Index applicability to non-citizens, 114–15, 117, 124; and class of beneficiaries (Breard case), 111–19; and the death penalty, 111–12, 125n; domestic, 114, 117, 124, 127n; as enforceable, 115; of limited utility, 117; small role of, 111; violations of, 112–14, 116–17, 118, 126n identity, collective, 206–7, 216–24, 233n; definitions of, 207; ethnic/nationality, 218; ethno-religious, 218, 222; historical traditions of, 209; racial, 217, 219–21; religious, 217–18, 221; and status, 216–17, 226; and transnationalism, 157–61 immigrant assimilation, notion of, 4–5 immigrant integration, ethnic focus of, 48–9; German/American examples of, 5–6; in liberal nation-states, 3–8; national models of, 6–7, 30n; non-academic/political origins of, 3–4; research on, 48 immigrants, countries of origin, 210–12; covenant idea, 17, 31n; deterrents to, 117–18; encouragement given to, 97; first-wave transnationalism, 135–54; location in host society, 23; numbers of, 210; pillarization of, 14–15, 64; practices/adjustments, 1–2; and Proposition, 117–18, 187; rights of, 123–4; second-wave transnationalism, 154–61; spatial dispersion of, 49 immigration, and balkanization of America, 120; contemporary, 1; effects of, 39; increase in, 69; state policies concerning, 1–2 integration, alternative to, 4–5; civic, 75–7; coexistence/doubling, 24; differentialist turn, 39–41; downward incorporation, 23–4; and imposition of substantive culture, 5; as independent of national citizenship, 87–8; individual/group paradox, 73; as intransitive, 5; mainstream, 23; mandatory course for, 15, 31n; and

241

naturalization as mechanism of, 95–6, 107n; notion of, 3, 30n; policies for, 209; priority areas, 74; and retention of identity, 63; return to, 89; of second-/third-generation immigrants, 16; social/economic, 72–4; as two-way process, 73, 74 inter-nationalism, 122–4 Itzigsohn, J. et al., 180 Jackson Preece, J., 13 Jacobson, D., 87 Jamaicans (in the United States), and dual citizenship, 145; education/employment prospects, 146; and gender tensions, 148, 166n; and home country loyalty, 145–6; political incorporation of, 146–7; and racial identity, 147–8; transnationalism of, 145–6, 166n Joppke, C., 88 Koh, H., 118 Kymlicka, W., 10–11, 12 language, acquisition of, 6, 9–10, 11, 92–3, 104; differentialist policy, 45; inter-nationalist strategies, 123–4; mandatory training in, 76; middle position on, 10; regional preservation/strengthening of, 40; teaching of mother-tongue, 70–1, 83; tightening of requirements of, 19 membership, deterritorialization of, 119–20; as dual/overlapping, 124; model, 110–11 migrants, claims-making by, 198–9, 203–7; multicultural challenges by, 199; in the Netherlands, 59–85; and preservation of identity, 61–2, 63, 64; profile of, 59–61; rights of, 199; temporary residence for, 61–2 minorities’ policy, 81; challenges to, 69–70; development of, 62–3; and emancipation in multicultural society, 64–5; and equality before the law, 65–7; and promotion of equal opportunity, 68–9

242

Index

Morawska, E., 48 Moynihan, D.P., 39 multiculturalism, 1, 2, 120, 209; Australian, 12; and awareness of cultural bias, 82–3; Canadian, 9, 11–12; challenges to, 81–2; and citizenship, 75–7, 84; de facto, 8–10; debates concerning, 70–2; Dutch, 14–15, 59–85, 215, 223; and emancipation, 64–5; European, 12–13; integrationist discourse, 71–4, 81; and mother-tongue teaching, 70–1; official, 8, 10–13; realities of, 84–5; and return to nationalism, 77–80, 83; and rights issue, 199–200, 233n; rise/fall of, 59; Swedish, 13–14; Swiss, 8; unity/diversity debate, 81–2 nation-state, alternatives to, 195; boundaries of, 120; challenges to, 196; differential discourse on, 40, 196; and equal rights, 199, 233n; and extension of international influence, 202; and the global, 196; institutional framework, 202; link with citizenship, 87, 104n–5n; loyalty to, 83; migrant claims on, 198–9; threats to, 230; and transnational immigration, 26–9 nationalism, return to, 77–80 nationality laws, British, 101–2; consequences of restrictive policies, 91–3; developments in, 89–90; and dual nationality, 94–5; ethnic origins of, 90–1; French, 97–101; German, 90–7; guidelines, 91; and Islamic problem, 98–9; reform of, 89, 93–7; residency requirements, 94–5; as restrictive, 99; Two States, One Law concept, 90–1, 105n, 106n; types of, 88–9; voluntarist element, 99–101 naturalization policies, 103; indifferent, 101; as mechanism of integration, 95–6, 107n; as part of assimilation process, 97–8

non-citizens, 104, 104n–5n; rights of, 114–15, 117, 118, 119–20, 124, 128n, 199; status, 2 Pasqua Law (1993), 99–101 postmodernism, 121, 124 postnationalism, 1, 16, 17; American structure of, 111–24; claims for, 110; counterarguments, 199; disputes over, 198–9; empirical/causal arguments, 102–3; European context, 197–8; failure of, 91–3; and guestworkers, 88; implication of, 110–11; and integration as independent of citizenship, 87–8; and legitimacy of the state, 118–19; and meaningful integration, 102; new form of, 197; and postmodern malaise, 121; and rights/membership, 111 religion, and accommodation of difference, 10; and cultural values, 83 Report on the Situation of Foreigners in Germany (2000), 5–6 Schain, M., 7 Scheffer, P., 78–9, 83 Schuck, P., 88 Slaughter, A.-M., 122 social services, differentialist policy, 45–6 sovereignty, 110, 114, 122, 124n Soysal, Y., 16, 17, 83, 115, 119, 120, 199 Taguieff, P.-A., 44, 45 Thomas, W.I., 3 Todd, E., 45 transnational involvements and assimilation (T/A), adhesive, 134, 154, 156, 158, 160–1; analysis of, 133–4; bicultural/hyphenated aspects, 154–5, 158–9; and children of immigrants, 154, 156, 167n; class differences, 156–61; coexistence of,

Index 161–4; definition of, 134; enclave, 158–9; false dichotomy of, 178; first-wave Cuban refugees in Miami, 150–4; and identity, 157–61; immigrant generation, 135; long term, 178; lower-class Donimincans, 139–45; main concepts informing, 134; middle-class Asian Indians, 136–9; pan-ethnic, 157, 160; patterns of similarities/differences, 164; second/native-born American generation, 154–61; and shift from difference to exclusion, 155–7; studies into, 134–5; sustainment of, 155; theoretical models for, 165; undocumented Chinese in New York Chinatown, 148–50; upwardly mobile Jamaicans in New York, 145–8, see also assimilation transnationalism, 20–1, 88; and assimilation, 22–6; boundedness of, 203; and children, 183–4; and claims-making, 203–7, 230–2; closet, 22; concept of, 200–1; core, 179; desire/ability to participate in, 183; and discovery of ‘home’, 186–9; emergence of, 200; and erosion of

243

citizenship, 87; expanded, 179–80; from below, 202–3, 231; goals/objectives, 182; institutionalization of, 181; and international influence, 202; linkages, 2; long-term, 177–8; marginality, 184–6; and move towards globalization, 229–30; and movement, 179, 180; and the nation-state, 26–9; nature of tasks engaged in, 182; new-old, 21–2, 133; practice of, 180; public dimension of, 195–7, 233n; scope of, 181–2; socioeconomic characteristics, 183, 192; triadic, 203–4; upwardly mobile/successful, 190–1 US Commission on Immigration Reform (1997), 6 Vienna Convention, 112, 114 Walzer, M., 121 Waters, M., 25 Welfare Reform Act (1996), 2 Wieviorka, M., 45 Zwan, A. van der, 75

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