SelectedStudiesMigrationAndIncorporation PDF

Migration and ethnic studies are on the rise.
A body of literature has rapidly

grown and, within it, a European research area is emerging. Yet, the scholarship
is still highly fragmented, being largely orientated towards the United States
and other countries with longer, older narratives of immigration. Unlike
people, theories and concepts do not travel easily, meaning we cannot take for
granted that research results are equally applicable on all continents. The first
volume of the imiscoe Textbooks Series answers the pressing need for a
European perspective on migration. Assembling for the first time in a single
binding are 25 classic papers that have had a lasting impact on studies of
international migration and immigrant integration in Europe. Not only is
this book a body of knowledge drawing together complementary expertise
developed in the field thus far, it is a launch pad for cross-national comparisons
around the globe.
Marco Martiniello is research director of the National Fund for Scientific
Research (frs-fnrs) in Belgium and a professor of sociology and politics at
the University of Lige, where he also serves as director of the Center for
Ethnic and Migration Studies (cedem). Jan Rath is a professor of urban
sociology at the University of Amsterdam, where he also serves as director of
the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies (imes).
The editors have selected from both the grounding classics and the best new work to show
how migration is transforming the rich democracies.
Professor John Mollenkopf, The City University of New York
A collection of must-read, though sometimes hard-to-find, pieces that any scholar or
student interested in immigration to Europe and its consequences will want to consult.
Professor Roger Waldinger, University of California, Los Angeles
A must not only for courses focused on Europe, but also a most useful tool for shedding new
light on North American migration by casting it in an often neglected comparative context.
Professor Aristide Zolberg, The New School for Social Research
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amsterdam university press www.aup.nl A ms t e r d a m U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s
TEXTBOOKS
IMISCOE
Selected Studies in
International Migration
and Immigrant
Incorporation
marco martiniello & jan rath (eds.)
isbn 978 90 8964 160 1
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Selected Studies in International Migration
and Immigrant Incorporation
migration en ethnic deel 1.indd 1 04-03-10 15:56
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IMISCOE
International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in Europe
The IMISCOE Research Network unites researchers from, at present, 25 institutes
specialising in studies of international migration, integration and social cohesion
in Europe. What began in 2004 as a Network of Excellence sponsored by the Sixth
Framework Programme of the European Commission has become, as of April 2009, an
independent self-funding endeavour. From the start, IMISCOE has promoted integrated,
multidisciplinary and globally comparative research led by scholars from various branches
of the economic and social sciences, the humanities and law. The Network furthers existing
studies and pioneers new scholarship on migration and migrant integration. Encouraging
innovative lines of inquiry key to European policymaking and governance is also a priority.
The IMISCOE-Amsterdam University Press Series makes the Networks ndings and
results available to researchers, policymakers and practitioners, the media and other
interested stakeholders. High-quality manuscripts authored by Network members and
cooperating partners are evaluated by external peer reviews and the IMISCOE Editorial
Committee. The Committee comprises the following members:
Christina Boswell, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh,
United Kingdom
Tiziana Caponio, Department of Political Studies, University of Turin / Forum for
International and European Research on Immigration (FIERI), Turin, Italy
Michael Collyer, Sussex Centre for Migration Research (SCMR), University of Sussex,
United Kingdom
Rosita Fibbi, Swiss Forum for Migration and Population Studies (SFM), University of
Neuchtel, Switzerland / Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lausanne
Albert Kraler, International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), Vienna,
Austria
Leo Lucassen, Institute of History, Leiden University, The Netherlands
Jorge Malheiros, Centre of Geographical Studies (CEG), University of Lisbon, Portugal
Marco Martiniello, National Fund for Scientic Research (FNRS), Brussels / Center for
Ethnic and Migration Studies (CEDEM), University of Lige, Belgium
Patrick Simon, National Demographic Institute (INED), Paris, France
Miri Song, School of Social Policy and Sociology, University of Kent, United Kingdom
IMISCOE Policy Briefs and more information can be found at www.imiscoe.org.
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Selected Studies in International Migration
and Immigrant Incorporation
edited by
Marco Martiniello and Jan Rath
IMISCOE Textbooks
Amsterdam University Press
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The multidisciplinary IMISCOE-AUP Textbook Series encompasses, at present, four volumes, and
aims to present both an international comparison of the development of international migration and
immigrant integration in Europe and an assessment of theoretical approaches with regard to this
issue. Materialisation of this objective strengthens the development and dissemination of a body
of common knowledge in this eld and consequently boosts the growth of a European research
area. The current volume encompasses 25 theoretical papers that have had an impact on research
in Europe or reect a European perspective on international migration and immigrant integration.
Our thanks are due to IMISCOE and to all those who have contributed, in whatever way, to the
realisation of this rst volume. We especially thank Anna Swagerman and, most of all, Kim Jansen.
Cover design Studio Jan de Boer, Amsterdam
Layout The DocWorkers, Almere
isbn 978 90 8964 160 1
e-isbn 978 90 4851 104 4
nur 741 / 763
Martiniello and Rath / Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2010
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book
may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or
by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written
permission of both the copyright owners and the authors of the book.
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Contents

Introduction: migration and ethnic studies in Europe 7

Part 1 - The migration process 19
1 Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack
The function of labour immigration in Western
European capitalism 21
2 Tomas Hammar
Introduction to European immigration policy:
a comparative study 45
3 Thomas Faist
The crucial meso-level 59
4 Steven Vertovec
Conceiving and researching transnationalism 91
5 Russell King
Towards a new map of European migration 111
6 Virginie Guiraudon
The constitution of a European immigration policy
domain: a political sociology approach 141
7 Abdelmalek Sayad
Immigration and state thought 165

Part II - Modes of incorporation 181
8 Hans van Amersfoort
Minority as a sociological concept 183
9 Tariq Modood
Black, racial equality and Asian identity 201
10 William Rogers Brubaker
Introduction to immigration and the politics of citizenship
in Europe and North America 215
11 Marco Martiniello
Ethnic leadership, ethnic communities political
powerlessness and the state in Belgium 237
12 Michel Wieviorka
Racism in Europe: unity and diversity 259
13 Rainer Baubck
Changing the boundaries of citizenship:
the inclusion of immigrants in democratic polities 275
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contents
14 Robert Kloosterman, Joanne van der Leun and Jan Rath
Mixed embeddedness: (in)formal economic
activities and immigrant businesses in the Netherlands 315
15 Patrick Simon
The mosaic pattern: cohabitation between ethnic
groups in Belleville, Paris 339
16 Hassan Bousetta
Political dynamics in the city: three case studies 355
17 Adrian Favell
Integration and nations: the nation-state and research
on immigrants in Western Europe 371

Part III - Conceptual issues 405
18 Fredrik Barth
Introduction to ethnic groups and boundaries:
the social organization of cultural difference 407
19 John Rex
The theory of race relations: a Weberian approach 437
20 Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis
Contextualizing feminism: gender, ethnic and
class divisions 469
21 John Solomos
Varieties of Marxist conceptions of race, class and the
state: a critical analysis 489
22 Frank Bovenkerk, Robert Miles and Gilles Verbunt
Racism, migration and the state in Western Europe:
a case for comparative analysis 517
23 Robert Miles and Victor Satzewich
Migration, racism and postmodern capitalism
537
24 Etienne Balibar
Class racism 567
25 Ceri Peach
The ghetto and the ethnic enclave 581

About the editors 607
List of sources 609
Index 613

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Introduction:
migration and ethnic studies in Europe
Over the past few decades, practically every country in the advanced
world has witnessed a substantial increase in immigration (Castles
& Miller 2009). Some countries such as Canada or the United States
have hosted immigration for centuries, and their mental map and
social fabric are consequently geared to accommodating newcomers.
But even for those countries, the magnitude of the current ow of
people crossing the border with or without valid documents was un-
expected. The US had its version of the guest worker system in the
Mexican Bracero Program of the 1940s, but the immigration of Latino
workers for the agricultural industry is nothing when compared to
what was in store. The previous immigration regime favoured immi-
grants from Europe, but the abolition of restrictions for immigrants
from Africa, Asia or Latin America in 1965 opened the US to non-
Europeans (Cornelius, Martin & Hollield 1994). Immigration laws
were tightened in the 1980s and 1990s in response to growing politi-
cal pressure against what some regarded as unbridled immigration
as well as mounting unemployment and rising public expenditures
for documented and undocumented immigrants alike. Meanwhile,
Los Angeles outnumbered Americas all-time city of immigration,
New York. That being said and contrary to the general political
mood in the US authorities still maintain that the city warmly wel-
comes immigrants. Even if immigrants are not always treated as
welcome guests, still acknowledged are the contributions they have
made to the metropolis ourishing, now and in the past.
On the other side of the Atlantic, similar developments have occurred,
though under different circumstances. One striking difference is
that Europes nations have never really considered themselves coun-
tries of immigration the way North America has. On the contrary,
many, including Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal. Spain sending
countries in living memory and even the Netherlands presented
themselves as countries of emigration. International migration and
the social problems it allegedly generates and with which it usually
international
migration
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8
marco martiniello and jan rath
is amalgamated have in recent years emerged as inevitable issues
in the media and politics, especially after 9/11. Migration has been
constructed as an international and domestic security issue linked to
urban unsafety, international organised crime, terrorism, illegality,
environmental issues and public health. This has aggravated the fear
of an invasion of Europe by cohorts of poor people. Meanwhile, the
issue of the co-existence between nationals and migrant communi-
ties has become increasingly interpreted in terms of social tensions
and problems (criminality, drugs, unemployment, school drop-out,
insecurity, etc.). In several European countries, political parties play
on the fears of the electorate with regard to migration in order to
gather electoral support. More precisely, since 9/11 and the Madrid
bombings of 3/11, there has been real intellectual and political panic
surrounding the issue of Islam in Europe and elsewhere.
1
To be fair,
there is also a more positive approach to migration and multicultur-
alism. Some welcome immigration as an answer to the greying of the
population. Others see it as a necessary condition for economic ad-
vancement in the framework of the Lisbon Agenda. The same holds
for diversity. While many politicians and opinion leaders advance an
assimilationist policy and thus aim at abolishing any form of ethnic
diversity, urban sociologists, economic geographers and city plan-
ners are increasingly identifying diversity as key for economic growth
(see for instance Florida 2000). Fractions of the general public also
value diversity in their social practices and modes of consumption as
illustrated by the success of ethnic food, fashion and world music, for
example in most European cities.
Nevertheless, public and political debates about migration are hardly
serene. In fact, since the early 1980s, migration has become the focal
point for passionate debates and controversies on a regular basis.
2

In these circumstances, social scientists nd themselves caught in a
very difcult position, especially if they take seriously the point that
their role is to elaborate knowledge free from passions and fears.
Their work is, in effect, running the risk of unwillingly reinforcing
the excessive dramatisation surrounding migratory phenomena.
Even when they assign themselves the precise opposite goal, they
are not always immune from distorted interpretations of their work
within the public sphere.
This ambiguity did not, however, preclude social scientists from be-
coming very prolic. Proliferation of migration and ethnic studies
in Western Europe is a relatively recent phenomenon. This branch
of social scientic research took off in several European countries
migration and
ethnic studies
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introduction
9
in the early 1980s and a little earlier in countries such as the United
Kingdom. In the rst stages, the study of migration was largely re-
served for demographers and political economists. Traditionally,
it has been a key area of study for the discipline of demography.
Political economy has quite logically developed an interest in this
eld. Until the oil crisis of 1973, the mere economic dimension of
migration was actually assumed to be the most obvious and most
natural dimension of the process. It was usually portrayed in terms
of the movements of the labour force.
The aim of the introduction to this textbook is not to present a classic
state of the art on migration and ethnic studies. This work has already
been done several times and has given rise to many publications in
different countries (see for instance Penninx, Berger & Kraal 2006).
Instead of repeating what has already been achieved, it seems more
fruitful in this context to articulate a number of marked features of
the eld of study. We will briey reect on European migration and
ethnic studies and highlight a number of academic publications that
were central to this development. In our view, two structural factors
shape European migration and ethnic studies. Firstly, there is the
structure of European academic research, both in terms of disciplin-
ary and thematic prole and funding. Secondly, we turn our attention
to the dominance of American perspectives in this eld and the ten-
dency of European researchers to take these perspectives for granted.
European migration and ethnic studies in a wider scientic
structure
The rst feature of European migration and ethnic studies is what
may be called the problem of the epistemological break, according to
Gaston Bachelard (1983) and Pierre Bourdieu (1973). More precisely,
we should say that a major challenge in the study of migration and
ethnic relations is the absence of any epistemological break, which
is often a result of the aforementioned intellectual emergency and
the social conditions of production of the social scientic work. As
discussed above, the common sense, led by a biased media sociali-
sation, conceives of immigration in terms of economic, social and
political problems. These include insecurity and criminality, unem-
ployment, poverty, urban decay, violence, religious and ethnic con-
icts and the dilution of the nation. Since 1973, this mosaic of folk
representation has been widely diffused in the public. Surprisingly,
the social sciences as a whole and sociology, more specically, did
absence of an
epistemological
break
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not represent any exception. Sociologists have actually started cat-
egorising the social experience of migrant populations into distinc-
tive domains, which they elaborated as specic social problems to be
studied and resolved. In fact, we have observed how construction of
the sociological perspectives on migration and ethnic relations in the
early hours of the discipline simply mirrored the intuitive theories
of migration among the wider public. This led to the development
of a literature rife with binary perspectives, such as immigrants and
housing, immigrants and school, immigrants and criminality, im-
migrants and security, immigrants and health, immigrants and cul-
ture, immigrants and the labour market. A great number of studies
has been produced and continues to be in all these sub-elds of
research. In the worst cases, they have been either atly empiricist or
simply unfruitful due to their redundancy. On the whole, one must
reckon with this rst major difculty in order to account for the rela-
tive theoretical stagnation of the eld. (For a more critical point of
view, see Rath 2001.)
Its as though migration and ethnic studies were meant to contribute
to solving the social problems associated with a phenomenon still
dominantly perceived as a threat to the social order (Sayad 1984).
Insofar as it tends to answer a social demand more or less directly,
the sociology of migration has been constrained. It has been forced
to internalise the problematised and dramatised perception of the
common sense which is itself largely determined, as stated above,
by a concern for social order. In this situation, it is quite difcult to
establish a positive assessment in terms of the scientic value of the
works produced. As noted by Michel Oriol:
In their concern for solving concrete problems quickly, they [the re-
searchers] can only raise the problems in terms comparable to those
of the public opinion. It becomes therefore more difcult to break
off with ideology in order to establish a properly scientic approach.
(1981: 6)
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The tight entanglement of social debates and policies helps explain
the weaknesses of the sociology of migration processes and ethnic
relations, as well as the predominance in the eld of the attest em-
piricism (Noiriel 1989).
Some claim that it is hard to talk of migration and ethnic studies as
a rm, coherent theoretical corpus in Europe. In other words, this
eld of research would not have reached the status of a branch of
binary perspectives
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introduction
11
the social sciences in its own right. The study of migration and ethnic
relations could hardly pretend to compete academically with more es-
tablished branches of sociology, anthropology, political science and
so forth because of its major theoretical weaknesses and fragmenta-
tion. Others believe that mainstream sociology is not theoretically
stronger. As such, the problem would be related to the structure of
social science research, which is fairly disciplinarily oriented, with
disciplinary-based institutes, evaluations and funding. Meanwhile,
migration and ethnic studies is thematically oriented and multi-
disciplinary. For sociologists, this eld is not sociological enough; for
anthropologists, geographers and political scientists the same holds
true. Consequently, scholars publish in specialised migration and
ethnicity journals that attract fewer readers, reach lower citations and
have less impact scores. The list goes on.
It is apparent that migration and ethnic studies was for a long time
marginalised in academic circles and universities. As already under-
scored by Abdelmalek Sayad (1984) and Philippe Lorenzo (1989),
it was an undervalued eld of research. The eld consequently re-
mained unattractive for academic researchers until not so long ago.
This is mainly the case in Continental Europe. In the US and, to a
lesser extent, in the UK, things are different. In the New World, the
professionalisation of sociology happened in the context of a country
conceiving its history as one of immigration. It comes therefore as
no surprise that this discipline has grown while maintaining immi-
gration as a central concern. For instance, the research produced in
this eld has allowed the Chicago School to develop and to become
a world-famous school of sociology. In many other European coun-
tries, the leading gures of social sciences were until rather recently
not interested in these phenomena. When they did show an interest,
they did it in a way that was once characterised by Lorenzo (1989) as
marginal, periodical and brief.
As far as social sciences and the study of migration are concerned,
researchers are all too often constrained by having to chase down
funding and research contracts at various ministries and govern-
mental agencies. The fact that immigration and integration have,
in the course of the last twenty years, remained highly contentious
and sensitive from an electoral point of view has had various con-
sequences. Most often, elected politicians holding executive ofces
are particularly careful in selecting the research projects that may be
immediately useful in terms of policymaking. Sometimes, an advan-
tage is given to research projects that give academic alibis often of a
undervaluation of
European migration
and ethnic studies
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quantitative nature to policies already agreed upon. In other words,
politicians in executive ofces have a strong tendency to intrude
upon the academic debate by imposing the legitimate research
problematics and themes without taking into account the research-
ers properly scientic concerns and agenda. One can observe how,
in recent years, themes worth receiving subsidies were the control
of asylum seekers and refugee ows, the control of external borders,
criminality, migrant insecurity and employment and unemployment
and, last but not least, Islamic terrorism issues.
The scarcity of sources of funding and the contractualisation of
research do not easily accommodate the theoretical concerns of the
researchers. There is a power struggle between the politicians and
policymakers in one camp and the academics in the other. The latter
seem to be at the base end of it. However, the relative autonomisation
of the academic eld is still a precondition for an effective epistemo-
logical break in the course of a solid research process. Furthermore,
it constitutes an important difference between non-academic exper-
tise and scientic research.
Researching and teaching in this eld have, for a long time, remained
poorly valued on the whole. Nor have the pursuits been very reward-
ing in terms of academic prestige. Investing in these themes has not
been the most direct way forward for those willing to join the elite
of social science research. As a respondent of Lorenzo put it: You
dont make a career in academia with immigration (Lorenzo 1989:
9). Sayad once asked the very uneasy question: Is the science of the
poor, of the small people, (socially) a poor science, a small one?
4

(1984: 20). There is no doubt about the answer: the sociology of im-
migration was a minor sociological subject matter.
Moreover, it seems that immigration and ethnic relations have almost
exclusively been studied by researchers who were in one way or an-
other complacent to the subject. A number of researchers in the eld
were either migrants themselves or of migrant descent. The same
narrow relationship between personal experience and research experi-
ence was observable among native researchers. They often had a spe-
cial relationship with immigrant population, either through marriage
or friendship. In other cases, they had close links with the migrants
countries of origin. It should be said that many of these researchers,
both natives and migrants, occupied precarious and unstable po-
sitions within the academic world and were often badly dependent
on external funding. One could contend that, on the social scale
contractualisation
of research
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introduction
13
of academic prestige, migration and ethnic studies is still too often in
the hands of second-class researchers. This latter statement is im-
mune from any judgment of their scientic competence. It actually
aims to emphasise how their social and national backgrounds, i.e.
the weakness of their position in the academic eld, do not generally
qualify them for the most academically valued positions. Moreover,
it is often expected that ethnic minority researchers should work on
ethnic and migration issues, just as it is usually considered natural
that gender studies be foremost a matter for female researchers. This
situation has signicantly evolved over the course of the 1990s and
2000s. Although theoretical divergence within the European eld
on the relevance of ethnicity as a mobilising social and political force
remains important, a form of decompartmentation and demarginali-
sation is undoubtedly at work. From either analytical angle, migra-
tion and ethnicity have become key issues in the social analysis of
contemporary Europe.
In the course of the 1990s and the 2000s, European migration and
ethnic studies has undergone a process of change, of demarginalisa-
tion and of professionalisation. There are many specialised academic
journals ranked in the ISI Web of Knowledge (e.g. Ethnic and Racial
Studies, International Migration Review, Journal of Ethnic and Migration
Studies, Revue europenne des migrations internationales). There are
many workshops, conferences and international networks dedicat-
ed to the study of migration and integration. There is a number of
specialised research institutes at various universities and a growing
number of Masters and PhD programmes in elds related to mi-
gration and ethnic studies. Moreover, main funders have launched
special programmes for research projects that revolve around mi-
gration and integration (e.g. the European Commissions Seventh
Framework Programme, the New Opportunities for Research
Funding Co-operation in Europe network known as NORFACE,
the Foundation for Population, Migration and Environment (PME/
BMU) and various national research councils). In short, migration
and ethnic studies is, more and more, gaining respect as a legitimate
academic eld worth an investment by students who hope to nd a
job in the domain.
European social scientists fascination for the Americas
The second feature of European migration and ethnic studies is the
adoption without sufcient care of conceptual and theoretical ele-
second-class
researchers
professionalisation
of European
migration and
ethnic studies
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14
ments developed in other social and national contexts. As observed
by Oriol:
Sociology has experienced the same enthusiasm as the population
in general for the Americas and sought its paradigms there, just as
people have sought their fortune. (Oriol 1981: 24)
5

In fact, a wide number of theoretical constructions in the European
sociology of migration has been imported from the US. The Chicago
School and the structural-functionalism among other schools have
provided European researchers with a huge stock of concepts. We can
mention here a number of examples: assimilation, adaptation, mar-
ginality, inclusion, integration. The reason for these abundant theo-
retical imports seems to lie in the fascination for the US mentioned
by Oriol, as well as the fact that the discipline of sociology in America
was far more advanced in the study of migration than the European
one when this theme became topical among European researchers.
Acknowledging the richness and relevance of the American concep-
tual legacy cannot preclude expressing explicit reservations in terms
of the very questionable way in which these concepts were used and
applied by European researchers.
A major problem lies in the fact that divergence has been underes-
timated, in terms of the historical, social and economic background
of Europe and the US. This divergence should have, at the very least,
stimulated a careful transferring of concepts from one context to the
other. Indeed, different historical and spatial contexts never corre-
spond in every respect, and therefore it is somehow illusory to use
theories and concepts developed for explaining and accounting for
the situation in one context for the other. Before they can be intro-
duced in a given context, theories and concepts external to a social
formation should rst undergo a critical and thorough examination.
They must be deconstructed and reconstructed in order to be adapt-
ed satisfactorily to a new context. This work has not been sufciently
achieved in this eld of study, especially when it comes to importing
elements of the American intellectual tradition. Moreover, the intrin-
sic problems of these imported concepts and problematics were not
denitively solved even in the American context. Therefore, by intro-
ducing them uncritically in Europe, theoretical difculties have also
been unwillingly taken on board. This factor may in itself account for
the uneasy development of a European sociology of migration and
ethnic relations.
theoretical and
conceptual imports
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introduction
15
These two problems of the theoretical and conceptual imports, es-
pecially from the US, may be illustrated briey through the example
of the late introduction and the development of concepts linked to
ethnicity, multiculturalism (Martiniello 1997) and underclass in
Continental Europe. It is unquestionable that these external elements
of debate can potentially reinvigorate this eld of research. However,
these categories must be used carefully. Indeed, can we assert that
the concept of ethnicity refers to the same intellectual representa-
tion in a society that has always conceived of itself as an immigration
country? This representation has been shaped for a long time by the
powerful ideology of the melting pot. Countries with old and strong
national and nationalist traditions have traditionally considered mi-
grant populations as a temporary labour force. European researchers
have often neglected this crucial question. Beyond that, sociological
debates about ethnicity in the US gave rise to the creation of com-
peting schools of thought. Today, the advocates of the substantial-
ist conception of ethnicity seem to be mostly minorised because
of the thorough criticism of their position in the early 1960s and,
even more sharply, after the publication of the inuential works of
Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan (1972). Now, among European
researchers manipulating the concept of ethnicity in migration and
ethnic studies, some still adopt an ambiguous position concerning
substantialism, which may bring the theoretical debate a few decades
back.
Another example concerns underclass. The concept is highly con-
tested in American academia, notably for having a strong moralistic
content. By reintroducing it in French social sciences in the early
1990s, Didier Lapeyronnie imported the American controversy and,
to a certain extent, the moralistic approach to the issue of social and
economic exclusion in Europe. Importing a concept without refer-
ring to the context in which it was created or the controversies it has
produced is problematic. We cannot assume a priori that underclass
is a useful concept for Europe.
European migration and ethnic studies
The Europeanisation and the internationalisation of research through
several networks and programmes, such as those in the European
Unions scientic research frameworks, can give a fresh new theo-
retical orientation to the discipline. It is indisputable that immense
conceptual and methodological problems have yet to be solved (Lloyd
ethnicity
underclass
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1995), and that there exist only very narrow margins for developing
crucial scientic research activities such as data collection and stan-
dardisation on an international level. However, at present, there are
wider opportunities being offered to European researchers, allowing
them to meet on a more or less regular basis and to exchange ideas
in collaborative research projects.
Cooperation needs to be structured. Research must, above all, focus
on European issues. Relevant questions must be asked. For instance,
how does one regulate supply- and demand-driven migration? What
is the best way to integrate for immigrants who stay? How can insti-
tutional arrangements be adapted so that social cohesion does not
vaporise? In an effort to answer such questions, the research network
IMISCOE, which stands for International Migration, Integration
and Social Cohesion in Europe, implements a rigorously compara-
tive multidisciplinary research programme with Europe as its central
focus. This is a promising venture for designing truly transnational
and transdisciplinary research projects in Europe, while also foster-
ing cooperation with academics interested in the same issues world-
wide.
To conclude, it seems indisputable that we need more profound re-
ection on the core features of European migration and ethnic stud-
ies. Such a reection implies that students of migration and ethnic
studies familiarise themselves with key texts in this eld. For this
volume, we collected a number of texts that we believe were crucial
for the development of European research in our eld. To rst iden-
tify these texts, we consulted with several dozen key academics in
migration and ethnic studies, asking them to nominate Europes
most classic publications. As could be predicted, we ended up with
a very long list of titles and authors. Some names, however, were
unanimously regarded as crucial in the development of European
migration and ethnic studies.
We take sole responsibility for the next phase of the selection process
during which we reduced the list to those comprising the chapters
of this volume. We acknowledge that the selection process was, at
the end of the day, arbitrary since other works could certainly have
been chosen. Our selection, however, provides a compelling repre-
sentation of European migration and ethnic studies. The chapters
address the main issues dealt with over the years within different
academic disciplines, different schools of thought and in a number
of European countries. We chose to organise the chapters themati-
IMISCOE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
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14
15
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43
introduction
17
cally. Chapters 1 through 7 deal with the migration process and its
related policies. Chapters 8 through 17 discuss modes of incorpora-
tion. Finally, chapters 18 through 25 bring together works dedicated
to transversal conceptual issues. Although some formatting changes
have been made, the substance of each chapter is a reproduction of
the text as it appeared in its original publication. In each thematic
section, the chapters appear in chronological order of their publica-
tion. We hope this organisation will help contextualise the works,
giving readers a sense of when and how these specic topics and ap-
proaches in European migration and ethnic studies emerged.
Notes
1 See for example Johnson & Crawford (2004) New Breed of Islamic Warrior
is Emerging: Evidence in Madrid Attack Points to Takris, Who Use
Immigration as a Weapon, The Wall Street Journal 29 March: A16.
2 See 2002s special issue of the Journal of International Migration and
Integration, 3 (3/4).
3 Free translation of: Par souci de rsoudre vite des problmes concrets, ils (les
chercheurs) ne peuvent gure les poser que dans les termes o lopinion publique
les reconnat. Il sera alors dautant plus difcile de sarracher lidologie, pour
essayer de fonder une dmarche proprement scientique... (Oriol 1981: 6).
4 Free translation of: La science du pauvre, du petit (socialement) est-elle une
science pauvre, est-elle une petite science? (Sayad 1984: 20).
5 Free translation of: La Sociologie a connu la mme fascination que les peuples
pour les Amriques et vint y chercher ses paradigmes tandis quils y qutaient for-
tune. (Oriol 1981: 24).
References
Bachelard, G. (1973), La formation de lesprit scientique. Paris: Vrin.
Bourdieu, P., J. C. Chamboredon & J.C. Passeron (1973), Le mtier de
sociologue. Paris: Mouton.
Cornelius, W., P. Martin & J. Hollield (1994), Controlling
Immigration: A Global Perspective. Stanford: Stanford University
Press.
Castles, S. & M. Miller (1999), The Age of Migration, 4th edition
(2009). New York: Guilford Press.
Florida, R. (2000), The Rise of the Creative Class: And How Its
Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. New
York: Basic Books.
Glazer N. & D. P. Moynihan (1970), Beyond the Melting Pot: The
Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City.
Cambridge: MIT Press.
1
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18
Lloyd, C. (1995), International comparison in the eld of ethnic rela-
tions, in A. Hargeaves & J. Leaman (eds.), Racism, Ethnicity and
Politics in Contemporary Europe, 31-44. Aldershot: Edward Elgar.
Lorenzo, P. (1989), Approche qualitative des recherches sur limmigration
en France. Paris: Centre de Recherche et dtudes dAnthropologie
et DUrbanisme.
Martiniello, M. (1997), Sortir des ghettos culturels. Paris: Presses de
Sciences Po.
Noiriel, G. (1989), Enjeux: Une histoire sociale du politique est-elle
possible?, Vingtime Sicle October/December: 81-89.
Oriol, M. (1981), Bilan des tudes sur les aspects culturels et humains
des migrations internationales en Europe Occidentale 1918-1979.
Strasbourg: Fondation Europenne de la Science.
Penninx, R., M. Berger & K. Kraal (eds.) (2006), The Dynamics of
Migration and Settlement in Europe: A State of the Art. IMISCOE
Joint Studies. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Rath, J. (2001), Research on Immigrant Ethnic Minorities in the
Netherlands, in P. Ratcliffe (ed.), The Politics of Social Science
Research: Race, Ethnicity and Social Change, 137-159. Houndmills/
Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Sayad, A. (1984), Tendances et courants des publications en Sciences
Sociales sur limmigration en France depuis 1960, Current
Sociology 32 (3): 219-304.
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Part I
The migration process
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1. The function of labour immigration in
Western European capitalism
Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack
As of the 1950s, migrant workers ocked to Western Europe to take up the
manufacturing industries low-paid and low-qualied jobs. Some came from
former colonial areas. Others were recruited under a guest worker regime.
Virtually all occupied an inferior social position in key domains of social life,
notably the labour market and housing. A growing number of scholars, many
of whom were inspired by Marxist thought, tried to explain this phenomenon.
The sociologist and political economist Stephen Castles and the sociologist
and ethnologist Godula Kosack formulated this problematic in a compre-
hensive way in their seminal book from 1973, Immigrant Workers and Class
Structure in Europe. They had previously expounded their views in an article
published in 1972 in the journal New Left Review. Here they claimed that mi-
grant work fullled an economic and socio-political function for capitalism,
being a fresh reservoir of labour and a means of dividing the working class.
They further located the origin of racism in capitalist expansion. Castles and
Kosack garnered much praise for drawing connections between the political,
social and ideological demands of capitalism and migrant labour, and for
criticising studies that dealt only with the problems of assimilation of indi-
vidual migrants.
The domination of the working masses by a small capitalist ruling
class has never been based on violence alone. Capitalist rule is based
on a range of mechanisms, some objective products of the economic
process, others subjective phenomena arising through manipulation
of attitudes. Two such mechanisms, which received considerable at-
tention from the founders of scientic socialism, are the industrial
reserve army, which belongs to the rst category, and the labour ar-
istocracy, which belongs to the second. These two mechanisms are
closely related, as are the objective and subjective factors which give
rise to them.
mechanisms of
domination
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22
stephen castles and godula kosack
Engels pointed out that English manufacture must have, at all times
save the brief periods of highest prosperity, an unemployed reserve
army of workers, in order to produce the masses of goods required by
the market in the liveliest months.
1
Marx showed that the industrial
reserve army or surplus working population is not only the necessary
product of capital accumulation and the associated increase in labour
productivity, but at the same time the lever of capitalist accumula-
tion, a condition of existence of the capitalist mode of production.
2

Only by bringing ever more workers into the production process can
the capitalist accumulate capital, which is the precondition for ex-
tending production and applying new techniques. These new tech-
niques throw out of work the very men whose labour allowed their
application. They are set free to provide a labour reserve which is
available to be thrown into other sectors as the interests of the capi-
talist require. The whole form of the movement of modern industry
depends, therefore, upon the constant transformation of a part of
the labouring population into unemployed or half-employed hands.
3

The pressure of the industrial reserve army forces those workers who
are employed to accept long hours and poor conditions. Above all:
Taking them as a whole, the general movements of wages are exclu-
sively regulated by the expansion and contraction of the industrial
reserve army.
4
If employment grows and the reserve army contracts,
workers are in a better position to demand higher wages. When this
happens, prots and capital accumulation diminish, investment falls
and men are thrown out of work, leading to a growth of the reserve
army and a fall in wages. This is the basis of the capitalist economic
cycle. Marx mentions the possibility of the workers seeing through
the seemingly natural law of relative over-population, and undermin-
ing its effectiveness through trade-union activity directed towards co-
operation between the employed and the unemployed.
5
The labour aristocracy is also described by Engels and Marx. By
conceding privileges to certain well-organized sectors of labour,
above all to craftsmen (who by virtue of their training could not be
readily replaced by members of the industrial reserve army), the capi-
talists were able to undermine class consciousness and secure an
opportunist non-revolutionary leadership for these sectors.
6
Special
advantages, sometimes taking the form of symbols of higher status
(different clothing, salary instead of wages, etc.) rather than high-
er material rewards, were also conferred upon foremen and non-
manual workers, with the aim of distinguishing them from other
workers and causing them to identify their interests with those of
the capitalists. Engels pointed out that the privileges given to some
British workers were possible because of the vast prots made by the
industrial
reserve army
labour aristocracy
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part i the migration process
capitalists through domination of the world market and imperialist
exploitation of labour in other countries.
7
Lenin emphasized the ef-
fects of imperialism on class consciousness: Imperialism... makes it
economically possible to bribe the upper strata of the proletariat, and
thereby fosters, gives shape to, and strengthens opportunism.
8
... A
section of the proletariat allows itself to be led by men bought by, or
at least paid by, the bourgeoisie, and the result is a split among the
workers and temporary decay in the working-class movement.
9

The industrial reserve army and the labour aristocracy have not
lost their importance as mechanisms of domination in the current
phase of organized monopoly capitalism. However, the way in which
they function has undergone important changes. In particular the
maintenance of an industrial reserve army within the developed
capitalist countries of West Europe has become increasingly dif-
cult. With the growth of the labour movement after the First World
War, economic crises and unemployment began to lead to political
tensions which threatened the existence of the capitalist system.
Capitalism responded by setting up fascist rgimes in the areas
where it was most threatened, in order to suppress social conict
through violence. The failure of this strategy, culminating in the de-
feat of fascism in 1945, was accompanied by the reinforcement of the
non-capitalist bloc in East Europe and by a further strengthening of
the labour movement in West Europe. In order to survive, the capital-
ist system had to aim for continuous expansion and full employment
at any price. But full employment strikes at a basic principle of the
capitalist economy: the use of the industrial reserve army to keep
wages down and prots up. A substitute for the traditional form of
reserve army had to be found, for without it capitalist accumulation
is impossible. Moreover, despite Keynsian economics, it is not pos-
sible completely to avoid the cyclical development of the capitalist
economy. It was therefore necessary to nd a way of cushioning the
effects of crises, so as to hinder the development of dangerous social
tensions.
Immigrants as the new industrial reserve army
The solution to these problems adopted by West European capital-
ism has been the employment of immigrant workers from under-
developed areas of Southern Europe or from the Third World.
10

Today, the unemployed masses of these areas form a latent surplus-
population
11
or reserve army, which can be imported into the de-
veloped countries as the interests of the capitalist class dictate. In
economic crises
employment of
immigrant workers
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addition to this economic function, the employment of immigrant
workers has an important socio-political function for capitalism: by
creating a split between immigrant and indigenous workers along
national and racial lines and offering better conditions and status to
indigenous workers, it is possible to give large sections of the work-
ing class the consciousness of a labour aristocracy.
The employment of immigrant workers in the capitalist produc-
tion process is not a new phenomenon. The Irish played a vital part
in British industrialization. Not only did they provide a special form
of labour for heavy work of a temporary nature on railways, canals
and roads;
12
their competition also forced down wages and condi-
tions for other workers. Engels described Irish immigration as a
cause of abasement to which the English worker is exposed, a cause
permanently active in forcing the whole class downwards.
13
Marx
described the antagonism between British and Irish workers, arti-
cially created by the mass media of the ruling class, as the secret of
the impotence of the English working class, despite their organiza-
tion.
14
As industrialization got under way in France, Germany and
Switzerland in the latter half of the 19th century, these countries too
brought in foreign labour: from Poland, Italy and Spain. There were
800,000 foreign workers in the German Reich in 1907. More than a
third of the Ruhr miners were Poles. Switzerland had half a million
foreigners in 1910 15 per cent of her total population. French heavy
industry was highly dependent on immigrant labour right up to the
Second World War. According to Lenin, one of the special features
of imperialism was the decline in emigration from imperialist coun-
tries and the increase in immigration into these countries from the
more backward countries where lower wages are paid.
15
This was
a main cause of the division of the working class. The fascist form
of capitalism also developed its own specic form of exploiting im-
migrant workers: the use of forced labour. No less than 7
1
/
2
million
deportees from occupied countries and prisoners of war were work-
ing in Germany by 1944, replacing the men recruited for the army.
About a quarter of German munitions production was carried out by
foreign labour.
16

Compared with early patterns, immigration of workers to con-
temporary West Europe has two new features. The rst is its charac-
ter as a permanent part of the economic structure. Previously, immi-
grant labour was used more or less temporarily when the domestic
industrial reserve army was inadequate for some special reason, like
war or unusually fast expansion; since 1945, however, large numbers
of immigrant workers have taken up key positions in the productive
process, so that even in the case of recession their labour cannot be
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dispensed with. The second is its importance as the basis of the mod-
ern industrial reserve army. Other groups which might conceivably
full the same function, non-working women, the disabled and the
chronic sick, members of the lumpenproletariat whose conditions
prevent them from working,
17
have already been integrated into the
production process to the extent to which this is protable for the
capitalist system. The use of further reserves of this type would re-
quire costly social measures (e.g. adequate kindergartens). The main
traditional form of the industrial reserve army men thrown out of
work by rationalization and cyclical crises is hardly available today,
for reasons already mentioned. Thus immigration is of key impor-
tance for the capitalist system.
The development of immigration since 1945
There are around eleven million immigrants
18
living in West Europe,
making up about 5 per cent of the total population. Relatively few have
gone to industrially less developed countries like Norway, Austria
and Denmark, while large concentrations are to be found in high-
ly industrialized countries like Belgium, Sweden, West Germany,
France, Switzerland and Britain. Our analysis concentrates on the
four last-named which have about 90 per cent of all immigrants in
West Europe between them.

Immigrants in West Germany, France, Switzerland and Britain
19

Immigrants
(thousands)
Immigrants as
percentage of
total population
Date of gures
(latest available)
West Germany 2,977 4.8 September 1970
France 3,177 6.4 December 1969
Switzerland 972 16.0 December 1969
Britain 2,603 5.0 1966
Most immigrants in Germany and Switzerland come from Southern
Europe. The main groups in Germany are Italians (574,000 in
1970), Yugoslavs (515,000), Turks (469,000), Greeks (343,000)
and Spaniards (246,000). In Switzerland, the Italians are by far the
largest group (532,000 in 1969) followed by Germans (116,000)
and Spaniards (98,000). France and Britain also have considerable
numbers of European immigrants, but in addition large contingents
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from former colonies in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. France has
617,000 Spaniards, 612,000 Italians, 480,000 Portuguese, as well as
608,000 Algerians, 143,000. Moroccans, 89,000 Tunisians, about
55,000 black Africans and an unknown number (probably about
200,000) from the remaining colonies (euphemistically referred to
as Overseas Departments) in the West Indies and the African island
of Runion. The largest immigrant group in Britain comes from
the Irish Republic (739,000 in 1966). Most of the other Europeans
were displaced persons and the like who came during and after the
war: Germans (142,000), Poles (118,000). Cypriots number 60,000.
There are also an increasing number of South Europeans, often al-
lowed in on a short-term basis for work in catering and domestic
service. Coloured immigrants comprise about one third of the total,
the largest groups coming from the West Indies (269,000 in 1966),
India (240,000) and Pakistan (75,000).
20

The migratory movements and the government policies which
direct them reect the growing importance and changing function
of immigrant labour in West Europe. Immediately after the Second
World War, Switzerland, Britain and France recruited foreign work-
ers. Switzerland needed extra labour for the export boom permit-
ted by her intact industry in the middle of war-torn Europe. The
European Voluntary Workers in Britain (initially displaced persons,
later Italians) were assigned to specic jobs connected with indus-
trial reconstruction. The reconstruction boom was not expected to
last. Both Switzerland and Britain imposed severe restrictions on
foreign workers, designed to stop them from settling and bringing
in their families, so that they could be dismissed and deported at the
least sign of recession. France was something of an exception: her
immigration policy was concerned not only with labour needs for
reconstruction, but also with permanent immigration to counteract
the demographic effects of the low birth-rate.
When West German industry got under way again after the 1949
Currency Reform there was at rst no need for immigrants from
Southern Europe. An excellent industrial reserve army was provided
by the seven million expellees from the former Eastern provinces
of the Reich and by the three million refugees from East Germany,
many of whom were skilled workers. Throughout the fties, the
presence of these reserves kept wage-growth slow and hence pro-
vided the basis for the economic miracle. By the mid-fties, how-
ever, special labour shortages were appearing, rst in agriculture and
building. It was then that recruitment of foreign workers (initially
on a seasonal basis
21
) was started. Here too, an extremely restrictive
policy was followed with regard to family entry and long-term settle-
changing function
of immigrant labour
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ment. Rotation of the foreign labour force was encouraged. In this
stage, the use of immigrants in the countries mentioned followed
the pre-war pattern: they were brought in to satisfy special and, it was
thought, temporary labour needs in certain sectors. They were, as an
ofcial of the German employers association put it, a mobile labour
potential.
22

By the sixties, the situation was changing. Despite mild cyclical
tendencies it was clear that there was not going to be a sudden re-
turn to the pre-war boom-slump pattern. The number of immigrant
workers grew extremely rapidly in the late fties and early sixties.
Between 1956 and 1965 nearly one million new workers entered
France. The number of foreign workers in West Germany increased
from 279,000 in 1960 to over 1.3 million in 1966. In Switzerland
there were 326,000 immigrant workers (including seasonals) in
1956, and 721,000 in 1964. This was also the period of mass im-
migration to Britain from the Commonwealth.
23
The change was not
merely quantitative: immigrants were moving into and becoming in-
dispensable in ever more sectors of the economy. They were no lon-
ger lling gaps in peripheral branches like agriculture and building
but were becoming a vital part of the labour force in key industries
like engineering and chemicals. Moreover, there was growing com-
petition between the different countries to obtain the most desirable
immigrants, i.e. those with the best education and the least cultural
distance from the receiving countries. The growing need for labour
was forcing the recruiters to go further and further aeld: Turkey and
Yugoslavia were replacing Italy as Germanys main labour source.
Portugal and North Africa were replacing Italy and Spain in the case
of France.
As a result, new policies intended to attract and integrate im-
migrant workers, but also to control them better, were introduced.
One such measure was the free labour movement policy of the EEC,
designed to increase the availability of the rural proletariat of Sicily
and the Mezzogiorno to West European capital.
24
Germany and
Switzerland liberalized the conditions for family entry and long-
term settlement, while at the same time tightening political control
through measures such as the German 1965 Foreigners Law. France
tried to increase control over entries, in order to prevent the large-
scale clandestine immigration which had taken place throughout
the fties and sixties (and still does, despite the new policy). At the
same time restrictions were made on the permanent settlement of
non-Europeans ofcially because of their greater difculties in
integrating. In Britain, racialist campaigns led to the stopping of
unrestricted Commonwealth immigration in 1962. By limiting the
mobile labour
potential
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labour supply, this measure contradicted the economic interests of
the ruling class. The new Immigration Act of 1971, which could pro-
vide the basis for organized and controlled labour recruitment on the
German and French pattern, is a corrective, although its application
for this purpose is not at present required, since the ruling class has
created an internal industrial reserve army through unemployment.
In view of the stagnant domestic labour force potential and the
long-term growth trend of the economy, immigrant labour has be-
come a structural necessity for West European capitalism.
25
It has
a dual function today.
26
One section is maintained as a mobile uc-
tuating labour force, which can be moved from factory to factory or
branch to branch as required by the development of the means of
production, and which can be thrown out of work and deported as
required without causing social tensions. This function was shown
clearly by the West German recession of 1966-7, when the foreign
labour force dropped by 400,000, although there were never more
than 29,000 receiving unemployment benet. As a United Nations
study pointed out, West Germany was able to export unemployment
to the home countries of the migrants.
27
The other section is required
for permanent employment throughout the economy. They are of-
fered better conditions and the chance of long-term settlement.
28

Despite this they still full the function of an industrial reserve army,
for they are given inferior jobs, have no political rights and may be
used as a constant threat to the wages and conditions of the local
labour force.
Occupational position
The immigrant percentage of the population given in the table above
in no way reects the contribution of immigrants to the economy.
They are mainly young men, whose dependents are sent for later if at
all. Many of them remain only a few years, and are then replaced by
others, so that there are hardly any retired immigrants. Immigrants
therefore have higher than average rates of economic activity, and
make contributions to health, unemployment and pension insurance
far in excess of their demands on such schemes.
29
Particularly high
rates of activity are to be found among recently arrived groups, or
among those who for social and cultural reasons tend not to bring de-
pendents with them: Portuguese and North Africans in France, Turks
in Germany and Pakistanis in Britain. Immigrant workers are about
6.5 per cent of the labour force in Brirain, 7-8 per cent in France, 10
per cent in West Germany and 30 per cent in Switzerland. Even these
permanent
employment
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gures do not show adequately the structural importance of immi-
grant labour, which is concentrated in certain areas and types of work.
The overwhelming majority of immigrants live in highly indus-
trialized and fast-growing urban areas like Paris, the Lyon region,
the Ruhr, Baden-Wrttemberg, London and the West Midlands. For
example 31.2 per cent of all immigrants in France live in the Paris
region, compared with only 19.2 per cent of the total population. 9.5
per cent of the inhabitants of the Paris region are immigrants.
30
In
Britain more than one third of all immigrants are to be found in
Greater London compared with one sixth of the total population.
Immigrants make up 12 per cent of Londons population.
31

More important still is the concentration in certain industries.
Switzerland is the extreme case: the whole industrial sector is domi-
nated by foreign workers who make up more than 40 per cent of the
factory labour force. In many branches for instance textiles, cloth-
ing, building and catering they outnumber Swiss employees.
32
Of
the nearly two million foreign workers in Germany in September
1970, 38.5 per cent were in the metal-producing and engineering in-
dustry, 24.2 in other manufacturing branches and 16.7 per cent in
building. Foreign workers accounted for 13.7 per cent of total em-
ployment in metal producing and engineering. The proportion was
even higher in some industries with particularly bad working condi-
tions, like plastic, rubber and asbestos manufacture (18.4 per cent).
In building, foreign workers were 17.5 per cent of the labour force.
On the other hand they made up only 3-4 per cent of all employees
in the services, although their share was much higher in catering
(14.8 per cent).
33
Similar concentrations were revealed by the 1968
Census in France: 35.6 per cent of immigrant men were employed in
building and 13.5 per cent in engineering and electrical goods. 28.8
per cent of foreign women were domestic servants. In Britain the
concentration of immigrants in certain industries is less marked,
and different immigrant groups have varying patterns. The Irish
are concentrated in construction, while Commonwealth immigrants
are over-represented in metal manufacture and transport. Pakistani
men are mainly to be found in the textile industry and Cypriots in
clothing and footwear and in distribution. European immigrants are
frequently in the services sector. Immigrant women of all nationali-
ties tend to work in services, although some groups (Cypriots, West
Indians) also often work in manufacruring.
34

In general immigrants are concentrated in certain basic indus-
tries, where they form a high proportion of the labour force. Together
with their geographical concentration this means that immigrant
workers are of great importance in the very type of enterprise and
concentration in
basic industries
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area which used to be regarded as the strongholds of the class-con-
scious proletariat. The real concentration is even greater than the
gures show, for within each industry the immigrants tend to have
become predominant in certain departments and occupations. There
can be hardly a foundry in West Europe in which immigrants do not
form a majority, or at least a high proportion, of the labour force.
The same applies to monotonous production line work, such as car-
assembly. Renault, Citroen, Volkswagen, Ford of Cologne and Opel
all have mainly foreign workers on the assembly line (the British mo-
tor industry is an exception in this respect).
Perhaps the best indication of the occupational concentration of
the immigrant labour force is given by their socio-economic distribu-
tion. For instance a survey carried out in 1968 in Germany showed
that virtually no Southern Europeans are in non-manual employ-
ment. Only between 7 per cent and 16 per cent of the various nation-
alities were skilled workers while between 80 per cent and 90 per
cent were either semi-skilled or unskilled.
35
By comparison about a
third of German workers are non-manual, and among manual work-
ers between one third and one half are in the skilled category in the
various industries. In France a survey carried out at Lyon in 1967
found that where they worked in the same industry, the French were
mainly in managerial, non-manual or skilled occupations, while the
immigrants were concentrated in manual occupations, particularly
semi-skilled and unskilled ones. The relegation to unskilled jobs is
particularly marked for North Africans and Portuguese.
36
In Britain,
only about 26 per cent of the total labour force fall into the unskilled
and semi-skilled manual categories, but the gure is 42 per cent for
the Irish, 50 per cent for the Jamaicans, 65 per cent for the Pakistanis
and 55 per cent for the Italians.
37

Immigrants form the lowest stratum of the working class carry-
ing out unskilled and semi-skilled work in those industrial sectors
with the worst working conditions and/or the lowest pay.
38
The entry
of immigrants at the bottom of the labour market has made possible
the release of many indigenous workers from such employment,
and their promotion to jobs with better conditions and higher status,
i.e. skilled, supervisory or white-collar employment. Apart from the
economic effects, this process has a profound impact on the class
consciousness of the indigenous workers concerned. This will be dis-
cussed in more detail below.
socio-economic
distribution
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Social position
The division of the working class within the production process is
duplicated by a division in other spheres of society. The poor living
conditions of immigrants have attracted too much liberal indigna-
tion and welfare zeal to need much description here. Immigrants get
the worst types of housing: in Britain slums and run-down lodging
houses, in France bidonvilles (shanty-towns) and overcrowded hotels,
in Germany and Switzerland camps of wooden huts belonging to
the employers and attics in the cities. It is rare for immigrants to get
council houses. Immigrants are discriminated against by many land-
lords, so that those who do specialize in housing them can charge
extortionate rents for inadequate facilities. In Germany and France,
ofcial programmes have been established to provide hostel accom-
modation for single immigrant workers. These hostels do provide
somewhat better material conditions. On the other hand they in-
crease the segregation of immigrant workers from the rest of the
working class, deny them any private life, and above all put them
under the control of the employers 24 hours a day.
39
In Germany
the employers have repeatedly attempted to use control over immi-
grants accommodation to force them to act as strike-breakers.
Language and vocational training courses for immigrant workers
are generally provided only when it is absolutely necessary for the
production process, as in mines for example. Immigrant children
are also at a disadvantage: they tend to live in run-down overcrowded
areas where school facilities are poorest. No adequate measures are
taken to deal with their special educational problems (e.g. language
difculties), so that their educational performance is usually below-
average. As a result of their bad working and living conditions, im-
migrants have serious health problems. For instance they have much
higher tuberculosis rates than the rest of the population virtually ev-
erywhere.
40
As there are health controls at the borders, it is clear that
such illnesses have been contracted in West Europe rather than be-
ing brought in by the immigrants.
The inferior work-situation and living conditions of immigrants
have caused some bourgeois sociologists to dene them as a lumpen-
proletariat or a marginal group. This is clearly incorrect. A group
which makes up 10, 20 or 30 per cent of the industrial labour force
cannot be regarded as marginal to society. Others speak of a new
proletariat or a sub-proletariat. Such terms are also wrong. The rst
implies that the indigenous workers have ceased to be proletarians
and have been replaced by the immigrants in this social position. The
second postulates that immigrant workers have a different relation-
inferior conditions
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ship to the means of production than that traditionally characteristic
of the proletariat. In reality both indigenous and immigrant work-
ers share the same relationship to the means of production: they are
excluded from ownership or control; they are forced to sell their la-
bour power in order to survive; they work under the direction and in
the interests of others. In the sphere of consumption both categories
of workers are subject to the laws of the commodity market, where
the supply and price of goods is determined not by their use value
but by their protability for capitalists; both are victims of landlords,
retail monopolists and similar bloodsuckers and manipulators of
the consumption-terror. These are the characteristics typical of the
proletariat ever since the industrial revolution, and on this basis im-
migrant and indigenous workers must be regarded as members of
the same class: the proletariat. But it is a divided class: the marginal
privileges conceded to indigenous workers and the particularly inten-
sive exploitation of immigrants combine to create a barrier between
the two groups, which appear as distinct strata within the class. The
division is deepened by certain legal, political and psychological fac-
tors, which will be discussed below.
Discrimination
Upon arrival in West Europe, immigrants from under-developed ar-
eas have little basic education or vocational training, and are usually
ignorant of the language. They know nothing of prevailing market
conditions or prices. In capitalist society, these characteristics are
sufcient to ensure that immigrants get poor jobs and social condi-
tions. After a period of adaptation to industrial work and urban life,
the prevailing ideology would lead one to expect many immigrants
to obtain better jobs, housing, etc. Special mechanisms ensure that
this does not happen in the majority of cases. On the one hand there
is institutionalized discrimination in the form of legislation which
restricts immigrants civic and labour market rights. On the other
hand there are informal discriminatory practices based on racialism
or xenophobia.
In nearly all West European countries, labour market legislation
discriminates against foreigners. They are granted labour permits for
a specic job in a certain rm for a limited period. They do not have
the right to move to better-paid or more highly qualied positions,
at least for some years. Workers who change jobs without permis-
sion are often deported. Administrative practices in this respect have
been liberalized to some extent in Germany and Switzerland in re-
division of the
proletariat
institutionalized
discrimination
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cent years, due to the need for immigrant labour in a wider range
of occupations, but the basic restrictiveness of the system remains.
In Britain, Commonwealth immigrants (once admitted to the coun-
try) and the Irish had equal rights with local workers until the 1971
Immigration Act. Now Commonwealth immigrants will have the
same labour market situation as aliens. The threat of deportation if
an immigrant loses his job is a very powerful weapon for the em-
ployer. Immigrants who demand better conditions can be sacked for
indiscipline and the police will do the rest.
41
Regulations which re-
strict family entry and permanent settlement also keep immigrants
in inferior positions. If a man may stay only for a few years, it is not
worth his while to learn the language and take vocational training
courses.
Informal discrimination is well known in Britain, where it takes
the form of the colour bar. The PEP study,
42
as well as many other
investigations, has shown that coloured immigrants encounter dis-
crimination with regard to employment, housing and the provision
of services such as mortgages and insurance. The more qualied
a coloured man is, the more likely he is to encounter discrimina-
tion. This mechanism keeps immigrants in their place, i.e. doing
the dirty, unpleasant jobs. Immigrants in the other European coun-
tries also encounter informal discrimination. Immigrants rarely get
promotion to supervisory or non-manual jobs, even when they are
well-qualied. Discrimination in housing is widespread. In Britain,
adverts specifying no coloured are forbidden, but in Germany or
Switzerland one still frequently sees no foreigners.
The most serious form of discrimination against immigrant
workers is their deprivation of political rights. Foreigners may not
vote in local or national elections. Nor may they hold public ofce,
which in France is dened so widely as to include trade-union posts.
Foreigners do not generally have the same rights as local workers
with regard to eligibility for works councils and similar representa-
tive bodies. The main exception to this formal exclusion from politi-
cal participation concerns Irish and Commonwealth immigrants in
Britain, who do have the right to vote (the same will not apply to those
who enter under the 1971 Act). But the Mangrove case shows the type
of repression which may be expected by any immigrants who dare to
organize themselves. Close police control over the political activities
of immigrants is the rule throughout Europe, and deportations of po-
litical and trade-union militants are common. After the May Events
in France, hundreds of foreign workers were deported.
43
Foreign lan-
guage newspapers of the CGT labour federation have been repeated-
ly forbidden. The German Foreigners Law of 1965 lays down that the
informal
discrimination
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political activity of foreigners can be forbidden if important interests
of the German Federal Republic require this a provision so exible
that the police can prevent any activity they choose. Even this is not
regarded as sufcient. When Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt visited
Iran in March 1972 to do an oil deal, the Shah complained strongly
about Iranian students being allowed to criticize him in Germany.
The Greek and Yugoslav ambassadors have also protested about the
activities of their citizens. Now the German Government is working
on a new law which would go so far as to make police permission
necessary even for private meetings of foreigners in closed rooms.
44
Prejudice and class consciousness
Discrimination against immigrants is a reection of widespread hos-
tility towards them. In Britain, this is regarded as colour prejudice
or racialism, and indeed there can be no doubt that the hostility of
large sections of the population is at present directed against black
people. Race relations theorists attribute the problems connected
with immigration partly to the immigrants difculties in adapting
to the prevailing norms of the host society, and partly to the in-
digenous populations inbred distrust of the newcomers who can be
distinguished by their skin colour. The problems are abstracted from
the socioeconomic structure and reduced to the level of attitudes.
Solutions are to be sought not through political action, but through
psychological and educational strategies.
45
But a comparison of sur-
veys carried out in different countries shows that hostility towards
immigrants is everywhere as great as in Britain, even where the im-
migrants are white.
46
The Italian who moves to the neighbouring
country of Switzerland is as unpopular as the Asian in Britain. This
indicates that hostility is based on the position of immigrants in so-
ciety and not on the colour of their skin.
Racialism and xenophobia are products of the capitalist nation-
al state and of its imperialist expansion.
47
Their principal historical
function was to split the working class on the international level, and
to motivate one section to help exploit another in the interests of the
ruling class. Today such ideologies help to deepen the split within
the working class in West Europe. Many indigenous workers do not
perceive that they share a common class position and class interests
with immigrant workers. The basic fact of having the same relation-
ship to the means of production is obscured by the local workers
marginal advantages with regard to material conditions and status.
The immigrants are regarded not as class comrades, but as alien in-
racialism and
xenophobia
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truders who pose an economic and social threat. It is feared that they
will take away the jobs of local labour, that they will be used by the
employers to force down wages and to break strikes.
48
Whatever the
behaviour of the immigrant workers and in fact they almost invari-
ably show solidarity with their indigenous colleagues such fears
are not without a basis. It is indeed the strategy of the employers to
use immigration to put pressure on wages and to weaken the labour
movement.
49
The very social and legal weakness of the immigrants is
a weapon in the hands of the employers. Other points of competition
are to be found outside work, particularly on the housing market.
The presence of immigrants is often regarded as the cause of ris-
ing rents and increased overcrowding in the cities. By making im-
migrants the scapegoats for the insecurity and inadequate conditions
which the capitalist system inevitably provides for workers, attention
is diverted from the real causes.
Workers often adopt racialism as a defence mechanism against a
real or apparent threat to their conditions. It is an incorrect response
to a real problem. By preventing working-class unity, racialism as-
sists the capitalists in their strategy of divide and rule. The function
of racialism in the capitalist system is often obscured by the fact that
racialist campaigns usually have petty-bourgeois leadership and di-
rect their slogans against the big industrialists. The Schwarzenbach
Initiative in Switzerland which called for the deportation of a large
proportion of the immigrant population is an example,
50
as are
Enoch Powells campaigns for repatriation. Such demands are op-
posed by the dominant sections of the ruling class. The reason is
clear: a complete acceptance of racialism would prevent the use of
immigrants as an industrial reserve army. But despite this, racial-
ist campaigns serve the interests of the ruling class: they increase
tension between indigenous and immigrant workers and weaken
the labour movement. The large working-class following gained by
Powell in his racialist campaigns demonstrates how dangerous they
are. Paradoxically, their value for capitalism lies in their very failure
to achieve their declared aims.
The presence of immigrant workers is one of the principal fac-
tors contributing to the lack of class consciousness among large sec-
tions of the working class. The existence of a new lower stratum of
immigrants changes the workers perception of his own position in
society. Instead of a dichotomic view of society, in which the working
masses confront a small capitalist ruling class, many workers now
see themselves as belonging to an intermediate stratum, superior to
the unskilled immigrant workers. Such a consciousness is typied by
an hierarchical view of society and by orientation towards advance-
racialism
defence mechanism
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ment through individual achievement and competition, rather than
through solidarity and collective action. This is the mentality of the
labour aristocracy and leads to opportunism and the temporary decay
of the working-class movement.
Immigration and society
The impact of immigration on contemporary West European society
may now be summarized.
Economic effects: the new industrial reserve army of immigrant work-
ers is a major stabilizing factor of the capitalist economy. By restrain-
ing wage increases, immigration is a vital precondition for capital ac-
cumulation and hence for growth. In the long run, wages may grow
more in a country which has large-scale immigration than in one
which does not, because of the dynamic effect of increased capital
accumulation on productivity. However, wages are a smaller share,
and prots a larger share of national income than would have been
the case without immigration.
51
The best illustration of this effect is
obtained by comparing the German and the British economies since
1945. Germany has had large and continuous increases in labour
force due to immigration. At rst wages were held back. The result-
ing capital accumulation allowed fast growth and continuous ratio-
nalization. Britain has had virtually no growth in labour force due
to migration (immigration has been cancelled out by emigration of
British people to Australia, etc). Every phase of expansion has col-
lapsed rapidly as wages rose due to labour shortages. The long-term
effect has been stagnation. By the sixties, German wages overtook
those of Britain, while economic growth and rationalization contin-
ued at an almost undiminished rate.
Social effects: The inferior position of immigrant workers with re-
gard to employment and social conditions has led to a division of
the working class into two strata. The split is maintained by various
forms of discrimination and is reinforced by racialist and xenophobic
ideologies, which the ruling class can disseminate widely through
its hegemony over the means of socialization and communication.
Large sections of the indigenous workers take the position of a la-
bour aristocracy, which objectively participates in the exploitation of
another group of workers.
Political effects: the decline of class consciousness weakens the
working-class movement. In addition, the denial of political rights
to immigrants excludes a large section of the working class from po-
effects of
immigration
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litical activity, and hence weakens the class as a whole. The most
exploited section of the working class is rendered voiceless and pow-
erless. Special forms of repression are designed to keep it that way.
Working-class movement and immigrant labour
Immigrant labour has an important function for contemporary West
European capitalism. This does not mean, however, that socialists
should oppose labour migration as such. To do so would be incorrect
for two reasons. Firstly, it would contradict the principle of proletar-
ian internationalism, which rejects the maintenance of privileges for
one section of the working class at the expense of another. Secondly,
opposition to immigration would cause immigrants in West Europe
to regard the working-class movement as its enemy, and would
therefore deepen the split in the working class which is exactly
what the capitalists are hoping for. The aim of a socialist policy on
immigration must be to overcome the split in the working class by
bringing immigrant workers into the labour movement and ght-
ing against the exploitation to which they are subjected. Only by de-
manding full economic, social and political equality for immigrants
can we prevent the employers from using them as a weapon against
working-class interests.
The policies of the trade unions with regard to immigration have
varied widely. The Swiss unions oppose immigration, and have since
the mid-fties campaigned for a reduction in the number of foreign
workers. At the same time, they claim to represent all workers, and
call upon foreigners to join not surprisingly, with little success.
The British unions opposed the recruitment of European Voluntary
Workers after the war, and insisted upon collective agreements lim-
iting their rights to promotion, laying down that they should be dis-
missed rst in case of redundancy and so on.
52
The policy towards
Commonwealth immigration has been totally different: the TUC has
opposed immigration control, and rejected any form of discrimina-
tion. This rejection has, however, been purely verbal, and virtually
nothing has been done to organize immigrants or to counter the
special forms of exploitation to which they are subject. The CGT in
France opposed immigration completely during the late forties and
the fties, condemning it as an instrument designed to attack French
workers conditions. More recently the CGT, as well as the two other
big labour federations, the CFDT and the FO, have come to regard
immigration as inevitable. All have special secretariats to deal with
immigrant workers problems and do everything possible to bring
opposition and
acceptance
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them into the unions. In Germany, the DGB has accepted immigra-
tion and has set up ofces to advise and help immigrants. The mem-
ber unions also have advisory services, and provide foreign language
bulletins and special training for immigrant shop-stewards. In gen-
eral, those unions which have recognized the special problems of im-
migration have not done so on the basis of a class analysis (here the
CGT is to some extent an exception). Rather they have seen the prob-
lems on a humanitarian level, they have failed to explain the strategy
of the employers to the workers, and the measures taken have been
of a welfare type, designed to integrate immigrants socially, rather
than to bring them into the class struggle.
Therefore, the unions have succeeded neither in countering ra-
cialism among indigenous workers, nor in bringing the immigrant
workers into the labour movement on a large scale. The participation
of immigrant workers in the unions is on the whole relatively low. This
is partly attributable to their rural background and lack of industrial
experience, but in addition immigrants often nd that the unions do
not adequately represent their interests. The unions are controlled by
indigenous workers, or by functionaries originating from this group.
In situations where immigrant and indigenous workers do not have
the same immediate interests (this happens not infrequently due to
the differing occupational positions of the two groups, for instance
in the question of wage-differentials), the unions tend to take the
side of the indigenous workers. Where immigrants have taken ac-
tion against special forms of discrimination, they have often found
themselves deserted by the unions.
53
In such circumstances it is not
surprising if immigrants do not join the unions, which they regard
as organizations for local labour only. This leads to a considerable
weakening of the unions. In Switzerland many unions fear for their
very existence, and see the only solution in the introduction of com-
pulsory solidarity contributions, to be deducted from wages by the
employers. In return the unions claim to be the most effective instru-
ment for disciplining the workers. When the employers gave way to
a militant strike of Spanish workers in Geneva in 1970, the unions
publicly attacked them for making concessions.
Where the unions do not adequately represent immigrant work-
ers, it is sometimes suggested that the immigrants should form their
own unions. In fact they have not done so anywhere in contemporary
West Europe. This shows a correct class position on their part: the
formation of immigrant unions would deepen and institutionalize
the split in the working class, and would therefore serve the interests
of the employers.
54
On the other hand, all immigrant groups do have
their own organizations, usually set up on the basis of nationality,
the formation of
immigrant unions
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and having social, cultural and political functions. These organiza-
tions do not compete with the trade unions, but rather encourage
their members to join them. The aim of the political groups have
so far been concerned mainly with their countries of origin. They
have recruited and trained cadres to combat the reactionary regimes
upon returning home. At present, as a result of greater length of stay
and increasing problems in West Europe, many immigrant political
groups are turning their attention to class struggle in the countries
where they work.
It is the task of the revolutionary movement in West Europe to
encourage this tendency, by making contact with immigrant groups,
assisting them in co-ordinating with immigrants of other nationali-
ties and with the working-class movement in general, giving help in
political education and cadre-training, and carrying out joint actions.
Such co-operation means surmounting many problems. Firstly, lan-
guage and culture may make communications difcult. Secondly,
the risk of repression to which immigrant militants are exposed may
make them reluctant to make contacts. Thirdly, the experience of dis-
crimination may cause immigrants to distrust all local people. This
leads in many cases to cultural nationalism, particularly marked for
historical reasons among black people. In order to overcome these
difculties, it is essential for indigenous political groups to study the
problems of immigrants and the special forms of discrimination and
exploitation to which they are exposed. Concrete attempts to combat
these must be made. Indigenous groups must offer co-operation and
assistance to immigrants in their struggle, rather than offering them-
selves as a leadership.
It is not only when revolutionary groups are actively trying to co-
operate with immigrant workers organizations that they come up
against the problems of immigration. The majority of immigrants
are not politically organized, whether through apathy or fear of re-
pression. Groups agitating in factories or carrying out rent cam-
paigns are likely to come up against large numbers of unorganized
immigrants in the course of their daily work. It is then essential to
take special steps to communicate with the immigrants and to bring
them into the general movement. Failure to do so may result in the
development of petty-bourgeois chauvinism within factory or hous-
ing groups, which would correspond precisely with the political aims
of the capitalists with regard to labour migration. In Germany, the
large numbers of revolutionary groups at present agitating in facto-
ries almost invariably nd it necessary to learn about the background
and problems of immigrant workers, to develop special contacts with
them, and to issue leaets in the appropriate languages. The same
revolutionary
movement
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applies to housing groups, which frequently nd that immigrants
form the most under-privileged group in the urban areas where they
are working.
Immigrant workers can become a class-conscious and militant
section of the labour movement. This has been demonstrated repeat-
edly; immigrant workers have played a leading part in strike move-
ments throughout West Europe. They are at present in the forefront
of the movement which is occupying empty houses in German cities.
Immigrant workers showed complete solidarity with the rest of the
working class in May 1968 in France, they were militant in strikes
and demonstrations and developed spontaneous forms of organiza-
tion in the struggle.
But such successes should not make us forget the capitalist strat-
egy behind labour migration. Powerful structural factors connected
with the function of immigrants as an industrial reserve army, and
with the tendency of part of the indigenous working class to take on
the characteristics of a labour aristocracy, lead to a division between
immigrant and indigenous workers. Solidarity between these two
sections does not come automatically. It requires a correct under-
standing of the problems within the revolutionary movement and
a strategy for countering ruling-class aims. It is necessary to assist
the immigrant workers in ghting exploitation and in defending
their special interests. At the same time revolutionary groups must
combat racialist and xenophobic ideologies within the working class.
These are the pre-conditions for developing class-consciousness and
bringing the immigrant workers into the class struggle.
Notes
1 Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, in Marx and
Engels, On Britain, Moscow 1962, p. 119.
2 Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Moscow 1961, p. 632.
3 Ibid., p. 633.
4 Ibid., p. 637.
5 Ibid., p. 640.
6 Engels, Preface to the English edition of The Condition of the Working
Class in England, op. cit., p. 28.
7 Engels, The English Elections, in On Britain, op. cit., p. 505.
8 Lenin, Imperialism the highest Stage of Capitalism, Moscow 1966, pp. 96-7.
9 Ibid., pp. 99-100.
10 In this article we examine the function of labour migration only for the
countries of immigration. Migration also plays an important stabilizing role
for the reactionary regimes of the countries of origin a role which is un-
derstood and to some extent planned by the ruling class in West Europe.
pre-conditions for
class-consciousness
and class struggle
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Although we are concerned only with West Eucope in this article, it is im-
portant to note that the use of certain special categories of workers, who
can be discriminated against without arousing general solidarity from other
workers, is a general feature of modern capitalism. The blacks and chicanos
are the industrial reserve army of the USA, the Africans of white-dominated
Southern Africa. Current attempts by liberal capitalists to relax the colour
bar to allow blacks into certain skilled and white-collar jobs, both in the USA
and South Africa, however estimable in humanitarian terms, are designed
mainly to weaken the unions and put pressure on wages in these sectors.
11 Marx mentions several forms taken by the industrial reserve army. One is
the latent surplus-population of agricultural labourers, whose wages and
conditions have been depressed to such an extent that they are merely wait-
ing for a favourable opportunity to move into industry and join the urban
proletariat. (Capital, Vol. I., op. cit., p. 642.) Although these workers are not
yet in industry, the possibility that they may at any time join the industrial
labour force increases the capitalists ability to resist wage increases. The
latent industrial reserve army has the same effect as the urban unemployed.
Unemployed workers in other countries, in so far as they may be brought
into the industrial labour force whenever required, clearly form a latent in-
dustrial reserve army in the same way as rural unemployed within the coun-
try.
12 See E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, Harmondsworrh
1968, pp. 469-85.
13 The Condition of the Working Class in England, op. cit., p. 123.
14 Letter to S. Meyer and A. Vogt, 9 April 1870, in On Britain, op. cit., p. 552.
15 Imperialism, op. cit., p. 98.
16 Hans Pfahlmann, Fremdarbeiter und Kriegsgefangene in der deutschen
Kriegswirtschaft, 1939-1945, Darmstadt 1968, p. 232.
17 For the role of the lumpenproletariat in the industrial reserve army, see
Capital, Vol. I, op. cit., p. 643.
18 We use immigrants in a broad sense to include all persons living in a West
European country which is not their country of birth. Much migration is of
a temporary nature, for a period of 3-10 years. But such temporary migration
has effects similar to permanent migration when the returning migrant is
replaced by a countrymen with similar characteristics. Such migrants may
be regarded as a permanent social group with rotating membership.
19 For sources, as well as a detailed analysis of social conditions of immigrants,
see Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack, Immigrant Workers and Class
Structure in Western Europe, London, Oxford University Press for Institute of
Race Relations, 1972 (forthcoming).
20 The 1966 Census gures are at present the most recent ones available. It
should, however, be noted that, for technical reasons, they seriously un-
der-enumerate the Commonwealth immigrants in Britain. Moreover, the
number has grown considerably since 1966, particularly if we look at the
whole community including children born to Commonwealth immigrants
in Britain, who were not counted by the census. We shall have to wait for
the results of the 1971 Census to obtain a more accurate picture of the im-
migrant population in Britain.
21 Many foreign workers are still employed on a seasonal basis in building,
agriculture and catering in France and Switzerland. This is a special form
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of exploitation. The worker has no income in the off-season and is therefore
forced to work very long hours for the 9-10 months when he does have work.
He cannot bring his family with him, he has even more limited civic rights
than other immigrants, and he has absolutely no security, for there is no
guarantee that his employment will be continued from year to year.
22 Ulrich Freiherr von Gienanth, in Der Arbeitgeber, Vol. 18, 20 March 1966, p.
153.
23 For Commonwealth immigration see E.J.B. Rose et al., Colour and Citizenship,
London 1969.
24 Eurocrats refer to the free movement policy as the beginning of a European
labour market. But although EEC citizens have the right to choose which
country to be exploited in, they lack any civic or political rights once there.
Moreover, the Southern Italian labour reserves are being absorbed by the
monopolies of Turin and Milan, so that intra-EEC migration is steadily de-
clining in volume, while migration from outside the EEC increases.
25 Where formalized economic planning exists, this necessity has been publicly
formulated. Prognoses on the contribution of immigrants to the labour force
were included in the Fourth and Fifth Five-Year Plans in France, and play
an even more prominent part in the current Sixth Plan. See Le VIe plan et les
travailleurs trangers, Paris 1971.
26 Cf. Ruth Becker, Gerhard Drr, K.H. Tjaden, Fremdarbeiterbeschftigung
im deutschen Kapitalismus, Das Argument, December 1971, p. 753.
27 United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, Economic Survey of
Europe 1967, Geneva 1968, Chapter I, p. 49.
28 The distinction between the two sections of the immigrant labour force
is formalized in the new French immigration policy introduced in 1968.
There are separate regulations for South Europeans, who are encouraged
to bring in their families and settle permanently, and Africans (particu-
larly Algerians) who are meant to come for a limited period only, without
dependents.
29 It is estimated that foreign workers in Germany are at present paying about
17 per cent of all contributions to pension insurance, but that foreign-
ers are receiving only 0.5 per cent of the total benets. Heinz Salowsky,
Sozialpolitische Aspekte der Auslanderbeschaftigung, Berichte des Deutschen
Industrie instituts zur Sozialpolitik, Vol. 6 (8), No.2, February 1972, pp. 16-22.
30 Calculated from: Statistiques du Ministre de lIntrieur, Hommes et
Migrations: Documents, No. 788, 15 May 1970; and Annuaire Statistique de la
France 1968.
31 1966 Census.
32 Statistisches Jahrbuch der Schweiz 1967, pp. 140-1.
33 Auslndische Arbeitnehmer 1970, Nrnberg 1971.
34 1966 Census. For a detailed analysis of immigrants employment see: K.
Jones and A.D. Smith, The Economic Impact of Commonwealth Immigration,
Cambridge 1970.
Also Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe, op. cit., Ch.
III.
35 Auslndische Arbeitnehmer 1969, Nrnberg 1970, p. 86.
36 Linsertion sociale des trangers dans laire mtropolitaine Lyon-Saint-
tienne, Hommes et Migrations, No. 113, 1969, p. 112.
37 1966 Census.
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38 Some employers particularly small inefcient ones specialize in the ex-
ploitation of immigrants. For instance they employ illegal immigrants, who
can be forced to work for very low wages and cannot complain to the authori-
ties for fear of deportation. Such cases often cause much indignation in the
liberal and social-democratic press. But, in fact, it is the big efcient rms
exploiting immigrants in a legal and relatively humane way which make the
biggest prots out of them. The function of immigration in West European
capitalism is created not by the malpractices of backward rms (many of
whom incidentally could not survive without immigrant labour), but by the
most advanced sectors of big industry which plan and utilize the position of
immigrant workers to their own advantage.
39 So far as we are concerned, hostel and works represent parts of a single
whole. The hostels belong to the mines, so the foreign workers are in our
charge from start to nish, stated a representative of the German min-
ing employers proudly. Magnet Bundesrepublik, Informationstagung der
Bundesvereinigung Deutscher Arbeitgeberverbande, Bonn 1966, p. 81.
40 A group of French doctors found that the TB rate for black Africans in the
Paris suburb of Montreuil was 156 times greater than that of the rest of
the local population. R.D. Nicoladze, C. Rendu, G. Millet, Coupable dtre
malades, Droit et Libert, No. 280, March 1969, p. 8. For further examples
see Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe, op. cit., Ch.
VIII.
41 For a description of how a strike of Spanish workers in a steel-works was
broken by the threat of deportation, see P. Gavi, Les Ouvriers, Paris 1970, pp.
225-6.
42 W. W. Daniels, Racial Discrimination in England, based on the PEP Report,
Harmondsworth 1968.
43 See Review of the International Commission of Jurists, No. 3, September 1969,
and Migration Today, No. 13, Autumn 1969.
44 Cf. Der Spiegel, No. 7, 7 February 1972.
45 See Mark Abrams study on prejudice in Colour and Citizenship, pp. 551-604.
The results of the study are very interesting, but require careful interpre-
tation. The interpretation given by Abrams is extremely misleading. The
results of the prejudice study, which was said to indicate a very low level
of prejudice in Britain, attracted more public attention than all the other
excellent contributions in this book. For a reanalysis of Abrams material see
Christopher Bagley, Social Structure and Prejudice in ve English Boroughs,
London 1970.
46 We have attempted such a comparison in Immigrant Workers and Class
Structure in Western Europe, op. cit., Chapter IX. Historical comparisons also
tend to throw doubt on the importance of race as a cause of prejudice: white
immigrants like the Irish were in the past received just as hostilely as the
black immigrants today.
47 Oliver Cromwell Cox, Caste, Class and Race, New York 1970, p. 317 ff. This
superb work of Marxist scholarship is recommended to anyone interested in
racialism.
48 Surveys carried out in Germany in 1966 show a growth of hostility towards
immigrants. This was directly related to the impending recession and local
labours fear of unemployment.
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49 Historically, the best example of this strategy was the use of successive waves
of immigrants to break the nascent labour movement in the USA and to
follow extremely rapid capital accumulation. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
gives an excellent account of this. Similar was the use of internal migrants
(the Okies) in California in the thirties see John Steinbeck, The Grapes of
Wrath.
50 Although the Federal Council, the Parliament, the employers, the unions
and all the major parties called for rejection of the Schwarzenbach Initiative,
it was defeated only by a small majority: 46 per cent of voters supported the
Initiative and 54 per cent voted against it.
51 Many bourgeois economists and some soi-disant Marxists think that im-
migration hinders growth because cheap labour reduces the incentive for
rationalization. Bourgeois economists may be excused for not knowing (or
not admitting) that cheap labour must be the source for the capital which
makes rationalization possible. Marxists ought to know it. A good study on
the economic impact of immigration is: C.P. Kindleberger, Europes Postwar
Growth the Role of Labour Supply, Cambridge (Mass.) 1967.
52 See Bob Hepple, Race, Jobs and the Law in Britain, London 1968, p. 50 and
Appendix II.
53 For details of such cases see Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western
Europe, op. cit., Chapter IV.
54 We do not wish to imply that it is always incorrect for minority groups to
form new unions, if the existing ones are corrupt and racialist. It was obvi-
ously necessary for militant blacks in the USA to do this, as the existing
union structure was actively assisting in their oppression. But organizations
like the Detroit Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM), though consist-
ing initially of blacks only, were not separatist. They had the perspective of
organizing class-conscious workers of all ethnic groups. Such organizations
appear to be neither necessary nor possible in the present stage of struggle
in West Europe.
For references please consult the bibliography of the book in which
this article was originally published. (see List of sources, page 609)
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43
Introduction to European immigration
policy: a comparative study
Tomas Hammar
This article is the introduction to the book European Immigration Policy: A
Comparative Study, edited by political scientist Tomas Hammar. At the time
of its publication in 1985, the construction of a European immigration policy
was not yet a hot policy issue. Moreover, the systematic comparative study
of immigration policies across the Continent was underdeveloped. In fact,
Hammars book was one of the rst and most convincing collective at-
tempts to compare immigration patterns and policies in different European
countries. This is one valuable reason to include the introductory chapter of
the book in this volume even though it does not deal with all the member
states of the European Community at the time. Another reason is the utility
of Hammars analytical distinction between two related parts of immigration
policy immigration regulation and aliens control versus immigrant policy
which has become a classic distinction. After more than twenty years, it
remains an excellent point of entry into the study of immigration and integra-
tion policies in Europe.
The six immigration countries studied in this book have experienced
a period of large-scale immigration caused mainly by similar factors.
None of these countries had planned or even foreseen an internation-
al migration of the size that actually occurred. Their reaction to this
migration has been strikingly similar and at the same time decisively
different, but in the long run immigration control has become more
strict everywhere and active labor recruitment has been stopped; at
the same time, there have been a number of improvements in the
social and cultural situation of immigrants.
similar experiences
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tomas hammar
Selecting six countries
The project countries have been chosen partly because of their size
and their large immigrant populations and partly because they of-
fer a high degree of variation in the regulation of immigration and
in immigrant policy. Germany, France and Britain were included
from the outset because of their sizeable immigrant populations, and
Switzerland because of its high proportion of foreigners. In addition
these four countries provide examples of very different sorts of inter-
national migration as well as different immigration policies. Sweden
could not be left out, partly because the initiative and nancing of
this study was Swedish, but more important it deserves a place as the
Scandinavian country which has both admitted the most immigrants
and developed rst a specic immigration policy. The Netherlands
was included as the sixth country because of its mixture of post-co-
lonial and Mediterranean labor immigration, and also because of its
traditional emphasis on cultural pluralism and its inuence on cur-
rent ethnic minorities policy.
The selection of countries was also made with the idea that the
two major ways of regulating immigration should be represented:
the guestworker or rotation system (Germany and Switzerland),
and the policy of permanent immigration (Britain and Sweden). The
post-colonial immigration that prevails in Britain and has played a
major role in France and in the Netherlands is included as well as
immigration to countries with no such colonial ties, represented by
Sweden, Germany, and Switzerland. We further hoped that our selec-
tion would give examples of various types of immigrant policy, based
on different welfare ideologies and on the different social and political
organizations of the societies represented.
Other immigration countries, of course, could have been included
as well, had the project resources not required that the number of
selected countries be limited. Norway and Denmark have both admit-
ted immigrants from, among other countries, Turkey and Pakistan,
and they offer interesting cases for policy comparison. Yet immigra-
tion to these two countries has been relatively small, and if only one
Scandinavian country can be included, Sweden is the logical choice.
Belgium had a large immigrant population of some 900,000 in
1980. The number of foreign citizens residing in Austria at the same
time was estimated to be about 250,000. Although both countries
have adopted policies directed towards the temporary employment of
foreign workers, they have found that their immigrants tend to stay
permanently. They would offer excellent additional studies, but their
exclusion does not signicantly reduce the breadth of our study.
representative
countries
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47
Since we study changes over several decades in immigration and
immigrant policy, we may claim that we cover more than six cases.
We are able to present data for each country emanating from differ-
ent time periods. The comparison of six national cases will improve
our knowledge about the preconditions of immigration policy, about
the interrelations between regulation of immigration and immigrant
policy, and in general about the dynamics of international migration
and national policymaking.
Migratory paths
Postwar migration to and within Europe has been characterized as
a movement from south to north, although such postwar migration
would be better characterized as a movement from the periphery to
the center. Migration from Italy reached considerable proportions in
the 1950s and was joined during the 1960s by an even larger migra-
tion from Spain and Portugal in the southwest and from Yugoslavia,
Greece, and later Turkey in the southeast. African migration has
gone mainly to France, while the bulk of transoceanic migration
from the West Indies, Pakistan, and India has gone to Britain. The
Netherlands has had immigration from Indonesia and Latin America
as well as from Morocco and Turkey.
On the map (Figure 1.1) two additional arrows from Ireland to
Britain and from Finland to Sweden reinforce the impression of a
movement from periphery to center. Nevertheless, although both ar-
rows show a movement across national boundaries, one is reluctant
to say that they represent international migration in the same sense
as do the other arrows. Irish immigrants have always been allowed to
enter Britain and seek employment without restriction. Until at least
1948 they were regarded as full British citizens. Finnish immigrants
have a similarly privileged position because of the common Nordic
labor market and their countrys traditional ties to Sweden. In con-
trast to the Irish, however, a large number of Finnish immigrants
have considerable language difculties after arrival, and in this re-
spect they resemble the immigrant groups in Sweden that have more
distant origins.
Eastern Europe is blank on the map, not because it has no migra-
tion or exchanges of labor, but because we lack information about
it. The sizeable immigration to West Germany from East Germany
and from Poland is discussed in the chapter on Germany, but it
would also be interesting to have had examples of migration within
Eastern Europe. We probably would have found surprising similari-
movement from
periphery to center
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tomas hammar
ties and enormous differences from the immigration phenomenon
in Western Europe. For example, the German Democratic Republic
has signed an agreement with Algeria that provides for the trans-
fer of workers with relatively stringent provisions which might be
compared with similar agreements in the West. In the countries of
Eastern Europe, however, state planning and control of the economy,
including labor mobility, predominates, which means that the back-
ground for immigration and immigration policy is completely differ-
ent there. Thus, we leave this part of the map blank, mainly because
a thorough study of migration in Eastern Europe requires a separate
research project.
Figure 1.1. Postwar migration to Europe
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More than three fourths of the foreign citizens in the immigration
countries live in France, Germany, and Britain. Each of these coun-
tries has approximately four million resident immigrants, although
the statistics are difcult to compare and in some cases are rather
unreliable. Except for Liechtenstein and Luxemburg, Switzerland
has the highest percentage of foreign citizens in its population (14.5
percent in 1982). If one compares statistics on the percentage of for-
eign workers in the project countries, they are about the same as the
percentage of foreign residents (see Table 1.1).
These gures do not reveal that immigrants in Western Europe
represent a great number of different nationalities, nor do they
show how immigrants with the same nationality often settle in the
same country and even the same region. Spanish and Portuguese
immigrants have gone mainly to France, and to a lesser extent to
Switzerland. Yugoslavs and Turks have gone mainly to Germany.
Italians are an older immigrant group and have settled primar-
ily in Switzerland and to a lesser extent in Germany and France.
Immigrants from North Africa have gone to France and later to the
Netherlands as well, although the bulk of immigration to the latter
country has come from its former colonies in Asia and Latin America.
Table 1.1. Foreign citizens residing in the European project countries in
1983 (thousands)
All residents Labor force
Foreign
citizens
Percent
of total
Foreign
citizens
Percent
of total
Sweden 405.5 4.9 2227.7 5.2
Netherlands* 543.6 3.7 208.4 3.7
France* 4,459.0 7.2 1,436.4 6.3
Great Britain 1,705.0 3.1 931.0 3.8
West Germany 4,666.9 7.6 2,037.6 9.2
Switserland 925.8 14.5 647.9 21.9
Source: OECD, Continuous Reporting System on Migration, SOPEMI 1983, for all coun-
tries except Great Britain.
Notes:
* Data from 1982, and for labor force in France 1981. Based on number of residence
and work permits, and therefore an overestimate of the size of the foreign population.
Data from 1981, Labour Force Survey.
Yearly average. Seasonal workers (13,400) and frontier workers (108,400) are in-
cluded.
distribution of
nationalities
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tomas hammar
The same is true for Britain, where almost all postwar immigration
has come from former colonies in the West Indies and from India
and Pakistan. The majority of immigration to Sweden has come
from Finland and from the other Nordic countries, although there
has also been a signicant inow of immigrants from Yugoslavia,
Greece, and Turkey.
There are a number of possible explanations for the distribution
of nationalities among the receiving countries. In many cases bilater-
al agreements and recruitment practices based on such agreements
have led to concentrations of certain nationalities, for example,
Turks and Yugoslavs in Germany or Moroccans in the Netherlands.
Geographical proximity between sending and receiving countries
has often had a similar effect, particularly when accompanied by a
history of close relations. Geographical distance has sometimes re-
duced the potential for certain kinds of immigration. Since Britain
and Sweden are located somewhat on the periphery of continental
European migration, they have not received as many immigrants
from Southern Europe and Turkey. Ex-colonies and countries with
whom they have historically had close contact have provided much of
the immigration to France, the Netherlands, and especially Britain.
Finally, the distribution of immigrants by nationality can also be ex-
plained by chain migration, which occurs when an initial group of
immigrants settles in a country and then, by encouraging others in
their home country or by providing a model for them, attract others
of the same nationality to a particular receiving country.
The sources of migration to Europe have progressively moved to
areas farther and farther away. While immigration from Southern
Europe, initially quite extensive, has decreased in recent years, immi-
gration from Africa, Asia, and especially the Near East has increased.
The change in the sources of immigration has meant that many of
the new minority groups are more highly visible, as they differ more
in culture and tradition from indigenous European population than
did the so-called traditional immigrant groups of the past. There
are indications that this newer long-distance immigration will con-
tinue and increase in the future.
An important change in immigration policy occurred during the
period from 1970 to 1974. For economic and other reasons the im-
migration countries of Western Europe heavily restricted or usually
stopped recruiting foreign labor, and since then only refugees and
the relatives of resident aliens are admitted. Policymakers have now
come to realize, to their surprise, that many foreign workers are like-
ly to remain as permanent residents.
bilateral agreements
restricted policies
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This change in immigration policy, which we will call the turn-
ing point, was the rst clear break with the relatively open and un-
restricted policies of the previous two decades. The change was de-
clared in Switzerland (1970), Sweden (1972), Germany (1973), and
France (1974). Though it was made with the consent of each national
government, it was made without open political debate and without
any formal, ofcial decisions. It is important to note that this turning
point should be thought of as a policy change towards stricter regula-
tion but not necessarily as a stop for labor migration.
In Britain and the Netherlands, where most immigrants came
from colonies or former colonies and usually held the citizenship of
the mother country, the turning point in immigration policy did not
occur at a specic time but came gradually. In Britain this process
has involved the gradual elimination of the immigration rights of
colonial citizens. Though this process began there in 1962 and has
not yet ended, one can nevertheless say that the passage of the 1971
Immigration Act was perhaps the most signicant legislation in this
area. In the Netherlands there was a major revaluation of immigra-
tion policy at the end of the 1970s. The number of new work permits
issued fell sharply in 1973, but labor immigration was never formally
stopped. Not until 1980 did the government impose serious re-
strictions on post-colonial immigration and begin to develop a new
immigrant policy.
Immigration to the six European project countries has changed
during the past decade in other ways as well. While the number of
single, male immigrants has decreased, mainly because of the policy
change that occurred at the turning point, the immigration of refu-
gees and the dependants of resident aliens has increased. In other
words, the total amount of immigration to the project countries has
not decreased substantially as a result of the stop in labor recruit-
ment, but has remained constant or in some cases has actually in-
creased. Thus, there is a relationship between the imposition of the
stop and the change in the composition of immigrant population.
This relationship is discussed in more detail in the comparative anal-
ysis presented in Part II.
Immigration policy
There are many denitions of immigration policy. They vary even
within a single country. Yet when we compare a number of coun-
tries, we need a working denition that is relevant to all these coun-
tries. Thus, under our scheme, immigration policy will consist of
two parts which are interrelated, yet distinct: (a) regulation of ows of
immigration and control of aliens, and (b) immigrant policy.
the turning point
a working denition
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tomas hammar
Immigration regulation and aliens control
Regulation of immigration is the oldest, the most obvious, and ac-
cording to some people the only aspect of immigration policy.
Immigration regulation refers to the rules and procedures gov-
erning the selection and admission of foreign citizens.
It also includes such regulations which control foreign citizens
(aliens) once they visit or take residence in the receiving country,
including control of their employment. Deportation also falls under
these regulations. Employers may be allowed to recruit foreign labor
on their own, or labor transfer agreements may be entered into by
the state and ofcial information and recruitment bureaux be opened
abroad. All this, of course, is a part of immigration regulation and
must be included along with measures taken to restrict immigration
or to stop it completely. The free movements of peoples, such as oc-
cur in the common labor markets of the EEC and Nordic areas, are
also an aspect of immigration regulation; even though in these two
cases policymakers have decided that certain kinds of immigration
should not be regulated.
In general, all sovereign states reserve the right to determine
whether foreign citizens will be permitted to enter their territory and
reside there, and in all the project countries this power of the state is
found in law or in administrative regulations. Most changes in im-
migration policy, for example the changes at what we call the turn-
ing point, have been made by changing the application of existing
aliens laws and not by changing the laws. Such laws were applied in
a liberal way as long as immigration was encouraged, but later, when
the goal was to limit the volume of immigration, discourage potential
immigrants, and reduce the total number of foreigners in the coun-
try, the application of the same aliens laws became more strict. At
the same time, however, immigration regulation was abandoned for
certain groups of foreigners who were admitted without restrictions.
Examples of this are, as already mentioned, the free circulation of
labor in the EEC and the Nordic area and the acceptance on a perma-
nent basis of political refugees.
Immigration regulation implies that foreign citizens remain un-
der some kind of aliens control until they become naturalized citi-
zens. The conditions that foreign citizens are subject to during this
period of controlled residence vary greatly from country to country.
Some countries at an early stage guarantee their foreign residents
the right to remain permanently. Other countries keep them in a
position of legal insecurity and uncertainty for many years. Some
countries admit foreign workers for seasonal employment and re-
quire them to leave when the season ends, although they are often
regulation
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permitted to return again the following season. Some countries or-
ganize so-called rotation systems under which foreign workers are
allowed to stay in the country only a maximum number of months or
years, after which (in theory at least) they must depart to make room
for new workers. In this way these countries hope to avoid the es-
tablishment of any new, permanent population groups whose needs
and demands would be considerably greater than those of temporary
guestworkers.
Even in countries that do not apply seasonal employment or rota-
tion systems, however, it often takes many years before foreign citi-
zens are guaranteed that they will not be forced to leave the coun-
try against their will. By delaying permanent status, immigration
countries retain the legal right to repatriate foreign workers when
desired, even those with many years of residence. The conditions at-
tached to permanent status can thus function as a means of control-
ling the size or composition of immigration and must therefore also
be included as a part of immigration regulation.
Compulsory repatriation of large groups of immigrants is rare.
Nevertheless, it has long been a possibility which hangs over the
heads of many of the foreign workers employed in Western Europe.
Though seldom utilized, it nonetheless inuences their living condi-
tions and their attitudes towards residence in the host country.
Thus, the very existence of the possibility of compulsory repatria-
tion is a factor in a countrys immigrant policy. Immigration regula-
tion may be said to foster a considerable degree of legal insecurity
because decisions concerning permanent status are made by admin-
istrative authorities who have much discretion in interpreting such
regulations. Such legal insecurity is made worse when foreign citi-
zens have no right to appeal against the decisions of administrative
authorities.
Immigrant policy
Immigrant policy is the other part of immigration policy and refers
to the conditions provided to resident immigrants. It comprises all
issues that inuence the condition of immigrants; for example, work
and housing conditions, social benets and social services, educa-
tional opportunities and language instruction, cultural amenities,
leisure activities, voluntary associations, and opportunities to par-
ticipate in trade union and political affairs. Immigrant policy may be
either direct or indirect.
Immigrants have a number of special needs to begin with be-
legal insecurity
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tomas hammar
cause they are different from the host population. They often speak a
foreign language and represent a different culture. Immigrants also
have special economic interests and ambitions for the future. All of
this may sometimes prompt a country of immigration to devise spe-
cial measures to improve the situation of its immigrants. Since these
measures do not usually apply to the non-immigrant population, we
will call them direct immigrant policy.
Like the non-immigrant population, immigrants are also affected
by a countrys general public policy, which involves economic, social,
political, and other measures. These measures are not designed with
only immigrants in mind; instead, they are intended to apply to all
inhabitants of a country whether citizens or not. Yet they may not
be applied to all inhabitants in the same way, i.e. there may be dis-
crimination, both positive and negative, in the allocation of resources
and opportunities. When general public policy affects immigrants
substantially, we will talk about indirect immigrant policy.
Indirect immigrant policy can be termed inequitable or dis-
criminatory when immigrants receive signicantly less than others,
and when they are denied opportunities to participate in society. Even
when the distribution of benets is perfectly equal, however, immi-
grants can still remain in an inferior position, primarily because they
have recently made a new start in the host country and experience
less favorable circumstances than the rest of the population. This
situation can be ameliorated if immigrants are given greater benets
than other people, e.g. special language instruction, special cultural
support, and so on. These measures are the tools of direct immigrant
policy.
To summarize in outline form, immigration policy comprises:
1. Immigration regulation and aliens control
(a) strict or liberal control of the admission and residence of
foreign citizens
(b) guarantees of permanent status; legal security versus vulner-
ability to arbitrary expulsion
2 Immigrant policy
(a) indirect: immigrants inclusion in the general allocation of
benets; equal versus discriminatory distribution
(b) direct: special measures on behalf of immigrants; afrmative
action and the removal of legal discrimination
Although we will in our analysis distinguish between these two parts
of immigration policy, they are of course in practice at work simul-
taneously. What is very often not understood is the profound effect
direct immigrant
policy
indirect immigrant
policy
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that they can have on one another. A system of rotation might, for
example, leave most immigrants in a very weak legal position as
residents. This may in turn impede integration and the full enjoy-
ment of social and civil rights both areas of concern to immigrant
policy. Another example of the mutual inuence between immigra-
tion regulation and immigrant policy would be when a country uses
instruments of immigrant policy (e.g. housing applications, school
registers, and so on) to identify and expel illegal immigrants, thus
accomplishing a task of immigration regulation.
General preconditions
Immigration policy should be analyzed in the context of a countrys
history, economy, geography, population, international relations,
etc., for these are factors that affect immigration to a country, both
quantitatively and qualitatively. Valid comparisons between the proj-
ect countries are possible only when the general preconditions for
the countries immigration policies are analyzed.
Policymakers in each country may have tried to shape immigra-
tion policy on the basis of their own experience and their particular
national needs, but the policies of all the project countries neverthe-
less have numerous features in common. Periods of passport exemp-
tion, rigid immigration control, and active recruitment of foreign
workers have come at the same or almost the same time in every
country. Thus, it seems that the shaping of immigration policy is
determined in part by conditions beyond the control of policy makers
in the individual countries. For example, two world wars have dis-
rupted long-standing patterns of habitation and have forced people
to ee their home countries. Economic disruptions, resulting either
from the wars or from other causes, have been possibly even more
unsettling than the wars themselves. The Great Depression in the
1930s affected the entire industrialized world and resulted in the
widespread traumatic belief that future economic crises had to be
avoided at all costs. During the following decades, Keynesian eco-
nomic theory gradually provided new policy options, starting with
active budget policies, which were applied to counter depressions.
Of course, all countries have not been affected by war and eco-
nomic crisis to the same degree, and partly because of this, there
are signicant differences in the immigration policies of the proj-
ect countries. One might say that although they came from different
parts, they are all sailing on the same heaving ocean, all exposed to
the same uctuations in weather, winds, and currents. Yet because
local conditions
matter
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tomas hammar
they each set a different course and sail in a different kind of vessel,
no two voyages are ever exactly alike. Similarly, no two countries im-
migration policies are ever exactly alike, even though all countries are
affected by and must contend with the same external conditions.
General preconditions, as the term will be used here, are back-
ground conditions which, on the whole, remain stable for a consid-
erable period of time and are not easily inuenced or altered in the
short term. For the general as well as attentive public, and also for
policymakers, these conditions act as constraints on the possibilities
for state action; in other words, they form a factual, concrete frame-
work for immigration policy over a relatively long period of time.
Terminology
Two of the key concepts in this comparative study are immigrant
and immigration. The term immigrant is sometimes used in the
very broad sense of its root-word migrant, a person who moves
from one country to another. In common usage, however, the term
immigrant has acquired the narrower meaning of a person who
migrates to a country with the intention of taking up permanent resi-
dence, something akin to the term settler. The denition of im-
migrant that will be used in this book lies somewhere in between the
broad sense of migrant and the narrow sense of settler:
Immigrant is a person who migrates to a country and then actually
resides there longer than a short period of time, i.e. for more than
three months.
Immigration refers to the physical entrance of immigrants as here
dened, either singly or as a group, into a country.
This denition thus excludes people that pay only a short visit to a
country; for example, those who come on vacation or to visit rela-
tives, or those who come on business trips or to do some specic
job (a mechanic to install machinery for instance, or artists to give a
performance), as long as their stay is for less than three months. On
the other hand, immigrant does not only refer to those who plan
from the beginning to stay permanently in a country. Thus, students,
scholars, artists, and others who spend longer than three months as
guests in a country are considered immigrants although they do
not plan to stay permanently.
The decisive criterion is the actual length of time that a person
conditional
constraints
denition of
immigrant and
immigration
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resides in the country of immigration. People that intend to remain
permanently, i.e. settler immigrants, are not included in the deni-
tion if they return home after only a couple of months; on the other
hand, people that intend to remain only a couple of months but later
change their mind and stay for several years are included. Obviously,
the length of residence necessary for a person to be included in our
denition of immigrant cannot be determined in any but an arbi-
trary fashion. Each project country allows most foreign citizens to
take up residence for a limited period of time, usually three to six
months, without requiring visas or residence permits, and for this
reason we have set the residence criterion in our denition at three
months.
Foreign citizens that remain in a country for longer than three
months must usually obtain a residence permit; therefore, any for-
eign citizen who has such a permit is likely to become an immigrant,
and is therefore considered such under our denition. But the de-
nition also includes people who do not have residence permits, in
particular illegal or undocumented aliens. In general, it is difcult
to say with certainty that people are or are not immigrants when they
arrive, although those who have applied for residence permits in ad-
vance are of course more likely to stay longer than those who have
not. Under our denition, the criterion determining whether or not
a foreign citizen should be considered an immigrant is if he or she
stays in the country for longer than three months.
The terms immigrant and immigration are applied in a dif-
ferent manner in each project country, and their meanings have
changed over time. The denition used here will for this reason
cause more difculties in some project countries than in others.
As the following chapters will show, there is an obvious relation
between a countrys immigration policy and its terminology. In
Germany and Switzerland immigrants are foreign workers (aus-
lndische Arbeitnehmer in Germany and Fremdarbeiter in Switzerland)
and they are controlled by aliens bureaux (Auslnderbehrde, or in
Switzerland Fremdenpolizei). France has always used the terms les
immigrs and limmigration, and Sweden used similar terms (invan-
drare and invandring) in the 1960s when its new immigrant policy
was launched. In Britain the term immigrant has been applied par-
ticularly to colored people, while in the Netherlands the new policy
envisioned for immigrants is called a minorities policy.
The technical language used in each country is adjusted so that
it best describes and explains the countrys policy. Terminology also
inuences the way in which immigration policy is conceived and un-
derstood in each country; terms that should be instruments of de-
terminologys
inuence
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tomas hammar
scription gradually become xed concepts that limit exibility and
creativity. For this reason it is important that our comparative discus-
sions use terms that are well dened. The above denitions of im-
migrant and immigration will be used in a strict sense in the com-
parative chapters and will also serve as the general frame of reference
in the country chapters, although each author has naturally chosen to
use the terminology of his particular country by way of illustration.
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The crucial meso-level
Thomas Faist
1
This article was originally published in 1997 in a volume entitled International
Migration, Immobility and Development: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, edited
by political scientists Thomas Faist and Tomas Hammar and sociologists
Grete Brochman and Kristof Tamas. Historically, most theories of migration
have focused either on global and structural factors explaining the different
patterns of population movement (macro theories) or on individual determi-
nants of migration (micro theories). The meso level that exists between indi-
viduals and larger structures has been, for a long time, relatively neglected.
Faist argues very convincingly in favour of meso level theories. It is crucial to
understand the impact on migration of social relations or social ties across
individuals in kinship groups, households, local settings, formal organisa-
tions and friendship circles. It is also vital to examine the relationships be-
tween migrants and those who stayed behind since they may explain the
reproduction of migration patterns. With his characteristic theoretical rigor,
Faist offers here one of the rst systematic arguments in defence of meso
theories of migration while, at the same time, recognising the importance of
micro and macro theories. By doing so, he has promoted a comprehensive,
multilevel approach to migration that has since been further developed in
the literature.
Lacunae in sociological theories of international migration
Sociological approaches have presented an impressive array of plau-
sible arguments as to why people move from one place to another,
especially across the borders of nation-states. However, these theo-
ries have not directly addressed the question of why so few people
migrate from so few communities and why so many return. Firstly,
the total migrant population in the world is estimated to about 2 per
cent of the worlds population. Secondly, return migration consti-
tutes an important fact. The social ties between movers and stayers
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thomas faist
are not automatically ruptured. For example, between 1960 and 1993
out of an estimated total of 12 million labour migrants and depen-
dants from the Mediterranean countries of Southern Europe and
North Africa, 9.3 million returned to their countries of origin from
Germany (own calculations, based upon Statistisches Bundesamt
1955-95). Nevertheless, the immigrant population in Germany in-
creased as a result of family reunication during the later 1970s and
1980s after the ending of guestworker recruitment.
In short, any theoretical attempt should therefore not focus on
movers only, but on both movers and stayers, and also on how stayers
who once make a move shuttle back and forth, or become stayers
again, be it in the countries of origin or destination.
Most theoretical efforts have mostly focused either on global
structural factors inducing migration and refugee movements (mac-
ro-theories) or on factors motivating individuals to move (micro-
theories). This review and partial reconstruction of theories about
international South to North migration emphasises the meso-level
between what are usually called the micro- and the macro-levels, the
level of analysis between individuals and larger structures such as
the nation-state. It does so in focusing on social relations (social ties)
between individuals in kinship groups (e.g. families), households,
neighbourhoods, friendship circles and formal organisations.
Two strands of literature have paid attention to the meso-level.
Firstly, in recent years the processes of immigrant incorporation
have been studied in economic sociology (Portes 1995). However,
so far little has been said about the costs and benets involved in
transferring human capital abroad or about the mediating role of
resources inherent in social relations (social capital) in the decision-
making process. Secondly, there is a huge and impressive empirical
literature on migrant networks (Massey et al. 1993). There are also
plausible arguments as to why these migrant networks embedded in
migration systems (Kritz and Zlotnik 1992) are crucial elements in
explaining international migration. Yet this literature is more suc-
cessful in explaining the direction (e.g. from former colonies to the
European and North American core) than the volume of international
movement. In particular, it is not clear what exactly happens in net-
works and collectives that induces people to stay, move and return.
The specic characteristics of social capital are important in ex-
plaining the low volume of international movement, chain migra-
tion and often high rates of return migration. It is very difcult to
transfer social capital abroad; even harder than the transfer of hu-
man capital. However, once pioneer migrants have moved abroad,
relatives, friends and acquaintances can draw upon social capital and
movers and stayers
meso-level
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processes of chain migration develop. Nevertheless, social ties of
movers and stayers do not simply vanish in the course of interna-
tional migration. This is why many movers return to the countries of
origin.
The following discussion evaluates micro-level rational choice
theory and macro-level migration systems theories. Secondly, it in-
troduces three levels of analysis the structural (political-econom-
ic-cultural factors in the sending and receiving countries and at the
international level), the relational (social ties of movers and stayers)
and the individual (degrees of freedom of potential movers). Thirdly,
the decision-making processes and the dynamics of migration are
partially reconstructed. Two crucial categories are used as a point of
departure: social ties and social capital in social networks and collec-
tives.
Dominant theories of international migration
This section appraises micro- and macro-level theories about the vol-
ume and dynamics of South to North movement. The idea is not
to evaluate these theories as such but what they say about decision
making and the dynamics of international migration. Theoretical
and empirical work started with Sir Ernest George Ravenstein (1885
and 1889). He perceptively analysed relations between distance and
propensity to move, developing seven laws of migration.
The laws are: (1) The majority migrate only short distances and
thus establish currents of migration towards larger centres. (2) This
causes displacement and development processes in connection with
populations in sending and destination regions. (3) The processes of
dispersion and absorption correspond to each other. (4) Migration
chains develop over time. (5) Migration chains lead to exit move-
ments towards centres of commerce and industry. (6) Urban resi-
dents are less prone to migrate than rural people. (7) This is also true
for the female population.
These observations are a useful starting point as empirical rules
of thumb that may apply to certain regions of the world at specif-
ic time periods. Ravenstein himself found abundant evidence for
these laws in mid-nineteenth-century internal English migration.
However, his generalisations and later those of Everett Lee ( 1964)
must be placed into more general sociological frameworks if we
want to know whether and why their rules of thumb are true or not.
Rational choice and systems theories may provide such frameworks.
micro- and
macro-level theories
rational choice and
systems theories
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thomas faist
The rational choice approach: between preferences and
opportunities
The basic instrumental statement is: In choosing between at least
two alternative courses of action, a person is apt to choose the one for
which the perceived value of the result is the greater. It is assumed
that the actor is able to make rational decisions on the basis of a set
of tastes or preference orderings.
Some sociological rational choice theories take as the basic com-
ponent not only the values (goals, preferences) but also the expectan-
cies (subjective probabilities) a potential mover holds (DeJong and
Fawcett 1981; see also chapter 3).
The basic value-expectancy model is straightforward:
MM = S(i) P(i) E(i)
where MM is the strength of the motivation to migrate, P is the
preferred outcome, E is the expectancy that migration will lead to
the desired outcome, and i refers to the specic preferences (values)
potential movers hold.
The preferences may be most diverse. They may be related to im-
proving and securing: wealth (e.g. income), status (e.g. prestigious
job), comfort (e.g. better working and living conditions), stimulation
(e.g. experience, adventure and pleasure), autonomy (e.g. high de-
gree of personal freedom), afliation (e.g. joining friends or family),
exit from oppression of all kinds (e.g. refugees), meaningful life (e.g.
improving society), better life for ones children, and morality (e.g.
leading a virtuous life for religious reasons). In this view the poten-
tial migrant might not only be a worker, a member of a household
or a kinship group, but also a voter, a member of ethnic, linguistic,
religious and political groups, a member of a persecuted minority, or
also, among many other things, a devotee of arts or sports.
In addition to values (preferences) and expectancies Hartmut
Esser explicitly adds a third important element, opportunities
and constraints. Therefore, his approach can be called structural
individualism.
We could restate the above equation to read:
MM = S(i) V(i) P(i), depending on O/C
O/C is the set of external opportunities and constraints encoun-
tered by a potential migrant.
Essers theoretical approach deals with assimilation and accultur-
ation of immigrants in the receiving country. Yet Essers premises
basic
value-expectancy
model
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could be used to deal with decision making in the sending countries
as well. His rst fundamental hypothesis (1980: 210-11) could be re-
stated as follows: The more intense the motives of a migrant are re-
garding a specic goal, the stronger the expectation that she can full
her goals by (temporary) territorial exit, the higher the propensity
to attribute a high preference (value) to exit and the fewer the con-
straints working against exit, the more likely a potential mover will
choose the exit option. These constraints and opportunities could in-
clude factors such as societal and cultural norms (e.g. gender roles),
state policies (admission policies of the receiving countries) and eco-
nomic differentials related to income or employment.
In addition to opportunity structures information plays a decisive
role for migration decision making. Depending on the availability of
information on transport and opportunities for jobs and housing, po-
tential migrants can optimise their benets. Such information may
ow along various communication channels, such as mass media
and friends who migrated before but also pioneer migrants outside
the inner circle of relatives and friends.
An important prerequisite of immobility then is that a potential
mover has sufcient information as to what goals can be better ac-
complished in the sending or the receiving country. If a potential
migrant decides to be mobile, the question arises whether the neces-
sary resources can be transferred abroad. The territorial restriction
of certain assets has been termed location specic capital (DaVanzo
1981: 116). It is a widespread phenomenon that highly educated and
trained movers, especially refugees, cannot enter at the same occu-
pational level in the receiving country. For example, lawyers, physi-
cians and engineers may not get accredited to practise law, medicine
and mechanics and may have to look for work outside their eld.
Information about these and other limitations may prohibit interna-
tional movements although they would not discourage the internal
movement of migrants. In these cases it is more likely that internal
and not international migration occurs.
Rational choice accounts certainly are a powerful tool with which
to model migration decision making and action. Yet, we have to ex-
amine what is meant by opportunities and constraints in order to
understand more clearly the decision-making process. Sociological
and anthropological studies have frequently found that migration de-
cisions are taken in social units such as the family, extended families
or even whole communities. These social units use available resourc-
es in their perceived self-interest. Often, in patriarchal systems. the
male head decides at the expense of females and younger members
of the family.
constraints and
opportunities
location-specic
capital
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thomas faist
This problem of dening a supra-individual decision-making unit
is partly remedied by the new economics of migration (Stark 1991),
whose theorists do not prejudge the sole social unit of decision mak-
ing to be the individual actor but try to aggregate the utilities of the
individuals involved, especially in the case of rural economies. Yet by
considering family utility in aggregate terms, these theorists have ig-
nored or simplied the relations between family members, the social
ties that bind or separate family or household members. If basic so-
cial relations are disregarded in this way, we do not get a good idea of
power and authority relations, (mis)trust and solidarity. For example,
who decides which member of a social unit such as a household mi-
grates and what is the legitimation of the decision maker?
Even if we specify the structural opportunities and constraints, we
should still explain how they relate to individual rationality. Rational
choice approaches to migration do not specify how structural oppor-
tunities are translated into individual action and vice versa. In es-
sence, we encounter the problem of linking macro- and micro-levels
of analysis: For example, a sophisticated individual might be aware
of the level and nature of foreign investment in his or her country,
but would still be unlikely to perceive it as immediately affecting a
residence desire and possible decision to move (Gardner 1981: 73).
To make this link we need to complement micro-level approaches
with more elaborate concepts of social relations and social ties.

The migration-systems approach: between the world system and
networks
While rational choice theories of migration have evolved from the
micro-level to consider macro-level factors also (structural individ-
ualism), systems theorists have come full circle: They were at rst
exclusively concerned with the macro-level (migration systems), but
have gradually come to introduce lower-level concepts such as mi-
grant networks.
The most elaborate effort at developing a fully-edged system-the-
oretic analysis is Hoffmann-Nowotnys concept. encompassing four
levels, the individual, national subsystems, national societies and the
international society (1970 and 1973). Hoffmann-Nowotny applies
general social systems theory to the phenomenon of international
migration. He starts with the fundamental relation between power
and prestige in a society. In his conceptual universe prestige legiti-
mises power. Hoffmann-Nowotny posits that in any society there
exists some sort of consensus about the value attributed to material
and immaterial goods (e.g. education). Power and prestige in a social
system are determined by the position and by the status attributed to
prestige and power
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their positions. Structural tensions arise from inequalities and sta-
tus inconsistencies in the sending country. These structural tensions
may generate anomic tendencies, i.e. an imbalance between power
and status. Action directed to resolve these tensions may take forms
such as social mobility, giving up the social position held or emigra-
tion to a country where status aspirations can be attained (Hoffmann-
Nowotny 1973: 11-14). In essence, for Hoffmann-Nowotny (interna-
tional) migration constitutes an interaction between societal systems
geared to transfer tensions and thus balancing power and prestige
(1973: 19; translation T.F).
Later migration-systems approaches have four main characteris-
tics. Firstly, migration-system theories assume that migration sys-
tems pose the context in which movement occurs and that it inu-
ences actions on whether to stay or to move. An analysis of trade and
security linkages and colonial ties helps to explain the origin and direc-
tion of international movement. Basically, a migration system is here
dened as two or more places (most often nation-states) connected
to each other by ows and counterows of people (see Faist 1995).
Secondly, using dependency-theory and world-systems approaches,
systems theories have stressed the existence of linkages between coun-
tries other than people, such as trade and security alliances, colonial
ties and ows of goods, services, information and ideas (Portes and
Walton 1981). These linkages often have existed before migration
ows occurred. For example, in the case of European receiving coun-
tries (e.g. France, Netherlands and Great Britain) most movers come
from former colonies.
Thirdly, migration systems theory focuses on processes within mi-
gration systems. Movement is not regarded as a one-time event but
rather as a dynamic process consisting of a sequence of events across
time (Boyd 1989: 641). Already Mabogunje suggests in his program-
matic article on rural-urban migration in Africa that migration needs
to be studied as a circular, interdependent, progressively complex
and self-modifying system (1970: 4). Theorising the dynamics of
migration has thus moved from a consideration of movement as a
linear, unidirectional, push-and-pull, cause-effect movement to no-
tions that emphasise migration as circular, interdependent, progres-
sively complex and self-modifying systems in which the effect of
changes in one part can be traced through the entire system. For
example, once it has started, international migration turns into a self-
feeding process. Petersen assumed that pioneer migrants or groups
set examples that can develop into a stream of what he called mass
migration (1958: 263-4). This helps to explain international move-
ment as a self-feeding process that gains in momentum as networks
four main
characteristics
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thomas faist
reduce both the direct monetary costs of movement and the opportu-
nity costs (that is, the earnings forgone while moving, searching for
work and housing, learning new skills), and also decrease the psy-
chological costs of adjustment to a new environment in the receiving
country. Movers and stayers are regarded as active decision makers
(Fawcett 1989).
Fourthly, within the context of important factors such as econom-
ic inequalities within and between nation-states and the admission
policies of the receiving states, individuals, households and families
develop strategies to cope with stay-or-go alternatives. Lately, systems
theorists have started to apply social network theory vigorously. The
main assumption is aptly summarised in Charles Tillys provocative
phrase that it is not people who migrate but networks (1990: 75). In
other words, migrants are not atomistic ies (Cohen 1987). Social
networks consist of more or less homogeneous sets of ties between
three or more actors. Network patterns of social ties comprise eco-
nomic, political networks of interaction, as well as collectives such
as groups (e.g. families, communities) and (public) associations.
Network theory builds its explanations from patterns of relations.
It captures causal factors in the social structural bedrock of society,
bypassing the spuriously signicant attributes of people temporarily
occupying particular positions in social structure (Burt 1986: 106).
Migrant networks, then, are sets of interpersonal ties that connect
movers, former movers and non-movers in countries of origin and
destination through social ties, be they relations of kinship, friend-
ship or weak social ties (see Choldin 1973). In international migra-
tion, networks may be even more important than in domestic migra-
tion because there are more barriers to overcome, e.g. exit and entry
permits, and if not available, costs for illegal border crossing.
Concerning migration and non-migration, a system-theoretic
perspective emphasises that predisposing factors of very different
kinds can enhance migration (e.g. wage differentials between coun-
tries, population growth, civil wars) when embedded in the context of
historically grown political, economic and cultural linkages between
senders and receivers, while other macro-factors may lead to non-mi-
gration, such as very restrictive exit and entry policies. Precipitating
events (e.g. economic crises in sending countries) and intervening fac-
tors (e.g. migrant networks) are then thought to enhance migration.
An important insight is that migration processes are accompanied by
feedback effects affecting decisions to stay or go. For example, earlier
internal migrations may lead to international migration or pioneer
migrants may serve as role models for other potential migrants.
In sum, migration-systems theories constitute a great advance in
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the explanation of the dynamics of international movements. Yet, the
real signicance of social and political units between the micro- and
macro-levels remains blurred. Contrary to what is claimed, we get no
clear understanding of the mechanisms by which macro-factors shape
micro-level decision making. To posit the relevance of intermediate
structures such as the family, household and migrant networks is
not sufcient to establish a meso-level. It begs the question as to how
intermediate structures systematically pattern decision making, and
are shaped both by the actions of potential and actual movers and by
larger social structures.
Both rational choice and migration-systems theories have started
to place more emphasis on processes linking the micro- and macro-
levels: Rational choice theories have come to consider social units
such as families and migration-systems theories emphasise net-
works. But both show a decisive weakness in conceptualising the
social ties of movers and stayers within families or households and
networks. Processes within these social units and relations between
them and larger aggregates (e.g. state institutions) have to be brought
into this analysis. One of the crucial factors is the lack of an appro-
priate conceptual framework. The following exposition of a social
relational approach is therefore not meant to substitute but rather
to enrich the rational choice and migration-systems approaches to
international migration by paying more systematic attention to the
meso-level.
Three levels of analysis: macro-structural, relational and
individual
In its most general form spatial movement can be understood as a
transfer not only from one place to another but also from one social
unit or neighbourhood to another. This transfer may strain, rupture,
change or reinforce previous social ties. In a sociological analysis
of international migration three levels are relevant: (1) political-eco-
nomic-cultural structures on the level of the international system,
the country of origin and the country of destination (structural level),
(2) density, strength and content of social relations between stayers
and movers within units in the areas of origin and destination (rela-
tional level), and (3) the degree of freedom or autonomy of a potential
mover (individual level), i.e. the degree to which he or she has the
ability to decide on moving or staying.
(1) Political-economic-cultural structures denote an array of factors
in the sending and receiving countries and in the international politi-
linking micro- and
macro-levels
political-economic-
cultural structures
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thomas faist
cal and economic system of nation-states. The nation-states differ in
the political realm as political and administrative units. For example,
sending countries may vary with respect to political stability. This has
consequences for the emergence of refugee ows. The admission
and integration policies of sending countries also vary. Nation-states
also differ along characteristics such as living standards, jobs and
working conditions, unemployment rates and wages in the sending
and receiving countries. Such differentials are important prerequi-
sites for migration to occur between nation-states. Finally, in the
cultural realm there are differences in normative expectations and
collective identity. For example, in some areas of the world, cultures
of migration have developed (e.g. Caribbean islands and the Indian
island of Goa). International norms and organisations also have an
impact on the mobility of persons (e.g. international convenants on
human and social rights by the International Labour Organisation
and the Geneva Convention on refugees and asylum seekers).
Research into structural opportunities has been abundant, espe-
cially into the history of international labour migration. Hatton and
Williamson (1994) summarise their ndings on transatlantic migra-
tions from Europe to America around the turn of the century, saying
that demographic growth in the sending regions and income gaps
between home and overseas destinations were both important, while
industrialisation (independent of its inuence on real wages) made
a modest contribution. Frank Thistlethwaite argued in his prcis on
earlier transatlantic migrations that the inner secrets of emigration
are to be sought in the working of those two revolutions which are so
interconnected, the demographic and the industrial (1991: 236-7).
With respect to political refugees, however, large refugee ows
have been caused by international wars, especially the Second World
War but also the Cold War. Many more recent refugee ows have
originated as a by-product of the formation of new states in the
South, or as a result of social transformations (e.g. revolutions) and
ethnic conicts in both old and new states. External intervention in
less developed countries has also been a common cause of refugee
ows, for example in the South (Zolberg et al. 1989). Also, the very
formation of territorially bounded states in the South after decolo-
nisation resulted in migration and refugee ows. Moreover, in pro-
cesses of state formation and the rebuilding of states the persecution
and expulsion of minority groups can achieve a high priority.
(2) The social ties of the movers and stayers vary with respect to
density, strength and content. These ties may go to the receiving or the
sending countries or to both at the same time. They can range from
a dense network of social ties to the country of origin to a total break,
density, strength
and content
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i.e. no social relations anymore and a reorientation to the country
of destination in the process of settlement. Yet even in the case of
permanent settlement abroad, social ties can be established or re-
inforced both in the country of origin and in the receiving country.
Therefore, permanent settlement in the receiving country does not
necessarily mean fewer social ties to the area of origin. If these social
ties are systematically patterned in networks and collectives, we can
link the relational to the structural level.
(3) On the individual level international movements can be char-
acterised by a continuum along the degrees of freedom for potential
movers. At one end, in some instances for example, slaves, con-
victs, some refugees, contract workers, sometimes children and
spouses the essential decision maker is not the migrant him- or
herself. At the other end, there are individuals with a high degree of
autonomy, based on resources such as money, information and con-
nections. The degree of freedom or autonomy is circumscribed in a
context in which the main sets of parties involved in migration deci-
sion making and the dynamics of migration are: (1) individuals in the
place of origin; (2) collectives and social networks of potential and ac-
tual movers and stayers such as families, households, friendship and
kinship circles, neighbourhoods, ethnic, religious and professional
associations, but also (3) interested collective actors in the countries
of origin and destination (e.g. Non-Governmental Organisations, su-
pra-national organisations such as UNHCR, sending and receiving
country governments, political parties, unions and employer organi-
sations).
Characteristics of a meso-level approach
Firstly, emphasis needs to be placed on how decisions on moving
and staying are made in and between groups of people (e.g. families
and various forms of larger territorial and extra-territorial communi-
ties) rather than by isolated individuals or groups where economic-
political-cultural structures only come in as external constraints and
opportunities. A processual account will help us to specify the mech-
anisms causing changes in social relations. In this interpersonal and
inter-group perspective decisions over moving and staying may be
taken on different levels for example, by individuals and differently
sized groups or imposed upon these groups by outside collective
actors such as governments of nation-states. The basic assumption
is that potential migrants and groups always relate to other social
structures along a continuum of degrees of freedom. Particular units
such as households or families therefore deserve special attention.
Empirical studies muster abundant evidence that these units have
degrees of freedom
interpersonal and
inter-group decisions
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gured most prominently not only in earlier transatlantic migrations
from Europe to the white-settler colonies (Bodnar 1985), but also do
so in contemporary movements from the South to the North, espe-
cially from rural areas in the South (Hugo 1995). It would be naive
to conceptualise all social units such as households as single-interest
decision-making bodies. There is too much evidence on the impor-
tance of diverging interests and of power relations within these units,
for example expressed in hierarchical and patriarchal decision making.
Secondly, the internal dynamics of migration can indeed be de-
scribed as self-feeding processes of cumulative causation, usually in
ways that reinforce existing staying/moving patterns. Historically,
waves of international moving and staying usually had a clearly dis-
cernible beginning, a climax and an end with dynamics somewhat
independent even from economic and political conditions in the
receiving and sending countries once migration started (Thomas
1973). A relational analysis tries to capture the dynamics of migration
by a close analysis of collectives (e.g. families or households) and net-
works. This implies that international migration is not simply seen
as a straight line, only interrupted by external factors that may or may
not capture mass migration. Instead, movers and stayers take ad-
vantage of the opportunities offered by macro-level constraints such
as demographic, economic and political developments.
A pioneering exemplar: the polish peasant in Europe and America
One exemplar that implicitly sketches theoretical considerations and
empirical evidence along these lines is Thomass and Znanieckis ac-
knowledged masterpiece on The Polish Peasant in Europe and America
(1918-20). It deals with transatlantic migration of peasants from
Russian Congress Poland to the United States. According to Thomas
and Znaniecki, the decisions of movers and stayers can be described
by reference to the breakup of traditional society, and particularly of
its extended-family system due to the marketisation of economic life
in the areas of origin. The breakup of the peasant family was said to
create new possibilities, especially through the growing assertion of
the personality (ibid. 2: 217). This evolutionary determinism may be
criticised, but the shift from affectual to purposive and rational forms
of action is the most relevant aspect of The Polish Peasant for the
study of the causes and dynamics of migration. Importantly, Thomas
and Znaniecki argued that this development of more abstract, com-
plex and cognitive levels of social reorganisation did not entail the
disappearance of primary-group attitudes and values but was largely
constituted out of them.
Newer research has focused on migration not as an expression
internal dynamics
of migration
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of societal disorganisation but as an active strategy to diversify in-
come in rural households dependent on crops, etc. Yet what may
be needed most for a comprehensive interpersonal and processual
account is a focus on migration that includes processes of both soci-
etal organisation and disorganisation. Clearly, the focus of these two
authors on household, communal and other ties remains valuable
because it helps to construct the meso-level, whether we focus on
disorganisation (e.g. persecution of political refugees) or organisa-
tion (e.g. migration as a household strategy for economic survival or
even advancement).
Thomas and Znaniecki observed that potential migrants can
reorganise both in the country of origin and in the new country of
settlement. In the former country examples of co-operative collec-
tive action included education of peasants through the press and the
emergence of co-operative institutions, such as co-operative shops,
lean and savings banks, and agricultural improvement societies (ibid.
4: 178-304). We could add forms of political voice such as peasant
protests (see Scott 1976). Indeed, there were alternatives to moving
in improving the life situation in the country of origin. In the main
country of destination, the United States, Polish immigrants came to
be members of various forms of communal life, ranging from mu-
tual aid societies and parishes to cultural organisations. Typically,
immigrants such as Poles used their investment in family, ethnic-
ity and religion as resources to redene their situation, as workers,
citizens, and members of household and religious groups. A parallel
story could be told about political refugees. Although the root causes
may differ and options to stay without endangering their lives may
be minimal for refugees at the time of ight, the same principles of
social analysis could be applied.
The decision-making process
Social ties and social capital
Social relations in collectives and social networks constitute distinct
sets of intermediate structures on the meso-level. It is via these social
relations that the resources of individuals are related to opportunity
structures (gure 7.1). According to rational choice approaches deci-
sions to move or to stay are inevitably made by individual or collective
actors who weigh the costs and benets involved. What migration-
systems theories emphasise is that these decisions are always made
within specic economic, political and cultural contexts that are de
termined by larger opportunity structures reected in the family,
neighbourhood, workplace and community.
societal organisation
and disorganisation
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thomas faist
The macro- and micro-levels of analysis can be connected by
the concepts of social ties and social capital. Movers and stayers are
embedded in a social-relational context characterised by social ties, a
continuing series of interpersonal transactions to which participants
attach shared interests, obligations, understandings, memories and
forecasts. Strong ties are characterised by direct, face-to-face trans-
social ties and
social capital
Figure 7.1. Three levels of migration analysis
MACRO-LEVEL:
STRUCTURAL
opportunity structures
(political-economic-
cultural structure)
MESO-LEVEL:
RELATIONAL
collectives and social
networks
(social relations)
MICRO-LEVEL:
INDIVIDUAL
values, expectancies and
recources
(degrees of freedom)
economics:
income and
unemployment
differentials; access
to capital
politics:
regulation of spatial
mobility (nation-
states and interna-
tional regimes);
political repression,
etnic and religious
conicts
interdependence in
international system
of states
cultural setting:
dominant norms
and discourses
demography and
ecology:
population growth;
availability of arable
land
level of technology
social ties:
strong ties: families
and households;
weak ties: networks
of potential movers,
brokers and stayers;
symbolic ties:
ethnic and religious
organisations
social capital:
resources available to
potential movers and
stayers by participa-
tion in networks and
collectives through
weak, strong and
symbolic social ties
individual values
goals, preferences and
expectancies)
improving and
securing survival,
wealth, status, com-
fort, stimulation,
autonomy, afliation
and morality
individual resources:
nancial capital
human capital:
educational creden-
tials; professional
skills
cultural capital:
common worldviews,
forecast, memories,
symbols
political capital: voice
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actions between the actors involved. They are durable and involve
obligations and substantial emotions. They are most widespread in
small, well-dened groups such as families, kinship and communal
organisations. By contrast, weak ties are dened by indirect relation-
ships. They involve no direct or only eeting contact. Weak ties refer
to a more narrow set of transactions. Transactions among friends of
friends is an apt shorthand for weak social ties.
Social capital are those resources inherent in patterned social
ties that allow individuals to co-operate in networks and collectives,
and/or that allow individuals to pursue their goals.
2
Such resourc-
es include information on jobs in a potential destination country,
knowledge on means of transport, or loans to nance a journey to
the country of destination. Social capital also serves to connect indi-
viduals to networks and collectives through afliations. Social capital
thus has a dual thrust: it facilitates co-operation between individual
(and group) actors in creating trust and links individuals to social
structures. Furthermore, social capital serves to mobilise nancial,
human, cultural and political capital. (For other and differing deni-
tions of social capital, see Bourdieu 1983 and Portes 1995.)
Social capital is not simply an attribute of individual actors. The
amount of social capital eventually available to individuals depends
on the extent of the network of social ties that can be mobilised and
the amount of nancial, cultural and political capital that members
of collectives or network participants can muster. In short, social cap-
ital is created and accumulated in social relations, but can be used by
individuals as a resource. Social capital is thus primarily a meso-level
category.
The primary question concerning the meso-level is how social
capital is created, accumulated and mobilised by collectives and net-
works, given certain macro-conditions. Moreover, how is this capital
made available to individuals, members and non-members of these
collectives? How does it serve to mobilise other forms of capital such
as nancial, cultural and political capital? It certainly makes a dif-
ference whether we deal with rst-time movers, return movers or
non-movers. For the sake of simplicity this section deals exclusively
with rst-time movers while the section on the dynamics of migra-
tion takes up the issue of return movers and their inuence on deci-
sion making.
Analytically, we can distinguish three different macro-level di-
mensions for this relational analysis: functional considerations,
normative expectations and collective identity (distinction based on
Peters 1993; see also Habermas 1981). On the level of potential mov-
ers and stayers we can then make an ideal-typical distinction between
three macro-level
dimensions
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thomas faist
interest-related, norm-oriented, and expressive behaviour and action.
Along this typology we are then able to chart various forms of social
capital that facilitate decision making in collectives and networks
exchange, reciprocity and solidarity (gure 7.2).
Figure 7.2. The meso-level: three forms of social capital in interper-
sonal relations
macro-level
dimensions
functional
considerations
normative
expectations
collective
identity
orientation of
movers and stayers
interest-related norm-oriented expressive
forms of social capital exchange reciprocity solidarity
The rst context in which social capital gures prominently is ex-
change relationships. This is the classical case analysed by rational-
choice approaches. Accordingly, migrants move when they expect
that they can reap higher benets in another location. Persons who
are involved in aiding these movers (facilitators) can also expect to
benet through material (e.g. money) and immaterial (e.g. social sta-
tus) gains. Favours, information, approval and other valued items are
given and received in transactions between movers and facilitators
(e.g. pioneer movers who return to the place of origin). In the course
of social interaction the movers, stayers and facilitators involved ac-
cumulate deposits based on previous favours by others, backed by
the norm of reciprocity.
Reciprocity does not imply that favours given and received must be
of the same value or identical. For example, in many cases the head
of the family is responsible for the ow of the household income. Yet
this does not mean that the head moves himself or herself in order to
supply cash. Reciprocity is a form of social capital when at least two
norms are adhered to: Firstly, persons help those who have helped
them, and secondly, persons should not harm those who helped
them before (Gouldner 1960). Reciprocity may serve to increase the
nancial capital available in collectives such as families or house-
holds. Migrant labour is a means to get much-needed cash to supple-
ment income earned through crops. In case of crop failure income
through labour migration can even act as a temporary substitute. In
this case reciprocity would mean that, on the one hand, the moving
family members remain loyal and actually send money back home
and, on the other hand, the remaining family members work in the
exchange, reciprocity
and solidarity
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elds. Trust between members of relevant collectives such as fami-
lies or households is a very valuable resource upholding reciprocity.
This norm-related aspect of reciprocal transactions also refers to the
third type of social capital, solidarity.
Solidarity is based on a group identity (we) that refers to a unity
of wanting and action. It is an expressive dimension to be distin-
guished from interest-based and norm-oriented behaviour. The
groups self- and other-denition makes it meaningful to talk about
the importance for potential movers that membership of a collective
and participation in a network have.
Usually, transactions of the exchange type are characterised by
weak social ties, while reciprocity and solidarity require strong so-
cial ties (Sahlins 1965). Yet norms of solidarity go with weak social
ties, when individual or collective actors feel closely bound to eth-
nic, religious and national identities. Movers and recipients may be
connected through symbolic ties, characterised by transactions based
on shared worldviews, understandings, forecasts and memories. For
example, in many African countries borders of nation-states are the
result of drawing-board exercises by the former colonial powers, and
arbitrarily cut across ethnic and linguistic groups. Refugees who
cross international borders are often more generously received by
groups with whom they share strong ethnic and linguistic afnities.
The existence of symbolic ties across nation-states and the fact that
most refugees in the South are movers with few resources explain
why many refugees, especially in Africa, end up in countries adjoin-
ing the state of origin, and why only a minority ever moves on to
countries in the North.
Taking Talcott Parsons distinction between self-orientation and
collectivity-orientation as a point of departure (Parsons 1951: 60), we
can further distinguish between migration decision making that is
oriented towards the self and towards relevant collectives. Tensions
can arise between, for example, occupational self-fullment and the
expectation to contribute to the sustenance of the family in the coun-
try of origin, as Thomas and Znaniecki have amply demonstrated.
For example, movers at the onset of political persecution could de-
cide further to support their family (collectivity orientation) although
imminent danger of being singled out as a target of violence strongly
suggests that they move immediately, albeit individually. To compli-
cate matters even further, potential movers are not only members of
families but also citizens of a nation-state, members of religious or
ethnic groups, etc. In short, they occupy several roles, i.e. there are
cross-cutting ties.
social ties and
symbolic ties
self-oriented and
collectivity-oriented
decisions
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thomas faist
The difcult transfer of social capital
In order to say what contributes to migration or enhances immobil-
ity, we have to start from the fundamental insight that many resourc-
es are local assets and transferring them to foreign countries would
involve high transferral costs. This does not apply only to the transfer
of human capital discussed earlier. Networks of social ties connect
migrants to other migrants and natives in the receiving country (who
hold various amounts of human, nancial and political capital). It
takes social capital to build such networks and substantial resources
are required. It is quite time- and energy-consuming to construct or
join new networks in the receiving country, especially in those cases
where it is not the whole family that is moving. It is even more dif-
cult to establish and join new collectives. Also, if a mover leaves
behind family, friends and other important persons relationships
that are characterised by strong and affective social ties it involves
high costs to maintain these ties while abroad, for example economic
costs (return trips) and psychological costs of adjustment to a new
environment. Costs are especially high for pioneer migrants who
cannot rely on established networks of movers to guide and facili-
tate their migration. Only if expected gains in transferring various
forms of capital exceed perceived costs are potential migrants seri-
ously encouraged to move. In sum, local assets that are undergirded
by nancial, human, political and social capital can lead a potential
mover to prefer in situ adjustment in the sending country to adjust-
ment abroad because transferral costs are high.
Secondly, social capital is often a prerequisite for the accumulation
and mobilisation of human, nancial, cultural and political capital. New
social ties in the receiving countries have to be well established, be-
fore migrants can make use of their nancial and human capital or
that available to other migrants who may help them in nding work
and housing. If there is no access to social capital, it is extremely
difcult to invest resources such as money and skills in a benecial
way. This is especially true when there are no pioneer migrants and
brokers who act as intermediaries for scarce resources. Moreover,
without social capital there is no basis for a rich cultural life in mi-
grant communities; for example, no religious institutions will be es-
tablished. Similar things can be said about political participation. If
migrants do not engage in collective action to voice their interests,
they will probably face more discrimination in the receiving coun-
tries. For a political voice, they need to form associations.
Therefore, we would expect that potential migrants prefer those
forms of movement that allow them to keep their social ties intact
(circular migration), to interrupt them only briey (seasonal migra-
high transferral
costs
social capital
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tion) or to transfer the whole set of important social ties abroad (e.g.
family migration in the context of chain migration).
The rst-time decision-making process
We may now conceptualise decision making and dynamics of move-
ment in various networks and collectives. The most relevant units
constituting meso-levels are households and families, groups of kin-
ship, the reference community, but also friends and acquaintances
in the workplace, and groupings such as ethnic, religious and politi-
cal associations. Interest-guided survival strategies, normative obli-
gations of family members to each other and expressions of collec-
tive identity are not mutually exclusive realms, the rst relating to
hard-core purposive (economic) action, the second to the soft fringe
of social and the third to the even softer fringe of cultural action.
We must analyse the set of social relations that structures decision
making and the dynamics of migration, the social connectivity itself,
the direct and indirect connections between actors. Here, we have to
measure the density, strength, symmetry, range, and so on, of the
ties that bind and the transaction and conversion costs and gains of
various forms of capital. Furthermore, we must study the cultural
content of functional imperatives and normative expectations.
Using the threefold typology developed earlier, we can hypoth-
esise that exchange relationships, albeit asymmetrical regarding
power and authority, may explain why family or household members
engage in a division of labour and migration. Thanks to reciprocity
as a form of social capital, household members can count on a fair
division of burdens and benets. As a subsistence and socialising
unit, the household allocates economic roles and assigns tasks ac-
cording to age, sex and kinship ties. It may give incentives to house-
hold members both at home and abroad to forgo more immedi-
ate satisfactions and carry burdens in the expectation that migratory
arrangements serve the household and its members in the long run
through factors such as acquisition of land, durable consumer goods
and improved human capital. Also, reciprocity could lead movers to
continue sending remittances home although they do not intend to
return. In cases of refugee ows social ties with actors in the country
of origin are likely to be severed quite abruptly. Family members are
often separated for long time periods. In these situations solidarity
between family members really needs a basis in past practices and
family bonds, including both reciprocity and solidarity as forms of
social capital.
On a cautionary note it should always be remembered that fami-
lies or households are dened by different economic, political, cul-
exchange
relationships
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thomas faist
tural, demographic and ecological settings and are not social units
with universal behaviour (see chapter 8). For example, it certainly
makes a difference whether we analyse movement from Africa to
Europe or from Latin America to the United States as well as from
various communities, regions or countries within these continents.
Factors such as household size and expectations directed towards
family members are likely to differ, not to speak of the variations
pertaining to historical links between sending and receiving regions,
current exit and admission policies, income, wage and unemploy-
ment differentials between sending and receiving countries.
The dynamics of international migration
So far, the main question has been why potential migrants decide
either to stay or to go. If we consider the dynamics of moving, ques-
tions then arise as to what happens after the migrants have moved
and why they return to the country of origin or stay in the receiving
country. After an analysis of rst-time decisions on moving or stay-
ing we shall now specify the causal mechanisms that allow us to fol-
low subsequent developments in the ow of choice processes over
time.
All the previous conceptual considerations on migration decision
making at the different levels of households, kinship relations (e.g.
families), friends and even larger groups suggest that there is a con-
tinuum along the deniteness of the break of social ties with the ori-
gin. Return migration is one case in which strong social ties between
sending and receiving regions matter.
Historical evidence of earlier transatlantic migrations also at-
tests to this thesis: While estimates vary and although most records
of immigration are imprecise, return rates probably ranged from
25 to 60 per cent for European immigrants in the United States in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Piore 1979: 110).
Sometimes, even permanent migrants retained strong ties with their
rural regions of origin; they maintained their location-specic hu-
man and social capital, e.g. bought land, built houses, and contrib-
uted to village and city projects.
Furthermore, leaving and returning may not be decisions taken
only once. Empirical research suggests that they occur repeatedly over
the life course of a mover. This suggests that space in international
migration is inadequately described by focusing solely on countries
of origin and destination (see chapter 2). Rather, as international
migration proceeds, transnational spaces unfold that cross-cut na-
subsequent
developments
of choice processes
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tion-states. A ow of people, goods, capital and services emerges. In
sum, in addition to the interpersonal and inter-group dimension, all
these aspects concern the intertemporal dimension of international
migration.
Three questions have to be addressed: Firstly, how do networks
of movers and stayers come into existence? Secondly, how do migra-
tion ows turn into chain migration migration as an established
pattern that may depart from its original incentive? Thirdly, are there
discernible patterns concerning the feedback effects on the sending
side?
How transnational networks are formed and function
Exchange relationships partly account for network formation. Clearly,
cost-benet calculations could lead the actors involved to intensify
social contacts. Migrant and refugee networks and organisations
facilitate social and individual action in reducing information and
transport costs as well as costs of integration in the country of desti-
nation. For example, migrants may get information about prospec-
tive employment by mail or telephone, and for refugees information
about reception centres in potential destination countries may be a
valuable resource. Also, exchange relations decrease the risk of not
nding a job and income in the country of destination. Very often,
movers know who awaits them and many probably already know
their prospective employer.
For the brokers facilitating international migration, migrant net-
works can provide a lucrative business. Brokers can be pioneer mi-
grants or refugees who capitalise on their experience, professionals
in organisations concerned with labour recruitment, or respected
individuals in the sending or receiving communities who facilitate
or enable contacts of potential and actual migrants to employers and
legal authorities. These brokers or gatekeepers thus turn into trans-
national entrepreneurs. They benet through money or social debts
incurred to them in the process of migration (exchange). Yet they
are themselves constrained by social norms to respond to legitimate
claims for assistance (reciprocity transactions). Exchange relation-
ships can also be applied for sending-community strategies chosen.
For example, inhabitants in some Mexican villages can best expect to
reap results from international migration if they all agree to sponsor
selected individuals for graduate studies in the United States (Pries
1996). The individualised strategy would be illegal entry in the coun-
try of destination.
Reciprocity is another source of network formation. For example,
when migrants arrive in the country of destination on prepaid tick-
facilitating social
networks
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thomas faist
ets, they are expected to pay back the expenses defrayed beforehand.
Often only formal agreements and not legal contracts undergird these
kinds of transactions between movers and intermediaries. Solidarity
may be a prime resource when the actors living and working abroad
send back remittances or arrange for their family members to join
them in the country of destination.
Access to migrant networks tends to be selective. Usually, it is not
open for all members of a sending. Access is governed by available
information and nancial resources, but also by (in)formal norms
of reciprocity and solidarity. For potential movers to get access to
migrant networks does not necessarily require everyday social in-
teraction and direct acquaintance within a community. Indirect so-
cial contacts maintained over large geographical distances may also
work. Although there is no empirical evidence yet, we can draw on
the strength of weak ties (Granovetter 1973). The argument here
is that weak ties may break more easily, but also transmit distant
information on migration opportunities more efciently under cer-
tain circumstances, for example, potential movers may remember
persons in destination and sending countries with whom some kind
of contact existed in the past, or who know friends who know mi-
grants. These persons then serve as brokers of information or even
gatekeepers for entry into the receiving countries, and access to jobs
and housing. Those to whom potential movers are weakly tied are
more likely to move in circles different from theirs and will thus have
access to resources such as information different from that of the
community of origin.
The value of networks for international movers and stayers dif-
fers, among other things, by the amount of human, nancial, cul-
tural and political capital available to the participants. We may hy-
pothesise that if the amount of nancial, human and cultural capital
held by individuals or collectives forming a network is very low, net-
works may act to retard the adjustment of movers into the receiving
nation-state (see also Pohjola 1991). The reason is that the capacity
to employ social capital crucially depends on the amount of other
forms of capital the respective network participants can muster. For
example, a comparative study on Colombian and Dominican immi-
grants in New York City during the 1980s found that movers with
higher amounts of human and nancial capital were found to be less
likely to rely on kin at the place of destination, while movers who had
lower amounts of capital depended more on kinship networks to get
established (Gilbertson and Gurak 1992). Among others, the latter
group relied more heavily on relatives to assist them with housing
upon arrival. They received assistance in seeking employment. The
selective access
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immigrants who reported heavy assistance from family networks
when they arrived were also found to be culturally and socially much
less integrated in New York. They had less language ability and held
lower-status jobs.
Not only individuals can participate in networks but also collec-
tives such as households, kinship groups or organisations (gure
7.3).
Figure 7.3. Networks of movers and stayers and organisations in inter-
national migration
Networks of Movers and Stayers Organisations
sending networks: aid with travel
arrangements, nancial support,
etc.
illegal intermediaries
(e.g. smugglers)
elite institutional networks
(e.g. transnational corpora-
tions)
legal/extra-legal agencies
(e.g. recruitment bureaus)
state labour recruitment
(e.g. national labour ofces)
refugee-aid organisations
(e.g. UNHCR and privately
sponsored associations)
receiving networks: aid with
legal systems, housing, jobs,
schooling, capital for enterprices,
language training
support associations in the
receiving country (e.g. human
-rights organisations)
Networks with strong ties may constitute secure environments that
not only supply valuable information and provide emotional encour-
agement (or the opposite!) but often arrange for the subsequent
move of members from various collectives. Once migrants have ar-
rived at their destination, these collectives lend valuable assistance in
adjusting to the new environment, especially in nding housing and
employment. Also, the migrant networks in which collectives par-
ticipate need not only consist of migrants themselves. Often, patron-
client relationships emerge in the employment eld between natives
and newcomers.
Finally, the strongest form of regularization of social interaction
is found in various organisations in the eld of international migra-
tion, which for their purposes apply institutional rules and resources.
These may be transnational companies sending personnel abroad
(e.g. management and/or construction workers), labour-recruitment
agencies (often supervised or even run by state institutions in Asian
participation of
collectives in
networks
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thomas faist
sending countries), or human-rights organisations in the countries
of origin and destination which extend shelter. The most regularised
forms of migrant selection are labour recruitment directly performed
by the receiving country in the sending countries (e.g. German
labour-ofce authorities in Turkey during the 1960s), or the selec-
tion of refugees in camps near the region of origin (e.g. Canadian
government in Africa since the 1980s).
Chain migration and relative deprivation
At some point in migration processes, networks sustain population
ows in ways that are less dependent on objective economic-political
conditions in the areas of origin and destination (for example, see
Shah 1994a: 34). The hypothesis would be that, once the number
of network connections reaches a certain level, international move-
ments become self-perpetuating because they create the social struc-
ture necessary to sustain them. In other words, it is likely that net-
works of circular migration a regular circuit in which migrants
retain claims and contacts and routinely return home transform
themselves into chain migration the following of related individu-
als or households (friends and relatives effect). The processes can
be described as a snowball effect: The more immigrants of a given
place and state in the destination region, the more want to come. It
takes time to develop the chain and this is the reason why we see it
fully-edged only in later phases of international migration. When
the accumulated capital nds better opportunities for investment
and exchange in the countries of destination, and brokers and gate-
keepers nd worthwhile benets in advising and channelling mov-
ers (exchange relationships), when norms of reciprocity can be en-
forced (e.g. money remitted to family) and when forms of mutual
aid among migrants create broad commitments to other migrants
(solidarity), networks of movers and stayers begin to ourish.
For this to occur, those not yet migrating need to receive informa-
tion from earlier migrants, or even to see the concrete results of the
ventures of those who migrated before. Therefore, (pioneer) return
migrants play an important role in spreading information on oppor-
tunities regarding where to go, work and live.
However, this does not answer the question of how the process of
chain migration starts, given favourable macro-conditions. To name
norms, motives, preferences and various forms of capital that guide
the behaviour of potential movers does not sufce to account for a
phenomenon such as chain migration. We might compare places of
origin that are very similar regarding both peoples preferences to
move or stay and the opportunity structures they are faced with. Yet
a snowball effect
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it has been repeatedly observed that the number of people moving
abroad from two most similar villages in this regard is not seldom
vastly different. In this virtually unexplored area, threshold models
of collective behaviour could be used to give situation-specic expla-
nations of moving and staying that do not explain outcomes solely
in terms of structures, goals and expectancies of actors before the
movement begins (Granovetter 1978). Only when we view decisions
on moving and staying as being also dependent upon the number or
proportion of other potential movers, who must make the decision
before another stayer does so, can we start to understand the process
of chain migration. The cost-benet calculations involved in thresh-
old behaviour are easiest to follow in the case of strong, symbolic and
affective social ties, for example when all family members move to
live together abroad.
Migration may bring about more migration by changes in social
status and income distribution. Relative deprivation theory posits that
individual and household satisfaction arise not only from improve-
ments in absolute economic status but also through comparison with
other actors in the reference community. If a potential migrants level
of income is low, the level of motivation to exit will also be low as
long as incomes are low across the board. However, if some actors
in the reference community experience an increase, then a poor ac-
tor will feel relatively deprived. This can be a direct effect of migration.
When household members migrate abroad for work, they earn higher
incomes than those available locally, and when they send money
home, they increase the amount of income available at the top of the
income distribution in the country of origin. This may lead to more
international migration. Relative deprivation need not necessarily
relate only to income but also to ways of life. For example, in a way
that is poorly understood, cultural norms of potential migrants have
evolved in the Caribbean to form a veritable culture-of-migration
(Marshall 1982).
One of the key elements introduced by economists into the analy-
sis has been the so-called inverted U-curve thesis: development often
rst enhances and thereafter reduces the scope and incentives for
migration (see chapter 4). This inverted U-curve depends upon ex-
ternal factors such as the level of income (economic development).
In addition, we could also speculate about an s-shaped curve concern-
ing the social diversity of migration (gure 7.4). An s-shaped curve
would depend upon factors that arise from the very process of migra-
tion itself, i.e. that are internal to migration processes.
relative deprivation
theory
inverted U-curve
thesis and S-shaped
curve
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thomas faist
The Crucial Meso-Level
Number or
Percentage of
Migrants
(Cumulative)
Time

Figure 7.4. A stylised S-shaped migration curve
Massey et al. (1994) found in research on Mexico-US migration that
social diversity was low in the initial stages of migration, increased
dramatically during the intermediate stages, and then stayed con-
stant or fell slightly as a level of mass migration was reached. In this
view migration begins with a narrow range of each communitys socio-
economic structure, but over time broadens to incorporate other social
groups. How could we explain this s-shaped pattern?
In an initial period, migration turns into a self-feeding process
that gradually encompasses more and more groups and social classes
from a local community because of declining costs. In a second pe-
riod, the movement becomes somewhat independent of economic
conditions in the host country as immigrants acquire social benets
in the receiving country and as family reunication and marriage mi-
gration quicken due to guaranteed civil rights and the establishment
of immigrant communities. This contributes both to rising numbers
of migrants and to less selectivity as to social class. At this stage even
children and older kin migrate in growing numbers. There could be
spill-over effects even to relatives and friends in other communities
in the same country of origin. In a third phase, migration may be-
come more selective again; this time in favour of groups that have
been underrepresented in the beginning (e.g. members of lower-
class or lower-status groups from remote parts of the sending re-
gions). Finally, in a fourth period, as migration has captured virtually
all groups and classes, the value of migration declines for potential
migrants. Those who could not migrate are not only relatively but
also absolutely deprived and even socially and economically margin-
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alised in the community. Yet all those who could participate in mi-
gration had a chance trying to overcome their sense of relative depri-
vation vis--vis the early movers. As the migrant potential is gradually
exhausted in the sending communities, some migrants settle in the
country of destination, some return to the country of origin for good
and others, probably a minority, may continue to move back and
forth for extended periods of time. Eventually, the volume declines
again.

Cumulative causation: feedback effects in the sending regions
Some of the feedback effects of migration that lead to further mi-
gration are part of a process called cumulative causation, dating back
to Gunnar Myrdals use of the term. As is clearly seen by the new
economics of migration, temporary migration may be a strategy of
risk diversication in rural households. Foreign wages sometimes
lead farmers to farm their land less intensively than before or even
let it lie fallow. If these migrants buy land, the outcome might be that
there is less land under intensive cultivation in the community, that
local food production is reduced, the price of staple crops raised and
the demand for labour decreased. These consequences may give in-
centives to the remaining members of the community to move, too.
Also, if land is more intensively cultivated, as farmer migrants
can now afford more capital, this could lead to more out-movement
because less manual labour is needed (Massey (1990). However, re-
mittances spent on agriculture could actually increase agricultural
prots. In some Mexican villages, for example, the money from El
Norte has helped to develop productivity and output, and migrant
farmers have even been able to keep marginal land under produc-
tion (Cornelius 1991: 108). In this latter case we could not expect
economic feedback effects to encourage further migration.
Even very high and increasing levels of migration do not neces-
sarily imply the exodus of virtually all potential movers or the settle-
ment of all movers in the receiving country. Assets and capital may
be location-specic and the transferral costs of social and other capi-
tals may keep the volume lower than expected.
As to return rates, movers may maintain social ties with the send-
ing region and build new ones in the receiving country. Caces and
others have tried to capture the rst phenomenon on the household
or family level by using the concept of the shadow household. It in-
cludes all individuals whose principal commitments and obligations
are to a particular household but who are not presently residing in
that household (Caces et al. 1985: 8). The intensity of their commit-
ments or obligations can be operationalised as indicators of house-
shadow household
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thomas faist
hold afliation. Of course, they may differ from one culture to an-
other, and depend on the closeness of kinship and other social or
symbolic ties that keep the family or household together.
Therefore, decisions over moving or staying made by families and
individuals not only inuence later decisions made by other indi-
viduals and households but also the long-term social and economic
arrangements within the families, households and the sending com-
munities. Furthermore, changes in the networks and collectives in
the country of origin could be expected during the absence of movers
and upon their return. For example, migration may entail the real-
location of responsibilities which ultimately impact on the roles and
status of household members. In the absence of male adult members
of the household, the gendered division of labour may change, as
women may take over additional roles, or vice versa. Female con-
tract workers from Indonesia in the oil-exporting countries of the
Gulf have often spent months away from their families, and special
arrangements have been made for the care of their children. In ad-
dition, there is empirical evidence that the traditional division of
labour along gender lines has broken down as women have taken
pride in autonomy and competence in handling family affairs in the
absence of their husbands, or as men have taken more responsibility
in childrearing during the overseas employment of their wives or as
women have increased their involvement in nancial affairs upon
returning home (Hugo 1995).
Women more than men may be willing to settle in the receiving
countries. For example, male and female migrants from a Mexican
village in the United States in the late 1980s differed strongly in their
responses to whether they planned to return to Mexico on a relatively
permanent basis. In general, women looked much less favourably
than men on the idea of returning to live in Mexico. It could be that
women may not get a job on the formal labour market there, and that
womens housework in the Mexican countryside generally involves
more drudgery than it does in US cities. For men, however, rural
Mexico represents a place where tradition is adhered to and men can
be men through either work or leisure activities, while the United
States remains the place of work, proletarian and spatial discipline,
and diminished male authority (Goldring 1995).
On the community level in the country of origin the feedback ef-
fects can be conceptualised as virtuous and vicious cycles: In some
cases a virtuous cycle evolves because migration eases the pressure
on land and labour. Remittances enable subsistence. However, one
also has to consider that the dependence on harvests or crop price is
replaced by one on urban wages. Moreover, not only economically,
virtuous and vicious
cycles
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but also politically, this may strengthen the voice option. This is es-
pecially the case when members of groups opposing the political re-
gime in the country of origin move back and forth between the two
regions. Even political campaigning may take place in the country
of destination, e.g. Dominicans in New York City and Algerians in
France. Refugees in the country of destination may stay in contact
with political activists in the sending country. Sikh secessionists in
the United Kingdom and Kurdish activists in Germany constitute
clear-cut examples of this.
It is equally plausible that a vicious cycle evolves. When labour mi-
gration grows in importance, this works against economic and politi-
cal co-operation at the village level. Financially, external links might
become the most signicant and the nexus of social pressures and
economic imperatives that held a subsistence-oriented village together
could weaken. Here, new forms of solidarity and reciprocity may
arise as described by Thomas and Znaniecki (1918-20). If efforts to
build mutually benecial arrangements of exchange, reciprocity and
solidarity fail, however, social disorganisation may ensue that rules
out the mutuality and the shared poverty, replacing it with involu-
tion and mutual hostility. What Edward Baneld has termed amoral
familism in Southern Italy is perhaps the accumulation of migra-
tion feedback effects in a village that became economically marginal.
According to Baneld this effect has been produced by three factors
acting in unison: a high death rate and important for our context
certain land tenure conditions and the absence of the institution of
the extended family (Baneld 1958: 10).
The importance of change and stability
One hypothesis is: the stronger the commitment of migrants to so-
cial units in the country of origin (not only in terms of strength of
social ties weak and strong but also regarding the content reci-
procity and solidarity), the more likely it is that return migration of
successful migrants takes place. In turn, the higher the rate of this
kind of return migration, the greater the likelihood that positive eco-
nomic feedback effects occur.
To determine the rates of return, we have to ask to what degree
the goals of the actual movers could be fullled while living abroad
and whether a change in their preferences has taken place in the
course of their absence from the sending place. Firstly, high rates of
return migration may attest to the fact of the successful achievement
of some goals involved (e.g. transfer of remittances and skills). Or,
alternatively, it could be an indicator that the goals aspired to could
not be achieved, a sign of failure. Secondly, return may also indicate
goal attainment and
social ties
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thomas faist
the existence, maintenance and further development of social ties
that bind movers to those left behind, sometimes despite the strains
and changes created by international mobility. It would indeed be
unwarranted to assume that potential and actual movers can only
maintain social ties to either side, the sending or the receiving coun-
try. Therefore, it is feasible to assume that migrants use social capital
to retransfer various other forms of capital.
In an age of increasing international migration we can also ob-
serve that migrants not only cultivate social ties to the area of origin
but, simultaneously, also in the country of destination. At rst sight,
this is somewhat counterintuitive. There is a continuum regarding
social ties between temporary commuting and circulation, on the
one hand, and permanent emigration and immigration, on the other
hand. Commuting and circulation are terms that denote a great va-
riety of movement, usually short-term, repetitive or cyclical in na-
ture, but all having in common the lack of any declared intention
of a permanent or long-lasting change in residence. They imply few
breaks of links with the place of origin and little distance regarding
the political, economic and cultural sphere. At the other end of the
continuum, permanent emigration and thus immigration are more
likely to change signicantly the character of social ties and involve
greater economic, political and cultural distances. Regarding short-
term movements we would expect a higher degree of a sojourning
orientation (e.g. towards seasonal and cyclical movement) than in
the case of permanent settlement in the country of destination (Tilly
1978).
The intentions of migrants to stay are relatively clear-cut, if we dif-
ferentiate between those who intend to stay permanently and those
who come temporarily. However, there are labour migrants or refu-
gees who did not come to stay permanently, but eventually settle and
still indicate that they wish to return to their homeland. This phe-
nomenon has often been referred to as the illusion of return. In these
cases we must look not only at the social ties of migrants to persons
in the sending countries, but also at the symbolic ties, namely the
set of collective representations (e.g. religious symbols), memories,
forecasts and worldviews that migrants perceive to have in common
with those in the sending countries. The prevalence of symbolic ties,
a basis for cultural capital, is one important element in the explana-
tion of actual settlement and declared return.
In short, it is the differential strength and the content of social
and symbolic ties of movers to the place of origin as well as destina-
tion that can be used to classify different types of spatial mobility on
the domestic and international level across different administrative
illusion of return
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units such as nation-states. However, trans-national social spaces
suggest that even more permanent settlement in the receiving coun-
try does not necessarily imply a complete rupture of social ties and
other forms of linkages.
The existence of transnational social spaces attests to the ability of
movers creatively to pattern their occupational and personal expe-
rience. In this perspective it would often seem appropriate to talk
of transnational migrants instead of emigrants and immigrants. We
need to develop concepts that can not only be applied in either the
sending or the receiving regions but can also refer to emerging trans-
national social linkages, such as those between Algeria and France,
India and the United Kingdom, Turkey and Germany, and Mexico
and the Caribbean and the United States. Glick-Schiller and her as-
sociates give a vivid picture of social ties in transnational spaces:
Whether the transnational activity is sending the barbecue to Haiti,
dried fruits and fabric back home to Trinidad so these goods can be
prepared for a wedding in New York, or using the special tax status
of Balikbayan boxes to send expensive goods from the United States
to families back home in the Philippines, the constant and various
ows of such goods and activities have embedded within them re-
lationships between people. These social relations take on meaning
within the ow and fabric of daily life, as linkages between different
societies are maintained, renewed, and reconstituted in the context
of families, of institutions, of economic investments, business, and
nance and of political organizations and structures including na-
tion-states. (Glick-Schiller et al. 1992: 11)
Towards a meso-level in international migration
This analysis suggests that answers to pressing issues of international
migration can be found in supplementing the dominant micro- and
macro-sociological theories and including an explicit social relation-
al perspective. Conceptual meso-levels introduce a distinct layer of
analysis to the already rich empirical literature working on this level.
Ironically, the study that comes closest to the social relational con-
cepts advanced in this appraisal is the one that stood at the begin-
ning of the sociology of international movement, namely William
I. Thomass and Florian Znanieckis theoretical-empirical study on
The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. These authors have posed
the core questions of staying or moving and the feedback effects in
a way that also deserves much more attention than it has received
transnational
social spaces
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thomas faist
lately. Looking at moving and staying as both an interpersonal and
an intertemporal process, we can analyse rst-time moves, repeated
migration and return migration with the same conceptual tools.
Using these tools we come to realise not only that territorial exit is
one of several possible strategies to respond to declining or increas-
ing opportunities. In situ adjustment and change have to be consid-
ered as well. We also pay more attention to the importance of local
assets, high transaction costs for social capital and the difculties
involved in converting various forms of social capital because they
do not seem to be traded in a common currency. Also, the analysis
of transnational social spaces developing within migration systems
offers a way to study the transfer and retransfer of various forms of
capital.
Moreover, various forms of migration and economic mobility al-
ways have to be complemented by the possibility for voice. Sometimes
voice is directly or indirectly one of the immediate causes for moving,
as in the case of persecution. And even in the case of labour migrants
the feedback effects of migration on opportunities to express voice
can be important. For example, political activists move between and
within both the sending and receiving countries. The current con-
icts surrounding the political role of Islam in West European and
North American countries is a vivid case in point. One of the ques-
tions to be addressed is to what degree these conicts are transferred
from the sending to the receiving country, and to what extent these
politicisation processes are outcomes of migrant adjustment to new
centres of work and life.
Notes
1 The author would like to thank his collaborators in the Migration and
Development project for fruitful comments. Thanks also go to the au-
thors colleagues at the centre for Social Policy Research and at the Institute
for Intercultural and International Studies at the University of Bremen.
Moreover, various individuals contributed stimulating criticism that some-
times differs vigorously from the positions taken by the author: Hartmut
Esser, Jutta Gatter, Jrgen Gerdes, Hans-Joachim Hoffmann-Nowotny,
Stefan Leibfried, Bernhard Peters, Stefan Sandbrink, Charles Tilly,
Madeleine Tress and Carsten G. Ullrich.
2 Social capital is created when the relations between persons change in
ways that facilitate action (Coleman 1990: 304).
possibility for voice
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marge tekst
Conceiving and researching transnationalism
Steven Vertovec
Anthropologist Steven Vertovec played a crucial pioneering role in the de-
velopment of transnationalism studies in Europe. In this article published
in 1999 in a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies on transnational com-
munities, Vertovec reviews the literature on transnationalism and suggests
several themes to disentangle the term. He presents transnationalism suc-
cessively: as a social morphology, as a type of consciousness, as a mode of
cultural reproduction, as an avenue of capital, as a site of political action and
as a reconstruction of locality. This categorisation helped to renew the eld of
transnationalism studies, which was at the time slowly running out of breath
and imagination. Furthermore, Vertovec presents a very clear research agen-
da for his programme on transnational communities, sponsored by the UKs
Economic and Social Research Council. Today, this programme remains in-
tact as one of the major attempts to systematise research on transnational-
ism in Europe. It is also one of the more innovative initiatives in the area of
migration studies.
To the extent that any single -ism might arguably exist, most so-
cial scientists working in the eld may agree that transnationalism
broadly refers to multiple ties and interactions linking people or in-
stitutions across the borders of nation-states. Of course, there are
many historical precedents and parallels to such patterns (see, for in-
stance, Bamyeh 1993 as well as the introduction to this special issue).
Transnationalism (as long-distance networks) certainly preceded the
nation. Yet today these systems of ties, interactions, exchange and
mobility function intensively and in real time while being spread
throughout the world. New technologies, especially involving tele-
communications, serve to connect such networks with increasing
speed and efciency. Transnationalism describes a condition in
which, despite great distances and notwithstanding the presence of
international borders (and all the laws, regulations and national nar-
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steven vertovec
ratives they represent), certain kinds of relationships have been glob-
ally intensied and now take place paradoxically in a planet-spanning
yet common however virtual arena of activity (see among oth-
ers, Glick Schiller, Basch and Szanton-Blanc 1992; Castells 1996;
Hannerz 1996).
Transnationalism represents a topic of rapidly growing interest
witnessed in the proliferation of academic articles, university semi-
nars and conferences devoted to exploring its nature and contours.
While broadly remaining relevant to the description of transnation-
alism offered above, however, most of this burgeoning work refers
to quite variegated phenomena. We have seen increasing numbers of
studies on transnational... communities, capital ows, trade, citizen-
ship, corporations, inter-governmental agencies, non-governmental
organizations, politics, services, social movements, social networks,
families, migration circuits, identities, public spaces, public cultures.
These are obviously phenomena of very different natures, requiring
research and theorization on different scales and levels of abstrac-
tion. In the excited rush to address an interesting area of global ac-
tivity and theoretical development, there is not surprisingly much
conceptual muddling.
It is a useful exercise therefore to step back at this point in or-
der to review and sort out the expanding repertoire of ideas and ap-
proaches so as perhaps to gain a better view of what we are talking
about as transnationalism is variously discussed.
Transnationalism as...
In the Introduction to this special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies,
Alejandro Portes, Luis E. Guarnizo and Patricia Landolt (1999) rig-
orously describe the meaning of transnationalism as it pertains to a
signicant, and arguably new, category of contemporary migrants.
While others have approached migration by way of addressing trans-
nationalism, Portes, Guarnizo and Landolt emphasize that it is the
scale of intensity and simultaneity of current long-distance, cross-
border activities especially economic transactions which provide
the recently emergent, distinctive and, in some contexts, now nor-
mative social structures and activities which should merit the term
transnationalism. This is a compelling contribution to theory.
In a number of recent works on transnationalism (many of which
do not focus on migration) the characteristics of intensity and simul-
taneity are also, in different ways, offered as the terms hallmarks.
However, such works offer an often confusing array of perspec-
dening
transnationalism
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tives. Nevertheless, theory and research on transnationalism has
been grounded upon rather distinct conceptual premises, of which
six merit closer scrutiny. The different takes on the subject are, of
course, not exclusive; indeed, some rely on others. Nevertheless, the
meaning of transnationalism has been variously grounded upon argu-
ably distinct conceptual premises, of which six merit closer scrutiny.
1. Social morphology
The meaning of transnationalism which has perhaps been gaining
most attention among sociologists and anthropologists has to do with
a kind of social formation spanning borders. Ethnic diasporas what
Kachig Tllyan (1991, p. 5) has called the exemplary communities
of the transnational moment have become the paradigm in this
understanding of transnationalism. To be sure, diasporas embody
a variety of historical and contemporary conditions, characteristics,
trajectories and experiences (see Tllyan 1996, Cohen 1997, van
Hear 1998), and the meaning of the term diaspora itself has been
interpreted widely by contemporary observers (Vertovec 1999). One
of the hallmarks of diaspora as a social form is the triadic relation-
ship (Sheffer 1986; Safran 1991) between (a) globally dispersed yet
collectively self-identied ethnic groups, (b) the territorial states and
contexts where such groups reside, and (c) the homeland states and
contexts whence they or their forebears came.
Another feature central to the analysis of transnational social for-
mations are structures or systems of relationships best described as
networks. This is a handle on the phenomena in line with Manuel
Castells (1996) analysis of the current Information Age. The net-
works component parts connected by nodes and hubs are both
autonomous from, and dependent upon, its complex system of rela-
tionships. New technologies are at the heart of todays transnational
networks, according to Castells. The technologies do not altogether
create new social patterns but they certainly reinforce pre-existing
ones.
Dense and highly active networks spanning vast spaces are trans-
forming many kinds of social, cultural, economic and political rela-
tionships. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson (1992, p. 9) contend that
Something like a transnational public sphere has certainly rendered
any strictly bounded sense of community or locality obsolete. At the
same time, it has enabled the creation of forms of solidarity and iden-
tity that do not rest on an appropriation of space where contiguity
and face-to-face contact are paramount.
different
foundations
ethnic diasporas
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Furthermore, Frederic E. Wakeman (1988, p. 86) suggests that the
loosening of the bonds between people, wealth, and territories
which is concomitant with the rise of complex networks has altered
the basis of many signicant global interactions, while simultane-
ously calling into question the traditional denition of the state.
In these ways the dispersed diasporas of old have become todays
transnational communities sustained by a range of modes of social
organization, mobility and communication (see especially Guarnizo
and Smith 1998). The examples and discussions concerning trans-
nationalism and migration offered in the Introduction to this special
issue (Portes, Guarnizo and Landolt 1999) clearly contribute to this
perspective. In addition to the longstanding ethnic diasporas and
newer migrant populations which now function as transnational
communities, many illegal and violent social networks also operate
transnationally as well. For the United States Department of Defense,
transnationalism means terrorists, insurgents, opposing factions in
civil wars conducting operations outside their country of origin, and
members of criminal groups (Secretary of Defense 1996). These
kinds of cross-border activities involving such things as trafcking
in drugs, pornography, people, weapons, and nuclear material, as
well as in the laundering of the proceeds, themselves require trans-
national measures and structures to combat them (see, for instance,
Stares 1996; Williams and Savona 1996; Castells 1998).
2. Type of consciousness
Particularly in works concerning global diasporas (especially within
Cultural Studies) there is considerable discussion surrounding a
kind of diaspora consciousness marked by dual or multiple iden-
tications. Hence there are depictions of individuals awareness of
decentred attachments, of being simultaneously home away from
home, here and there or, for instance, British and something else.
While some migrants identify more with one society than the other,
write Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Basch and Cristina Szanton-Blanc
(1992, p. 11), the majority seem to maintain several identities that
link them simultaneously to more than one nation. Indeed, James
Clifford (1994, p. 322) nds, The empowering paradox of diaspora
is that dwelling here assumes a solidarity and connection there. But
there is not necessarily a single place or an exclusivist nation... [It is]
the connection (elsewhere) that makes a difference (here).
Of course, it is a common consciousness or bundle of experiences
which bind many people into the social forms or networks noted in
the section above. The awareness of multi-locality stimulates the de-
sire to connect oneself with others, both here and there who share
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the same routes and roots (see Gilroy 1987, 1993). For Stuart Hall
(1990), the condition of diaspora or transnationalism is comprised of
ever-changing representations that provide an imaginary coherence
for a set of malleable identities. Robin Cohen (1996, p. 516) develops
Halls point with the observation that
transnational bonds no longer have to be cemented by migration or
by exclusive territorial claims. In the age of cyberspace, a diaspora
can, to some degree, be held together or re-created through the mind,
through cultural artefacts and through a shared imagination.
A wealth of personal and collective meanings and perspectives may
subsequently be transformed, such that, as Donald M. Nonini and
Aihwa Ong (1997) describe, transnationalism presents us with new
subjectivities in the global arena.
Further aspects of diasporic consciousness are explored by Arjun
Appadurai and Carol Breckenridge (1989, p. i), who suggest that
whatever their form or trajectory, diasporas always leave a trail of col-
lective memory about another place and time and create new maps
of desire and of attachment. Yet these are often collective memories
whose archaeology is fractured (ibid). Compounding the awareness
of multi-locality, the fractured memories of diaspora consciousness
produce a multiplicity of histories, communities and selves a re-
fusal of xity often serving as a valuable resource for resisting repres-
sive local or global situations.
Finally, in addition to transformations of identity, memory,
awareness and other modes of consciousness, a new the transna-
tional imaginary (Wilson and Dissanayake 1996) can be observed
reshaping a multitude of forms of contemporary cultural production.
3. Mode of cultural reproduction
In one sense depicted as a shorthand for several processes of cultural
interpenetration and blending, transnationalism is often associated
with a uidity of constructed styles, social institutions and everyday
practices. These are often described in terms of syncretism, creoliza-
tion, bricolage, cultural translation and hybridity. Fashion, music,
lm and visual arts are some of the most conspicuous areas in which
such processes are observed. The production of hybrid cultural phe-
nomena manifesting new ethnicities (Hall 1991) is especially to
be found among transnational youth whose primary socialization
has taken place with the cross-currents of differing cultural elds.
Among such young people, facets of culture and identity are often
self-consciously selected, syncretized and elaborated from more than
one heritage.
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coherence
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An increasingly signicant channel for the ow of cultural phenom-
ena and the transformation of identity is through global media and
communications. Appadurai and Breckenridge (1989, p. iii) com-
ment that
Complex transnational ows of media images and messages perhaps
create the greatest disjunctures for diasporic populations, since in
the electronic media in particular, the politics of desire and imagina-
tion are always in contest with the politics of heritage and nostalgia.
Gayatri Spivak (1989, p. 276) describes the discourse of cultural
specicity and difference, packaged for transnational consumption
through global technologies, particularly through the medium of
microelectronic transnationalism represented by electronic bulletin
boards and the Internet.
Many other forms of globalized media are having considerable
impact on cultural reproduction among transnational communities
too, for example, diasporic literature (Chow 1993; King, Connell and
White 1995). Concerning television Kevin Robins (1998) describes
aspects of de-regulation affecting broadcasting regions that effect
the emergence of new cultural spaces necessitating a new global
media map. The expansion of satellite and cable networks has seen
the spread of channels targeting specic ethnic or religious diaspo-
ras, such as Med TV for Kurds, Zee TV for Indians, and Space TV
Systems for Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese and Koreans. Viewing
is not solely passive, and there are emerging multiple and complex
ways in which these media are consumed (see, for instance, Gillespie
1995, Morley and Robins 1995, Shohat and Stam 1996).
4. Avenue of capital
Many economists, sociologists and geographers have seen transna-
tional corporations [TNCs] as the major institutional form of trans-
national practices and the key to understanding globalization (see,
for instance, Sklair 1995). This is due not least to the sheer scale
of operations, since much of the worlds economic system is domi-
nated by the TNCs (Dicken 1992). TNCs represent globe-spanning
structures or networks that are presumed to have largely jettisoned
their national origins. Their systems of supply, production, market-
ing, investment, information transfer and management often create
the paths along which much of the worlds transnational activities
ow (cf. Castells 1996).
Alongside the TNCs, Leslie Sklair (1998) proposes that there has
arisen a transnational capitalist class comprised of TNC executives,
transnational
corporations
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globalizing state bureaucrats, politicians and professionals, and con-
sumerist elites in merchandizing and the media. Together, Sklair
claims, they constitute a new power elite whose interests are global,
rather than exclusively local or national, and who thereby control
most of the world economy.
In addition to the Big Players in the global economy, however, the
little players who comprise the bulk of transnational communities
are making an ever greater impact. The relatively small amounts of
money which migrants transfer as remittances to their places of ori-
gin now add up to at least $75 billion world-wide (Martin 1994). The
scale of this activity has soared over the past thirty years: in Algeria,
the value of remittances climbed from $178 million in 1970 to $993
million in 1993; in India from $80 million in 1970 to over $3 billion
in 1993; and in Egypt from $29 million in 1970 to nearly $5 billion
in 1993 (World Bank 1995).
Beyond what they mean to the families receiving them, for national
governments remittances represent the quickest and surest source
of foreign exchange. Indeed, a great number of national economies
today, such as the Philippines, Pakistan and many Latin American
states, absolutely depend on monetary transfers of many kinds from
nationals abroad. This fact has prompted many countries to develop
policies for the transnational reincorporation of nationals abroad
into the home market and polity (Guarnizo and Smith 1998). One
often cited case is India, which provides a range of favourable con-
ditions for non-resident Indians [NRIs] to use their foreign-honed
skills and capital to invest in, found or resuscitate Indian industries
(Lessinger 1992; ct. The Economist, 6 June 1998). Such policies have
impacts beyond the economic dimension. As Katharyne Mitchell
(1997b, p. 106) observes, the interest of the state in attracting the in-
vestments of wealthy transmigrants widens the possibilities for new
kinds of national narratives and understandings.
Resources do not just ow back to peoples country of origin but
to and fro and throughout the network. Robin Cohen (1997, p. 160)
describes part of this dynamic; anywhere within the web of a global
diaspora,
Traders place orders with cousins, siblings and kin back home;
nieces and nephews from the old country stay with uncles and
aunts while acquiring their education or vocational training; loans
are advanced and credit is extended to trusted intimates; and jobs
and economically advantageous marriages are found for family
members.
new global power
elite
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The strategy is often one of spreading assets (particularly if one of
the geographic contexts of activity at home or away is deemed
unstable for reasons of political turmoil, racism, legal bureaucracy,
shrinking labour market or simply bad business environment).
While many transnational communities have found themselves dis-
persed for reasons of forced migration (van Hear 1998), others have
largely spread themselves for economic reasons. Thus among the
Chinese diaspora, Nonini and Ong (1997, p. 4) state that it is im-
possible to understand such transnational phenomena unless strat-
egies of accumulation by Chinese under capitalism are examined,
for such strategies penetrate these phenomena and are in turn af-
fected by them. Yet while economic objectives may be catalyst to the
formation of transnational groupings, such activities give rise to a
host of others. Transnational activities are cumulative in character,
Alejandro Portes (1998, p. 14) notes, and while the original wave of
these activities may be economic and their initiators can be properly
labeled transnational entrepreneurs, subsequent activities encom-
pass political, social, and cultural pursuits as well.
5. Site of political engagement
[T]here is a new dialectic of global and local questions which do not
t into national politics, writes Ulrich Beck (1998, p. 29), and only
in a transnational framework can they be properly posed, debated
and resolved.
Such a transnational framework a global public space or forum
has been actualized largely through technology. Publishing and
communications technologies make possible rapid and far-reaching
forms of information dissemination, publicity and feedback, mobili-
zation of support, enhancement of public participation and political
organization, and lobbying of intergovernmental organizations (see
Alger 1997; Castells 1997). Certainly much needs to be done to real-
ize the full civic potential offered by these, yet a considerable amount
of political activity is now undertaken transnationally.
The most obvious and conventional forms of such activity are
represented by international non-governmental organizations
[INGOs], including the International Red Cross and various United
Nations agencies. Their number has been rapidly increasing and in
1993 INGOs totalled 4,830 (Kriesberg 1997). The transnational di-
mensions are reected in their ability to provide and distribute re-
sources (especially from constituent bodies in wealthy countries to
ones in poorer countries), facilitate complementary or cross-cutting
support in political campaigns, and provide safe havens abroad for
activities of resistance which are illegal or dangerous in home con-
transnational
activities
INGOs
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texts. However many INGOs, claims Louis Kriesberg (ibid), simply
reect the status quo of hierarchy and power. Transnational Social
Movement Organizations [TSMOs], on the other hand, are INGOs
that seek to change the status quo on a variety of levels. TSMOs, ac-
cording to Kriesberg (ibid, p. 12) work for progressive change in the
areas of the environment, human rights, and development as well as
for conservative goals like opposition to family planning or immigra-
tion. The issues which concern TSMOs themselves are transbound-
ary in character, and they draw upon a planetization of peoples
understandings (Cohen 1998). Citing information published in the
1993 Yearbook of International Organizations, Jackie Smith (1997) ob-
serves that among 631 TSMOs 27 percent are explicitly concerned
with human rights, 14 per cent with the environment, 10 per cent
with womens rights, 9 per cent with peace, 8 per cent world order/
multi-issue, 5 per cent with development, and 5 per cent self-deter-
mination/ethnic .
Transnational political activities are also undertaken by ethnic
diasporas. Robin Cohen (1995, p. 13) reasons that Awareness of their
precarious situation may also propel members of diasporas to ad-
vance legal and civic causes and to be active in human rights and so-
cial justice issues. Yet the nature of much diasporic politics is quite
contested. Katharyne Mitchell (1997a) deeply criticizes the assump-
tions of many postmodernist theorists (especially Homi Bhabha
1994) who contend that hybrid, diasporic third space standpoints
are inherently anti-essentialist and subversive of dominant hegemo-
nies of race and nation. Mary Kaldor (1996) points to the presence
of both cosmopolitan anti-nationalists and reactionary ethno-nation-
alists within diasporas. And Arjun Appadurai (1995, p. 220) writes
that among transnational communities
These new patriotisms are not just the extensions of nationalist
and counter-nationalist debates by other means, though there is cer-
tainly a good deal of prosthetic nationalism and politics by nostalgia
involved in the dealings of exiles with their erstwhile homelands.
They also involve various rather puzzling new forms of linkage be-
tween diasporic nationalisms, delocalized political communications
and revitalized political commitments at both ends of the diasporic
process.
The politics of homeland engage members of diasporas or trans-
national communities in a variety of ways. The relations between
immigrants, home-country politics and politicians have always been
dynamic, as Matthew Frye Jacobson (1995) and Nancy Foner (1997)
ethnic diasporas
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remind us with regard to the Irish, Italians, Poles and Jews in turn-
of-the-century America. Yet now expanded activities and intensied
links are creating, in many respects, deterritorialized nation-states
(Basch, Glick Schiller and Szanton-Blanc 1994). Political parties now
often establish ofces abroad in order to canvass immigrants, while
immigrants themselves organize to lobby the home government.
Increasingly, emigrants are able to maintain or gain access to health
and welfare benets, property rights, voting rights, or citizenship in
more than one country (around half the worlds countries recognize
dual citizenship or dual nationality; see Traces world news digest
No.1 on the Transnational Communities Programme website, URL
address below). Other forms of recognition have developed as well.
For instance, in Haiti, a country that is politically divided into nine
departments or states, during President Aristides regime overseas
Haitians were recognized as the Tenth Department complete with
its own ministry (Basch, Glick Schiller and Szanton-Blanc 1994).
And in one of the strangest cases of transnational politics, the gov-
ernment of El Salvador has provided free legal assistance to political
refugees (eeing their own regime!) in the United States so that they
may obtain asylum and remain there, remitting some $1 billion an-
nually (Mahler 1998).
6. (Re)construction of place or locality
Practices and meanings derived from specic geographical and his-
torical points of origin have always been transferred and regrounded.
Today, a high degree of human mobility, telecommunications, lms,
video and satellite TV, and the Internet have contributed to the cre-
ation of translocal understandings. Yet nevertheless, these are an-
chored in places, with a variety of legal, political and cultural rami-
cations, not only for the practices and meanings, but for the places as
well (cf. Kearney 1995; Hannerz 1996).
Some analysts have proposed that transnationalism has changed
peoples relations to space particularly by creating social elds that
connect and position some actors in more than one country (Glick
Schiller, Basch and Szanton-Blanc 1992; Castells 1996; Goldring
1998). Appadurai (1995, p. 213) discerns that many people face in-
creasing difculties of relating to, or indeed producing, locality
(as a structure of feeling, a property of life and an ideology of situ-
ated community). This, he reckons, is due not least to a condition
of transnationalism which is characterized by, among other things,
the growing disjuncture between territory, subjectivity and collective
social movement and by the steady erosion of the relationship, prin-
cipally due to the force and form of electronic mediation, between
social elds
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spatial and virtual neighbourhoods. There have emerged, instead,
new translocalities (Appadurai 1995; Goldring 1998; Smith 1998).
Researching transnationalism
The subject of transnationalism is receiving ever greater attention
through a range of approaches and disciplines. Nonini and Ong
(1997, p. 13), however, are critical of the creeping dilution of research
by a cultural studies approach that treats transnationalism as a set
of abstracted, dematerialized cultural ows, giving scant attention
either to the concrete, everyday changes in peoples lives or to the
structural reconguration that accompany global capitalism (cf.
Mitchell 1997a,b).
While there is certainly much to be learned about the construc-
tion and management of meaning offered by cultural studies, there
is immediate need for more, in-depth and comparative empirical
studies of transnational human mobility, communication, social ties,
channels and ows of money, commodities, information and images
as well as how these phenomena are made use of. In addition to
helping us to understand the rapid forms of change (and their his-
torical antecedents) which transnationalism represents, more social
scientic studies will help us to recognize how and why, as Nancy
Foner (1997, p. 23) puts it, some groups [and places] are likely to be
more transnational than others and we need research that explores
and explains the differences. Within immigrant groups, there is also
variation in the frequency, depth and range of transnational ties.
Luis Eduardo Guarnizo and Michael Peter Smith (1998) outline
some serious shortcomings in contemporary theorization of transna-
tionalism. Perhaps foremost among these is the question of the ap-
propriate level of analysis and the connection between scales. In the
introduction to this special issue, Alejandro Portes, Luis E. Guarnizo
and Patricia Landolt (1999) have addressed these issues and made
signicant strides in establishing, delimiting, analytically dening
and typologizing transnational phenomena.
George E. Marcus (1995) has provided a useful methodological
outline of multi-sited ethnography essential to the study of transna-
tionalism. Such research involves tracing a cultural formation across
and within multiple sites of activity (ibid, p. 96) by way of methods
designed around chains, paths, threads, conjunctions, or juxtaposi-
tions of locations (ibid, p. 105). Marcus advocates approaches which
either follow the... people (especially migrants), the thing (com-
modities, gifts, money, works of art, and intellectual property), the
shortcomings in
transnationalism
theories
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metaphor (including signs and symbols or images), the plot, story or
allegory (narratives of everyday experience or memory), the life or bio-
graphy (of exemplary individuals), or the conict (issues contested in
public space).
While broadly concurring with the advantages of such a meth-
odology, Ulf Hannerz (1998) adds that the research may need to
be not merely multilocal but also translocal... Serious effort must
thus be devoted to an adequate conceptualization and description
of the translocal linkages, and the interconnections between these
and the localized social trafc. Hannerz (ibid) also sees the need
for collaborative, multidisciplinary teamwork among colleagues in
a variety of locations, themselves supported by the new information
and telecommunications technologies. Following and drawing upon
all these approaches and insights, a major new multidisciplinary re-
search programme has been developed with the aim of advancing
both our empirical knowledge and theoretical understanding of con-
temporary forms of transnationalism.
ESRC research programme on transnational communities
In 1997 the Economic and Social Research Council of Great Britain
[ESRC] launched a 3.8 million ($7 million) research programme
on the subject of Transnational Communities. Following a national
call for projects, some 170 proposals were received. Together with
a Selection Committee comprised of fourteen academics and non-
academics, over 250 peer referees contributed towards the nal
choice of projects to be funded. Nineteen projects have been com-
missioned, some within a single discipline, but most linking several.
While the programmes Directorship is based at Oxford University,
the projects themselves are managed from a variety of British universi-
ties with multi-site research to be undertaken throughout the world.
The programme projects will be linked by common methodologi-
cal concerns surrounding the formation and maintenance of com-
munity based especially on social, economic and political networks,
the construction and expression of identity focused on the refashion-
ing of cultural forms and symbols, and the reproduction or contesta-
tion of social relations including issues of gender and power. The
projects are grouped under four themes (which coincidentally paral-
lel themes proposed in the introduction to this special issue):
four project themes
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1. New approaches to migration
Comparative Diasporas commissioned studies within this theme
look at notions of incorporation within the Armenian diaspora,
Hungarians of Hungarys periphery, Soviet Jews and Aussiedler
(returned ethnic Germans ) in Germany;
Transversal Migration projects here concern the social and cul-
tural communities of seafarers and the expansion of transnational
Chinese migration circuits;
Refugees and Asylum-Seekers comprised of comparative research
on the role of exiles in post-conict reconstruction in Eritrea and
Bosnia;
2. Economics
Global Economic Networks a theme representing a core area of
the programme, including a study of the Russian diaspora and
post-Soviet economic restructuring, research on British experts in
global nancial centres, an examination of Chinese global entre-
preneurship with special reference to Southeast Asia, plus a study
of production and marketing strategies surrounding commodity
ows between India and Britain;
Transnational Corporations [TNCs] focused on a study of
Japanese and Korean corporations and their managers in Britain;
Transnational Household Strategies work assessing the impact
of legal status and children on the strategies of female migrant
domestic workers in Britain, plus research on remittance patterns
among Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in Britain;
3. Politics
Global Political Networks includes research on Turkish political
networks in Europe and on the indigenous peoples movement
and its localization in Ecuador and Bolivia;
City, Region, National and Supra-National Policies consisting of
a comparative study of dual citizenship strategies, of the state and
of immigrants, in Canada, Germany and Britain;
Gender, Communities and Power addressed by a project examin-
ing gendered aspects of British and Singaporian transmigration
to China;
4. Society and culture
Social Forms and Institutions concentrating on a set of three
interlinked projects concerning culture ows in societies of the
Arab Gulf;
Cultural Reproduction and Consumption addressed by two teams,
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one concerned with literature and lm within a variety of diaspo-
ras, the other with the place of broadcast media among Turks in
Europe;
Transnational Religious Communities devoted to a multi-sited
study of a prominent Su Muslim movement.
While conducted independently, the projects will gain a kind of syn-
ergy through their coordination as a programme.
The programme does not exist solely for the projects, however.
Other facets include: a weekly seminar series; an annual conference,
each year devoted to one of the programmes key themes; workshops
organized within Britain and abroad focusing on a variety of issues
and bringing together academics and non-academics. A Working
Paper series including papers by such distinguished writers as
Alejandro Portes (1998), Zygmunt Baumann (1998) and Stephen
Castles (1998) has been established in both hardcopy and internet-
downloadable formats. The Transnational Communities programme
will also be supporting a newsletter, world news digest, and three
book series. Information on the projects and all other aspects of
the research programme can be found on the ESRC Transnational
Communities Programme website (http://www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk).
Although invoked with a variety of meanings, transnationalism
provides an umbrella concept for some of the most globally transfor-
mative processes and developments of our time. The terms multi-
vocality may actually prove to be advantageous: as Alejandro Portes
(1998, p. 2) points out, the concept may actually perform double
duty as part of the theoretical arsenal with which we approach the
world system structures, but also as an element in a less developed
enterprise, namely the analysis of the everyday networks and pat-
terns of social relationships that emerge in and around those struc-
tures. The ESRC Transnational Communities Programme, working
in conjunction with parallel projects and programmes in Europe,
North America and the Asia-Pacic will add signicant new data and
analyses to test some of transnationalisms more speculative concep-
tualizations.
transnationalism as
an umbrella concept
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Towards a new map of European migration
Russell King
Geographer Russell Kings work on migration is best described by two key
words: interdisciplinarity and innovation. In this article on European mi-
gration, rst published in 2002 by the International Journal of Population
Geography, King seeks to advance the knowledge on migration by system-
atically questioning what he calls the old dichotomies of migration studies:
international versus internal, forced versus voluntary, temporary versus per-
manent, legal versus illegal. In the new European age of migration, these
binary distinctions are increasingly blurred. The motivations and modalities
of migrations are much more diverse than in the past. It is therefore useful to
explore relatively new patterns of migration, such as retirement migration or
the hybrid concept of tourism-migration. To do so, King invites us to develop
an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to human spatial mobility
and therefore to stretch the frontiers of migration research in a groundbreak-
ing way.
Introduction
Established forms of international migration which have historically
been very important (nineteenth-century settler migrations from
Europe to the Americas, post-war guest-worker migration from the
Mediterranean to northwest Europe, refugee migrations post-World
Wars) have for too long now shaped our thinking about how migra-
tion is conceptualised and theorised.
1
These migrations, and their
conceptual codication by writers ranging in time from Ravenstein
(1885, 1889) to Sjaastad (1962), Lee (1966), Harris and Todaro (1970)
and White and Woods (1980), have led to the assumption, or at least
the inference, that all migrants are poor and uneducated. This as-
sumption, when applied to European (and other) migrations today,
leads to false characterisations: for instance, to the notion that the es-
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sence of a denition of a migrant is someone who is poor, uprooted,
marginal and desperate; or to the automatic assumption that all mi-
grants from, say, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Senegal or Albania are
uneducated and therefore somehow socially inferior to the members
of the host societies with whom they interact.
2

We therefore need to appreciate that many of the key questions
that were frequently asked in order to frame our understanding of
the functioning of migration as a historically ubiquitous social pro-
cess (Why does migration take place? Who migrates? What are the
spatial and temporal patterns of ows? What are the effects of mi-
gration on the places of origin and destination and on the migrants
themselves?) now have a different array of answers than the mainly
economic and political ones which shaped our earlier analyses. Even
where economic rationales remain paramount, new mobility strate-
gies are deployed to achieve the economic (and other) objectives.
In this paper I attempt to offer an overview of some new geogra-
phies and typologies of international migration in Europe. My analy-
sis will not be a rigorous mapping of the new ows, but rather a qual-
itative, even intuitive, exploration of a range of new, and not-so-new,
types of migration and mobility. These relatively new forms of mi-
gration derive from new motivations at both macro- and micro-level
(the retreat from those Fordist-type migrations which were linked to
mass production, and from an individual desire to see migration as
a route to a stable industrial job), new spacetime exibilities, various
new globalisation forces and new international divisions of labour,
and changing views of consumption and self-realisation. Amongst
these changes in migration types, patterns and motivations, there are
important implications for dening and studying migration which
tend to blur further the never-straightforward boundary between mi-
gration and mobility, and to melt away some of the traditional di-
chotomies which have shaped the study of migration in the past. I
propose to deal with some of these conceptual and methodological
questions rst, and then turn to the new geographies and typologies
of migration in Europe.
Towards a more integrated approach to migration studies
Despite a long history of scholarly study into the eld, today migra-
tion still tends to remain a dichotomised and fragmented area of en-
quiry.
More than 30 years ago the sociologist Clifford Jansen (1969: 60)
wrote that migration is a problem of many disciplines: it is essen-
new geographies of
migration
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tially geographical, involving human movement across space, inu-
encing and changing the environments of both the places of arrival
and of departure; it is demographic, since it affects the structures of
the populations at both origin and destination; it is economic to the
extent that many shifts in population (especially of workers) are due
to economic imbalances between areas; it may be a political problem,
where states feel the need to control or restrict departure or entry of
international migrants and refugees; it involves social psychology inas-
much as migrants motives for leaving and their problems of adapt-
ing to the new host society have to be studied; and it is a sociological
phenomenon since the social structure and cultural systems, again
both in the places of origin and arrival, are affected by migration, and
in turn affect the migrant.
Anthropologists might feel offended at being left out of the above
list, but to some extent their elds of enquiry have been subsumed by
Jansen under his denition of migration as a sociological phenom-
enon; nevertheless, the important recent research by anthropologists
on a wide range of migration-related issues to do with culture, iden-
tity, transnationalism and gender deserves more prominent mention
here (even if nearly all of it post-dates Jansens overview). And the
above list is by no means exhaustive, given the interest shown in mi-
gration studies by historians, lawyers and human rights specialists,
social policy analysts, philosophers, literary and media scholars and
others. As the map of learning constantly evolves, so fresh perspec-
tives are opened up; in recent years, for instance, migration has come
to be seen as a crucial element in cultural studies.
The need, therefore, is for an interdisciplinary (rather than a
cross-disciplinary or a multidisciplinary) synthesis which brings to-
gether and integrates a range of perspectives, frameworks, theoretical
stances and methodologies in order to study migration (or the vari-
ous forms of migration) in a manner which is holistic (embedding
migration in its social context) and which recognises its multifaceted
diversity. This sounds like a challenging agenda, but it can be (and is
being) achieved.
3
Too often, on the other hand, does one read papers
which attempt to model or explain migrant behaviour by reference
to economic or psychological variables which seem to have scant
linkage with the reality of the migrant experience in the specic con-
text in which they are being studied; too often are the economic data
upon which some analyses are built insufciently scrutinised (if they
are questioned at all) for the accuracy and relevance of the sources.
Too often, also, does one come across qualitative research which has
insufcient claim to rigour or representativeness; the insights might
be valid for the group studied, but often the reaction is so what?
interdisciplinary
study of migration
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russell king
The results generated by a given micro-scale study may be very differ-
ent from those of similar groups studied elsewhere, but comparative
analysis necessary for migration studies to reach a mature stage as
a unidisciplinary or postdisciplinary branch of the social sciences
and humanities is too often lacking.
The interdisciplinary study of migration is only achieved over
time: by studying migration assiduously in different contexts, by
having beneted from an interdisciplinary formation (something
not easy to achieve within the UK university system), and by wide
reading and engagement with migration scholars from different
disciplinary and interdisciplinary backgrounds. The objective is to
overcome single-discipline narrowness for instance, by exposing
the lack of reality and humanity in many econometric studies or by
critiqueing the myopia of folkloric studies carried out in some tiny
corner of the world and also to be open-minded towards the nu-
merous ideological paradigms which often underlie discipline-based
studies (neo-classical economics, Marxist sociology, systems theory
in its various forms, theories of transnational identity or hybridity,
etc.). Further barriers to a holistic, synthesising study of migration
are posed by the division of the migration process into its many
fragmented component stages (departure, arrival, return) and by the
hegemonic role of national models and discourses of immigration
and ethnicity (assimilation, integration, multiculturalism, ius sangui-
nis, etc.). In short, disciplinary and paradigmatic closure are the en-
emy of an effective, sympathetic study of human migration (Castles,
2000: 15-25).
Deconstructing the binaries of migration
New forms of mobility and migration, and new integrated ways of
studying these mobilities, also imply a reappraisal of the longstand-
ing heuristic divides within the eld of migration study. As will be-
come more specically apparent later on, we need to deconstruct tra-
ditional migration dichotomies or migration dyads as Cohen (1995:
6) calls them. Whilst these binaries perhaps continue to have some
use for the beginner to construct a mental map of the eld of migra-
tion studies, they are less solid devices for understanding migratory
phenomena in Europe in the late twentieth and early twenty-rst
centuries. What are these dichotomies? I would list the following.
barrieres to
interdisciplinarity
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Process and product
The eld of migration studies consists of two rather distinct branches
and, hence, two rather separate literatures: the study of the actual act
of migration as movement across space (often undertaken by geogra-
phers and economists); and the study of the ethnic communities and
diasporas that are the product of migration (analyses of integration,
ethnic relations, cultural characteristics, etc.). Although these two
subelds of migration studies are analytically distinct, the linkages
between them have been insufciently explored. Now this is begin-
ning to be rectied by longitudinal or life-history approaches that
trace the migrant from origin to destination (and, where relevant,
back again), linking pre- with post-migration characteristics, some-
times across more than one generation, and often employing a social
networks approach. According to Castles, this dynamic whole, which
encompasses all aspects of the lived reality of migrants:
may be referred to as the migratory process, a term which underlines
that migration is not a single event (i.e. the crossing of a border) but a
life-long process which affects all aspects of a migrants existence, as
well as the lives of non-migrants and communities in both sending
and receiving countries. (Castles, 2000: 15-16)
One might also add that migration inuences the lives of other mi-
grants in the destinations. The study of transnational communities,
for many scholars the new migration paradigm of the last half-dozen
years, affords an integration of patterns of movement within the es-
tablishment, maintenance and evolution of migrant communities in
two or more countries (Glick Schiller et al., 1995; Portes et al., 1999;
Pries, 1999; Faist, 2000).
Internal versus international migration
We have another primary distinction between studies of internal and
those of international migration. Again, rather separate literatures
have evolved, with somewhat different conceptual frameworks and
models.
4
Only very recently has research begun to link the two scales:
searching for common conceptual models; noting how internal mi-
gration is often sequenced or interleaved with international migra-
tion; examining how international migrants and ethnic minorities
are mobile within the host countries; and realising that, as nation-
states become less important, so the distinction between internal and
international mobility becomes blurred. This is obviously the case
within the European Union, and has particular meaning for third-
country nationals for whom different types of European boundaries
the migratory
process and the
product of migration
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(e.g. within and outside Schengenland) present different (im)per-
meabilities for their movement and access to rights.
Studies of migration that focus on the household or family have
often noted how, within such a unit, different individuals migrate in
different ways to different destinations, both internal and interna-
tional. Often such a division of labour in migration may be gendered,
with a difference between men and women as to who goes abroad
and who migrates internally.
Another blurring of the difference between internal and inter-
national migration occurs when international borders change. The
breakup of Yugoslavia or the former Soviet Union, or the unication
of Germany, are examples of signicant international frontier shifts
which affect migration status, in effect turning internal migrants
into international movers, and vice versa. This raises an interesting
question: are there internal migrants who are destined to become in-
ternational migrants at some stage in the future, not through actual
movement but through some hitherto unforeseen political event?
Voluntary versus forced migration
There is a commonly-used distinction between voluntary and forced
migration. This is the dichotomy used to structure Aaron Segals
Atlas of International Migration, for instance, together with a third
part on diasporas (Segal, 1993). Whilst it is easy to think of migrations
which are unequivocally forced (slave migrations, or migrations of
ethnic cleansing or of religious persecution), as well as those which
are unequivocally voluntary (such as Northern European retirement
migrants who settle on the Costa del Sol), in practice many migra-
tions are not so easily categorised. Is a young Filipina woman sent
by her family to work as a domestic helper in Rome or Madrid a vol-
untary or a forced migrant? Segal classies Asian indentured migra-
tion as voluntary a highly dubious categorisation. Clearly there is a
complex continuum of coercion and free-will in migration decisions,
as some later examples will testify.
Such a continuum might contain the following stages:
Migrants of free will, who choose to migrate to satisfy largely
non-economic life-choice ambitions for a better education, or to
retire to a pleasant scenic or climatic environment.
Migrants who are encouraged or pushed to migrate by life cir-
cumstances, such as economic migrants seeking to avoid un-
employment and very low incomes by seeking better-paid jobs
abroad.
Migrants who are more or less compelled to migrate by circum-
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stances which are largely beyond their control extreme poverty,
famine, environmental crisis, political chaos, inter-ethnic ten-
sion, etc.
People who are forced to migrate by others and who therefore
have no control over their decision to move slave migrations,
refugees eeing to save their lives, extradition, abduction, forced
repatriation, or children taken abroad by their parents.
However, even between these four types there are blurred boundar-
ies between the migration forces of free-will, encouragement, virtu-
al compulsion and force exerted by violence or threat. Moreover, both
forced and voluntary migrants can use similar means of migration
(e.g. clandestine border crossing by smugglers) and can have similar
impacts on destination areas.
Temporary versus permanent migration
Next, we can make a basic distinction between temporary migra-
tion (followed by return) and permanent migration (where there is
no return).
5
This seems a simple enough distinction, but often the
intention (to emigrate for good, or to return sooner or later) is quite
different from the outcome. Also, there are different degrees of tem-
porariness: one year, ve, twenty. Return migrants to Greece are
dened by the Greek government as those who have lived abroad
for at least one year and been resident back in Greece for at least a
year, whereas return studies of the Mexico-US labour migration are
based on the notion of return to Mexico after settlement, this be-
ing dened as three years continuous residence in the United States
(Massey et al., 1987: 310; King, 2000: 9). But the time-space con-
tinuum of migration/ mobility is truly continuous; threshold levels
are arbitrary tools for statistical measurement (and perhaps too for
policy), but they can obscure more than they reveal. For migrants
they can have real signicance as they trigger residency, citizenship
or other rights. Seasonal and shuttle migration of a to-and-fro kind
(weekly, monthly, occasional) must also t into the continuum, blur-
ring the distinction between migration and other forms of spatial
mobility which, although they may not be regarded as convention-
al migration, nevertheless carry similar sorts of motivation (for in-
stance, economic) and intentionality.
Psychologically, many longer-term migrants are torn between
the desire to return and the desire (or need) to stay: the myth of re-
turn (Anwar, 1979) is just one way of expressing this ambivalence.
Another is the notion of being a migrant becoming a permanent
state of mind: a true home doesnt exist any more. Perhaps we can
the myth of return
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russell king
call this a state of migrancy (Chambers, 1994). The construction
of transnational communities can be seen as another expression of
this condition of being neither (or both) here and there, with the
migrant moving back and forth across and within this transnational
social and cultural space. For yet others, the true return can never
take place, for home is another time, another place held in the
memory by nostalgia but not recoverable because of changes which
have occurred in the meantime.
Legal and illegal migration
Reecting the renewed globalisation of migration over the last 20
years, and the increasing perception in some quarters of migra-
tion as a crisis and unwanted (hence the growing discourse of
migration control), we can distinguish between legal and illegal mi-
gration. Whilst this may be an easy distinction to defend in strictly
legal terms, once again the dichotomy fails to match many aspects of
contemporary migratory reality. Many are unhappy with the term il-
legal and prefer terms such as irregular or undocumented. There
are many ways of interpreting the growth of illegal movement. For
some it represents the growing undesirability of mass migrations
and the need to control and manage migration in the face of appar-
ently increasing pressures for people to migrate. For others it is al-
most the reverse a reection of the fact that the natural forces
of migration will always overcome regimes of control and contain-
ment. Hence, is it something to be repressed or a phenomenon to
be creatively managed? Moreover, the boundary between legality
and illegality is easily crossed. An amnesty or a regularisation law
may transform illegal into legal immigrants virtually overnight. Or
an apparently unproblematic legal migrant may suddenly become
illegal the moment he or she becomes unemployed, is suspected of
a petty crime, or fails to renew the permit to stay. Furthermore, a
legal migrant may work in the illegal (or informal) economy; or an
illegal migrant may work without hindrance in the legal or formal
economy. And who denes a migrant as an illegal? The country of
origin, of destination, of transit, or some international organisation?
Blurring the distinction
To sum up this part of the discussion, the multiplicity and variety of
types of migration and movement observable today blur the distinc-
tion between the migratory dyads, turning them into continua and
mixing them up into new matrices and combinations rather than
preserving them as readily identiable polar types. The old certain-
ties if ever they were certainties disappear. How voluntary is
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voluntary migration? How temporary is temporary? What is meant,
exactly, by illegal migration? How is movement within the EUs
Schengenland to be dened: as internal or international migration?
For individuals who are frequently on the move, circulating between
two or more countries, according to xed or irregular rhythms and
circuits, are they engaging in true migration? Or is this some other
kind of spatial mobility?
Finally, I address the wider question: is migration the exception or
the norm? On a world scale, about 150 million people are reckoned
to be international migrants, less than 3% of the worlds population
(International Organization for Migration, 2000: 5). On the other
hand, in Europe (and other parts of the more developed world), only
a minority of people are born, live their lives, and die in the same
community or settlement; some kind of migration inevitably takes
place. I wonder how many of you, reading this paper, have never
engaged in some kind of migration. We should also remember that
there are many people and cultures in the world whose very existence
is based on migration or on a history of migration: nomads, transhu-
man shepherds, Roma, international business executives, and so on.
So are migrants therefore still to be regarded as the others who are
different from us? Or is it the case that all of us are, in some way or
another, migrants or the product of migration? Is it not the case that
migrants are the perfect exemplars of the post-modern condition?
And if so, does this not bring migration studies from the fringes of
the social sciences and the study of humanity in to its very core? The
postmodernist emphasis on permeability of borders, connectivities
and identities lends itself by nature to the study of migration; and the
study of migration, in response, shifts its focus to a new emphasis on
culture, subjectivity and identity, reecting the general cultural turn
in the social sciences in the past couple of decades (Cohen, 1995: 8).
New motivations and settings for migration
At a more concrete level, new connectivities, new space-time ex-
ibilities, and the embedding of migration/mobility within the forc-
es of globalisation, have served to blur the correlative conception
of migration as a measurable spatio-temporal phenomenon (i.e. a
movement across a threshold distance for a specied threshold of
time). New mobilities have emerged which confound the conven-
tional divide between migration on the one hand and other forms
of human spatial mobility on the other travel, tourism, circulation,
commuting. Globalisation and the post-1989 New World Order cre-
globalisation
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russell king
ate new geographies of movement into and around Europe from
new globe-spanning migrations which have no historical precedent,
to local-scale cross-border dynamics where none existed for half a
century before.
The motivations, too, have fundamentally changed. Under the
earlier migration epochs of European transatlantic settlement and
postwar European labour migration, linked to the relatively xed
parameters of the respective productive regimes of colonialism and
Fordism, the migration variables were more or less certain the
destination, the type of job, the level of pay, the means of transport,
the likelihood of stay or return. Now migrants motives, and the out-
comes of their actions, are far more diverse, as are their geographi-
cal origins, destinations, routes and modes of travel. As Fortress
Europe imposes its own logic of migration control, new migration
processes and patterns open up, driven by new market dynamics.
Migration has become a new global business with a constantly shift-
ing set of agents, mechanisms, routes, prices and niches. Very differ-
ent from the Fordist labour migration system of Europe in the 1960s
and early 1970s, the new migration regimes of the 1980s and 1990s
were based on fast-evolving European and global conditions: the
escalation of push pressures from the global South, the new-found
economic prosperity of southern Europe (combined with ease of en-
try), and the removal of the Iron Curtain as a barrier to emigration
(only for it to be partly replaced by a West European set of barriers
to immigration including a new Fortress Europe frontier along the
border of the former Soviet Union). Episodic migrations of crisis and
ight from political turmoil and environmental catastrophe add to
the cocktail of new migration factors.
Consistent with the post-Fordist privatisation of migration and
with the creation of a kind of migration plc come other market con-
cepts: growth in the number of agents, intermediaries, trafckers,
and a pricing structure for each route, each origin nationality and
each destination country. Within this new privatised, semi-illegal
international migration regime, some migrants set off with no par-
ticular destination country in mind: they go where the agents and
smugglers take them, or abandon them. Others are able quite explic-
itly to shop for opportunities and destinations, measuring the costs
and benets of risk, insecurity, quality of life, anticipated income,
cultural (un)familiarity, and existence of social and kin contacts.
6

These types of migrant, described above, are still largely to be
characterised as economic migrants although they do differ from
the classic labour migrant type where recruitment is managed by
the host country. Another difference is the diverse educational, skill
privatised
international
migration regime
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and status levels of recent immigrants to Europe, whether they come
from (say) Morocco, Kurdish areas of Iraq or Bangladesh. Many are
highly educated and some have considerable professional experi-
ence, but the opportunities available to them are severely restricted
to the low-status jobs rejected by West European nationals. Rhode
(1993) has described this phenomenon as brain waste; highly edu-
cated migrants and refugees are attracted to menial jobs in Europe
because the pay they get, even for cleaning houses or selling newspa-
pers at street corners, is much higher than pursuing a professional
career in their home countries where jobs are often extremely scarce
and incomes very low and unreliable.
Yet, perhaps reecting their more educated background and their
possession of a kind of anticipatory socialisation into West European
culture by their consumption of global media and images of Western
lifestyles, their motives are not necessarily purely economic. For
many of these migrants, moving to Europe, by whatever means (and
often the price is very high), is part of a dream of self-realisation.
Their migration may be a gesture of escape, an adventure, a rite of
passage (King, 1996). Shuttleworth and Kockel (1990), in their study
of young Irish emigrants, have described this type of emigration as
emigration as walkabout. Hence to the traditional economic motiva-
tion of labour migration we add other rationales: excitement, experi-
ence, leisure, seeing the world. Migration itself becomes a desirable
act rather than an economic means to an end: a consumption good
rather than a strategy which satises the production needs of another
countrys economy or the private survival needs of an individual mi-
grant; and the projection of an individuals identicatory experience
beyond what are perceived as the restricting connes of his or her
own country.
New European migrations: some examples
To list fully all new forms of migration affecting Europe is beyond
the scope of this paper, quite apart from the issue of what is new
and what is not. What I have tried to do in the preceding sections of
the paper is to set out some of the new contexts for recent migratory
phenomena and to link these to the need for changing approaches
to how we dene and study migration/mobility. Let us now be more
specic and examine a selection of new migration types and ows in
Europe. The following is by no means an exhaustive list and is sub-
ject to the caveats drawn above. The list extends and elaborates some
of the types identied by Cohen (1997) and its time-frame is roughly
self-realisation
motives
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the last 15 years, since the European migrations of Fordism, fam-
ily reunion and post-Fordist economic restructuring (King, 1993a;
Blotevogel and King, 1996; Koser and Lutz, 1998).
Migrations of crisis: refugee, irregular and illegal migrations
One of the main features of the global and European map of migra-
tion since the mid-1980s has been the strong growth in refugee mi-
grations, especially in respect of people who do not satisfy the 1951
UN convention denition of a well-founded fear of persecution on
account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular
social group, or political opinion, and who are thus condemned to
remain asylum-seekers or displaced persons. The UN denition of
refugees is being rendered out-of-date by political, religious, ethnic
and environmental crises. At the same time, there has been a sharp
increase in the phenomenon of illegal or irregular migration. An
estimated 500,000 foreigners entered the EU clandestinely in 2000,
ve times the number estimated to have entered in 1994 (Ratnesar,
2001). Of course, such estimates must be regarded as highly approxi-
mate given the obvious problems of measuring clandestine migra-
tion, but few would dispute the general trend to a marked increase.
This has happened in response to strong push factors operating from
the countries of origin, and in the context of increasingly harsh re-
gimes of immigration control imposed by West European states, in-
cluding stricter criteria and more rigid and mechanistic processing
of asylum-seekers claims for refugee status. Two main mechanisms
of irregular migration can be recognised: deliberate illegal entry
(forged documents, landing on remote southern European coasts,
crossing poorly guarded borders, etc.); and legal entry (e.g. on a tour-
ist visa) followed by overstaying. Increasing evidence exists for the
orchestration of illegal entry by semi-criminal organisations ma-
a groups, trafckers and agents at various points in key smuggling
routes. Laczko and Thompson (2000) and Salt (2000) have provided
useful overviews of human smuggling and migrant trafcking in
Europe, including conceptual issues, bibliographic surveys and sta-
tistical estimates.
Crisis-driven migrations affecting Europe as a destination can oc-
cur in any part of the world. Since 1990 they have emanated from
the Gulf War, the persecution of Kurdish populations in Turkey and
Iraq, war and famine in various parts of Africa, and the break-up
of the former Yugoslavia. In the last of these cases, war and ethnic
cleansing led to massive displacements of population, both within
the region and, more particularly, the 1 million Bosnians who be-
came refugees in Western Europe in the early to mid-1990s, many
crisis-driven
migrations
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of whom have now been pressured to return in the wake of the 1995
Dayton Agreement which ended hostilities in Bosnia and provided
for the planned repatriation of the displaced and refugee popula-
tions.
The Albanian emigration of the last ten years is a good example
of how the notion of crisis can differentially interact with migration,
producing a continually evolving dialogue between the two terms
(Pastore, 1998):
Firstly, the mass exodus of 1991 can be seen as a direct response
to the Albanian political, economic and social crisis accompany-
ing the abrupt post-Communist transition. This is an obvious
point, but a deep understanding of the Albanian context is nec-
essary to comprehend fully the resultant dynamics of migration
to Italy and Greece. To view Albanians eeing their country in
the early 1990s as either refugees or economic migrants eeing
political chaos and economic collapse is too simplistic. As Mai
(2001) shows in an interesting analysis of the role of Italian tele-
vision in the Albanian emigration, the collapse was also a moral
and an ethical one. Young Albanians, in particular, were suffering
a collective identity crisis which counterposed a forced, ethicised
identity of the heroic nature of work in an Albanian society that
was projected by Enver Hoxha to his information-starved people
as paradise on earth, with the increasing identicatory appeal of
la dolce vita on the other side of the Adriatic.
But the migration of the early 1990s provoked further crisis in
Albania, leading to both short- and longer-term instability. The
key to this vicious cycle of linkages was the investment of mi-
grant remittances in informal pyramid savings schemes which
collapsed in early 1997, bankrupting the majority of the Albanian
population and provoking a second mass exodus. Longer-term
effects of emigration on the re-making of the Albanian crisis,
according to Pastore (1998), were the establishment of crimi-
nalised emigration rackets and the demographic distortion of the
Albanian population by the emigration of so many young people.
Thirdly, the Albanian migrations were also seen as a crisis for
the Italian and Greek states: how were they to deal with the tens
of thousands of migrants entering the country without legal
documents and by whatever means they could nd? As Lazaridis
(1996) and Zinn (1996) have shown, policy paralysis, dithering
and contradictions have been the main reactive outcomes in both
countries. This has had the effect of prolonging and almost insti-
tutionalising the crisis nature of the Albanian immigration into
Albanian
emigration
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a kind of semi-permanent feature of the Italian and Greek politi-
cal and press discourse, which tends overwhelmingly to stigma-
tise Albanians as criminals (Jamieson and Silj, 1998; Lazaridis
and Wickens, 1999). On the one hand this might be thought to be
a negation of the very meaning of the term crisis; on the other,
it asks important questions about how media representations of
migrants come to be constructed, and about the power of such
representations to inuence public opinion.
Sisters are doing it for themselves: growth in independent female
migration
Until the early 1980s, there was an overwhelming and regrettable
trend to consider women migrants as dependants or followers of pri-
mary male migrants to use Cohens (1997) phrase, as the baggage
of male workers. Numerically and sociologically (Cohens words
again), we have entered a new phase of female migration, charac-
terised by the independent migration of females in response to the
needs of the European and global service economies.
Campani (1995) and Phizacklea (1998) have been important voic-
es in the debate on the contemporary global and European contexts
for female migration. Sex, marriage and maids describe, somewhat
over-simplistically, the three sectors of activity which are important
for female migrants in Europe (Phizacklea, 1998: 31-4), but few data
are available to quantify the relative importance of these three fe-
male migratory types the migration (including trafcking) of sex-
workers, the international bride trade, and the migration of domestic
and care workers. More broadly, it is important to realise how the
demand for women migrants has increased through the centrality
of the types of service activities in post-industrial society which have
traditionally been associated with female labour or are those which
only women are willing to supply (Campani, 1995: 546).
There has been quite an impressive amount of literature on fe-
male migration experiences in Southern Europe published since the
late 1990s; of particular value are the collections edited by Anthias
and Lazaridis (2000) and Ribas Mateos (2000). Anthias notes that
women migrants provide the exibility and low cost that appeals
both to global capital, and to middle-class households seeking to hire
domestic help: they are located in or within a secondary, service-
oriented, hidden (economy) ... that reproduces an ethically and gen-
dered divided labour market (Anthias, 2000: 25). Against this struc-
turalist perspective are a number of ethnographic documentaries
which tell a variety of stories of exploitation and empowerment,
of patriarchy and liberation, of isolation and solidarity, of sacrice
sex, marriage
and maids
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and achievement (for some accessible studies in English, see Andall,
1998, 1999, 2000; Chell, 1997, 2000; Escriv, 1997; Lazaridis,
2000; Zontini, 2001). More often than not, women are the social
glue which holds the ethnic community together, especially in na-
tional communities (e.g. Filipinos in Spain and Italy, Cape Verdeans
in Italy) where women migrants were the pioneers and where they
remain in numerical dominance. Moreover, they are playing increas-
ingly active roles in processes of integration with the host society, be-
coming important agents of cultural change. Undoubtedly, migrant
women in Southern Europe are at the forefront of the interesting
work being done in gender issues in migration in recent years.
Playing the global labour market: skilled and professional migrants
This type of migration has been thoroughly researched by Salt (1984,
1992) and Findlay (1993) since the mid-1980s. Hence it is question-
able how new it is for the European setting, although new ows of
skilled migration have emerged from Eastern Europe since 1989
(Rhode, 1993). Findlay and Salt write about professionals, business
executives, accountants, engineers, consultants and the personnel of
international organisations. To these I would add sports stars and
entertainers. The ows, by and large, are not one-way but multidi-
rectional and temporary, although East-West ows are likely to be
more permanent and unidirectional. This is a uid type of migration
which merges with (and is tending to be substituted by) business
travel and short-term contract and trouble-shooting visits (Salt and
Ford, 1993). Highly-skilled and professional migration also overlaps,
at the individual level if not conceptually, with the next two types
I am going to consider: cross-border shuttle migration and student
migration.
The movement of skilled persons lies at the heart of attempts to
integrate Europe through the free movement of people, goods, ser-
vices and capital within the EU. This increasing ease of movement
for elites and highly-skilled labour creates a polarisation of migration
types with, at the other end, poor immigrants and asylum-seekers
from outside the EU. This emerging hierarchical division is one of
the clearest contrasts opening up in the new map of European migra-
tions (Koser and Lutz, 1998: 2).
Here and there and back and forth: shuttle migration
The bipolar xity of conventional studies of migration based on an
origin, a destination, and a more-or-less denitive and statistically
measurable relocation between the two has been challenged both
by the heightened role of mobility in (European, Western) society
skilled migration
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at large (Urry, 2000), and by new geographies and temporalities of
movement (Cwerner, 2001). Now, many movements are multiple
and spatially capricious in Kevin McHughs catchy words, in-
side, outside, upside down; backward, forward, round and round
(McHugh, 2000).
The dual role of borders and frontiers is interesting here: on the
one hand the removal of frontiers within the EU facilitates an inten-
sication of mobility between and across the states of the Union;
on the other, the juxtaposition of countries at different levels of eco-
nomic development and with different social and cultural systems,
notably inside and outside the EU frontier, creates the conditions for
new dynamics of movement. Much of this may be illegal, but much
of it represents an accommodation of new economic mobility types
to the visa and access regimes that are imposed by the EU.
In particular, since 1989 there has been a sharp rise in cross-bor-
der shuttle migration across the eastern frontier of the EU; this has
tended to replace the mass East-West migrations originally feared
by the West as soon as the Iron Curtain was dismantled. Although
some instances of cross-border shuttle migration are of fairly long
standing (e.g. that of Slovenians to Trieste), others have risen with
dynamic new rhythms during the 1990s, for instance the migration
of Poles to Germany (Iglicka, 2000). Iglicka distinguishes shuttle or
pendular migrants (who stay for less than three months) from short-
term migrants (more than three months, less than one year), long-
term migrants (more than one year), and settler migrants (such as
the Aussiedler). Cross-border shuttle migration can be for short-term
work opportunities, for instance in construction or agriculture, or for
trading buying and selling of goods with different prices and mar-
ket situations either side of the border. It is important to emphasise
how this type of movement is facilitated by, and represents an adap-
tation to, the availability of tourist visas; it is also important to realise
that many trips are multipurpose, combining tourism and shopping
with trading and short-term work.
Student migrations: from the year abroad to the Big OE
Student migrations are a long-overlooked but increasingly important
form of European mobility. Whilst there are some historical paral-
lels (the medieval wandering scholar, or colonial patterns of stu-
dent migrations to France, the UK, the Netherlands, etc.), since the
1980s student mobility within Europe has been strongly promoted
by the European Commission via schemes such as the Erasmus and
Socrates exchanges, whose initial aims which look unlikely to be
achieved, at least for the forseeable future were to have one in ten
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students studying at a university in another EU country.
7
Since the
launch of the Erasmus scheme in 1987, around 750,000 universi-
ty/third-level students have spent a period of 3-12 months studying
abroad; this gure covers the academic years 1987-88 to 1999-2000.
Numbers have grown steadily year-on-year, with a seven-fold in-
crease in annual movers between the late 1980s and the late 1990s.
On a broader front it is important, once again, to recognise the
variety of migratory subtypes under this general category. Student
migrations are an important part of the internal mobility of young
adults within European countries, particularly the UK, where there
has been a continuous tradition of going away to university (in
many other European countries the dominant tradition has been for
university students to live at home). Surprisingly, the migrational
signicance of students going to university has scarcely been stud-
ied. This signicance lies in two areas: the initial move to univer-
sity, and the implications of this for subsequent national population
distribution (do students tend to stay on in their university towns,
return home, or move elsewhere?). For international student migra-
tions, such as those involving a Year Abroad at a foreign university,
the same questions arise: do students tend to preserve their affective
and institutional links to their Year Abroad destination, or are their
future migration propensities unaffected?
It is also possible to see student migration as a subset of youth mi-
gration motivated by a mixture of broader educational goals and ex-
perience/travel/pleasure-seeking, perhaps facilitated or interleaved
with casual or temporary work. Amongst European students, espe-
cially those from northern countries, the gap year between school
and university, or between graduation and employment, exemplies
this, as does young Australian and New Zealanders predilection for
their Big Overseas Experience. Here, again, we see complex over-
lappings of socio-economic and mobility types (students/workers/
tourists, but also travellers, drifters, hobos...) which defy neat migra-
tory and motivational categorisations (Bianchi, 2000).
Love migrations: the transnationalisation of intimacy
The explanation of contemporary migrations increasingly with ref-
erence to individual and personal factors (which, nevertheless, at a
societal scale have considerable signicance) opens up other possi-
bilities. Students and tourists travel, study abroad, have sex, fall in
love.
8
Their subsequent locational behaviour and mobility/migration
regimes may be more related to this libidinal factor than to any other.
Indeed, love migration can probably be found in all types of migra-
tion. Maybe, as far as migration factors are concerned, love conquers
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russell king
all. The possibility for the initiation of such transnational intimacy
is greatly increased by mass travel, study abroad, and tourism; whilst
the accelerating speeds and technologies of travel and communica-
tion in a shrinking Europe increase the chances of such transnational
love being maintained.
Technology apart, several important global sociological factors lie
behind the growth of love migrations within (and outside) Europe.
The expansion of linguistic competence is one factor (young Britons
are an exception here: hiding within their global language, they are
less multilingual than their other European counterparts). Another
is the linked expansion of the global experience industries (tourism,
travel, leisure, education, networking) with the extension of youthful
attitudes and lifestyles to later ages. Together these factors produce
an expansion of individual transnational interfaces resulting from
mobility and migration; the major cities (London, Paris, Brussels,
Frankfurt, Barcelona, Rome, Geneva the list is much more exten-
sive), especially those with explicit multinational functions, are the
principal nodes for this intensication of cross-national personal
contact, relationships, partnerships and marriages. My conclusion is
simple: do not underestimate the libidinal factor in migration. You
read it here rst.
Heliotropes and rural idyllists: migrations of environmental
preference
Finally, there has been a steady growth in what we might call environ-
mental preference migration (Williams et al., 1997). These are migra-
tions that are the very antithesis of being economically motivated,
and are undertaken by those who prioritise quality-of-life and aes-
thetic considerations over income. Having said that, they are often
undertaken by those who can afford to take such choices, such as
people of wealth or independent means, including retired persons.
These are lifestyle migrations in which a move to a pleasant rural
landscape or a sunnier climate enables certain individuals to enjoy
a more relaxing and healthier life in a culture which is somewhat
different from and more appealing than their own. There are, how-
ever, many variants on this theme, including those who wish to es-
cape to the sun by settling in a Spanish Mediterranean coastal resort
(OReilly, 2000), those who are international counterurbanisers
such as the British home-owners in rural France studied by Buller
and Hoggart (1994), and Kockels (1991) countercultural migrants
Dutch and Germans who have settled along the remote western
seaboard of Ireland in order to pursue alternative rural lifestyles.
Heliotropic migrants Northern Europeans who spend varying
lifestyle migrations
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amounts of time during the year living and relaxing in the warm
south illustrate very well one of the dimensions along which the
divide between migration and more frequent forms of mobility is
particularly difcult to draw. The spectrum of movements ranges
from tourism through seasonal residence to permanent relocation to
a holiday area, such as international retirement migration (Williams
and Hall, 2000). In some recently completed work I carried out
with Tony Warnes and Allan Williams (King et al., 2000), we found
that British retiree migrants to southern Spain and the Portuguese
Algarve generally had extensive prior experience of visiting the re-
gion on holiday before making the semi-permanent retirement
move.
9
Repeated holidays in sunny seaside resorts had frequently
led to a progressively more committed engagement with a destina-
tion which was seen as both enjoyable and desirable, and as increas-
ingly familiar. Often the purchase of a at or holiday villa as a second
home became a stepping-stone to a more-or-less permanent transfer
of residence upon retirement.
These forms of movement and dual place connections are not dis-
similar to movement patterns associated with other kinds of trans-
national community, although the motivations behind the establish-
ment of such transnational communities may be very different. In
contrast to diasporic communities spawned by refugee scatterings
or transnational communities built out of labour migrations, the
British on the Costa del Sol (or the Germans in Majorca, or whatever)
are engaging in migration and resettlement as a lifestyle activity.
They have become heliotropes, permanent sun-seekers, and all the
evidence suggests their numbers are set to grow (King et al., 2000).
Conclusion
This paper has attempted to map out both some new migratory forms
and processes in Europe, and the attendant conceptual and method-
ological challenges of how to approach their study. These new forms
of migration derive from new international divisions of labour, the
new European geopolitics after the Cold War, new motivations of
migrants (above all the retreat from labour migrations linked to
Fordist production systems), new space-time exibilities and tech-
nologies, and the relatively new notion of migration as consumption
and self-discovery. Thus, and in a variety of ways, migration process-
es in Europe (and globally) have certainly become more diverse in
the past 20 years or so. Whilst the structural underpinnings of the
new migrations have been implicit throughout much of the forego-
new migratory
forms
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russell king
ing account, there remain some reservations about how new these
migrations are. Koser and Lutz (1998: 4-5), for example, cautioned
against a posteriori descriptions of newness and pointed out that his-
torical analysis often exposes the arbitrariness of the application of
the term new to a social phenomenon such as changing migration.
Nevertheless, they seem to have been broadly happy with the appella-
tion new, and theirs is not the only book on European migration to
include this word in its title (King, 1993b; Thrnhardt, 1996).
This diversication and (albeit contested) newness of migratory
forms encourages both the reassertion of some basic tenets of migra-
tion study, and opens up the potential, indeed the necessity, of new
methodological approaches.
Firstly, I reiterate my earlier plea for an integrated interdisciplin-
ary approach which also recognises paradigmatic plurality and the
value of mixed methodologies combining, for instance, economic
analysis, class analysis, studies of ethnicity and culture, and attempts
to capture the richness of the human experience of migration.
Secondly, the need for comparative analysis remains paramount if
studies of migration are to rise above the ideographic. Comparisons
can be between migratory groups (in the same country), or across
countries (comparing similar or contrasting migratory groups), or
across time.
Thirdly, we need to recognise what I would call the double em-
beddedness of migration; at the individual scale, migration must be
embedded in a migrants life-course (and in some cases of the life-
course of the family, even across generations); and at the macro scale,
the study of migration must be embedded in the societies and social
processes of both the countries/places of origin and of destination.
Fourthly, it has to be acknowledged that many of the new forms
of migration/mobility surveyed or mentioned in this paper are inad-
equately captured by statistics, if at all. There is a tendency for migra-
tion not to be documented if it is not seen as problematic. Hence less
and less reliance can be placed on data sources such as Eurostat or
the OECDs SOPEMI database for measuring human spatial mobil-
ity in Europe. More reliance will need to be put on primary research
surveys carried out on the new migratory forms.
As well as new data-frames, new terms and metaphors are re-
quired to describe the new mobility types which challenge the bi-
nary polarisation of origin and destination and the semi-permanence
of the common notion of migration. Regarding new metaphors of
migration, I am much attracted by the notion put forward by Ribas
Mateos (2001) of the Mediterranean caravanserai a common
space for migrant groups and ows where they can arrive, stay a
Mediterranean
caravanserai
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while, and then move on to other destinations, perhaps returning
for a later staging stay prior to other moves. To borrow a current
EU mobility term, migrants become stagiaires, interposing migra-
tions and journeys with periods spent sojourning and working in
a variety of destinations. In his book Sociology beyond Societies, John
Urry (2000) goes much further: for him, mobility is the metaphor
of contemporary global society. He goes the whole globalisation hog
by concentrating his entire post-society analysis on migration, mo-
bility and interfaces, setting aside social structures and processes.
Life is a trip engaged on by contemporary, capitalist nomads moving
through uid, deterritorialised spaces; the place-specic metaphors
are spaces of movement, pausing and meeting the hotel lobby, the
motel, the airport transit lounge (Urry, 2000: 26-32). Urry would
certainly agree with Bergers (1984) statement that migration is the
quintessential experience of our time, even more so at the dawn of
the new millennium.
But we should be careful not to be carried away by such hyperbole.
The shrinking of a borderless Europe is the privilege of a relatively
small section of European society perhaps above all those lucky aca-
demics who are amongst the greatest beneciaries of this travelling,
networking, conferencing, migration culture as they move about
their spatially extensive but socially restricted small world (Lodge,
1983). Of course a globalised Europe is far from a borderless utopia,
as any Albanian or Moroccan migrant will afrm (Urry, 2000: 13,
22).
Throughout this paper we have seen how the traditional binaries
of migration study have been bridged and broken up by new exible
and evolving mobility patterns. How to handle, for instance, cross-
border shuttle migration (is it really migration?); or how to categorise
migrations driven by poverty as voluntary or involuntary; or how to
unravel the space-time congurations of long-stay tourism, foreign
second-home ownership, residence abroad and expatriacy? We have
also seen how legal versus illegal is a particularly blurred dichotomy
of migrant reality. Illegality seems to be constructed in an illogical
(but perhaps also cynical) way by host societies which seem willing
to exploit cheap migrant labour (and even be structurally dependent
upon it) yet at the same time to deny the legal and civic existence of
migrants. In this way, migration into Europe has become more and
more of a global business (cf. Salt and Stein, 1997) which has its own
set of private market mechanisms competition, prices, agents, bro-
kers, buyers and sellers of migrants and migration services.
Moreover, there are other, less often recognised migration di-
chotomies than those discussed and deconstructed in this paper.
no borderless utopia
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Migrations can be spectacular or mundane, or, as noted a little ear-
lier, regarded as problematic or non-problematic. By and large, the
mundane, unproblematic forms of movement are left unrecorded
and often unstudied. The spectacular, problematic ones get all the
attention, although here it must be stressed that the nature of the
spectacle is often exaggerated and distorted by its media portrayal
and politicisation. Even the notions of home and away or abroad
have become blurred. Members of transnational communities
may feel at home in two or more places (or not feel at home any-
where). Furthermore, one can be homeless at home, as evidenced
by Jansens (1998) narratives of post-Yugoslav identities; or one can
be transnational at home, without ever having migrated, as Golbert
(2001) demonstrates in her study of Ukrainian Jews.
These new, more diverse and exible varieties of mobility/migra-
tion pose obvious challenges for migration policy, especially within
the mind-set of Fortress Europe, and for attitudes towards regula-
tion, governance and citizenship (Pugliese, 1995; Geddes, 2000).
The issue is further complicated by the fact that, in contrast to earlier
generations of migrants (for example the European guestworkers
of the 1960s who were functionally and sociologically rather homo-
geneous and whose migration was highly regulated), many national
migration ows into Europe nowadays are mixed ows made up of
refugees, economic migrants, people with high skills and those with
no skills. Moreover, many migrants change categories in order to
maximise the success of their migration project, or they may move
between destinations for the same reason. All these facets of the
contemporary map of European migration sit uneasily with regula-
tory regimes of migration management and control. National bodies
regulate contiguous space, whereas migrations function in network
space. States want to sedentarise and integrate migrants (or certain
accepted categories of them), but mobile people with multiple place
afliations and hybrid or cosmopolitan identities have no wish to t
in to the ideology of one national identity. Meanwhile, all around
Europe there seems to be a constantly shifting discourse as to the
desirability of migration, now very much related to economic, labour
force and demographic projections for the next few decades (see, for
instance, Visco, 2000).
Finally, in stressing the importance of the new migratory circum-
stances of a post-industrial, post-modern Europe, I draw attention
again to movements motivated above all by non-economic, or only
partly economic, considerations those linked to life-cycle such as
student and retirement migrations, both of which have potential
mixed migration
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for future expansion. Within the same vein, the migration of chil-
dren has scarcely been studied, at least from the childs perspective
(Dobson and Stillwell, 2000). Quite rightly, women have become an
important new focus for migration research in Europe, recognising
their central role in the migration process and as cultural agents in
the structuring of ethnic communities and their relation with host
societies. On this, as on so many other topics in the unfolding map
of new migrations, much still needs to be done. These are exciting
times to be a migration researcher in Europe!
Acknowledgements
This paper is a revised version of a keynote address to the conference
on Strangers and Citizens: Challenges for European Governance,
Identity, Citizenship, University of Dundee, 17-19 March 2001.
Earlier versions were presented and discussed at the conference
on Old Differences and New Similarities: American and European
Immigration in Comparative Perspective (Italian Academy,
Columbia University, New York, 12-13 November 1999) and at New
Patterns, New Theories: A Conference on International Migration
(Nottingham Trent University, 11-13 September 2000). I thank con-
tributors to the discussions following the presentation of the pa-
per at these three fora, and also the many postgraduate students in
Migration Studies at the University of Sussex for their stimulating
conversations Clara Guillo, Nick Mai, Enric Ruiz-Gelices and Chris
Whitwell will all recognise their own individual inputs somewhere in
the text.
Notes
1 Curiously, each of these evolved in ways somewhat different to those origi-
nally expected and dened by the terminology: for instance settler migra-
tions involved a lot of unanticipated (and unrecorded) return, and guest-
workers generally ended up by staying and transforming themselves into
more or less settled ethnic communities (King, 2000).
2 I nominate these examples of particular nationalities because recent work
on these migrant groups in Europe has demonstrated that they often have
high levels of education and professional expertise which, by and large, they
are compelled to leave behind when they take up what are (for them) much
more remunerative jobs as cleaners, building labourers, streethawkers or
farm workers in destination countries such as France, Italy or Greece: see,
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russell king
for example, Chell (1997); Knights (1996); Lazaridis and Wickens (1999);
Riccio (2001). Whilst experiences and reactions differ between and amongst
the various migrant nationalities, some are able to draw strength from their
own cultural values and self-knowledge of their own multilingualism and
cosmopolitan experiences see, for instance, Riccio (2001) and Zinn (1994)
on the Senegalese in Italy.
3 See, for instance, a number of recent books which attempt an interdisci-
plinary analysis of the general eld of international migration: Brettell and
Hollield (2000), Faist (2000), Hammar et al. (1997), and Papastergiadis
(2000).
4 Although it is also true, as Cohen (1995: 5) points out, that some of the early
pioneering studies of migration as a generic process sought to minimise or
overlook this distinction (cf. Lee, 1966; Petersen, 1958; Ravenstein, 1885,
1889; Zelinsky, 1971).
5 Except, perhaps, after death. The burial place of migrants has particular sym-
bolic meaning, the implications of which have scarcely been considered by
researchers.
6 The term migrant shopping comes originally, I believe, from a workshop
paper prepared by Robin Cohen (1997). Enlarging Cohens notion, the
shopping market for migrants functions in two directions. Firstly, indi-
vidual countries shop for migrants within a global market in order to satisfy
certain needs characterised by domestic labour supply shortfall. The UK,
for instance, has recently recruited nurses from Spain and the Philippines.
According to Cohen, the two countries which have perfected the system of
immigration shopping are Australia and Canada. They have structurally
linked their economic development, manpower and immigration depart-
ments and are intent on nding selected migrants to ll slots in their labour
market, including business entrepreneurs who bring investment and cre-
ate new wealth and jobs, and skilled labour migrants for the labour-short
IT sector. The second expression of the migrant shopping market is where
individual migrants shop around for possibilities and opportunities in dif-
ferent countries, often moving on when better economic or social openings
become available in another country. Andall (1999) presents a well-worked
case of this type of migrant shopping in her study of Cape Verdean women
in Europe, whilst Guiraudon (2000) tackles the issue of venue shopping on
the part of asylum-seekers, also in the European context.
7 To be more precise, the target proposed by the then European Commission
in 1987 was that, by 1992, a tenth of EU graduates would have spent at
least three months of their higher education in another country. By 1992 the
achieved gure was 4% rather than 10% (Adia et al., 1994: 2, 39). Although
the 10% objective was reafrmed in 1997, this was accompanied by a state-
ment that its achievement would be unlikely, due above all to nancial pres-
sures on students (Jallade et al., 1997). Meanwhile, the total European popu-
lation of students has grown considerably.
8 At a recent Erasmus conference in Spain, the Italian philosopher and se-
miologist Umberto Eco said that the main benets of the EUs Erasmus
programme were as much sexual as cultural. According to Eco, student
exchanges and bi- and multi-lingualism encouraged mixed marriages and
relationships across Europes national frontiers. See report in Times Higher
Education Supplement, 6 July 2001.
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9 This experience of holidaying in the region prior to the migration upon re-
tirement was less important in the other two southern European destina-
tions we surveyed, Malta and Tuscany. Here, career links, family ties and
military service were common additional factors (King et al., 2000: 94-5).
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The constitution of a European immigration
policy domain: a political sociology approach
Virginie Guiraudon
1
*
This article by political scientist Virginie Guiraudon was awarded the prize
for 2001s best European Union Studies Association conference paper.
Combining the insights of James March and Johan Olsens Garbage Can
Model with a sociological approach focused on power competition between
actors, it explains the incomplete and complex constitution of the European
immigration policy domain. Guiraudon is one of the rst scholars to demon-
strate so brilliantly that the melding of policy studies and political sociology
can be fruitful. She helps make sense of the gradual Europeanisation of im-
migration, asylum and anti-discrimination policy. Whats more, Guiraudons
work seeks to overcome shortcomings of the simple legal approach long
dominant in European Union studies.
*EDITORS NOTE An earlier version of this article was presented as
a paper to the 2001 EUSA conference and was awarded the prize for
the best 2001 EUSA conference paper.
The prize selection committee (Dorothee Heisenberg, James
Hollield, George Ross) noted that Guiraudons paper captures the
complexity of contemporary EU policy formation in the immigration
area ... [and] is remarkable for its recognition and mastery of differ-
ent streams of policy-making over time. It foregrounds real EU poli-
tics in an unstable, constantly changing set of institutional arenas
without imposing articial social science parsimony. Reading the
paper we enter the EU as it is, not as we would like it to be in our a
priori models. Guiraudons refreshing theoretical quest instead goes
toward the sociology of organizations, borrowing from March and
Olsons garbage can approach. garbage can model
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virginie guiraudon
While rst generation European Community (EC) policies such as
the common agricultural policy are under re, new policy domains
are emerging in the European Union (EU) framework. At the 1999
Tampere summit, EU leaders declared that the development of
a comprehensive immigration and asylum policy was a top prior-
ity and the EUs next large-scale enterprise after the single market
and European monetary union (EMU).
2
Three years later, the June
2002 Seville summit was still largely dedicated to immigration as
European leaders invoked populist electoral breakthroughs in vari-
ous European elections to step up the ght against illegal migration.
The ofcial narratives behind the development of this common
policy have taken two forms. Before 1992, the predominant dis-
course within the Schengen laboratory and the ad hoc immigration
group was that free movement within the EC required compensa-
tory measures at the external borders lest Europe become a sieve.
This political version of the spillover theory of integration was large-
ly replaced in the 1990s by a more securitarian perspective (Bigo
1996), as the number of asylum-seekers and persons displaced by
war rose. Asylum shopping and immigration risks were now com-
mon problems that could best be dealt with through co-ordination.
The view here resembles liberal intergovernmentalism, which poses
that major member states co-operate to upgrade common interests
and reduce transaction costs.
The reconstruction of the rationale behind the rise of immigra-
tion on the political agenda masks the complexity and incomplete-
ness of current EU-level policies and considers them to be an in-
evitable solution to a commonly dened problem. They postulate a
rationality long criticized when analysing national policy processes.
Among them, March and Olsen (1989) focused on situations of orga-
nized anarchy whereby the elements of decision-making are thrown
into the process as they appear as in a garbage can. The elaboration
of an EU immigration policy presents similarities with their model.
My main claim is that, regarding both immigrant and migration
control policy, only one side of the debate venue shopped at the
international level to pursue their own ends, primarily to escape do-
mestic adversaries. In the case of migration control, bureaucrats sit-
ting in interior ministries sought to regain the discretion taken away
by courts and the leeway lost to inter-ministerial arbitrage. Regarding
immigrant policy, the domestic challenge came from electoral poli-
tics that forestalled policy change and innovation. The migration pol-
icy domain cannot be understood as the bargaining outcome among
states with a coherent or aggregated set of preferences on these is-
sues. Instead, only one camp in the national policy eld went trans-
masked complexity
and incompleteness
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national, and this article provides an account of the ways they did so.
It thus examines the dynamics of the constitution of this policy
domain to better apprehend its timing, form and content. After set-
ting out the analytical framework that focuses on power struggles
among groups seeking legitimacy (I), I turn to the main chapters of
the story so far: the bureaucratic rivalry that led to Title IV of the EU
Treaty and the incorporation of Schengen via protocol at Amsterdam
which sets the frame for a common immigration and asylum poli-
cy (II); the rivalry of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that
carved out a space for EU policy in the area of migrant incorporation,
which resulted in Article 13 on anti-discrimination and a race direc-
tive in 2000 (III); and, nally, the parallel activities of the European
Court of Justice (ECJ) and the Commission Trade directorate in the
area of freedom of services that affect migration ows within and
into the EU.
I. Theoretical and contextual premises
The story of the rise of immigration on the EU policy agenda is
that of governmental and non-governmental actors arriving on the
European scene to escape domestic constraints and open up new
spaces for action. In this motley crew, we nd law and order of-
cials from Interior, Justice and Foreign Affairs ministries, interna-
tional NGOs, activists and Commission fonctionnaires from different
directorates. Although each came to believe that there should be a
European immigration policy, they exploited different policy venues
and frames resulting in a set of policy instruments involving varying
degrees of supranationalization and distinct decision-making rules.
These groupings are not monoliths. National and EU bureaucrats,
NGOs compete among their own kind as much as they ght among
themselves in a struggle for legitimacy and autonomy. In this re-
spect, the Bourdieusian notion of eld (Bourdieu 1981) is helpful
since it focuses on the power struggles within each group of actors
(see also Favell 2000).
This actor-oriented approach generates several research ques-
tions: why did certain groups decide to go transnational? Who were
they competing with at the national and transnational level? Why did
certain groups gain a monopoly of expertise in the European sphere?
What policy venues and frames did they exploit? What opportunities
could they seize upon (allies in EU institutions or member states,
actors in other policy areas, treaty revisions, changes in the global
economic or strategic context)? The empirical study of these mobili-
eld
actor-oriented
research questions
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virginie guiraudon
zation strategies explains the particular timing, form and content of
EU policies that affect both migration ows and the conditions of im-
migrant minorities in Europe. In other words, our approach should
be able to explain:
when international co-operation started and when competence
was shifted to the EU (timing);
why certain rules and procedures for EU decision-making were
adopted (form);
why a particular policy toolbox was adopted (content).
The insights of public policy studies can be fruitfully combined with
that of political sociology to grasp the development of a European
policy domain.
3
March and Olsen suggest that, although the choices
made by the various selnterested actors can be said to be rational
from their perspective, one should not reconstruct a non-linear pol-
icy process as inevitable. Contingencies and reversals closed certain
paths and cleared others along the way. The garbage can model un-
derlines that interests, institutions, ideas, problems and solutions
appear in the process in no preordained sequence as exogenous
streams owing through a system (Olsen 2001: 191),
4
yet, as we will
see, the order in which each element appears has a bearing on the
eventual outcome.
5

I build upon the public policy agenda-setting literature, includ-
ing John Kingdons work (1995) which was directly inuenced by
the garbage can model and Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Joness
concept of policy frames and venues (1993). If a solution is dened
before a problem is identied, issue framing will be crucial to re-
constitute a causal story (Stone 1989). Similarly, the success of a
particular frame will depend upon windows of opportunities. This
implies that, once actors have decided to shift their strategies to a
European policy venue, their ability to do so will depend on the avail-
ability of relevant frames and their seizing of opportunities.
In methodological terms, I have consequently favoured a gene-
alogical approach that starts before the rise of immigration on the
European agenda. To capture the cross-national and cross-sectoral
dynamics of EU policy-making, I chose a comparative approach. I
focused on immigration politics in three founding members of
Schengen (France, Germany and the Netherlands) since the 1970s to
apprehend the relative position and constraints of national migration
policy players before and during the start of European co-operation.
To understand the choices and the fate of the various groups that
mobilized transnationally and that of EU institutional actors, I inter-
viewed the national civil servants in charge of immigration issues in
public policy
insights
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international forums and also conducted research in Brussels among
NGOs and EU institutional actors.
Before analysing the scope of EU immigration policy, the contours
of national policy-making in this area should be drawn. Migration as
a policy issue was never conned to a single ministry since it had
implications for labour, economics, foreign affairs, social affairs and
internal affairs (etc.). In federal systems, the division of labour is
even more complex. There is no tradition in Europe of immigra-
tion ministries as there is for agriculture or defence. Immigration is
a transversal issue where cross-sectoral conicts often arise. Cross-
national convergence was signicant in the 1990s, yet there remain
different models of incorporation, different priorities in migration
control based on previous colonial and labour market histories or
geopolitical position. Therefore, for immigration scholars, the ques-
tion regarding the policy sectors and the national models and priori-
ties that prevail in the European sphere is a fascinating one. Not all
sectoral and national interests were weighed in the policy process
and not all actors were deemed legitimate to set the agenda.
The shift of competence to the EU greatly narrowed the scope
of migration-related policies. With regard to migration control, the
European Economic Community (EEC) was limited by the treaty to
the free movement of EC workers, later EU citizens, although the
ECJ has extended some aspects of free movement to the families of
Community nationals and to citizens of countries that have signed
association treaties with the EC such as Turkey. One of the possible
routes that an EU policy could still take but has not, in spite of a 1997
Commission proposal
6
is to extend free movement to resident third-
country nationals.
Instead, migration management in the EU context is focused
on preventing unwanted migration, through visa policy and car-
rier sanctions, the establishment of buffer zones on the east of
Europe, the constitution of a database of inadmissible aliens (the
Schengen Information System) and of asylum-seekers ngerprints
(EURODAC). European asylum policies aim at preventing migration
with accelerated procedures for examining asylum requests, a com-
mon denition of a refugee, the notion of safe third country and
the 1990 Dublin Convention which organized a system to determine
which contracting party is responsible for examining an asylum re-
quest.
Regarding immigrant policy at the EU level, it has taken two
forms. First, the Commission funds projects for the integration of
workers and anti-racism, or gives grants to cities and regions that
target initiatives at ethnic minorities. Second, in the Amsterdam
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virginie guiraudon
Treaty, an article on anti-discrimination has been added and two di-
rectives have since been approved: one covers all forms of discrimi-
nation in employment, and the other counter-discriminations on the
grounds of race and ethnic origin in many spheres.
7
To understand
why these particular outcomes and not others such as the extension
of free movement or EU citizenship to third-country nationals can be
observed, I now turn to the history of EU mobilization around migra-
tion, asylum and anti-discrimination.
II. Immigration and asylum: bureaucratic rivalry and
security frames
When policemen replace diplomats: the emergence of intergovern-
mental co-operation on migration control
Quand les policiers succedent aux diplomates: the title of this
French Senate report (Turk 1998) sums up in a nutshell the increas-
ing involvement of law and order personnel at the European level
since the early 1980s and, among them, civil servants in charge of
migration management.
Migration control experts took advantage of new organizational
models: the transgovernmental working groups on security-related
issues such as the 1970s Trevi group. These groupings with varied
membership were exible, informal and secretive. This built trust
among ofcials who set the agenda of transgovernmental co-oper-
ation by emphasizing the kind of technical solutions that required
their expertise. They became inevitable interlocutors at the rst nego-
tiation stage, that of the Schengen Implementation Agreement (SIA).
While the 1985 Schengen agreement only contained three articles on
immigration, the issue came to dominate the discussion of the four
Schengen groups in charge of the SIA. During the 1985-90 period
when the SIA was drafted, inter-ministerial quarrels in the founding
Schengen countries ourished. Michel Portal at the French Ministry
of Interior recalls that the inter-ministerial conicts were and still
are considerable, terrible, especially when the political leaders totally
lost interest.
8
Vendelin Hreblay, a negotiator from the French po-
lice, admits that Foreign Affairs ministries and in Germany the
Chancellery were progressively ousted by Justice and Interior min-
istries (1998: 28).
9

Given that an international agreement was being negotiated
and that Foreign Affairs ministries deliver visas through consulates
abroad (visa policy being a cornerstone of European co-operation
on remote border control), there was no a priori reason to expect a
law and order
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monopoly of Interior and Justice personnel. Notwithstanding, their
domination accounts for the security-oriented content of the SIA
and subsequent decisions. It also explains the emphasis on techni-
cal issues, border control and surveillance technologies such as the
Schengen Information System.
Migration control bureaucrats went transnational at that partic-
ular moment because they had seen their action increasingly con-
strained in the early 1980s (Guiraudon 2000a). First, landmark court
decisions in the main European receiving countries that date from
the late 1970s had circumscribed administrative discretion. They es-
tablished in particular the right to normal family life and to secure
residence for long-term residents. In effect, governments could no
longer prevent family reunication, diminish the stock of legal resi-
dents except by nancial incentives as the new Kohl government did
in 1983, and certain categories of foreigners could no longer be ex-
pelled. This period also saw the rst major clashes between agencies
in charge of the integration of settled foreigners and those in charge
of migration control. The incentive to seek new policy venues shel-
tered from national legal constraints and conicting policy goals thus
dates from the beginning of the 1980s (see Guiraudon 2000c on this
case of venue shopping). This explains the timing of transgovern-
mental co-operation and its character: an emphasis on non-binding
decisions and secretive arrangements. Rather than creating an in-
ternational regime, i.e. a constraining set of rules with monitoring
mechanisms (Ruggie 1982), national civil servants sought to avoid
domestic legal constraints and scrutiny.
In 1990, only some elements of March and Olsens garbage can
were to be found in the migration policy domain at the European
level. Solutions had been devised before problems had been de-
ned. The solution was police cooperation and reinforced controls.
The problem that these means were meant to address soon became
apparent after the end of the Cold War in the form of an inux of
asylum-seekers in Germany and many emotional debates over im-
migration in other core member states, largely covered in the media
which prophesized tides of bogus refugees. International migra-
tion was also added to the list of transnational phenomena consid-
ered by a plethora of experts as the new threats which replaced Cold
War ideology: Islamic fundamentalism, global maas and terrorism
(Huysmans 2000).
While the 1980s had seen the emergence of a particular group
of policy actors seeking to further their interests in transgovermental
forums on migration and asylum, ideas and institutions were still in
their infancy. The ideas that framed intergovernmental co-operation
solution invented
before problem
dened
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virginie guiraudon
hinged on linking migration and crime and considering that they
constituted the dark side of globalization requiring a supranational
response. The lack of an alternative policy frame can be attributed
not only to the end of the Cold War security paradigm but also to
economic slump and high unemployment, which demobilized busi-
ness interests, which traditionally lobby for openness. These conjec-
tural elements should not be neglected in understanding why migra-
tion became a security (as opposed to a labour market) issue in the
1990s.
The institutional framework set up at the EU level with the cre-
ation of a Third Pillar on Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) conrmed
that European cooperation allowed Justice and Interior personnel
to regain a certain margin of manoeuvre and can be described as
exible multilateralism. One full group (GDl) of the K4 committee
of the Third Pillar was dedicated to asylum, visa and migration yet
the framework required unanimous decisions by the Council and
remained outside the community legal order, thereby excluding the
ECJ and the European Parliament. The Commission did not have a
right of initiative and thus could not play its agenda-setting entrepre-
neurial role.
Although a small task force was set up within the General
Secretariat of the Commission to liaise with the Council on JHA mi-
gration discussions, they did not come from the units that had always
defended the rights of thirdcountry nationals (the Employment and
Social Affairs and the Internal Market Directorate-Generals (DGs)),
which task force personnel considered oldfashioned and maximal-
ist. According to Wenceslas de Lobkowicz of the task force, they
wanted to leave the eld to the discretion of member states and avoid
debates over sovereignty (1994). Jean-Louis de Brouwer, now head of
the Commission unit External Borders, Immigration and Asylum,
also points out that one need[ed] to talk to the big players, the minis-
ters of Interior of the member states who usually are political heavy-
weights in their respective governments.
10

From Maastricht to Amsterdam, the JHA Council only agreed on
one joint position on the common denition of a refugee and on ve
legally binding joint actions, for instance, on school travel for third-
country national children and airport transit procedures. The lack of
formal agreements has been attributed to the complicated decision-
making structure of the Third Pillar. Yet, it is the same large mem-
ber states (France, Germany) most concerned with immigration
that stalled the process by insisting on labyrinthine procedures and
unanimous voting, thus undermining Ugurs intergovernmentalist
account of the upgrading of common interests in the face of massive
the Third Pillar on
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asylum requests (1995). The only operative agreements, the 1990
Dublin and Schengen agreements, were in fact adopted outside the
EU framework and their implementation delayed respectively until
1997 and 1995.
Moreover, a number of parallel forums on migration and asy-
lum were set up during this period, making the Third Pillar one
of many other venues: among them and aside from the Schengen
executive committee, Intergovernmental Consultations on Asylum,
Refugees and Migration Policies, the Vienna Club (Germany,
Austria, Switzerland, France and Italy), the Vienna Group and
Budapest process, the Central European initiative, the Ad Hoc
Committee of Experts for Identity Documents and the Movement of
Persons, the Council of Europe Committee of Experts on the Legal
Aspects of Territorial Asylum, Refugees, and Stateless People, the
UN Commission on Crime Prevention, and the Organization for
Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The institutions of the
EC were not considered as the legitimate set of institutions to de-
velop common policies, thus contradicting the neo-functionalist ac-
count of a spillover of the creation of the EC single market.
11

The diplomats strike back? Amsterdam and beyond
The decisions to shift co-operation on migration into the Community
framework and incorporate Schengen via protocol during the
last stage of the Amsterdam negotiations came as a surprise. The
Commission negotiating team headed by Michel Petite won a battle
if not the war in Amsterdam. Interior ofcials were taken aback since
they themselves were unclear about the content of the Schengen ac-
quis, 3,000 pages of various legal standing. They did not want the ac-
quis published and given a legal character. The Treaty actually came
into force in May 1999 before member states had agreed on its con-
tent and its incorporation.
To understand the Amsterdam outcome, one must remember
that ministries of Foreign Affairs negotiate treaty revisions in the EU.
They were not concerned with the consequences of the Schengen
protocol, a task that their colleagues sitting in Interior and Justice
ministries would have to undertake.
12
Having seen their negotiating
role diminished during the Schengen process, Foreign Affairs were
keen to rein in transgovernmental processes dominated by law and
order civil servants which had multiplied and run amok. By neglect-
ing the Third Pillar and preferring the Schengen group, the bureau-
crats in the Schengen founding member states had unwittingly con-
tributed to that outcome. They could not count on the support of later
Schengen members such as Italy or Greece who had not been treated
parallel forums
on migration
the Amsterdam
Treaty
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virginie guiraudon
as equal partners. Among the three founding Schengen members
studied, only the Dutch favoured a communitarization of asylum
and immigration. Given that the interests of the larger member states
(France and Germany) were better preserved in a exible multilateral
setting such as Schengen, the Dutch preference for the inclusion of
Community actors and a more constraining framework should not
be surprising. Even less so given that the French in particular had
bullied the Dutch in the Schengen context over drugs policy.
Notwithstanding, the German and French delegations success-
fully lobbied for provisions that limited the role of EC institutions in
the new Title IV of the Amsterdam Treaty on the progressive estab-
lishment of an area of freedom, security and justice. The Germans
obtained unanimous voting in the Council of Ministers and, under
French pressure, the role of the ECJ was circumscribed. The applica-
tion of preliminary rulings to the ECJ in areas covered by Title IV is
restricted since only courts of last instance will be able to use Article
177. Furthermore, the Court of Justice cannot rule on national mea-
sures adopted in relation to the crossing of borders to safeguard in-
ternal security, and its rulings shall not apply to judgments of courts
or tribunals of the Member States which have become res judicata.
The defended position reects the original motivation of intergov-
ernmental co-operation, which was to avoid judicial scrutiny that had
undermined migration control policy at the domestic level.
13

It remains puzzling that the state most concerned with the is-
sue (Germany) did not wish to shift competence to the Community
or lock in commitments, and lobbied for unanimity, given that
their priority was refugee burdensharing.
14
We know that, during
negotiations, like-minded ofcials and national governments do
not share the same preferences (Lord and Winn 2000) and here it
seems that the German Interior ofcials reluctance to depart from
a Schengen model of secretive inter-bureaucratic co-operation led to
a sub-optimal outcome for Germany, the main recipient of asylum-
seekers and displaced persons. Yet this only points to the lack of do-
mestic co-ordination on the issue in the German case. This is why
the Interior-Foreign Affairs Chancellery rivalry that dated from the
Schengen negotiations still mattered at Amsterdam. It led to what
Andrew Moravcsik has termed an aggregation failure whereby the
emergence of a coherent national position out of disparate demands
is blocked, a situation that, in his view, allows supranational entre-
preneurs to play the role of two-level network manager (1999: 283):
here the rejoicing Michel Petite who could claim victory for the policy
shift from the Third to the First Pillar, although with limitations on
the role of EC institutions.
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Amsterdam has also not solved the question of opt-outs.
Amsterdam consecrates the idea of a Europe la carte. The UK,
Northern Ireland and, consequently, the Republic of Ireland have
opted out of the new area of freedom, security and justice. Denmark,
albeit a member of Schengen, is not bound by the new title and co-
operates only on visa policy a legal nightmare since it requires the
signing of a separate Danish-EU treaty every time a decision is taken.
Since Amsterdam, developments suggest that, given the rules of
the game, the logic of the policy process has not drastically changed.
The Commission 2000 Communication on a community immi-
gration policy resubmitted texts that had been discussed under the
Third Pillar framework.
15
It faces competition from member states
that have a right of co-initiative. Typically, the country that holds the
Presidency of the Union uses this platform to push its pet projects
to satisfy its domestic electoral interests. Law enforcement measures
such as those proposed by the French Presidency in the fall of 2000
have been more successful than those emphasizing migrants rights.
The French proposals on carrier sanctions, expulsion of third-coun-
try nationals or the ght against smuggling were adopted in May
2001 under the Swedish Presidency, while the latter had to accept a
much watered down version of its own text on temporary protection
status to ensure passage.
What has been conrmed is the importance of migration in
the foreign relations of the EU. For instance, all concerned parties
agree that the JHA acquis has gone up the agenda in the accession
negotiations in which Justice and Interior ministers take a large
part (Lavenex 2001). Ten per cent of PHARE funding (130.7 million
Euros in 2000) goes to JHA issues, half of which concern border is-
sues (House of Lords Select Committee on European Union 2000,
part 3, p. 4). Preventing migration at the source has become an EU
mantra.
16
It has resulted in an number of initiatives including the
Dutchinspired cross-pillar High-Level Working Group (HLWG) set
up in December 1998. The latter drew up action plans for the six
main countries of origin of unwanted migrants in Europe to assess,
inter alia, the possibility of readmission agreements, safe returns
and transit zones. The HLWGs 1999 report stressed the general
recognition that a cross-pillar and comprehensive approach [was]
needed and stated that the expertise of the Member States needs to
be made available in various policy elds.
17
The groups trans-pillar
approach seemed to herald a new era when the prevailing preven-
tion-by-policing policies would be accompanied by policies that ad-
dressed the root causes of migration. Yet, the country reports simply
restated the six action points set out by the JHA K4 Committee in
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virginie guiraudon
March 1998 regarding immigration from Iraq in which Turkey was
expected to prevent Iraqis from arriving in the EU.
Thus, although diplomats at Amsterdam took their revenge
on Interior and Justice personnel, the latter still dominate and are
becoming more involved in diplomatic forums. For instance, in
February 2000, during the negotiations of the revision of the fourth
Lome Convention between the EU 15 and seventy one Mexican,
Caribbean and Pacic countries, Interior ministers insisted that a
clause of readmission of illegal migrants be included in the nal text
at the risk of blocking the agreement.
In sum, transgovernmental co-operation allowed law and order
ofcials to gain autonomy and devise policies without accommodat-
ing judges or conicting sectoral interests. They successfully dened
a frame that equated migration with transnational security threats
and favoured intergovernmental secretive forums. Over time, they
were perhaps too successful and, after Amsterdam, they have to co-
operate with EU institutions and publish their decisions. They do
remain key players.
III. Pro-migrant forces go transnational too: NGO rivalry
and the social exclusion paradigm
In 1985, when the rst Schengen agreement was signed, the
Commission issued new guidelines on migration (CEC 1985) and
argued that European integration entailed a better access to rights for
foreign residents. In July, it adopted a Decision setting up a procedure
for prior consultation of new policy in this area. Five member states
contested the move and the ECJ annulled the Decision in 1987.
18
The
Commissions competence was conned to the free movement of EU
citizens. Yet, this did not deter the Commission unit that had been
pushing for this change and pro-migrant transnational organizations
such as the Churches Commission for Migrants from carving out
a space for the defence of the rights of ethnic minorities in Europe.
The unit (0.4) within the Commission Directorate for Employment
and Social Affairs now called Free Movement of Workers, Migrant
Integration and Anti-racism was created in 1958 to handle issues
related to free movement of labour and later handled many budget
lines related to the integration of migrants and refugees and, since
1986, anti-racism.
19
Annette Bosscher, the head of the unit until the
late 1990s, and Giuseppe Callovi, who later moved to other director-
ates, rmly believed that European integration should go hand in
hand with the integration of non-Europeans.
security threats
pro-migrant
transnational
organizations
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Their unit has faced many challenges, given the thin treaty basis
for its actions. Its institutional activists (Ruzza 1999) had to nd
other bases for intervention. As Adrian Favell recalls:
as a political as opposed to economic agenda began to differen-
tiate itself in the Commissions corridors, certain DGs less power-
fully placed in the central drive towards EMU, seized on alternative
European public interest agendas, following the path pioneered by
the highly active and progressive minded DG XI (Environment).
(Favell 2000: 167)
Indeed the attitude of civil servants in the Employment and Social
Affairs DG resembled the purposeful opportunism (Cram 1997)
found in other directorates whereby larger policy agendas are instru-
mentalized to increase their scope for action.
A few individuals committed to a progressive agenda in fairly
marginal parts of the Commission could become policy entrepre-
neurs (Geddes 2000a, 2000b) precisely because their activities were
sheltered from public scrutiny. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a Member of the
European Parliament (MEP) who once headed the Frankfurt Bureau
for Multicultural Affairs, has thus analysed the situation: Europe
is full of promises for the future because the Commission and the
Parliament are not exposed to immediate electoral pressures.
20

Similarly, the successful initiatives in the area of immigrant policy
concerned a few Commission insiders and small NGO structures
that may have publicly decried the democratic decit yet practised
top-down lite politics.
The rst opportunity before Maastricht was to build upon the no-
tion of European citizenship that was meant to herald a peoples
Europe and the end of the democratic decit. To help mobilization
on this agenda, the Commission sought to increase its legitimacy as
a spokesperson for civil society by engineering an ofcial channel
of interest representation. In 1991, the European Commission acting
upon an initiative of the European Parliament founded the Migrants
Forum that spoke for 130 migrant associations that held an annual
general assembly. Yet, the Migrants Forum failed to nd common
ground (Kastoryano 1994; Geddes 1998).
21
Turks and Moroccans
vied for control of the organization, with the Moroccans eventually
winning out and giving the organization a Francophone cast that set
it apart from the largely Anglophone NGO world of Brussels. The
Forums activists also had different conceptions of citizenship and
cultures of contention depending on the nation states in which they
had settled.
European
citizenship
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virginie guiraudon
In any case, using the concept of citizenship to further the rights
of thirdcountry nationals failed in 1992. The gap between EU and
non-EU citizens widened when the Treaty on European Union
granted special rights to EU citizens residing in other member states
such as local voting rights. Both the Commission and the Brussels-
based NGO Migration Policy Group (MPG) refocused their agenda.
22

They jumped on the bandwagon of the EU war on social exclusion
(Article 137 of the Treaty of Amsterdam). Commission documents
insist that migrants and their descendants are prime victims of social
exclusion and that NGOs know best how to ght it.
23
Social exclusion
encompasses a wide range of programmes and the MPG promptly
responded to this signal by linking migrant integration in the 1996
Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) to this agenda rather than to
the debates on European citizenship, which had focused the ener-
gies of the Migrants Forum (Geddes 2000b). Indeed, the social
exclusion frame beneted pre-existing transnational networks that
could draw upon their credentials and expertise in the area of anti-
discrimination.
24
In fact, the Starting Line Group (SLG) founded in
1992 by academic and NGO legal experts and co-ordinated by the
MPG to draft an anti-discrimination article for the pre-Amsterdam
IGC included members from national anti-discrimination boards:
the British Commission for Racial Equality and the Dutch National
Bureau against Racism.
Citizenship or social exclusion, EU citizenship for third-country
nationals or anti-discrimination policies? In the NGO battle for legiti-
macy, the SLG supported by the MPG clearly had the organizational
structure, and the local and legal knowledge to successfully lobby for
its anti-discrimination agenda while the Migrants Forum with its
cumbersome structure remained focused on citizenship. Moreover,
the SLG matched EU technocratic standards. The anti-discrimina-
tion clause project was reminiscent of Article 119 and the 1976 Equal
Treatment Directive on gender equality in a very Euro-correct way.
Leading up to the 1996 IGC, initiatives that showed a gentler, kinder
Europe were welcome. The timing was ripe for the SLG initiative.
With Commission ofcials, they were able to informally set the agen-
da at the 1996 IGC, thereby conrming accounts of Amsterdam ne-
gotiations that build upon Kingdons model, such as Mark Pollacks
(1999), and those that focus on the importance of policy framing,
such as Mazey and Richardsons (1997).
Policy framing was key because, if the problem is dened as so-
cial exclusion, the range of solutions is wide. As Andrew Geddes has
pointed out:
war on social
exclusion
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it can be advantageous that the terms inclusion and cohesion are
vague and their meanings unclear because it implies that the quest
for inclusion is likely to be able to sustain itself in the long term and
potentially be institutionalized at the European level.
(Geddes 2000a: 224)
Like sustainable development, social inclusion is an objective that
one can hardly oppose. Anti-discrimination for its part presented
the advantage of not being solely targeted at migrants. Article 13
protects people with disability, the elderly and other groups a plus
given that measures specically protecting migrants are a hard sell.
Most member states that did not want to shift competence on im-
migrant policy to the EU level nevertheless did because they were
led to believe that in fact the issue was social exclusion of a number
of groups.
The ambiguity of the anti-discrimination frame also partly ex-
plains the rapid adoption of the so-called race directive in June
2000 (directive 2000/ 43/EC) seven months after the Commissions
proposal a record for the adoption of a piece of Community law
requiring substantial legislative changes at national level (Tyson
2001: 112). The directive also required a unanimous decision in the
Council and had an inter-sectoral character that implied interminis-
terial co-ordination making it a least likely case. The single factor
most often mentioned by the Council Social Affairs working group
interviewed in Brussels is Jorg Halder.
25
France was most vocal at
condemning the Austrian government for integrating the Freedom
Party in February 2000. Ironically, their enthusiasm towards a di-
rective that resembled Dutch or British tools for integrating ethnic
minorities stemmed from an event, the success of a far-right leader
who had praised the Waffen SS, that easily tted the French concep-
tion of anti-racist measures as a means of ghting ideas inspired by
Nazi Germany. In a classic Baptist-bootlegger coalition situation,
the German delegation was also extremely co-operative lest it be as-
sociated with the Austrians. The initial policy linkage between the
anti-discrimination package and the Austrian far right ensured the
passage of a directive.
Just as law and order ofcials, NGOs expanded the realm of com-
petence of the EU to include immigrant-related issues. Their agenda
had more chances of succeeding through lobbying techniques shel-
tered from public scrutiny than at the national level where public
opinion, media coverage and the mobilization of anti-immigrant par-
ties made the advancement of migrant rights unlikely. Even in the
Council, negotiations focused on reaching compromises on techni-
ambiguity of the
anti-discrimination
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virginie guiraudon
cal issues and legal wording rather than on the normative underpin-
nings of immigrant policy and can be contrasted to the emotional
partisan debates observed in many European countries. This closed
venue of debate allowed policy change in favour of migrants that is
arduous in open national venues.
IV Indirect policy effects: migration and freedom of services
Beside conscious efforts to mobilize around migration at the
European level, one must take into account decisions by EU institu-
tions and transnational non-state actors that indirectly bear on mi-
gration ows to complete the complex and contradictory set of EU
rules that affect migration within and into the EU.
The ECJ has traditionally been concerned with extending its ju-
risdiction. The Court has had to strike a balance between expanding
EC competence and remaining within the legitimate bounds of its
sphere of duty (economic rights rather than peoples rights and EC
citizens rather than non-EC citizens). Therefore, its jurisprudence
on third-country nationals has not been based on human rights but
on freedom of services or association treaty provisions. In the Rush
Portuguesa decision of 27 March 1990 (C-113/89, ECR 1-1417), the
ECJ reiterated that the provisions for the suppression of restrictions
to the freedom to deliver services entailed that a company could move
with its own staff. If the company employs third-country nationals,
member states cannot refuse them entry to protect their labour mar-
ket on the grounds that immigration from non-EU states is a matter
of national sovereignty.
The Court decision was in line with the drive towards the single
market, which resulted in the 1993 liberalization of service provision.
It stirred a controversy in Germany given the important number of
posted workers in the construction industry denounced by trade
unions as a form of social dumping. Indeed, no comprehensive su-
pranational regulation has been passed on the social and wage con-
ditions applicable to posted workers. Instead, a 1996 directive has
allowed member states to apply a minimum level of national regula-
tions to these posted workers and the Commission has proposed two
directives to implement this derived right of third-country nationals
(OJ 1999 C 67/9).
Meanwhile, at the Trade Commission directorate, developments
suggest that the mobility of personnel in the services sector will be
extended at the global level and thus affect ows into the EU. Co-
optation strategies are at work between the Trade Commission staff
Rush Portuguesa
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and business interests. One particular non-governmental forum sup-
ported by the Trade Commission is the European Services Forum
(ESF), an ofcial NGO in the Seattle EU delegation whose focus is to
support the Commissions viewpoint during the General Agreement
on Trade in Services (GATS) negotiations. At a conference of the
ESF under the patronage of the Commission, Trade Commissioner
Pascal Lamy expressed this sentiment: I particularly welcome the
participation of ... NGOs. The key to the success of the ESF is that it
is a forum, open to all stakeholders, including civil society.
26

Pascal Lamy has experience in setting up partnerships that
short-circuit member states since this was a key strategy of Jacques
Delors when Lamy was his chef de cabinet (Ross 1995). Lamys refer-
ence to civil society is misleading. In fact, the ESE based at UNICE,
the European employers federation, includes thirty-six European
trade federations and fty EU-based international companies in sec-
tors such as banking, insurance, telecommunications, postal ser-
vices, aviation, shipping, tourism, retail, legal services, accountancy,
management consulting, architecture, engineering, IT services, pub-
lishing, audiovisual, energy and environmental services.
Part of their agenda is lobbying against barriers to the movement
of people and in particular the complex, cumbersome, and time-
consuming procedures to obtain work permits and visas (ESF 2000)
and they favour a GATS visa or passport.
27
The adversaries are clearly
identied: the ESF managing director describes them as the under-
standably defensive interests of WTO Member Countries immigra-
tion and labor market developments ofcials (Kerneis 2000).
At an MPG meeting on this issue organized in Brussels in March
2001,
28
immigration ofcials jaws dropped in silent disbelief when
they heard multinational corporations proposing their passport.
The meeting also showed that strange bedfellows emerge at the
European level. European pro-migrant NGOs are not used, as are
their American counterparts, to engaging in client politics with busi-
ness interests (on the US case, see Freeman 2001). Yet there seems
to be a fast learning curve, which is fostered by the MPGs trans-
atlantic dialogue with US think-tanks. Strategic alliances between
NGOs and business interests are signs that some of the actors in our
story are trying to co-ordinate their scripts to seize upon the opportu-
nity of the new economic climate and the older free movement and
neo-liberal agenda of European integration.
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Conclusion
The coexistence of conicting discourses that do not speak to one
another, competition among like-minded actors, diverse modes of
decision-making (depending on their level of supranationalization),
in a period of numerous and rapid ED constitutional changes ex-
plains the autocratic and contradictory character of law-making in
EU immigration-related policies.
Both in the case of migration and asylum and that of anti-dis-
crimination policies at the EU level, we observe parallel dynamics.
First, a group of actors vie to become the legitimate policy interlocu-
tors against other similar groups: interior civil servants vs. their for-
eign affairs counterpart, MPG and the SLG vs. the Migrants Forum.
Each group has a pre-formatted set of policy solutions based on their
expertise: policing for the former, anti-discrimination for the latter.
They succeeded by momentously seizing upon an emergent broader
policy frame: immigration ofcials built upon the post-1989 new se-
curity agenda while NGOs joined calls for the ght against social
exclusion during the 1996 IGC. They were helped by their adversar-
ies weaknesses or errors, respectively the lack of supervision of other
key ministries whose attention was xed on the fall of the Berlin Wall
when Schengen was being negotiated, and the structural and chronic
problems of the Migrants Forum. It is telling that initially there was
little supervision of these experiments that grew on the margins of
the core market-driven project of European integration.
Our goal has been to account for the particular timing, form and
content of the immigration policy domain. Our focus on the ac-
tors who prevailed and the interests that they represented explains
the content and form of the European immigration policy domain.
Immigration ofcials sought to avoid national judicial constraints
and conicting bureaucratic views that were experienced in the early
1980s. They consequently favoured a secretive intergovernmental-
ism where they could exclude other ministries and escape judicial
monitoring. Similarly, they have privileged informal co-operation
and soft law. Their own professional identity explains the bias to-
wards control and policing. Pro-migrant groups knew that, as in a
national context, the institutions most receptive to defending mi-
grant interests are restricted venues of debate sheltered from elec-
toral fallout such as social administrations and courts. They found
European functional equivalents in the Commission and the ECJ
and have focused on legal solutions such as the inclusion of Article
13 in the Treaty. At the European level, small lobby-like structures are
the most efcacious which explains the success of the Dutch-British
conicting
discourses
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activists and therefore the emphasis on anti-discrimination. Success
only came once they could co-ordinate with Commission ofcials,
who had rst sought to build upon free movement to expand their
competence and later had tried to foster a more representative as-
sembly.
The timing of the constitution of the immigration policy do-
main itself depends on the windows of opportunity constituted by
the emergence of new frames, changes in the strategic or economic
context, or constitutional openings such as IGCs or Schengen nego-
tiation working groups. In this respect, this is not a straight path-
dependent account. Todays winners may yet face challeng-
es if the context changes or at the next constitutional moment.
Notwithstanding, they have accumulated a legitimacy capital and the
policy domain has been institutionalized in a way that cannot be easi-
ly undone. For instance, we have seen that the diplomats revenge at
Amsterdam has not altered the predominance of Interior and Justice
interests in the management of EU migration policy.
It cannot be denied that following 9/11 and the concert of European
leaders calls for a European border police prior to the Seville sum-
mit, a security/restrictive take may prevail. For politicians, this is a
convenient way of shifting blame and responsibility. Yet, few con-
crete decisions were taken at Seville and harmonization is slow, and
EU measures have not resulted in a decrease in illegal immigration.
In the end, this strategy may be as dangerous as activating xenopho-
bia at the national level. Populist parties, which are generally both
anti-immigrant and anti-EU, will be further strengthened by the fail-
ure of European leaders to support more proactive immigration and
integration policies.
Notes
1 The author thanks Martin Schain and participants of the 2001 EUSA meet-
ing who commented on an earlier version of this paper, Andrew Moravcsik
for his incisive reading, as well as the two anonymous referees for their in-
sightful suggestions.
2 Before 2004, the Council should unanimously adopt measures on asylum,
refugees and displaced persons, on the absence of any controls on persons
crossing internal borders and on external border control (including rules on
visas for stays of less than three months), and on the free travel of third-
country nationals within the EU for short-term stays. After 2004, measures
should be adopted with respect to refugee burden-sharing, and the harmo-
nization of the conditions of entry and residence, standards for the issue of
long-term visas and residence permits, or the right of residence for third-
country nationals wishing to stay in EU states other than their country of
residence.
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3 For a fuller treatment of the application of political sociology to EU studies,
see Guiraudon (2000b).
4 The central idea of the garbage can models is the substitution of a temporal
order for a consequential order (March and Olsen 1986: 17) and thus our
research paid particular attention to temporal ordering.
5 Given the recent debate in the American Political Science Review on the gar-
bage can (see Bendor et al. 2001 and the reply by Olsen 2001), I clarify that
my reference to Cohen et al.s famed 1972 article respects the spirit of their
work: the metaphor was not meant as the theory but rather as a model
to comprehend some features of decision-making ... to extend, rather than
replace, understandings gained from other perspectives (March and Olsen
1986: 12).
6 Proposal for a Council Act establishing the convention on rules for the ad-
mission of third-country nationals to the member states. COM/97/0387 -
nal - CNS 97/0227 [Doc 597PC0387].
7 Respectively, Council Directive 2000/43/EC of 29 June 2000 [Ofcial
Journal L 180, 19/07/2000, pp. 22-6] and Council Directive 2000/78/EC
0(27 November 2000 [O. J. L 303, 02/1212000, pp. 16-22].
8 Interview with Michel Portal, chef de bureau, Sous-Direction de la Circulation
Transfrontiere et des Visas, Ministry of Interior, Paris, December 1994.
Also interviews with M. Malwald, German Federal Ministry of Interior,
Bonn, April 1995, with Jrgen Haberlandt, German Federal Ministry of
Interior, Berlin, June 1995, and with Nicolas Franzen, Immigration and
Naturalization Department, Ministry of Justice, The Hague, February 1995.
The lack of political leadership was heightened by glasnost and Germanys
unwillingness to build a wall to its east.
9 Transport ministries had also signed the original 1985 agreement and later
disappeared.
10 Interview, General Secretariat of the European Commission, Brussels,
March 1999.
11 See Guiraudon (2000c) for a fuller analysis of alternative explanations.
12 Interview with Michel Petite, chief negotiator for the 1996 IGC, European
Commission, Cambridge, MA, April 1999.
13 Stetter (2000) refers to these decisions as principals seeking to prevent
agency loss when delegating authority. I would add that, once delegation
had occurred against their views, migration bureaucrats did indeed seek to
limit agency loss but that the rules and procedures adopted to do so seem
to have been counterproductive given what he views as the motivation for
shifting competence, which, again, was not the ex ante preferred option for
French and German ofcials.
14 For a thorough test of alternative theories of EU burden-sharing in this area,
see Thielemann (2002).
15 COM(2000) 757 nal, 22/1112000.
16 COM(2000) 757 nal, 22/11/2000, section 2.1 partnership with countries of
origin.
17 Press release, Final Report of the High-Level Working Group on Asylum
and Migration, 18/9/1999.
18 See 9 July 1987 decision in joint cases 281,283-5,287/85, Rec. 1987, 3023.
19 The Unit administers about 10 million ECUs for refugee integration, 6 mil-
lion for migrants, and 7 million for anti-racism every year. A 1995 report
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assessing 200 of the 560 projects on migrant integration that DG V funded
between 1991 and 1993 demonstrates that only 32 (16 per cent) were mi-
grant-led (CEC 1995: 10). NGOs, churches, trade unions, etc., made up the
rest of the beneciaries. After 1995, Brussels-based NGOs that had submit-
ted 2.6% of the proposals received 6.8% of the total funding a clear success
(CEC 1998).
20 Interview, Brussels, May 1995.
21 After several mismanagement crises, the Forum has been suspended.
22 The MPG staff acknowledged that supranational competencies that would
affect diverse national concepts of citizenship or change nationality law were
anathema ro member states (Hix and Niessen 1996).
23 See Guidelines on Preparatory Measures to Combat Social Exclusion (CEC
1998).
24 French or German national activists were interested in citizenship issues yet
were rarely present among the personnel of pro-migrant Brussels NGOs.
25 Interviews in Brussels with Claire Aubin, Social Affairs attach, French per-
manent delegation to the EU, 5 December 2001, Porrio Silva, Social Affairs
attache (in charge of presiding Social Affairs and Employment Council work-
ing group), Portuguese permanent delegation to the EU, 6 December 2001,
John Kittmer, Social Affairs attach, British permanent delegation to the EU,
6 December 2001.
26 Speech given at the conference The GATS 2000 Negotiations: new opportu-
nities of trade liberalization for all services sectors, Hotel Sheraton Brussels
Airport, Brussels (Zaventem), 27 November 2000.
27 The idea of a GATS visa emerged in 1993 at the end of the Uruguay Round
and is understood as a passport for different categories of natural persons
permitted entry under the schedule of commitments at the horizontal and
sectoral levels like Information and Communication Technologies (lCTs),
business visitors, contract personnel.
28 Transatlantic Workshop on High Skilled Migration (Brussels, 5-6 March
2001).
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Final version accepted for publication 9/10/02
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Immigration and state thought
Abdelmalek Sayad
In France and in French-speaking academia, the sociologist Abdelmalek
Sayad is unanimously considered one of the very best thinkers on migra-
tion. His oeuvre, though quantitatively not huge, is qualitatively outstanding.
Unfortunately it is not well known beyond the francophone world. This article
was rst published in French in 1996. It develops one of the major themes
in Sayads work, the notion of state thought. As explained here, it can be
summarised in the following way: to think about migration is always to think
about the state, and more precisely it is to think about the state that thinks
about migration.
Although it is a universal phenomenon, migration is always dis-
cussed within the framework of the local unit and, insofar as we are
concerned, within the framework of the nation-state.
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Despite the ex-
treme diversity of situations in which it occurs and despite the varia-
tions it displays in time and space, the phenomenon of emigration-
immigration does exhibit constants, in other words characteristics
(social, economic, juridical and political) that reappear throughout
its history. These constants constitute, as it were, a sort of common
and irreducible basis, which is both a product and an objectication
of state thought. State thought is a form of thought that reects,
through its own structures (mental structures), the structures of the
state, which thus acquires a body (see Bourdieu 1993). The categories
through which we think about immigration (and, more generally,
our whole social and political world), or our social, economic, cultural
and ethical categories and we can never place too much emphasis
on the role morality plays in the way we perceive the phenomenon of
immigration and, in a word, our political categories, are denitely
and objectively (that is, without our being aware of it and, therefore,
independently of our will), national or even nationalist categories.
The structures of our most ordinary political understanding, or of the
constants
state thought
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abdelmalek sayad
understanding that is spontaneously translated into our world-view,
shape our perception of immigration, but they are at the same time
shaped by it. They are basically national structures and they therefore
act as such. They are structured structures in the sense that they are
socially and historically determined products, but they are also struc-
turing structures in the sense that they predetermine and organize
our whole representation of the world, and therefore the world itself.
It is, without any doubt, because of all this that the migratory phe-
nomenon as a whole emigration and immigration can only be
described and interpreted through the categories of state thought.
That mode of thought is completely inscribed within the line of de-
marcation that radically divides nationals from non-nationals. The
line itself is invisible or scarcely perceptible but it has major implica-
tions. On the one hand, we have those who have quite naturally, or,
as the lawyers put it, have by right, the nationality of the country
(their country) from which they come in other words of the state
whose nationals they are and of the territory over which that state
has sovereignty and, on the other, we have those who do have the
nationality of the country in which they are resident.
The spirit of the state
It is also for all these reasons that we can say that thinking about im-
migration means thinking about the state, and that it is the state that
is thinking about itself when it thinks about immigration. And this
is perhaps one of the last things we discover when we reect upon
the problem of immigration and work on immigration, whereas we
should of course have begun with this, or at least should have known
this before we started. What we discover in this way is the secret
virtue of immigration: it provides an introduction, and perhaps the
best introduction of all, to the sociology of the state. Why? Because
immigration constitutes the limit of what constitutes the national
state. Immigration is the limit that reveals what it is intrinsically, or
its basic truth. It is as though it were in the very nature of the state to
discriminate and, in order to do so, to acquire in advance all the nec-
essary criteria of pertinence that are required to make the distinction,
without which there can be no national state, between the nationals
it recognizes as such and in which it therefore recognizes itself, just
as they recognize themselves in it (this double mutual recognition-
effect is indispensable to the existence and function of the state), and
others with whom it deals only in material or instrumental terms.
It deals with them only because they are present within the eld of
immigration
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its national sovereignty and in the national territory covered by that
sovereignty. It has been said that this diacritical function of the state,
which, strictly speaking, is one of denition, i.e. delineation,
2
is in
the very nature of the state, and that it constitutes the state in all
its forms and throughout its history. The need to discriminate is, it
would seem, more imperative and by that very fact more prescriptive
in the case of a republican nation-state. Such a state aspires to total
national homogeneity in other words homogeneity at every level:
political, social, economic, cultural (and especially linguistic and re-
ligious).
Quite aside from the fact that it disturbs the national order, blurs
the divide or the border line between what is and what is not na-
tional, and therefore perturbs or disturbs the order based upon that
separation, immigration, or in other words the presence within the
nation of non-nationals (rather than those who are simply foreign
to the nation), infringes upon the integrity of that order. It disturbs
the mythical purity or perfection of that order, and it therefore pre-
vents the full realization of that orders implicit logic. We can thus
understand why, without taking to extremes the logic implicit in this
state of affairs that is, without perverting it there is always a great
temptation to lapse into a form of fundamentalism that is known all
over the world, and that is cultivated and celebrated all over the world
(todays religious fundamentalism is no more than a variant, and not
even a new variant, as it exists prior to national fundamentalism, hav-
ing existed before the reality of the nation itself, and because it has
always coexisted alongside that fundamentalism). For those who take
a purist (or fundamentalist) view of the national order, immigration
is supposedly the agent of the perversion of the national social order
in its integrity and integrality because it concerns people who should
not be there (if the national order were perfect, it would not have this
aw, this inadequacy) but who are there (rather as though they were
the objectication or materialization of that aw, that inadequacy
and that inability to complete the nation). Immigration is undeniably
a subversive factor to the extent that it reveals in broad daylight the
hidden truth and the deepest foundations of the social and political
order we describe as national. Thinking about immigration basically
means interrogating the state, interrogating its foundation and inter-
rogating the internal mechanisms of its structuration and workings.
Using immigration to interrogate the state in this way means, in the
nal analysis, denaturalizing, so to speak, what we take to be natu-
ral, and rehistoricizing the state or that element within the state that
seems to have been aficted by historical amnesia. It means, in other
words, recalling the social and historical conditions of its genesis.
fundamentalism/
purism
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Time helps us forget all these things, but time is not the only factor
involved: time can succeed in this repressive operation only because
it is both in our interests and in the interests of the state itself to
forget its history. The naturalization of the state, or of the state that
exists inside our heads, makes it seem as though the state were an
immediate given, as though it were an object that existed by itself or
that was created by nature. It makes it seem that the state has been
in existence from all eternity, that it has been freed of all determina-
tions external to itself. It appears to exist independently of all histori-
cal considerations, independently of history and of its own history,
from which we prefer to divorce it for ever, even though we never
stop elaborating and telling that history. Immigration and this is of
course why it is so disturbing forces us to unveil the state, to unveil
the way we think about the state and the way it thinks about itself.
And it is the way it thinks about immigration that gives this away.
Being children of the nation-state and of the national categories we
bear within us and which the state has implanted in us, we all think
about immigration (in other words about those who are other than
ourselves, what they are, and through them, what we ourselves are)
in the way that the state requires us to think and, ultimately, in the
way that the state itself thinks.
State thought or spirit of the state as analysed by Pierre Bourdieu
is a mode of thought and a distinct way of thinking. The two appear
to be inseparable. It is state thought that creates the states mode of
thinking about everything it is and about all the domains to which
it is applied. In the same way, state thought may, as a result of its
constancy, its repetitions, its own strength, and its ability to impose
its way of thinking on others, have generated durable modes of think-
ing that are typical of state thought. We must therefore subject the
postulates of state thought to critical reection, to a process of dele-
gitimizing what is legitimate, of what goes without saying. We must
delegitimize it in the sense of objectifying what is most deeply rooted
within us, what is most deeply hidden in our social unconscious.
Such an operation makes a desanctifying break with doxa. We have
here an undertaking that everything within us resists: our entire so-
cial being (individual and collective) and everything that we commit
to it with such passion in other words our whole national being.
For we exist only in this form and only within this framework: the
framework and form of the nation. To take jurists as an example,
it took all the audacity of a Hans Kelsen to free himself from state
thought and even to rebel against that thought, and ultimately to con-
test the opposition that is de rigueur amongst jurists and (elsewhere)
between national and non-national by demonstrating the arbitrary
critical reection
of state thought
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(or conventional) character of that distinction: the national exists
de jure, and belongs by nature or by virtue of state (the possession of
the state of nationality) to the population that constitutes the state.
Anyone who is foreign (non-national) is subject to the competence
and authority of a state in which he plays no part, and on whose terri-
tory he resides, lives and works only as a result of his presence there
and for the duration of that presence. His presence does not have the
same status as the presence within that territory of a national. Kelsen
regards this difference as purely conventional or non-essential, and
that leads him to reject the idea that the state is necessarily the juridi-
cal expression of a community.
The crimes of immigration; immigration on trial
Why this preamble about state thought? First, because immigration
constitutes the privileged terrain on to which this form of thought
is projected, as though on to a mirror. Second, because of all the
domains of existence and of all the sectors of social life, delinquency
is the one that owes, so to speak, most to this way of thinking. In the
case of immigration, delinquency implies not only the offences that
the police have to deal with or those recorded by the crime statistics
but also, as one delinquency can hide another, a delinquency that
might be described as situational or statutory (and almost ontologi-
cal) because, at the deepest level of our mode of thought (i.e. state
thought), it is synonymous with the very existence of the immigrant
and with the very fact of immigration.
Unconsciously, or even when we are not fully conscious of it, the
fact of being an immigrant is far from being a neutral element with-
in the whole gamut of evaluations and judgements that are passed,
should an offence be committed, on the delinquent. Even though
those who pass these judgements (both the ones handed down by
the juridical apparatus and those of the social apparatus i.e. social
judgements) are unaware of the fact, and even though they almost
always do so against their will, the fact of being an immigrant de-
linquent (or a delinquent immigrant) constitutes, as a general rule,
something of an aggravating circumstance. Because we spontane-
ously endorse expressions of public opinion, which exists inside our
heads just as it exists inside the heads of everyone around us (this is
doxa), we even see such circumstances as a supplementary offence
in addition to the offence that has been committed and that has to be
judged. Immigration is a latent, camouaged offence (that of being
an immigrant an offence for which the subject in question bears
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abdelmalek sayad
no responsibility), which is brought to light by the actual offence that
has been committed, by the objectied offence that has to be brought
before the courts. Any trial involving a delinquent immigrant puts
the very process of immigration on trial, rst as a form of delinquen-
cy in itself and second as a source of delinquency. Before we can even
speak of racism or xenophobia, the notion of double punishment
is therefore present within any judgement passed on the immigrant
(and not only in the judgements handed down by judges sitting in
court). It is rooted in state thought, and is the anthropological basis
on which all our social judgements rest. Double punishment exists
objectively in our way of thinking, even before we make it exist in
the objectied form of either the sanction of a legal tribunal or an
administrative decision.
Double punishment exists inside our national heads, because
the very fact of immigration is tainted with the idea of being at fault,
with the idea of anomaly and anomie. The immigrant presence is al-
ways marked by its incompleteness: it is an at-fault presence that is in
itself guilty. It is a displaced presence in every sense of the term. It is
physically and geographically displaced: in other words, it is spatially
displaced because migration is primarily a spatial displacement. It
is displaced in the moral sense too, in the sense in which we speak,
for instance, of speaking out of turn or of misplaced discourse.
It is as though our categories of thought, which are in this respect
and as can never be said too often national categories, saw immigra-
tion itself as a form of delinquency, as an intrinsic delinquency. It
is as though, because the immigrant is already in the wrong simply
because he is present in a land of immigration, all his other sins are
reduplicated and aggravated by the original sin of immigration. That
is his rst sin in the chronological sense because it necessarily pre-
cedes all the other sins that might be committed during the lifetime
of an immigrant. It is a generative sin in the sense that it is the cause
not of his actual sins themselves, but of the place, time and context
(in other words of the social, economic and economic conditions) in
which those sins are committed. Because it is an objective sin, immi-
gration can never be totally bracketed out or neutralized, even when
we try to do so in all objectivity. Immigration, with all the disparage-
ment, disqualication and stigmatization it implies, affects all the
most ordinary acts committed by immigrants and, a fortiori, their
criminal acts. Conversely, all immigrant behaviour, and especially
deviant behaviour, has repercussions on the phenomenon of immi-
gration itself, and leads to greater disapproval, greater disqualica-
tion and greater stigmatization.
We therefore have two kinds of sin or guilt: a historically situated
double punishment
historically
situated sins
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sin (that of immigration) and what might be called behavioural sins
or crimes, or actual sins that gure in the taxonomy or the usual
table of sins that are reprehensible, sanctionable and sanctioned as
such (with varying degrees of severity) by the provisions of the Penal
Code which, in law (in theory, which means in accordance with a law
that has lost all sense of reality), apply to all offenders, whoever they
may be. What relationship is there between the two orders of crime?
On the one hand, we have a crime that has not been committed in-
tentionally. To that extent, none of those involved, or who become
involved despite themselves immigration and the country of im-
migration can admit to it. Even when it is ofcially authorized, the
presence of the immigrant is still, as we have said, basically at fault
(it is a presence that cannot be an end in itself and which, no matter
whether it is accepted or denounced, requires constant justication).
Those who are most concerned, namely the emigrant-immigrants
themselves, appear, nally, to be the real victims of the gigantic farce
that is being acted out at their expense. On the other hand, we have
the crime that has been committed, reported and recorded in canoni-
cal fashion. It is viewed and seen in itself for what it is in its material-
ity and, whenever possible, in the same light as all the crimes of the
rst kind.
What is the relationship between the two? In law, there is none.
Historically situated sins or crimes cannot be used as an argument
for either the defence or the prosecution of second-order crimes,
even when those crimes make the criminal liable to the ever-present
sanction of deportation, irrespective of whether or not it is actual-
ly implemented. Second-order crimes cannot serve as a pretext for
making a more serious and unjust case against immigration. But, in
practice, there is a relationship that is always present in everyones
mind. Some strongly deny being inuenced in one way or the other
by that relationship. Some claim to be totally neutral and to know
nothing about the guilty partys previous record or, in this case, his
status and quality as an immigrant. Others, in contrast, do not con-
ceal or hide their satisfaction at seeing two different modalities of
crime and the two punishments that sanction them overlapping and
aggravating one another in their view, this is only fair and, basi-
cally, something that is quite normal and that should be the rule.
The case against immigration is always inseparable from the case
made against the immigrant because of some offence, even a minor
one, that he has committed. The case against immigration in fact
involves the whole system of representation through which we con-
stitute immigration, and the deviancy or delinquency of immigra-
tion, through which we dene the immigrant and the acts, criminal
behavioural sins
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abdelmalek sayad
or otherwise, he is permitted to commit. These representations are
of two kinds. First, we have mental representations that are translated
into acts of perception and evaluation, cognition and recognition.
They are translated into a whole series of acts in which agents in-
vest their material and symbolic interests (and the symbolic are per-
haps invested with more force and passion than the material), their
social prejudices, their presuppositions and, in a word, their whole
social being. Second, we have what we might call object representa-
tions. These consist in all the external signs, all the indices, all the
features and all the characteristics that can become the object of the
manipulative symbolic strategies we use to determine the (mental)
representations that others have of those properties which are all
perceptible from the outside and their bearers. (In the practical
mode, an individual exists mainly in the sense that he is seen and
that he allows some part of himself to be seen; and the identity we
talk about so much is basically this being-perceived that we all share
in a social sense, and which basically exists only because it is rec-
ognized by others.) That is the way it is in social life, which is an
incessant struggle between the perceptions and classications these
representations impose. Everyone would like to impose the deni-
tion or (mental) representation that atters him most and is in his
best social interests by using the properties at his disposal and his
self-authorized (object) representation. Courts of all kinds are full
of these classication struggles, and the greatest condemnation con-
sists, of course, in the a priori denegation and dispossession of all
the social attributes even the most elementary, which are also the
most essential that make it possible to take part, even at the lowest
and most dominated level, in the play of these struggles between rep-
resentations, in the sense of both mental images and manifestations
designed to act upon those mental images.
The situation of criminality in immigration a situation which
implies, rather than its objective probability, a guaranteed rise in rac-
ism, as it always exists in the presence of and under the gaze of the
other raises the issue of the relationship between politics and polite-
ness. When an immigrant is involved, breaking the law also means
breaking the unwritten law imposing the reserve and neutrality (real
and feigned) that bets a foreigner. In such cases, breaking the law
means more than the infraction in question: it is an error of a differ-
ent order, a lack of politeness. This demand for simple politeness, for
good manners and nothing more, in reality implies the renunciation
of many things. The apparently minor or purely normal concessions
known as politeness are valuable only because they are, in reality,
or deep inside us, political concessions: enforcing respect for forms
mental
representations
object
representations
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comes down to demanding every form of the respect that is owed to
order. The political neutrality that the political demands of foreign
residents who are conned to the non-political is certainly more ac-
ceptable and more easily obtained if we locate it in the register of
politeness rather than in the sphere of the political, even though that
is its true territory. At an unconscious level, it is politeness that pre-
vents the foreigner from playing a political part in the political affairs
(internal and external) of the host country.
Allaying suspicion
A sort of social hyper-correction is required of the immigrant, espe-
cially one of lowly social condition. Being socially or even morally
suspect, he must above all reassure everyone as to his morality. There
has never before been so much talk of republican values in France.
That is because it is a way of denouncing what the social and political
morality of French society regards as the deviant behaviour of Muslim
immigrants: wearing veils to school, statutory discrimination against
women, the political use of religion, which is referred to as funda-
mentalism, and so on. Being conscious of the suspicion that weighs
upon him and which he cannot escape because he is confronted with
it throughout his immigrant life and in every domain of his exis-
tence, it is up to the immigrant to allay it constantly, to foresee it and
to ward it off by repeatedly demonstrating his good faith and his good
will. He nds himself caught up in social struggles despite himself,
because they are of necessity struggles over identity. Because he is
involved in them as an isolated individual and almost without wish-
ing to be involved especially in the interindividual interactions of
everyday life he has no choice but to exaggerate in one way or an-
other. Making a virtue of necessity, and to a large extent because of
the dominated position he occupies in the structure of symbolic pow-
er relations, the immigrant tends, no doubt rightly, to exaggerate
each of the contradictory options he thinks he has chosen, whereas
they have actually been forced upon him. He is condemned to exag-
gerate everything; everything he does, everything he experiences and
everything he is. At times, he must, as an immigrant (when he is at
the bottom of the social hierarchy within the world of immigrants),
assume the stigmas which, in the eyes of public opinion, create the
immigrant. He must therefore accept (resignedly or under protest,
submissively or deantly, or even provocatively) the dominant deni-
tion of his identity. We need only recall, in this connection, the fact
that the stigma itself generates a revolt against the stigma, and that
conscious of
suspicion
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abdelmalek sayad
one of the rst forms of that revolt consists in reappropriating or lay-
ing claim to the stigma, which is converted into an emblem in accor-
dance with the classic paradigm of black is beautiful. This can even
lead to the institutionalization of the group, which thus turns the
stigma in other words and roughly speaking the social, economic,
political and cultural effects of the stigmatization of which it is the
object and in part the product into its foundation. At other times,
in contrast, the immigrant devotes himself to the quest for so-called
assimilation. This presupposes putting a great deal of effort into his
self-presentation and representation (the representation others have
of him, and the representation he wishes to give of himself). The ef-
fort is therefore focused essentially on his body, his physical appear-
ance, and those forms of external behaviour that are most loaded
with symbolic attributes or meanings. It is intended to remove all the
signs that might recall the stigma (physical signs such as complex-
ion, skin colour, hair colour, etc; cultural signs such as accent, man-
ner of speech, clothes, the wearing of a moustache, a whole lifestyle,
etc.). The other strategy involves conspicuous mimicry and the adop-
tion of features which, in contrast, seem to be emblematically charac-
teristic of those to whom he wishes to assimilate. Whilst they are not
mutually exclusive, the two strategies, or at least parts of them, can
be simultaneously juxtaposed, though there is a danger that this will
exacerbate the contradictions. In all these examples, no matter how
contrasted, the issue appears to centre on the use of strategies of
simulation and dissimulation, pretence and bluff, and the acquisi-
tion and projection of a self-image that pleases [qui plat] others and
in which the immigrant delights [se complat], the image he would
like to be in keeping with his material and symbolic interests, or the
image that is least removed from the identity he is laying claim to.
On the one hand, his original identity is credited with having a great-
er authenticity the identity of the old man which he refuses to kill
off. He must preserve, or believe he is preserving, his original iden-
tity because he thinks he is doing so in order not to have to experi-
ence it in shame, timidity and scorn, and to avoid the risk of exoti-
cism, all of which can encourage the racism of which they are a
component element. On the other hand is the new identity he wishes
to create in order to appropriate, if not all the advantages bound up
with the possession of the dominant identity, at least the legitimate
identity (i.e. the identity of the dominant) that he will never have and
at least the negative advantages he can expect to derive from no lon-
ger having to be judged, or having to judge himself, by criteria that
he knows will always, and of necessity, work to his disadvantage.
There is another point on which the two strategies are basically in
assimilation
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agreement: both contain within them, each in its own way, a forced
recognition of legitimate identity. The former recognizes it by refus-
ing it, by keeping as great a distance as possible, and by avoiding any
superuous contact or any contact that is not indispensable. The lat-
ter, in contrast, recognizes it by taking its inspiration from it, by tak-
ing it as a model, by simulating it and by trying to reproduce it as
faithfully as possible, but also as slavishly as possible. In both cases
and this is another reason why they converge what is really at
stake in these strategies for social struggles, which are found in any
struggle between the dominated and the dominant, or in the face of
domination, is not, as is commonly said, the conquest or reconquest
of identity. It is the ability to reappropriate for oneself the possibility
of constructing ones own identity and of evaluating that identity in
complete autonomy. This is the ability that the dominated are obliged
to surrender to the dominant, so much so that anyone who nds
himself in the dominated position within the eld of symbolic power
relations has only two possible ways of gaining recognition or, more
prosaically, continuing to exist. Either he must be negated, and must
therefore consent to his own negation and disqualication, or he
must accept the risks involved in any attempt to assimilate. If he
adopts the rst strategy, he must do what he is being asked to do even
though he cannot resign or withdraw completely in the strict sense of
the term from a game he knows to be basically stacked against him.
He must, that is, simply withdraw from the struggle, as he is being
asked to do in other words, abandon it without necessarily leaving
the arena (i.e. immigration) in which such struggles take place. He
must agree to do no more than watch the struggle being played out,
through him and in front of him, without intervening. He must
agree to play the role of the victim designate. This is the fate to which
one is almost always condemned when one is involved in a game one
is not equipped to play and which one can never master (a game one
has not chosen to play, which is always played on the home ground
of the dominant, in their way, in accordance with their rules and with
their weapons of choice). The alternative is to accept the risks in-
volved in any attempt at assimilation, in other words in any form of
behaviour that is explicitly calculated, designed and organized with a
view to bringing about a change of identity, or what he believes to be
the transition from a dominated identity to a dominant identity. This
implies the danger of denying himself and, correlatively, all of his
fellows who reject that choice, who cannot or do not want to act in
that way, and thus deny themselves. Abandoning an identity, be it
social, political (or more specically national, as in the case of natu-
ralization), cultural, religious or whatever is not without its ambigu-
constructing and
evaluating ones
identity
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abdelmalek sayad
ity, especially when it is an identity that is dominated from every
point of view, an identity that is stigmatized and despised. In the eyes
of those who are being abandoned and left behind, this borders upon
treachery; in the eyes of the others, or those one dreams of joining,
that one aspires to being, it undeniably implies allegiance, but there
is still a suspicion of pretension and selsh calculation.
Reassuring others and giving them a sense of security, as well
as reassuring oneself, and giving oneself a sense of security, con-
stitute an imperative incumbent upon any foreign presence. This is
the constant preoccupation of any foreigner or anyone who has the
feeling of being a foreigner where he is living, of any foreigner to the
country and the society in which he lives, often continuously, but
who does not experience them as his country and society. He is a
foreigner to the economy and culture of that country, and a foreigner
amongst the population of that country. As a general rule, this is the
case with all traditional immigrants, who never stop emigrating from
their homeland. Their children may feel the same even though they
are not always or not necessarily, foreigners in the national sense.
Anyone who is not in a position of strength, when the balance of
power, and especially symbolic power, is not in ones favour (which
is collectively the case with immigrants, or, let me repeat, all those
who have a feeling of not really being at home in the place where
they are), is anxious not to frighten others. He is anxious not to do
so even when there is, objectively, no reason for them to be afraid of
him (the immigrant himself has no control over the phantasmatic
fears he inspires). He is, to be more accurate, always anxious not to
disturb them because a foreign presence is (rightly or wrongly, not
that it matters) always a cause for concern (foreigners are those of
whom we like to say we dont know who they are. We dont know what
they are like; we dont know what makes them tick; we dont know what
they are thinking or how they think; we dont know what is going on
inside their heads; we dont know how they might react; we cannot
understand them; you never know with them).
Reassuring the other is often a precondition for ones own secu-
rity. There are only two ways of providing reassurance and self-reas-
surance, only two ways of succeeding in reassuring both oneself and
others. They complement one another because they are both ways
of dispelling the mutual fears. They dispel both ones own fear (the
foreigners fear of being in a foreign country) and the fear of others
(their fear of a foreigner who is in their country). Both fears (which
are different in terms of their form and especially their content) are
shared unequally and differently, of course by both parties, or
by both the dominated and the dominant. The two different fears
reassuring others
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feed on one another; and despite all the differences that may exist
between them, they are part of the same attempt to reassure. On
the one hand, there is the fear of the dominant in other words
and in this case, the masters of the house who are all nationals,
no matter which social class they belong to. It can be allayed by the
strength of those who know they are dominant (because they know
that they are naturally at home, and know that they are the countrys
natural inhabitants), and who know they are in a position of strength
because they possess a legitimacy that merges into domination (a
legitimacy which, as such, does not realize that it is dominant). On
the other hand, there is the fear of the dominated (i.e. immigrants),
of the weak who have, in these circumstances, been deprived of all
power and all legitimacy. For the dominant, being reassured means
no longer having to reassure themselves in the face of some danger
(even though there is nothing for them to be afraid of, and even when
the danger is completely imaginary) and, at the same time, reassur-
ing others whose fear is, so to speak, constitutive of their immigrant
condition. For the dominated who, despite their structural weakness,
or perhaps because of that weakness, are perceived as dangerous (or
at least as constituting a collective danger) or, which is worse, are
regarded as enemies (and not only as the class enemies of old,
with whom we were used to coming into conict), reassuring the
dominant is without doubt the price that has to be paid to ensure
their own security (which is purely relative).
As this self-assurance depends upon a security that has to be won
from the other or in the face of the other, certain immigrants prefer
to withdraw, to take refuge in their hidden fear, and choose (or chose,
in an earlier state of immigration) to opt for the greatest possible dis-
cretion or, in other words, to become as invisible as they can. They
are helped here by the social and spatial relegation of which they are
the victims (relegation in space and by space). They also simultane-
ously turn it into self-relegation: relegation and self-relegation into
the same spaces, the space of social relations, the space of housing
and, primarily, the space of work. These are all spaces where they
nd themselves to be in the majority and amongst other immigrants
of the same background (originally from the same country, the same
region, the same village, the same kinship group). These are the im-
migrants of whom it is said that they hug the walls, which can only
please those who tend to see their reserve as a sign of politeness, or
even the eminently reassuring subservience they expect and demand
from foreigners. For other immigrants who are sufciently self-
condent, or convinced that they can allay suspicion, providing reas-
surance appears to consist in simulating the greatest resemblance
to take refuge
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abdelmalek sayad
to or similarity with those they are trying to reassure by disguising
their own features, or at least by attenuating the distinctive signs that
make them stand out and which are normally described as stigmas.
In a word, they do all they can to deny and abolish the radical alterity
(or the radicality of the alterity) of which they are the bearers. This
attitude, which corresponds to a quest for the greatest proximity and
which in fact contains within it all the marks of the allegiance shown
to the dominant, is inevitably despite the objective intentions be-
hind it and its self-proclaimed nality and paradoxically retrans-
lated into potential conicts. It is always liable to be interpreted in
terms of rivalry of unseemly rivalry, illegitimate rivalry and unfair
competition. This is an indication of the relatively narrow limits that
are ascribed to assimilation, of the limits within which the dominant
inscribe the assimilation they wish to impose upon those they domi-
nate, and which they are also happy to see them succeed in assimi-
lating,
3
by conceding them the form without always recognizing its
content.
But the height of both civil and political impoliteness, and the
height of rudeness and violence towards national understanding,
seems to be attained by those immigrants who are not immigrants:
the children of immigrants, those hybrids who do not fully share
the properties that ideally dene the integral immigrant, or the ac-
complished immigrant who conforms to the representation we have
of him. And nor do they really share the objective, and especially
not the subjective, characteristics of nationals. They are immigrants
who have not emigrated from anywhere. They are immigrants who
are not, despite that designation, immigrants like any others, in oth-
er words foreigners in the full sense of the term. They are not for-
eigners in cultural terms, as they are integral products of this society
and its mechanisms of reproduction and integration, of a language (a
language into which they were born and which, in this country, is not
their mother tongue in the literal sense), of education and of all the
other social processes. Nor are they foreigners in national terms, as
they usually have the nationality of the country in which they are liv-
ing. In the eyes of some, they are no doubt bad products of French
society, but they are still products of that society. Rather like disturb-
ingly ambiguous agents, they blur the borders of the national order,
and therefore the symbolic value and pertinence of the criteria that
found the hierarchy of groups and their classication. And what it is
no doubt most difcult to forgive this category of immigrants for is
of course the fact that they disrupt the diacritical function and mean-
ing of the divorce that state thought establishes between nationals
and non-nationals. We therefore do not know how to regard or treat
children of
immigrants
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these new-style immigrants, and nor do we know what to expect of
them. And at this point, ordinary fear, if we can put it that way, or the
personal or individual fear inspired by the foreign immigrant, turns
into a collective anxiety as the traditional separations are abolished
and as we lose the simultaneously physical, moral and mental or in-
tellectual security and comfort afforded by those eminently reassur-
ing separations to the extent that they constitute a protective barrier
behind which we can take shelter by asserting that we are at home,
safe from outside interference.
This form of anxiety, or this new fear of the immigrant, against
which the demand for politeness is powerless, is even more difcult
to dispel. It can be disseminated more widely and projected on to
a whole series of related objects: young people, difcult neighbour-
hoods, bad estates, the suburbs, the unemployed, delinquents and so
on. It can be projected on to the same individuals and the same plac-
es (the children of immigration or second-generation immigrants).
From that point of view, a radical transformation has taken place
within immigration, and the suspicion that continues to weigh upon
these new-style immigrants is proportional to the changes brought
about by the immigration of families and by their reproduction on
the spot. And given these new conditions, we have to go back to the
genetic crime that is consubstantial with this immigration, and all the
other crimes that have been committed in practice. Basically, we have
to go back to the reactions provoked by these crimes, to the way they
are judged, and to the ways in which they are assessed. Crimes and
infractions are not just forbidden. When they are committed, they are
punished accordingly, in other words for what they undoubtedly are,
but they are also, surreptitiously and secretly, punished because of
the nature of the offender. Even though the immigrant has changed
with regard to the outside world, this type of offender is regarded as
being illegitimate, as not being allowed to commit infractions, as be-
ing forbidden to offend and as not having the right to offend.
The suspicion always weighs on the same people. It weighs upon
people whose every characteristic their history and their birth (and
in this case, their immigration and their having been born in im-
migration) and, correlatively, their social position, their status, the
social and especially the symbolic capital they have acquired desig-
nates them as perpetual suspects. The stigmatization revealed by this
form of generalized suspicion derives from a schema of thought and
social perception with which we are already familiar. In more gen-
eral terms, it derives from the suspicious and accusatory relationship
we have with the popular classes, which are viewed as dangerous
classes. This schema, which is always the same, is as true today as it
disseminated fear
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abdelmalek sayad
was yesterday, as every age has its own dangerous classes. If the situa-
tion specic to the delinquent foreigner (and even more so the immi-
grant, even if he does have the nationality of the country), who is guilty
in two ways, or guilty of being guilty, is not necessarily to work to his
disadvantage and is not to act as an aggravating circumstance, judges
must display great restraint and a lot of self-control, and make an at-
tempt at self-correction. Even when it is not openly talked about, this
implicit combination of crimes and therefore punishments does give
rise to another sanction that is often imposed in addition to the other
two. It is intrinsically bound up with the foreigners condition, as a for-
eigner is by denition liable to be deported, even if, as does happen, it
has been agreed not to deport him. Whether the deportation actually
takes place or not, the foreigners liability to deportation is the sign par
excellence of one of the essential prerogatives of national sovereignty.
This too is a characteristic of state thought, which is not to say that it is
state thought. It is in fact in the very nature of the sovereignty of the na-
tion to be able to deport those foreign residents (foreign in the national-
ity sense) it sees t to deport, and it is in the very nature of the foreigner
(speaking nationally) to be liable to deportation, regardless of whether
or not he is actually deported. Whilst it is not a juridical sanction in the
strict sense, as it is not normally pronounced by a court of law, deporta-
tion from the national territory, which is an administrative or politico-
administrative measure taken as a result of the judicial condemnation
it extends beyond its effects clearly demonstrates the risks run by any
foreigner who infringes the rules of good conduct. Having supplied
proof of his lack of discretion, he is subject to administrative sanctions.
The same logic governs, a fortiori, the operation of naturalization: the
nation and nationality do not naturalize and nationalize just anyone.
Being an act that basically results from a decision, naturalization may
be incompatible with certain social and cultural characteristics or with
certain customs (in the sense of habits and customs). In the French
case, it is incompatible with polygamy, which is regarded as an offence
against public order in the particular sense in which international pri-
vate law understands that term. Naturalization may be incompatible
with certain criminal penalties. The nature and hierarchy of some pen-
alties disqualify anyone from claiming the quality of being French, but
they also vary according to the context and the moment. Not surprising-
ly, these crimes reproduce their punishments and bring them into line,
roughly speaking, with those that lead to deportation, rather as though
the conditions for entering a nationality obeyed, no doubt even more
strictly, the same principles as the conditions for entering and residing
in the nation, because they precede and pregure them.
deportation
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Part II
Modes of incorporation
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Minority as a sociological concept
Hans van Amersfoort
At a time when most scholars were writing about migratory workers and the
European guest work system, the geographer Hans van Amersfoort published
a study addressing some important questions. Which factors determine the
social position of different categories of migrants in the host society? To
what extent and under what conditions do ethnic minorities form via the
migration process? Van Amersfoorts work relied heavily on American socio-
logical scholarship, resulting in a typology of majority-minority relations and
a denition of immigrant ethnic minorities. The study strongly inuenced
the theoretical basis of both integration studies and integration policy in the
Netherlands.
Introduction
The terms minority or minority group are widely used in the so-
ciological literature. Minority appears to be a word with a broad, dif-
fuse meaning and an emotional appeal, exactly the qualities to make
it a candidate for political debate. Unfortunately, almost the opposite
properties are required if the term is to be used in scholarly analysis.
In fact, there are such a variety of meanings and contradictory prop-
erties attributed to the term in the scholarly literature that we can
hardly speak of a concept that can serve as an analytical tool.
The origins of this lack of precision can be traced back to that
essay by Louis Wirth which most social scientists take as the start-
ing-point of their analyses. Wirth initially describes a minority as:
A group of people who, because of their physical or cultural charac-
teristics, are singled out from the others in the society in which they
live for differential and unequal treatment and who therefore regard
themselves as objects of collective discrimination (Wirth 1945: 347).
This is not a very satisfactory denition because it makes the exis-
diffuse meaning
of minority
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hans van amersfoort
tence of minorities completely dependent on the feelings of minority
group members. It is not surprising that Wirth nds it necessary
to add new elements to his denition throughout the course of his
argument, adding that minorities objectively occupy a disadvanta-
geous position in society (Wirth 1945: 348). In subsequent passages
Wirth mentions a great number of additional properties that are of-
ten or not necessarily present, but which all have some connection
with the broad eld that he is trying to encompass. He concentrates
increasingly on the disadvantageous social position of the minority
and tends to neglect its numerical relationship to the wider society,
so that the people whom we regard as minority may actually, from
a numerical standpoint, be a majority (Wirth 1945: 349). If we ac-
cept this point of view, in addition to the importance attached to the
subjective denition of the situation by the minority found in Wirths
earlier statements, then every instance of group conict in society
becomes a minority problem.
Other authors have taken even less care about the question of def-
inition. Simpson and Yinger, for example, do not arrive at anything
like a denition in their textbook Racial and cultural minorities and
conclude their introduction with the remark: ... we have tried to de-
velop a meaning that will be useful in the study of the relationships
with which we are concerned (Simpson and Yinger 1953: 32). These
are simply all kinds of relationship between groups that differ ac-
cording to racial or cultural criteria. As their starting point for deal-
ing with minority group situations they take an earlier classication
by Cox in which we nd yet another category called a ruling class
minority, such as the Dutch in the colonial East Indies (Simpson
and Yinger 1953: 23). This illustrates the conceptual confusion sur-
rounding the term minority, for Wirth would never have spoken
of a ruling class minority, given the weight he attached to the disad-
vantageous position and his tendency to disregard the question of
numbers. However, Rex has declared that it could never have been
Wirths intention to go so far as to call, for instance, the Indians dur-
ing the British raj a minority (Rex 1970: 25). But Rex seems to under-
estimate the consistency with which Wirths confusing statements
are followed. Thus, in a more recent work, Bloom states explicitly:
Minority-majority situations do not depend on mere numbers. In
South Africa the twenty-ve per cent of the population that is white
is the effective majority (Bloom 1971: 30). To my mind this is a con-
fusing and inaccurate play on words. Moreover, it shows insufcient
awareness of the nature of the problem to be analysed, which is the
manner and extent to which social position and numerical strength
are related.
conceptual
confusion
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part ii modes of incorporation
One valuable attempt to make the concept of minority group
more useful can be found in the work of Wagley and Harris. In their
introduction and conclusion to Minorities in the New World they link
the concept of minority to the process of state formation and espe-
cially to the rise of the modern state (Wagley and Harris 1967: 5, 242
ff). It is only in the course of this process that people with different
cultural backgrounds become incorporated into one organization that
inuences an increasing number of aspects of social life. Therefore
minorities have the following major characteristics: (1) minorities are
subordinate segments of complex state societies; (2) minorities have
special physical or cultural traits which are held in low esteem by
the dominant segments of society; (3) minorities are self-conscious
units bound together by the special traits which their members share
and by the special disabilities which they bring; (4) membership in a
minority is transmitted by a rule of descent which is capable of afli-
ating succeeding generations even in the absence of readily apparent
special cultural or physical traits; (5) minority peoples, by choice or
necessity, tend to marry within the group (Wagley and Harris 1967:
10). On this last point, Wagley and Harris indicate more clearly than
Wirth that a minority situation is not only objectively disadvanta-
geous; by drawing attention to the continuity of the membership of
the minority group over several generations, they stress a subjective
side to the denition, a feeling of belonging. Thus minorities are not
only categories but collectivities whose sense of solidarity is based
on shared values. However, it is especially the rst point that adds a
valuable element to the discussion and makes it possible to come to
a more accurate denition of the concept of a minority.
Minority and state
The state monopolizes the use of violence within its territory and re-
stricts, as far as it is successful, the exercise of power by other units.
In this way the state increasingly inuences the institutionalized life
of society. This says nothing about the question of the relative nu-
merical strength of different groups in society. As we emphasized
earlier, the concept of minority implies that the numerical strength
of a group is connected with its social position. It is not only cumber-
some to call the Africans in South Africa a minority, it is also based
on the hidden supposition that every state is based on the universalis-
tic idea of equality. Petersen has rightly pointed out that the use of the
term minority implies a democratic moral judgement (Petersen
1965: 235). We therefore have to look for situations in which the state
democratic moral
judgement
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hans van amersfoort
is sufciently developed to exercise a profound inuence on social
life, and where the numerical size of groups is a decisive factor in the
process of policy-making.
Wagley and Harris have made this connection between the con-
cept of minority, the formation of states and the increasing inuence
of national, state-controlled institutions on social life. In the Western
world, this process runs parallel to the development of the idea of
the sovereignty of the people and the rise of the nation state. The na-
tion state has, on the one hand, to dene who belongs to the nation
and, on the other hand, to decide what are the rights each member
should possess. Since the French Revolution the traditional response
has been to favour the equality of citizens, but this makes it neces-
sary to dene more carefully what is meant by the terms equality and
citizen.
Marshall has made a classic analysis of this problem and dened
three kinds of basic rights and corresponding social institutions: (a)
Civil Rights, such as liberty of person, freedom of speech, thought
and faith, the right to own property and to conclude valid contracts,
and the right to justice; (b) Political Rights, such as the franchise and
the right of access to public ofce; (c) Social Rights, ranging from the
right to a modicum of economic welfare and security to the right to
share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilized
being according to the standards in the society (Marshall 1964: 71-3).
These rights nd their expression respectively in the courts, the vari-
ous representative bodies, the social services and the schools. Bendix
and Rokkan have analysed how these formal rights have been extend-
ed to increasingly larger sections of the population. Exceptions that
were made for categories such as illegitimate children, Jews, women
and illiterates have vanished in the course of time (Bendix 1964: 74-
104). In the rst instance this applied only to the recognition of for-
mal rights, leaving open the question of how far these rights could be
exercised in practice. Such a discrepancy between formal rights and
the actual possibility of exercising these rights produced an impor-
tant focus of social tension during the course of this process.
A complete realization of these rights, developed on the basis of
individual equality can, in certain cases, result in a burden rather
than a privilege. Rights in these circumstances acquire the character
of duties imposed by the state. Examples of such duties might be
the introduction of compulsory education or compulsory vaccination
against certain contagious diseases.
In the course of time, state-controlled institutions founded on
a conception of equal rights replace the institutions of the pre-in-
dustrial society based on a kinship and locality. Those sections of
nation-state
three basic rights
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the population that lag behind such developments for whatever
reasons will also stay behind in their degree of participation in so-
ciety. When this backwardness is dened as a problem it raises the
dilemma of how far the state should transform rights into duties.
This is a conict that often arises with minority groups and deserves
attention, because the nature of the conict is rarely given sufcient
emphasis in minority studies. There are many examples of such con-
ict, especially in the sphere of education where the absolute author-
ity of the father, an integral part of the culture of many minorities
from a peasant background, clashes with the states desire to uphold
the individual rights of women and children.
Finally, we must draw attention to the process of decision-making
in modern states. As citizens are rarely unanimous, decisions are
taken by a majority vote. It is in this situation that the term minor-
ity becomes salient. For in the feudal, colonial or totalitarian state
the question of majority or minority participation in the decision-
making process simply does not arise. The relative numbers of the
different segments of the population and the various strengths of in-
terest groups do not count in the political process, political life being
by denition a matter for the elite alone. Inequality for these states is
a natural condition, for they are based on it.
In such states the emancipation struggle of underprivileged
groups aims primarily at establishing formal political rights. As the
ruling elites are small they would soon lose much of their power if
formal political rights were used effectively. The characteristic prob-
lem for a minority group is not so much that it is difcult to ensure
formal rights, but that the numerical situation restricts the possibil-
ity of translating such rights into social inuence.
The concept of citizenship, as it has been developed by Marshall, is
used by Parsons in his analysis of the social position of the American
Negro (Parsons and Clark 1965: 709-54). Rose also falls back on the
concept of citizenship in the introduction to his work on the coloured
immigrants in Britain, because it is particularly useful for describ-
ing a situation of social deprivation and oppression in general terms
(Rose 1969: 13-17, 27-33). But it is even more valuable in that it makes
it possible to isolate a few strategic elds in which we can compare
the situations of minorities in different states, or of different minori-
ties in one state.
In the rst place we can turn our attention to the legal position.
Is the minority situation characterized by a special legal position as
compared to the majority? These legal rights can apply to all three
spheres of citizenship civil, political and social. The difference be-
tween formal rights and the actual possibility of using them is much
decision-making
legal position
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hans van amersfoort
more difcult to establish. But it is important to examine, when the
formal position of the minority is one of equality, whether the minor-
ity can in fact use the formal rights in the same ways as the majority.
Secondly, the position of the minority with respect to the education
system is of great signicance. The school is a strategic institution
in modern society and regulates further participation in most other
social institutions and activities. Organizing and controlling the edu-
cation system is therefore one of the major tasks of modern govern-
ments.
Besides these two areas that are controlled directly by the state,
there are other elds in which, at least in Western countries, the
control is not direct, but in which, nevertheless, the state exercises a
substantial inuence. These are the crucial areas of the labour mar-
ket and the housing market. Ones position in the labour market in
a modern society is the key to the distribution and personal alloca-
tion of goods and services, and it also regulates, to a large extent,
an individuals chances in the housing market. Although this is not
completely true, as governments also have a direct inuence on the
housing market under several types of legislative-provision which
may vary between different countries, it does demonstrate that some
form of government regulation is generally thought necessary.
For the sake of argument, so far I have described the state as a
uniform, monolithic body, which is, of course, a gross oversimpli-
cation. But I do want to stress that these four elds law, education,
employment and housing can be looked upon as being in the pub-
lic domain. They are, therefore, open to regulation or interference
by the state, although this clearly varies from one society to the next.
A number of interest groups, operating both outside and within po-
litical parties, try to steer government policy in their direction, and
it is certainly possible that some groups are more successful than
others in getting their wishes fullled. It is not the authors intention
to suggest that there is a necessary or inevitable development in the
direction of increasing equality.
It is exactly in the case of minorities that such a development is
not in the least clear. For they are a relatively permanent collectivity
opposed in many respects to the majority. This is the crucial distinc-
tion between minorities and interest groups, such as farmers, pen-
sioners, higher civil servants or divorced women. All these categories
are also minorities from a numerical point of view, but their position
is not continuously opposed to that of the majority. They can trade
their interests in the process of bargaining, propaganda and, most
importantly, by forming coalitions. It is precisely in this last respect
that a minority does not form part of the political arena. The forma-
labour and housing
markets
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tion of a coalition presupposes that there is not a permanently domi-
nant majority; if there is such a dominant group then the rationale
for coalitions collapses. This is decisive in the case where the formal
rights of minorities are recognized. For in mass societies there are
always more needs and wants than can be fullled at any given mo-
ment. The political goal of each group is to get its own needs and
wants placed somewhat higher on the priority list than those of other
groups, and the formation of coalitions is an essential part of this
process.
By concentrating on these four basic elds we can substantiate
more precisely the claim that a minority must be in a disadvanta-
geous position. It is in these elds that the norms of public life should
prevail, and these norms are derived from the concept of the equality
of the citizen and are not based on ascriptive criteria. This implies
that there must be a degree of consensus about the prevailing norms
in public life. Alternative norms in these elds would not only be an
impediment to required social interaction, but would undermine the
whole idea of equality on which it is based. It is on this point the
necessity for uniform norms regulating public life that many stud-
ies about the relation between majority and minority concentrate.
Minority and pluralism
It is possible to think of many different relationships between mi-
nority and majority groups. Several writers have categorized these
relations and have tried to construct systematic classications. This
raises a fundamental question: is it possible that a minority position
can cease to exist without the disappearance of the collectivity?
Wirth sees such a possibility as the most desirable solution to ma-
jority-minority relations and calls it pluralism, a term used by many
other writers after him. This term, however, appears to have a great
variety of meanings and it is sometimes used with a favourable con-
notation, and on other occasions in a negative sense. This diversity
of meaning has also led to subtle variations in the term; sometimes a
distinction is made between plural, pluralistic and pluriform. I think
it is unwise to elaborate on these distinctions: rather, the content of
the term could be analysed more carefully.
Wirth describes pluralism as: the conception that variant cul-
tures can ourish peacefully side by side in the same society. Indeed
cultural pluralism has been held out as one of the necessary pre-
conditions of a rich and dynamic civilization under conditions of
freedom (Wirth 1945: 354). He adds the important qualication that
pluralism
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the majority must not feel threatened, thus implying that there is a
limit to the degree of pluralism that a society can tolerate. Simpson
and Yinger also seem to recognize this limitation when they dene
pluralism as cultural variability within the range still consonant with
national unity and security (Simpson and Yinger 1953: 27). However,
neither Wirth nor Simpson and Yinger are explicit about the precise
limits of pluralism. It is difcult to see what Wirth has in mind, since
pluralism, which seems to me to be a property of society, for Wirth
appears to be primarily a property of the minority group. Moreover,
there are situations of pluralism which hardly can be looked upon as
favourable; for Wirth also states: If there is a great gulf between their
own status and that of the minority groups... the toleration of minori-
ties may go as far as virtually to perpetuate several sub-societies with
the larger society (Wirth 1945: 355). This is not a case of toleration in
the accepted meaning of the term but a strategy for oppression, and
pluralism, in this sense, is in total contradiction with the previous
denition of the concept.
To make things even more complex, there is another scholarly
tradition which uses the term pluralism in the analysis of societ-
ies that have a culturally diversied population. As Wirth is writing
within the American political tradition he tends to use the term in
a positive sense. The other tradition stems from the description of
colonial and post-colonial societies and there it generally has a nega-
tive connotation. These traditions form separate circuits and most
writers do not appear to link the two, thus giving us a second reason
for analysing the use of the term in both contexts. But our main aim
remains to nd an answer to the question of what degree of norma-
tive consensus is necessary to allow a minority full participation in
society.
Furnivall introduced the term plural society to describe the co-
lonial societies of South East Asia. He regarded such societies as the
product of the colonial state that brought a number of peoples and
cultures together as far, and only as far, as this was necessary for eco-
nomic purposes (Furnivall 1948: 304). In Holland, the Furnivall tra-
dition has been continued by van Lier in his social analysis of the his-
tory of Surinam. He argues that every reasonable complex society is
made up of elements held together by the state. In a non-segmented
or pluralistic society the component parts are the result of a strict
division of labour and an unequal distribution of the material and
cultural property of the population. This results in the appearance of
social strata with different styles of life and diverse customs and tra-
ditions. But these differences are mere gradations within one and the
same culture, the major portion of which is the common property of
need for
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all. Moreover, the members of a pluralistic society are usually of one
race and share a common language and religion, and the economic
behaviour of the different groups is generally governed by the same
motivation. A plural society is marked by an absence of unity of race
and religion and, furthermore, the different groups live in separate
economic spheres. The differences that arise in this type of society
are not gradations within a single culture, but are the result of groups
stemming from different ethnic origins and diverse cultural back-
grounds. Social strata usually coincide with groups that differ on
the basis of racial, cultural and economic criteria as well (van Lier
1971: 10).
It is especially this last sentence that points to the central issue
of the whole discussion: are these plural or segmented societies re-
ally different from societies that are ethnically stratied? M.G. Smith,
who has used the concept of the plural society particularly for de-
scribing situations in the British Caribbean, is strongly opposed to
this view. He states, what characterizes a plural society is that its
different segments have different institutional systems. Such insti-
tutional systems include kinship, religion, property and economy,
recreation etc.... The only common institutional system is the state
or, as Smith phrases it, government. There is no common value sys-
tem and, in the Parsonian tradition where stratication is seen as the
result of the value system, Smith nds no inherent reason why all
cultural sections in a plural society should be ranked hierarchically
(Smith 1965: 82-3).
I think it is necessary to stress the word all in the preceding sen-
tence, because it is certainly not true that access to the only joint
institution, government, is shared equally by all segments. This is
not only historically the case in the Caribbean, but it is also neces-
sary, from a theoretical point of view, that there should be a centre of
integration that keeps the different segments together in one society.
The vagueness about the extent to which there is a single hierarchy
is a problem that keeps emerging with writers who work with a more
or less modied model taken from Smith.
These modications sometimes go to extreme lengths. Rex, for
instance, has used Smiths plural concept in an article on South
Africa where he modies it to the point where it is virtually unrecog-
nizable (Rex 1971). He emphasizes the hierarchical relations in the
eld in which they are concluded: the labour market. It is a major
conceptual weakness of Smiths analysis (as it is in van Liers work)
that he evades the problem of the values that operate when there is
interaction between the members of different groups. In elds in
which there is no interaction, such as leisure activities or religious
no common value
system
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ceremonies, the distinct groups can adhere to their own value sys-
tems, but, in a domain where they interact, the pattern of relation-
ships will be dominated by a single value system.
However, it is far from clear how signicant the cultural differ-
ences must be before we can speak of a plural society. Van Lier, for
instance, stresses differences in religion and it is generally agreed
that, from an historical or theological standpoint, the gulf between
the religions in Surinam is greater than the differences between, for
example, Protestants and Catholics in Holland. But does this mean
that the saliency of religion as a factor in social life is therefore auto-
matically greater? The Northern Ireland situation might cause us to
hesitate before jumping to such a conclusion.
All these reservations about the way various authors use the con-
cept of plural society does not alter the fact that there are societies
in which we not only have stratication but also a signicant degree
of social distance of a non-hierarchical character. To a certain extent
we nd examples of such social distance in all societies. There is
everywhere a social distance between rural and urban peoples, be-
tween groups with different religions and philosophies of life, and
these need not be hierarchical. When such differences become in-
stitutionalized then we see the emergence of a plural society. Van
den Berghe describes this as follows: social structure is compart-
mentalized into analogous, parallel, non-complementary sets of in-
stitutions. Moreover, there is: primacy of segmental utilitarian non-
affective and functionally specic relationships between corporate
groups and of total, nonutilitarian affective, diffuse ties within such
groups (van den Berghe 1967: 34-5). Van den Berghe calls this so-
cial pluralism, which he distinguishes from cultural pluralism. The
emergence of ethnic groups in a society he calls cultural pluralism,
whereas a society that is racially structured, but culturally homoge-
neous, such as the South of the United States, he terms a socially
plural society (van den Berghe 1967: 35-6, 132-3). It seems difcult to
make this distinction operational because, in order to be stable, cul-
tural pluralism must result in a certain degree of institutionalization.
Any form of cultural pluralism, writes van den Berghe, has a struc-
tural facet which can be treated as social pluralism. Furthermore,
a culturally homogeneous society in which the social strata have no
interaction except in strictly specied roles, will become divided into
clearly distinguished subcultures (van den Berghe 1967: 135).
This is of little help if, instead of trying to analyse an historical
situation with the benet of hindsight, we are confronted by a con-
crete society. The more so because the signicance of these parallel,
non-complementary institutions for the functioning of the society as
social distance
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a whole is not made more explicit. As I argued before with regard to
Smith, so with van den Berghe it is clear that access to the political
arena is not in the least organized through these parallel, non-com-
plementary institutions. On the contrary, political power is vested in
one of the segments of the population which looks upon this cul-
tural pluralism as a strategy to continue its monopoly of power.
It follows from what has been said about the concept of minority
so far, that it is the spheres of public life, those that are important for
all the inhabitants of the state, that deserve most attention. Cultural
diversity in itself is not a problem but is a reality in all states, and
particularly the modern industrial state. Structural pluralism, in the
sense of parallel institutions, is the accepted rule in areas that are
now considered to be part of the private domain, as religion has be-
come with the rise of the secular state in the West. How far these
parallel institutions may promote or hinder minority participation in
the general public elds is a separate question, which Gordon has
put forward sharply with regard to the United States (Gordon 1964:
233-65).
However, the more important question is the extent of these pub-
lic or joint elds. If we want to identify a position as disadvanta-
geous there has to be a standard of comparison, there must be a
eld of interaction where the roles of the parties can be described as
asymmetrical. Plural, according to this denition, is a term that can
only be applied to a society when: (a) the plural organization regu-
lates communal elds, that is, the public domain; (b) the plural
organization consists of institutions that are indeed parallel. Where
the organization brings groups together in an hierarchical order, we
should rather speak of ethnic stratication.
One of the few democratic societies meeting these conditions
seems to be the Dutch society, as described by Lijphart. Lijphart uses
the term plural in the American political science tradition and not
in the Furnivall-Smith sense. He calls every society plural that ex-
hibits: clearly discernible, racial, linguistic and religious differences
(Lijphart 1968: 3). This description applies to almost every modern
society, as long as we do not specify how signicant these differences
must be. However, he adds two further elements. The rst is the
obvious point that differences must be institutionalized or, in his
words, organized (Lijphart 1968: 5). Although this comes close to
the ideas of Smith and van den Berghe, Lijphart argues that such a
society could hardly continue to exist unless these organized contacts
are cross-cutting rather than reinforcing. His third condition is that
there must be a diffusion of solidarity because participation, or po-
tential participation, is overlapping. We can easily imagine a society
Lijpharts three
conditions
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where linguistic, religious and economic lines do not run parallel
to each other, and where there is such a diffusion of solidarity. To a
certain extent Belgium ts this model.
This last condition represents a development of the concept that
brings it into total contradiction with the formulations of Smith and
van den Berghe. These writers would never call a society plural if it
had cross-cutting loyalties. The interest of the Dutch case, however,
is that it does not meet Lijpharts third condition. Dutch society is, or
was at least until the 1960s, organized in a pattern of parallel, mutu-
ally reinforcing institutions. That Lijphart continues to label it plural
seems inconsistent, but, because we have now reached the situation
where writers from the other tradition would use the term, it is inter-
esting to follow his analysis.
The Dutch pillarized (verzuilde) society corresponds to the pic-
ture of a society where there is a lack of consensus between the con-
stituent parts of the population, so that it is on the verge of conict
and instability unless power can be monopolized by one of the seg-
ments. This raises the key question of Lijpharts book: how can de-
mocracy function under such circumstances? In order to answer this
question, Lijphart looks to the specic rules of the political game as
they are accepted in this type of society. The fundamental rule is that
leaders are obliged to nd, in some form or another, a practical com-
promise. Furthermore, these rules stipulate that every type of coali-
tion must be possible, thus giving every pillar a realistic chance that
a good deal of its objectives could be achieved at some time or other.
The Dutch system seems to correspond quite closely to the cen-
tral feature of plural societies as expounded by Smith and van den
Berghe. It is a society in which the population segments are integrat-
ed into blocks that are not hierarchically ranked one over the other.
Such pluralism seems to be only possible under three conditions. In
the rst place, none of the pillars must be able, through numerical
strength or any other factor, to monopolize political power. Should
there be a dominant party then there will inevitably develop a system
of stratication. Secondly, no party or block must be permanently
excluded from participating in government. In Holland there have
always been some smaller splinter parties, but these have tradition-
ally associated themselves with one of the main pillars. For instance,
several of the more strictly orthodox Protestant churches have given
birth to such mini-parties, but they have always considered them-
selves to be the conscience of the major parties. In the third place,
these pillars or blocks must succeed in integrating the total popula-
tion by these indirect means.
It is very doubtful whether this pillar system can be still regarded
Dutch society:
pillarization
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as an accurate description of Dutch society. Increasingly individuals
and groups have broken away from the traditional pillars so that this
third condition is no longer satised. Further, it can also no longer
be taken for granted that the second condition will be met in the fu-
ture. Immigration since the Second World War has brought several
categories of immigrants into the country that cannot be regarded
as becoming integrated into any of the existing pillars, neither can
they hope to develop into a pillar of their own. This is the case with
the Islamic peasant migrants from Morocco and Turkey, a category,
even when it possesses the vote, that is too small to create its own
pillar. Consequently, for groups that are numerically small relative to
the society in which they live, a plural organization in itself does not
guarantee participation in social life.
If we use the term plural in the very vague sense of heteroge-
neous, it has hardly any meaning. We can say, for example, that
Dutch society has become more plural because of the immigration of
Muslims, but this obscures more than it illuminates. There is a good
example of the confusion to which the unspecic use of the term
may lead in Bagleys study of race relations in Holland (Bagley 1973).
By using the term plural he suggests a consistency and continuity in
Dutch policy towards immigrants that simply is not supported by the
facts. This policy could only be labelled plural if the aim was either
to integrate newcomers into one or all of the existing pillars, or to let
them develop into a pillar of their own. This last possibility has never
been attempted and is, in any case, political nonsense.
Furthermore, there can also be cited examples of a great variety
of reactions of Dutch society towards immigrants. The early Roman
Catholic immigrants from Poland and Italy were absorbed in the
Roman Catholic pillar; the Indo-Dutch were absorbed in all three
pillars. In the case of the Ambonese soldiers, now generally known
as South Moluccans, absorption was explicitly excluded as an aim
during the rst decade of their stay. Prior to 1975, there was simply
no policy at all with regard to the West Indians. To label all these
reactions as plural does not clarify the situation in the slightest.
If we use plural in the strict sense, as outlined above, it offers
a model for social organization that can be protable to countries
which have a population divided along cultural lines, provided there
is a certain balance of power between the blocks. However, if we have
segments that are numerically small, relative to the other blocks in
the total population, such an organization would not give them a
chance to promote their interests or to participate in public life.
obscured prots
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Towards a typology of majority-minority relations
In the preceding discussion it has repeatedly been stressed that the
disadvantageous position of a minority must be distinguished from
other positions of disadvantage in which categories and collectivities
might nd themselves. Schermerhorn has characterized the position
of minorities by constructing a typology which is presented here in a
somewhat modied form (Schermerhorn 1970: 13).
Schermerhorns typology
Numerical strength
Social power Strongest party Weakest party
Dominant Majority Elite
Subordinate Subordinated masses Minority
In his comment on this typology, Schermerhorn stipulates that there
are two characteristic congurations: elite masses and majority
minority. This is helpful in that we can at least distinguish between
these two fundamentally different situations.
There are still many other factors that can cause differentiation
between the concrete situations of minorities. Wirth has made a clas-
sication based on the objectives of the minority, and distinguished
between minorities aiming at pluralism, assimilation, secession and
domination (Wirth 1945: 354 ff). A practical difculty with these cat-
egories is that it is not always easy to establish what the aims of the
minority are. A far more serious criticism for the present discussion
is that such a classication does not take into account enough dimen-
sions to construct a global typology. If the orientation of the minority
is important, we should at least expect that the aims of the majority
should also be taken into account. In my opinion, there are at least
three dimensions along which minority-majority relations are basi-
cally differentiated.
Concentration-dispersion
In the rst place a distinction should be made between concentrated
and dispersed minorities. If we take the state as the unit of analysis
it is possible that a minority may be numerically stronger in a par-
ticular region. This makes it difcult to apply the central idea of the
concept of minority group, and it will be necessary in such situations
to consider the four public elds with due regard to regional varia-
three dimensions of
minority-
majority relations
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tions. For concentrated minorities other factors play an interven-
ing role in minority situations, and these include the absolute size
of the group, its size relative to that of the majority at the national
and regional level and the practical support given to the group from
other countries. These factors will also inuence the situation of a
dispersed minority but, because such minorities have no core area,
their whole orientation will be different and their aspirations will ac-
quire a different political expression.
Particularism-universalism
We have already mentioned Wirths idea that minorities differ in
their aims and that this can be seen as an important aspect of their
situation. It is also possible to introduce the orientation of the mi-
nority as a simple, dichotomous variable in the construction of a
typology. Either the minority can aim at participation in society, or
it can be focused exclusively on its internal affairs. In the rst case
the objective will be to remove any barriers preventing participation.
The minority bases its demands in such a situation on the principle
of equality, and, in general, will also demand the preservation of
alternative roles. The objective is precisely to get these kinds of roles
recognized as alternative. One wishes to be free to participate as a
Jew, Sikh or Black in the society because the public domain ought to
be neutral with regard to these properties. I will use the standard
sociological term universalism to label such situations. In the case
of concentrated minorities, this orientation can acquire the specic
form of regionalism.
Particularistic minorities also aim at improving their position
but their perception of rights and duties is fundamentally different.
They do not demand equal rights with the majority, but derive their
rights from their own particularistic value system. The extreme case
of this is when the minority aims at dominating the majority.
Emancipation, continuation and elimination
A third possibility for classifying minority situations is to use the
aims of the majority as a criterion. Simpson and Yinger have made
such a classication, but because they do not combine this variable
systematically with others, their approach has little practical value.
For instance, they give as an example of their variant pluralism only
cases of what I have called concentrated minorities. (Simpson and
Yinger 1953: 24ff). However, the policy of the majority is an impor-
tant aspect of the relationship between majority and minority, and
it is possible to distinguish between three major types of objective.
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(a) Emancipation: The aim is that there should be full participation
by the minority in the society. Special legal and social measures may
be undertaken to achieve this end. It presupposes that there is a suf-
ciently clear denition of what is thought to be participation in
society. The vital distinction between other reactions that I will call
elimination is that such participation need not result in the minor-
ity group becoming invisible or ceasing to exist as a collectivity.
(b) Continuation: Another objective of the majority can also be to
continue the present situation. This is an obvious possibility when
the minority fulls certain functions for the majority, as when the
minority is exploited. However, this is not necessarily the case, for it
depends on the fact that the absolute and relative size of the minor-
ity must be substantial. In some situations the goal of minority group
continuation may be the result of passive rather than active policies.
It is not so much that the objective is to exploit the minority, for the
simple reason that there is little to exploit, but rather there is a refusal
to pursue a policy of active emancipation for a minority that has be-
come part of the society in the course of historical development.
(c) Elimination: The majority can also aim at the elimination of the
minority as a recognizable collectivity. We can distinguish between
two variants of this category. In the rst case, the majority can aim
at forced assimilation by suppressing the constituent elements of a
minority such as language or religion. In the second case, the major-
ity can attempt the physical extermination of the minority by deporta-
tion, population transfer or even genocide.
From a logical point of view these three variants could be subsumed
under the same dichotomy that we used when describing the mi-
noritys orientation. In that case the categories continuation and
elimination would merge and come under the label particularism.
However, I think that the distinction between the two categories is
sufciently illuminating to justify retaining this subdivision.
The construction of a typology
By using these three dimensions we can construct a typology of twelve
cells which represent different types of minority-majority relations.
While such a typology has its limitations, it also has a number of ad-
vantages. It demonstrates how rare are the possibilities for a positive
development of relationships between majority and minority. Only
particularism
advantages
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the cells marked emancipation process and federalism suggest
the prospect of a stable form of minority participation in society. All
other forms are unsatisfactory for one or both of the parties and are
therefore inherently unstable, though the majority may be successful
for a period of time in consolidating its position by repression. There
may also be a temporary acceptance of the continuation of the status
quo by a strongly particularistic minority, which is in effect accept-
ing a reservation situation. The development of communications in
modern societies, however, is so strong that such groups tend, in the
long run, to adopt the wider society as their frame of reference. Thus
over several generations they will develop a desire for participation,
be it initially only in such elds as consumption and education.
In the dimension of elimination it is possible to reach a stable
situation, although this will also result in the end of the majority-
minority relationship. Particularly in the case of concentrated mino-
rities the outcome of the conict may be strongly inuenced by the
international political scene, as has clearly been the case in the popu-
lation transfer between Greece and Turkey after the First World War
and in the secession of Bangladesh.
It is not my intention to suggest that the development in the rst
two cells I mentioned will necessarily run smoothly. On the contrary,
these processes generally provoke a number of disputes and conicts
concerning the extent of emancipation and the degree of autonomy,
and the relationship between rights and duties. However, such con-
icts can be resolved within these basic processes.
There are a number of objections that can be raised against the ty-
pology. First, it may give the impression that once they have acquired
a certain character these relationships are unchanging. In reality,
majority-minority relations can change their character in the course
of time, but the typology gives us no information about the direction
in which these processes develop. A second objection is the unspe-
cic nature of the classication criteria. How are we to determine the
orientation or the objectives of a majority or a minority? There are
situations in which these orientations are relatively homogeneous
and it is not difcult to state in what direction they are pointing. But
in many cases the majority or the minority are far from homoge-
neous and may aim simultaneously at several different goals, which
may even be contradictory.
Nevertheless, this typology represents an improvement as com-
pared to the lack of precision which characterizes the scholarly, and
the more popular literature, on the subject of minorities. It should be
remembered that the typology is an elaboration of the one developed
by Schermerhorn, and it only deals with majority-minority relation-
disadvantages
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ships. It combines two dimensions that appear in the literature, but
only as separate criteria for classication. Schermerhorn has stipulat-
ed that the similarity in orientation between majority and minority is
in itself an important variable in minority situations (Schermerhorn
1970: 83). The combination of orientations can be clearly seen in
our typology. Moreover, I have clearly differentiated between concen-
trated and dispersed minorities because I have not found this distinc-
tion systematically treated elsewhere. It seems, however, that this is a
basic variable in the situations in which minorities nd themselves.
Conclusion: a revised denition
To conclude this analysis of the concept of minority or minority
group, it is necessary to present a revised denition. It is essential
that the concept contains no contradictory properties and that these
properties are sufciently explicit to distinguish the phenomenon
from any other phenomena. As a result of the present analysis, it
could be argued that a minority has three constituent properties that
can be summarized as follows:
1 A minority is a continuous collectivity within the population of a
state. This continuity has two important aspects:
(a) the minority consists of several generations,
(b) membership of the minority has priority above other forms of
social categorization.
2 The numerical position of a minority excludes it from taking ef-
fective part in the political process.
3 A minority has an objectively disadvantageous position in the
sense that its members do not participate to the same degree as
the majority population in the four following public elds:
(a) the legal system
(b) the educational system
(c) the labour market
(d) the housing market.
The translation of this chapter rst appeared, in slightly modied
form, in Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 1, no. 2, April 1978, 218-33. I
am grateful to the editor, John Stone, for his help with the translation
and for his permission to reproduce it here.

revised denition
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Black, racial equality and Asian identity
Tariq Modood
In the 1980s, within the sociology of race, a particular concept of blackness
was de rigueur. This political concept, inspired by the struggle of racialised
minorities in American society, was appealing at least for those who em-
braced it because it lumped all non-white groups together, thereby sug-
gesting they had a lot in common. In an inuential, provocative article pub-
lished by the journal New Community in 1988, the sociologist Tariq Modood
criticised the hegemony of this concept because it would not do justice to
the history and experiences of Asian immigrants. The concept of blackness,
even when used in a political way, overstates the signicance of colour and
colour discrimination, while simultaneously understating the ethnic identity
of Asians and the ethnicisms they suffer from.
The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own serves only
to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Over the last few years a consensus had developed amongst race
equality professionals and activists that the term black should be
used to describe all those who because of their race are unfavour-
ably treated within British society. While this idea originated in the
contracts with the US Black Power groups and is associated with the
Left, particularly with the Black Section movement in the Labour
Party, and indeed is most zealously pursued by some Labour con-
trolled local authorities, it has become a commonplace so that, for in-
stance, it is now current practice of the media not least the BBC. The
argument behind this usage of black is that it provides the means
of affecting a unity between otherwise very diverse, powerless mi-
norities that is necessary for an effective anti-racist movement. This
argument is thought to be so decisive that it is rare, at least in print,
to see it critically considered.
1
I believe however, that it required too
the use of black
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high a price in terms of loss of principle from anti-racists and sells
short the majority of the people it identies as black. In particular it
has the effect of imposing a professional-political consensus on the
Asian community that was formed by those largely outside it and
at a time when Asians as a community were barely participants in
debates on race.
In the use of the term Asian I assume that ethnic identities can co-
exist at different levels of generality (e.g. Mirpuri, Pakistani, Asian).
What I mean by an Asian identity is some share in the heritage of
the civilisations of old Hindustan prior to British conquest. Roughly,
it is those people who believe that the Taj Mahal is an object of their
history. As neither they nor the British public in general have yet dis-
covered the academic term South Asian I shall refer to such people
in Britain as Asian.
Racial simplicities
The idea that race equality involves the recognition of cultural and
ethnic diversity is one that is widely paid lip-service. It is true that
talk about cultural variety is sometimes ill-informed or patronising
and all too often an evasion from a serious commitment to ght-
ing against racial discrimination. Indeed, the factual recognition of
cultural plurality is not logically incompatible with forms of hierar-
chy. Apartheid is a classic case in point. Nevertheless an organisation
which is itself pledged to racial equality cannot but be opposed to
the crude categorisations which divide societies and humanity into
white and black. While the reduction of an over-lapping and inter-
related plurality into a simplistic dualism is the stock-in-trade of rac-
ist thinking it is not a tool available for anti-racists. For the latter are
committed to challenging the gross ignorance about peoples and the
indifference to their variety that racists utilise. If anti-racists borrow
the racists classications in order to defeat racism (racists have no
trouble in saying who is black, so why should we? it is often said)
2

then however successful or not they may be as an interest group
they will have lost their opposition to racism as a way of thinking. In
particular, they will have lost the ideal of a multi-racial society for a
model of society as composed of two and only two races which for
the forseeable future must live in conict.
If this seems somewhat abstract it is worth noting, in contrast to
say the USA or Canada, which are often the models for British race
simplistic dualism
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egalitarians in respect of government action especially in employ-
ment policy, the decline of the vocabulary of multi-racialism in the
UK. Similarly, one has to note the divergence of the new British race
vocabulary from that of America, Africa, India or just about any other
part of the globe where black continues to mean of sub-Saharan
African origin (cf. black is beautiful, black music, black Africa).
An anomaly which, for example, leads to even greater confusion in
the international than the British press as to how many black MPs
were elected in June 1987.
3

Description and identity
One justication for the new use of the term black is that regardless
of these inadequacies in other respects it is said to have a descriptive
clarity in objectively and factually picking out all those who suffer
in common ways from a single form of racism. The drawback here,
however, is that most ordinary people wish to be dened in terms of
a historically received identity, a distinctive set of beliefs and prac-
tices or in terms of their aspirations for themselves and their fami-
lies. They may seek more government attention for their problems
but just as they wish not to be trapped in a problematic condition
in inner-city decay, in conict with authority, in alienation from
the mainstream, without hope of winning acceptance and graduated
progress for their children so most people do not wish to be dened
in terms of a problem or as victims. The situation is exactly analo-
gous to the one where social theorists identify persons as proletariat
who may have nothing else in common other than this condition and
are then surprised to nd that the people in question do not make
that identity their own; or that the term working class fails to offer
inspirational identity to a large number of people who on all socio-
economic criteria are evidently working class. Most people wish to
put on show their best features, those qualities in which their indi-
vidual and collective pride resides in and by which they want the rest
of the world to know them. They wish to be known for what they are,
not for what others nd problematic about them.
A black identity
Now, of course, for many who suffer from white domination black
has become a focus of collective pride. This is certainly true of
many black activists and is perhaps quite widely true now of Afro-
black pride
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Caribbeans here
4
and particularly so of Afro-Americans. They may
not all share identical notions of black let alone a common political
perspective but they do all believe that the term black should be
used to promote a positive identity. The important point to note is
that this use of the term black, unlike the one I started off with, is
no longer descriptive. It is evaluative or aspirational for it denotes
not just the negative treatment of others to oneself (of white people
to those of another colour) but what one wishes to be or ought to
wish to be. One important implication is that, to be slightly technical
for a moment, the generic term black covers cases which are not
equally examples of the genus. Let me illustrate what I mean by an
example. Democracy is an evaluative generic term which may be
used to cover a range of organisations some of which may be more
democratic than others, and so the term applies more to some of the
organisations than to others. And there is a further assumption that
the lesser cases ought to be more like the major cases for the genus
is something worthy: the less democratic ought to be more like the
more democratic. So similarly the aspirational use of the term black
implies that while some persons or groups are more black than oth-
ers, insofar as being black is something to be encouraged, the lesser
or more ambiguous blacks ought to aspire to be more like the true
blacks.
This use of the term black may not in itself, any more than de-
mocracy, present any special difculties. However, there are several
factors about the British situation that conspire to make this posi-
tive notion of black harmful to British Asians.
5
Firstly, because as a
matter of historical and contemporary fact this positive black iden-
tity has been espoused by peoples of sub-Saharan African roots, they
naturally are thought to be the quintessential or exemplary cases of
black consciousness and understand black consciousness to be at its
fullest, something only achieved by people of African ethnicity. The
Handsworth Harambee organisation thus dened itself on a BBC
Open Door television programme as rooted in a belief system in-
uenced by Pan-Africanism, African socialism, and parts of the black
power philosophy. It is believed that though conditions of black peo-
ple are inuenced by what happens in Africa, in this way black people
can carve out for themselves a decent existence in Handsworth.
6
So
if Asians in Britain, by virtue of the discrimination practised against
them, come to believe that they too are black in a positive sense it is
obvious that only some of the concepts forged by creators of black
consciousness will be applicable to Asians so that they will necessar-
ily not be capable of being black in the full sense but be only second-
ary or ambiguous blacks.
British Asians
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Secondly, some may claim that when Asians are encouraged to think
of themselves as black what is on offer is not the old black conscious-
ness, the one forged exclusively by people of African ethnicity and for
people of African ethnicity, but a new Afro-Asian identity. Leaving
aside the question of what is supposed to be the link here between
the old and the new, the problem here is to know what content this
new identity has. For the attempt to reduce several groups who have
nothing more in common with each other (except the negative con-
dition of discrimination) than any of those groups have with white
people to a single identity makes, I must confess, such little sense to
me that this concept to me is nothing but a meaningless chimera.
At best it marks not so much a positive identity but a positive de-
termination to oppose white racism, and the adoption of the term
black here usually means by implication and certainly as a matter
of fact, the acceptance by Asians of an Afro political leadership. The
latter is evidenced by the relative numbers and especially positions
of power (e.g. Chairs of Committees) of Afro and Asian members in
inner London Councils ruling groups,
7
black workers groups such
as that in the National Association of Local Government Ofcers
(NALGO), black caucuses and other similar organisations prexed
by the term black.
8
An Afro leadership has of course had some ben-
ets for Asians, as for example in the West Indian lobbying which led
to the inclusion of the concept of indirect discrimination in the 1976
Race Relations Act, but presumably it need not be, as it has pres-
ently become, at the price of subordinating their identity to political
concerns. Indeed, if the primary mode by which Asians are made to
publicly relate to the rest of British society is through a black political
identity then no one should be surprised if Asians remain politically
under-represented and misrepresented and increasing numbers of
successful Asians try to make themselves inconspicuous and opt for
a path of apolitical assimilation.
That Asians cannot be served by a black identity equal to its use for,
say, Afro-Caribbeans is perhaps most pointedly illustrated by the fact
that when even explicit users of the new concept, in the moments
they wish to refer only to Asians do so by the term Asian, while a
book sub-titled West Indians in British Politics after a few introduc-
tory remarks about the wider black community thereon condently
speaks of West Indians as the black community.
9
What is particu-
larly signicant here is not that the author, Trevor Carter, in writing
exclusively of West Indian experience should use the term black as
an ethnically specic term. What is signicant is that Carter, despite
his introductory remarks, is able to use the term in this narrower
new Afro-Asian
identity
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way without any loss of intelligibility or plausibility. More damaging
still to the desire of any Asians to be included in a black identity is
Peter Fryers history of black people in Britain which, again, de-
spite the usual prefatory remarks about Asians as an integral part
of black Britain devotes less than twenty of its six hundred pages to
them.
10
This process of paying lip-service to the idea of British Asians
as blacks while actually being interested in developing a black ethnic
identity reaches its apogee in Paul Gilroys recent book in which, de-
spite some occasional and incidental uses of black as a descriptive
term (e.g. pp. 45-46), the interest in Asians, spanning two or three
sentences only, is conned to the extent that they approximate to black
youth culture
11
. A far more honest approach is that of Frasers and
Douglass Black Heroes in the Hall of Fame in which there is no place
for Asians not out of any hostility but simply inappropriateness.
12
Doublespeak and racial inequality
The drawback with black used as a descriptive term, then, is that it
denes people not in terms of their own identity but by the treatment
of others; the aspirational use, on the other hand, overcomes this
deciency but at the price of making British Asians have to dene
themselves in a framework historically and internationally developed
by people in search of African roots. These two situations, of course,
describe ideal or abstract cases. Real life is never so simple and the
present British situation certainly is not. For that consists of a largely
unrecognised ambivalence or confusion arising from the following:
i) wishing that a single term could be used for all non-white peoples;
ii) feeling that non-white is a term of negative contrast and noting
that at least for some of the referent groups black is a positive
term and hence to be preferred;
iii) noting that the term black is not adequately comprehensive nor
neutral between different ethnic minority groups for it seems
much more apt for some of those groups rather than others.
Hence we have a kind of doublespeak which in charity one has to
suppose is unconscious for otherwise one would have to question the
intelligence and/or motives of its users. A sentence like the following
is what I have in mind:
unconscious
doublespeak
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Too often when the party discusses the membership of black and
Asian people it centres on the level of black public representative-
ness, magistrates and MPs, rather on ways in which black people can
play a role in the party without necessarily aspiring to hold ofce; this
is not to diminish the important point that many more black people
should hold such ofces.
13
A sentence which boldly begins with one meaning of black imme-
diately gives way to an entirely different meaning without any sug-
gestion of having done so. Another example of the same general
phenomenon is when local authority job advertisements proclaim
a desire to attract applications from black and other ethnic minori-
ties or black and Asian people. That in each case the second half of
these conjunctions is very denitely secondary, an irritating addition,
is clear from the fact that regardless of how often these conjunctions
are used their order always follows strict precedence. Rare indeed
in these contexts would a statement be made in terms of all ethnic
minorities including black people. And to expect a phrase such as
Asian and Black might not seem unreasonable given the size of the
respective populations
14
or even the convention of alphabetical pre-
cedence, let alone the variety normal in the use of language; but it is
an expectation which will invariably be disappointed for it misses the
hierarchical politics of such formulae. When added to this an institu-
tion as central to public opinion formation as the BBC decides that
the term Black or Asian is too cumbersome and that for the sake of
editorial simplicity programme makers have the right to abbreviate
that term to Black, what are Asians in Britain supposed to conclude
about their signicance as a community in Britain? What is the mes-
sage that is being sent out to them? As anyone involved in race equal-
ity issues knows, constantly being described as an appendix or as an
afterthought erodes ones sense of ones worth so that one comes to
believe that one perhaps is as secondary or inferior as the benevolent
authorities and the media imply.
Ethnic self-denition
This brings us to the central point at issue, namely, the principle of
ethnic self-denition as a basic element of racial equality and multi-
racialism. When some time ago American blacks insisted on calling
themselves black and on being so-called by others this was right-
ly thought to be an assertion of collective self-respect and respect
for which by other races was a basic step towards racial equality.
Afro-American
collective self-respect
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Similarly, a while ago when many people here of West Indian origins
took on the term Afro-Caribbean it was part of a search for an iden-
tity in which one could have a sense of worth and resist denigrators.
And yet Asians in Britain who do possess a sense of common his-
tory and ethnic identity are nding it difcult to hold on to, let alone
develop, this identity by the activities of the very people who publicly
profess racial equality and in many cases are publicly invested with
the task of promoting it. Let me conne myself to one example, the
Commission for Racial Equality (CRE). The CRE in so much of its
publicity literature, videos, recommended ethnic monitoring catego-
ries, through the work of its professionals and so on, increasingly
refers to the people about whom it is concerned as black.
15
Yet it de-
nies treating Asians in any way less than their due and rejects that it
is smothering any distinctive group identity. The CREs view seems
to be that its proposed categorisation of Asians as black for, say, pur-
poses of ethnic monitoring as a tool in equal opportunity strategies,
is not an attempt to dene Asians as such. Rather it is to pick out an
important but limited feature about Asians in Britain while leaving
them free to develop their distinctive identity along lines congenial
to themselves.
If I am right in thinking that this is the CREs view (in the absence
of any ofcial statement it is gleaned from private correspondence
and conversations) then it is morally fraudulent. For when local au-
thorities,
16
academics, politicians, the media and public in general
in unison use the categories by which Asians are blacks, and this
categorisation becomes second nature so that anyone who questions
it is thought to be out of touch, there can be no doubt that the funda-
mental identity of Asians in Britain has been dened for them by the
mode of reference of the race relations establishment. When I raised
this matter with the Community Relations Council of one London
Borough I was told that this issue was out of date, that it had already
been settled by various conferences of professionals and that the
ght against racial discrimination would be best served if the Asian
community coming late to political self-consciousness accepted
it as a fait accompli.
Who knows what Asians think? Who cares?
Of course some Asians, including prominent gures, do accept the
term black of themselves. However, this fact has to be balanced by
three others. Namely, that there are three other groups of Asians,
late political self-
consciousness
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each of which is larger than the group just referred to. The largest
perhaps is the group that knows that society now refers to them as
black, tolerates this while studiously avoiding referring to themselves
as black. Then there is the group that feels politically obligated to talk
of themselves as black for they see that their political champions,
sponsors and other sympathisers talk of them in these ways and ex-
pect them to do so too. Finally, there is the group of Asians to whom
it simply has not occurred that when local authorities, politicians,
media, etc. speak of blacks, for example as in job advertisements
which say applications from black people are welcome, that they are
being referred to.
17
It might be thought that this last group must con-
sist of those who are least educated, least connected to British society
and live in areas of the country where race equality is not a major is-
sue. My experience is that this is not so at all and this group can still
be found in large numbers in areas such as Brent in London. They
persist in a cocoon of ignorance because their own understanding of
themselves and of other groups is so different from the assumptions
of the local public vocabulary that those assumptions do not even
register as possibilities within their framework of understanding.
18
I have made assertions here about what I believe to be true about
the large majority of Asians in Britain. It may be asked of me how I
can prove these assertions. Perhaps the strict answer is that I cannot
and that no one can prove the opposite either. For and this speaks
more loudly than any words there are very few gures available
on this matter. Virtually no one, certainly not the CRE nor the local
authorities who condently assume that Asians think of themselves
as black, nor again those who despite what they know feel no inhi-
bition in imposing this identity upon Asians, has thought the Asian
community important enough to merit this research and consulta-
tion.
19
The one research project that has specically examined grass-
roots thinking on this matter has been recently published by the
Ofce of Population and Censuses Surveys (OPCS).
20
Their research
consisted of three separate eld tests using three different question
formats and on each occasion in several parts of the country. They
found that when in the few cases that Asians ticked themselves as
Black it was mainly done in error due to the design of the form.
21

While it did not specically test for this it found no wish amongst
Asians to be subsumed under a black identity. It will be interesting to
see whether the issue is thought important enough for others to un-
dertake further research and for race relation professionals to nally
come to respect the principle of ethnic self-denition.
OPCS research
on Asians
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It will, incidentally, also be interesting to see if the government it-
self listens to the message of the OPCS research. For while it has
been the case that the Civil Service Commission has for a number of
years been using ethnic classications which are in tune with OPCS
ndings, the Home Ofce in its recent ethnic survey of probations
service staff and the Department of Education and Sciences survey
of schoolchildren and teachers to begin in autumn 1988 have used
the categories fashioned by the CRE and in the former case despite
the protest and noncooperation of the National Association of Asian
Probation Staff.
22
It seems that some government departments have
been persuaded by race professionals on this issue just at the mo-
ment when Asian opinion is beginning to stir on this point.
Political realism and Asian identity
I said at the start that the argument behind the new usage of black
consists in the unity it provides for anti-racism. Against this I have
tried to show how the argument is not worthy of race egalitarians
and necessarily devalues Asians, the numerically larger party in this
prospective unity. What now in conclusion must be stressed is that
one does not necessarily have to choose between these rival two posi-
tions, between an anti-racist common front on the one hand and a
respect for Asian identity on the other. What does follow, however,
is that it is foolish to expect a rainbow coalition (as Jesse Jackson
calls the non-white political alliance in America) to be successful if
it involves asking a partner to this coalition to adopt an identity false
to their own being. Such a coalition will be only skin-deep and will
be betrayed at the rst opportunity.
23
It is already quite clear how
unattractive current race equality campaigning is to the majority of
Asians who consistently cross the street to avoid it unless some grant-
aid is in prospect. The current uses on the term black, particularly
those which associate it with what is coming to be called a culture of
resistance,
24
may create unity amongst a band of militants but will
lead more Asians to seek a life of quiet assimilation than otherwise
would.
If we follow further the reference to Jesse Jackson and look more
clearly at the American experience we will learn, I believe, that racial
inequality and exclusion is overcome not simply by political institu-
tional change but with an accompanying restoration of ethnic pride.
This latter was achieved by the black is beautiful campaign and is to
some extent being emulated by Afro-Britons. Similarly, it is my con-
a rainbow
coalition
restoration of
ethnic pride
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viction that what we Asians need at present is to develop and project
a public identity which will be readily communicable and be true to
our own being and our own sense of worth. Only this will give us the
condence to play a more active role in public affairs and assert our-
selves as we are and not as others friend or foe would wish us to
be. An identity which, on the one hand, is capable of fostering pride
in our historical heritage and ethnicity and, on the other hand, which
can earn us the respect due to us in British society by virtue of the
hard work and disciplined commitment that we or our parents have
made in establishing ourselves in this country, and by virtue of our
growing contribution in the many areas of commerce, law, medicine,
education, science, technology and so on. A public identity which is
true to our thinking and being is of value in itself; it is also of benet
against those who would distort us into schemes and theories for
their own political purposes; and nally, it is of benet in inspiring
and achieving those aspects of racial equality and social success that
political initiatives by themselves cannot deliver.
The development of an authentic public identity is, of course, not
an alternative to a politics along the lines of a rainbow coalition or
a common front against racism. But and this is important nor
is it in opposition to it. The real question is whether current modes
of anti-racism will be sufciently adaptive on this point. For Asians
cannot be expected to embrace a political race equality which denies
them the distinctive public recognition that they seek.
The choice, then, is not between a separatist Asian ethnicity and uni-
ty of the racially oppressed; the choice is between a political realism
which accords dignity to ethnic groups on their own terms and a
coercive ideological fantasy.
Notes
1 See, however, Sandip Hazareesinghs excellent Racism Cultural Identity:
An Indian Perspective, Dragons Teeth 1986, 24:4-10. See also the brief edi-
torial in the Race and Society supplement of New Society, 6.11.1987. For an
example of the anti-Asian prejudice that the latter hints at, see the editorial
and Voice of Alex in Platform, October 19 and 25, 1987 respectively.
2 This argument is often generalised from a reference to racists to white so-
ciety in general: the dominant popular culture continues to insist on us-
ing the word black to identify people of both Afro-Caribbean and South
Asian descent (Richard Jenkins Countering Prejudice Anthropological or
Otherwise, Anthropology Today 1987, 3:2). Popular culture, however, has yet
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to oblige: it is a common experience of race/racism awareness trainers that
most white people use the term coloured when they should use black and
that they need to be taught the new vocabulary.
3 See, for example, Newsweek, 4 January 1988: 32-33. Newsweek, however, can
be forgiven for overlooking that in Jonathan Sayeed, the Conservative M.P.
for Bristol East, Westminster has had a half-Indian M.P. since 1983 for none
of the British media has noted the fact either.
4 This is not, of course, universally so even amongst the younger generation.
For a voice of dissent see Ferdi Dennis History Fact or Fiction?, The Voice,
week ending 25 March 1987. Indo-Caribbeans of course are dened out of
existence by the current idea that the term Afro-Caribbean is simply an
update on the term West Indian, see Lynette Lithgow East Indians and the
West Indies, Asian Times, 4.3.1988, pp. 4-5.
5 Probably also harmful to (amongst others) some black people: it cant be
much help to develop a term of ethnic pride and then see it applied indis-
criminately to non-white peoples. I conne my concern here to Asians.
6 Quoted in John Rex and Sally Tomlinson Colonial Immigrants in a British
City, London, 1987, Routledge and Kegan Paul, p. 260.
7 See Peter Hamid Asian Involvement in the Political Life of Great Britain with
Parallels Drawn from the Afro-Caribbean Experience, Shakti, November
1986, pp. 16-17.
8 Research suggests that not only do the majority of Asians not join such or-
ganisations but they do not even approve of their existence. The Harris poll
for Caribbean/Asian/African Times found only 31 per cent of Asians in favour
of the setting up of a Black Section in the Labour Party (African Times, 5 June
1987: 22).
9 Trevor Carter Shattering Illusions, West Indians in British Politics, London,
1986, Lawrence and Wishart.
10 Peter Fryer Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain, London,
1984, Pluto Press Ltd.
11 Paul Gilroy There Aint No Black In The Union Jack, London, 1987,
Hutchinson.
12 Flip Fraser and J.D. Douglas Black Heroes in the Hall of Fame, a stage musical
currently (December 1987) showing at the Astoria Theatre, London to wide
critical acclaim, not least because of its contribution to black pride.
13 Chosen at random from Positive Discrimination: Black People and the Labour
Party (The Labour Party, 1985: 20). Doublespeak sentences like these can
be found daily in virtually any book, article or newspaper item on race. Even
an Asian paper like New Life which is normally very clear on these matters
can occasionally nd itself in this sort of incoherence (see the editorial 19
June 1987: 6).
14 Most lay (and some professional) white, black and Asian people seem to be
actually unaware of the numbers - for example, that there are more than
twice as many British Asians as British Afro-Caribbeans. If as some guess
(Gujarat Samachar, Special Issue, August 1987, p. 19) that over 35 per cent of
West Indian immigrants were people of Asian origin then the statistics are
considerably further complicated.
15 This is particularly true of the Employment Division. See, for example, its
Positive Action and Equal Opportunity in Employment (CRE, 1985) which on
p. 3 states that the term black is used as a general description for ethnic
minority groups, including those of Afro-Caribbean and Asian origin and
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other groups who experience discrimination on grounds of race, colour or
national origins. This comprehensive use sits cheek by jowl with a quote on
the very next page from the White Paper preceding the 1976 Race Relations
Act which speaks of black and brown workers.
16 Taking the country as a whole many local authorities do not yet think of
Asians as blacks though it certainly is a growing trend. When they do switch
to the new usage the usual justication is that they are merely following CRE
guidelines. Nevertheless a noticeable counter current too has emerged. In
the face of local Asian protest some councils, usually only in areas where
Asians greatly outnumber Afro-Caribbeans, have recently formally decided
to not classify Asians under the term black. Three cases known to me are
Leicestershire, L.B. of Hounslow and Peterborough City Council. The issue
is at the centre of considerable controversy in L.B. of Brent where Asians
outnumber Afro-Caribbeans by only two to one, and is a live issue in L.B.s of
Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest and Hillingdon.
17 In which case such job advertisements seem to be prima facie unlawful indi-
rect discrimination though as far as I know no cases have appeared before an
industrial tribunal.
18 Richard Jenkins in Countering Prejudice Anthropological and Otherwise
in Anthropology Today 1987, 3:2 offers ethnic chauvinism as the one and only
reason why Asians cannot identify themselves as blacks. This is, of course,
as absurd as saying the only reason the Welsh have for objecting to the popu-
lar international conation between English and British is Welsh chauvin-
ism! Anti-racist intellectuals, even when friends, would do well to extend the
sources of their ethnic understanding.
19 I understand that the CRE is coming to the view that this is an issue which
will not go away and some consultations ought to be undertaken. If this is
indeed so I hope that these consultations will not be conned to or centre on
race professionals and CRCs (their majority view is not a secret and indeed
is the problem) but will be directed to Asian organisations and could very
simply be supplemented by commissioning an opinion poll.
20 Ofce of Population, Census and Surveys Developing Questions on Ethnicity
and Related Topics for the Census, Occasional Papers, 36, 1987.
21 Ibid: 64. Indeed, two details which emerge from this research show that
Asian and black modes of self-identity continued to diverge rather than con-
verge. While in the course of their eld tests OPCS removed West Indian
and African as sub-sections of Black because a distinct number of black
people objected to being dened in terms of overseas origins and any sub-di-
visions, Asians while accepting Asian as a generic term wished to be further
classied by reference to national origins (e.g., Indian). Similarly, while a
number of young blacks advocated the category Black British for blacks
born in the U.K., Asians deprecated the category British Asian for it implied
that British Asians were not British unless born here. Asians, it seems, are
searching for a British identity which is not incompatible with overseas ori-
gins and, no doubt, continuing overseas links.
22 The National Association of Asian Probation Staff described the use of a
black/white classication as divisive and itself racist (quoted in New Life,
25 December 1987: 2).
23. Consider the Harris Poll, op. cit., which suggests that the Conservative vote
amongst Asians living in areas of low ethnic concentration is now not much
below the national average.
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tariq modood
24 See, e.g., C. Gutzmore The Notting Hill Carnival, Marxism Today, August
1982. Though I cannot speak with any authority here I do not believe that
many black people welcome such descriptions of themselves.
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Introduction to immigration and the politics of
citizenship in Europe and North America
William Rogers Brubaker
This article is the introductory chapter of a 1989 publication edited by soci-
ologist Rogers Brubaker, entitled Immigration and the Politics of Citizenship in
Europe and North America. The book was one of the rst transatlantic com-
parisons of the links between immigration and citizenship. Though the vol-
ume only deals with six countries, Brubakers introductory chapter well places
the debates on citizenship, membership and immigration in a historical per-
spective. It also elegantly presents the major issues to be discussed when
dealing with issues of nationhood and citizenship in a migratory context.
Massive postwar migrations have posed a fundamental challenge to
the nation-states of Europe and North America. They have compelled
these countries to reinterpret their traditions, to reshape their institu-
tions, to rethink the meaning of citizenship to reinvent themselves,
in short, as nation-states.
This book addresses one important aspect of this challenge. It
is concerned with the implications of immigration for the theory
and practice of citizenship and membership in the United States,
Canada, the United Kingdom, France, West Germany, and Sweden.
Much has been written about immigration to these countries, but
little has been written about citizenship.
1
Through a broad compara-
tive discussion of citizenship and social membership the rst of
its kind the book aims to bring fresh perspectives to bear on the
intensifying policy debates about immigration and citizenship.
The authors make arguments about how citizenship and mem-
bership ought to be organized. And they make clear how citizenship
and membership are in fact organized. The essays in the rst part of
the book incline toward political argument, the essays in the second
part toward policy analysis. But the distinction is not a rigid one.
Most of the essays involve both argument and analysis.
citizenship
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william rogers brubaker
The essays in the rst part of the book articulate a wide variety
of viewpoints. This reects the preference of the German Marshall
Fund (and of this writer) for a lively clash of perspectives over a cho-
rus of carefully orchestrated bromides. The authors challenge tradi-
tional views of citizenship and membership. Joseph Carens disputes
the traditional, state-centered view that moral considerations are out
of place in decisions about admission to citizenship. Peter Schuck
argues that American citizenship has lost much of its value and
meaning. Kay Hailbronner challenges the widespread notion that
the Federal Republic of Germany has an unreasonably restrictive citi-
zenship policy. And Tomas Hammar takes issue with the traditional
negative attitude towards dual citizenship.
The essays in the second part of the book look through a com-
parative lens at citizenship and membership policies and practices.
I discuss citizenship law and naturalization practices. Mark Miller,
questioning the traditional view of noncitizens as politically passive,
analyzes the many ways in which noncitizen immigrants participate
in politics. And in the concluding essay, I discuss the economic and
social rights of noncitizens.
The six countries examined in the book have very different tradi-
tions of immigration and citizenship. Canada and the United States
are classical countries of immigration whose citizenship policies
have long been geared to mass immigration. Britain and France are
former colonial powers whose immigration and citizenship poli-
cies reect in complex ways the legacy of colonialism. Sweden and
Germany are traditional countries of emigration whose postwar
prosperity led to the recruitment, initially on a temporary basis, of
migrant workers.
2

Despite these differing traditions, each of these countries today
confronts similar problems. During the last quarter-century, each has
experienced a new immigration to borrow the expression used
to describe the surge in immigration from Southern and Eastern
Europe to the United States in the late 19th century. And the United
States has experienced a new new immigration. Thus Asia is now
the leading source of immigration to both Canada and the United
States; the Indian subcontinent and the Caribbean displaced Ireland
in the 1960s as the leading source of immigration to Britain; half of
the foreign population in France is now from Africa or Asia (mainly
from North Africa); Turks surpassed Italians during the 1970s as the
largest group of foreign workers in Germany; and Asia has recently
displaced Nordic countries as the leading source of immigration to
Sweden.
Contemporary debates about citizenship are simultaneously de-
comparing
six countries
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bates about nationhood. They are debates about what it means, and
what it ought to mean, to be a member of a nation-state in todays
increasingly international world. To place these debates in perspec-
tive, this introductory essay begins by evoking in general terms the
challenge posed by immigration to the nation-state and sketching
the historical background to current debates about immigration and
citizenship in each of the six countries. Next, it outlines the major
questions facing policy makers and sketches the options they have in
addressing these questions. The introduction concludes with some
remarks about the individual essays.
The challenge to the nation-state
Citizenship today means membership of a nation-state. To note this
is to point to a basic fact of political and social organization. We live
in a world of nation-states. Each claims a certain fraction of the hu-
man population as its own, and each aspires to mould this popula-
tion its citizenry into something more than a mere aggregate
of individuals or a mere congeries of groups. Each aims to create a
cohesive and in some respects homogeneous nation. The persistent
ethnic strife that aficts many polities is a brutal reminder that this
aspiration often goes unrealized. The aspiration, though, is shared
even by such fundamentally multicultural polities as India and the
Soviet Union.
But the nation-state is not only a fact. It is also an idea or ideal a
way of thinking about political and social membership.
3
It is a deeply
inuential model of membership that informs much current debate
on immigration and citizenship. Membership, according to this
model, should be egalitarian, sacred, national, democratic, unique,
and socially consequential. The membership status of postwar im-
migrants to Europe and North America, however, deviates from this
model in every respect. This has strained deeply rooted shared un-
derstandings about the way social and political membership ought
to be organized, and it has occasioned talk of a crisis of the nation-
state.
Because it remains so inuential, I want to look more closely at
this model of membership and say something about each of its com-
ponents. In sketching this model, I am not endorsing it. I want sim-
ply to summarize certain inherited ideas and ideals that continue to
inform political debates and discussions about immigration, about
nationality and citizenship, about patriotism and national identity,
about military service and the welfare state. I want to sketch the back-
ideal of nation-state
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drop of taken for-granted ideas and ideals against which the politics
of membership unfolds today.
What are these ideas and ideals? First, state-membership should
be egalitarian. There should be a status of full membership, and no
other (except in the transitional cases of children and persons await-
ing naturalization). Gradations of membership status are inadmis-
sible; nobody should be a second-class citizen.
Second, membership should be sacred. Citizens should be pre-
pared to make sacrices etymologically, to perform sacred acts
for the state. They should be willing to die for it if need be. Profane
attitudes toward membership, involving calculations of personal ad-
vantage, are profoundly inappropriate.
Third, state-membership should be based on nation-membership.
The political community should be simultaneously a cultural com-
munity, a community of language, mores, or belief. Only thus can a
nation-state be a nations state, the legitimate representative and au-
thentic expression of a nation. Those aspiring to membership of the
state must be or become members of the nation. If not (presumptive-
ly) acquired through birth and upbringing, such nation-membership
must be earned through assimilation.
Fourth, membership should be democratic. Full membership
should carry with it signicant participation in the business of rule.
And membership itself should be open: since a population of long-
term resident nonmembers violates the democratic understanding
of membership, the state must provide some means for resident
nonmembers to become members. Over the long run, residence and
membership must coincide.
Fifth, state-membership should be unique. Every person should
belong to one and only one state. Statelessness can be catastrophic
in a world in which even so-called human rights are enforceable for
the most part only by particular states. And dual (or multiple) citizen-
ship has long been considered undesirable for states and individuals
alike. There are legal techniques for regulating and mitigating the
conicts, inconveniences, and ambiguities it causes. But these tech-
niques cannot solve the central political problem of dual citizenship
the problem of divided allegiance.
Lastly, membership should be socially consequential; it should be
expressed in a community of well-being. Membership should entail
important privileges. Together with the duties mentioned above,
these should dene a status clearly and signicantly distinguished
from that of nonmembers. Membership should be objectively valu-
able and subjectively valued it should be prizeworthy and actually
prized.
six ideals of state-
membership
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This model of membership is largely vestigial. It is riddled,
moreover, with unresolved internal tensions. The idea of an egalitar-
ian and democratic membership points in one direction; the idea
that membership should be sacred and based on cultural belonging
points in a very different direction, with different policy implications.
That the model survives is due mainly to the lack of a coherent and
persuasive alternative. We lack a developed political theory of partial
or limited state-membership. We lack a political theory of desacral-
ized membership, based solely on calculations of personal advan-
tage, or of political membership dissociated from cultural belonging,
or of dual or multiple membership.
Because it is vestigial, the model is signicantly out of phase with
contemporary realities of state-membership. There are conspicuous
deviations from the model that have nothing to do with immigration.
The desacralization of state-membership, for example, has more to
do with the emotional remoteness of the bureaucratic welfare state
and the obsolescence of the citizen army in the nuclear age than
it does with immigration and occasional naturalizations of conve-
nience. And if modern-day citizenship is not very robustly demo-
cratic, this has more to do with the attenuated participation of most
citizens in the exercise of sovereignty than it does with the exclusion
of noncitizens from the franchise.
Still, the postwar immigration has accentuated existing deviations
from the nation-state model and generated new ones. These include
the proliferation of statuses of partial membership; the declining
value of citizenship; the desacralization of membership through the
calculating exploitation of the material advantages it confers; the in-
creasing demands for, and instances of, full membership of the state
without membership of the cultural nation; the soaring numbers of
persons with dual citizenship; and the long-term exclusion of large
numbers of apparently permanent residents from electoral participa-
tion. These membership trends deviate from every component of the
nation-state model. And each one arises from the unexpected devel-
opment of postwar immigration.
Unexpected especially on the Continent: for what has become a
settlement immigration began in France and Germany and Sweden
as a temporary labor migration. Neither a strictly temporary guest-
worker system nor unambiguous and accepted settlement immigra-
tion poses insuperable problems of membership. But an impercep-
tible slide from labor migration to settlement immigration, a slide
only partially and belatedly acknowledged by the immigrants them-
selves and by the country of immigration, could not help generating
delicate problems of membership. And equally delicate problems of
vestigial model
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membership are posed by the gradual settlement of undocumented
alien workers and their families in the United States.
The membership status of these migrants-turned-immigrants
has developed on the Continent in an ad hoc fashion with the piece-
meal administrative, legislative, and judicial acknowledgment of
their membership status.
4
This piecemeal process of inclusion con-
trasts with the total transformation effected by naturalization.
Paradoxically, the further this process has gone, the weaker the in-
centive to naturalize. Ad hoc enlargements of migrants rights may
obstruct rather than clear the path to full membership, trapping large
numbers of migrants-turned-immigrants in an intermediate status,
carrying with it many of the privileges and obligations of full mem-
bership but excluding two of the most important, symbolically and
practically: the right to vote and the duty of military service.
The immigration was unexpected, too, in its volume and in its
steadily increasing ethnic diversity. This holds for the United States
and Britain (and, as far as ethnic diversity is concerned, for Canada)
as well as for the Continent. Against the backdrop of the model of
membership sketched above, this threefold unexpectedness helps to
explain the profound political uncertainty of North America and es-
pecially Europe in the face of todays increasingly settled and increas-
ingly assertive immigrant population.
Not everyone shares this uncertainty, of course. Fundamentalists
defend the traditional model of the nation-state, stressing in particu-
lar the idea that state-membership presupposes nation-membership.
Multicultural pluralists, on the other hand, deny any validity to this
model, arguing for new forms of political membership that would
mirror an emerging postnational society. Fundamentalists demand
of immigrants either naturalization, stringently conditioned upon
assimilation, or departure; multicultural pluralists demand for im-
migrants a full citizenship stripped of its sacred character and di-
vorced from nationality. Neither position is particularly nuanced.
Fundamentalists treat the nation-state as something frozen in social
and political time; theirs is a profoundly anachronistic interpretation.
Multicultural pluralists, in their haste to condemn the nation-state
to the dustbin of history, underestimate the richness and complexity
of the nation-state model. If suitably reinterpreted to take account of
the changing economic, military, and demographic contexts of mem-
bership, the nation-state model may have life in it yet.
Traditions of nationhood and the politics of citizenship
The ideas and ideals sketched above inform the politics of citizenship
on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet, for historical reasons, the contours
of debate vary from country to country.
fundamentalism
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Above all, there is a basic difference between nations constituted
by immigration and countries in which occasional immigration has
been incidental to nation-building. Canada and the United States
have a continuous tradition of immigration. They were formed and
reformed as nations through immigration, and immigration gures
prominently in their national myths.
No European country is a classical country of immigration in this
sense. This is not to say that Europe has no historical experience with
immigration. Industrialization in Europe as elsewhere was accom-
panied by massive labor migrations, often across state boundaries,
and often leading to settlement. Poles in the coal mines of the Ruhr
and on the Junker estates of Prussia, Irish in the northern industrial
cities of England, Belgians and Italians in the frontier and industrial
regions of France these and other labor migrants of the second half
of the 19th century became permanent settlers.
Yet immigration has not been central to European nation-build-
ing, not even in France. Concerned about the low birth rate and about
the devastating losses in the world wars of this century, the French
state has long promoted immigration for demographic reasons. In
sheer numbers, immigration has been much more important in
France during the last hundred years than in any other European
country. Yet not even in France does immigration form part of the
national myth.
The massive immigration of the last quarter-century has not
transformed European countries into countries of immigration in
the classical North American sense. Even Sweden, which has gone
furthest in acknowledging and accepting its postwar labor migrants
as permanent settlers, makes it clear that it is not and cannot become
a country of immigration in the classical sense.
Debate about immigration and citizenship in each of our six coun-
tries is informed by distinctive traditions of nationhood by deeply
rooted understandings about what constitutes a nation. A few observa-
tions about these traditions may help to explain some of the striking
national differences in the contemporary politics of citizenship.
France was the rst nation-state, and it has remained the nation-
state par excellence. French conceptions of nationhood and citizen-
ship bear the stamp of their revolutionary origin. The nation, in this
tradition, has been conceived mainly in relation to the institutional
and territorial frame of the state: political unity, not shared culture,
has been understood to be its basis. What is a nation? asked Abb
Sieys in his famous pamphlet of 1789, and answered: a body of
associates living under one and the same law and represented by
one and the same legislature. But if political unity has been funda-
immigration and
nation-building
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mental, the striving for cultural unity has been crucially expressive of
French nationhood. Political inclusion has entailed cultural assimila-
tion, for regional cultural minorities and immigrants alike. The uni-
versalist, inclusive theory and practice of citizenship have depended
on condence in the assimilatory workings of schools, the army, the
church, unions, and political parties condence that has waned
markedly in recent years.
5

If the French conception of nationhood has been universalist, as-
similationist, and state-centered, the German conception has been
particularist, organic, and Volk-centered. Because national feeling
developed before the nation-state, the German idea of the nation
was not originally a political one, nor was it linked with the abstract
idea of citizenship. This pre-political German nation, this nation in
search of a state, was conceived not as the bearer of universal politi-
cal values, but as an organic cultural, linguistic, or racial community
as a Volksgemeinschaft. On this understanding, ethnic or cultural
unity is primary and constitutive of nationhood, while political unity
is derivative. While this way of thinking about nationhood has never
had the eld to itself, it took root in early 19th century Germany and
has remained available for political exploitation ever since; it nds
expression even in the Basic Law of the Federal Republic.
6

One would expect citizenship dened (as in France) in political
terms to be more accessible to culturally distinct immigrants than
membership dened (as in Germany) in ethnic or cultural terms.
This is in fact the case. The policies and politics of citizenship in
France and Germany have been strikingly different since the late
19th century, and they remain so despite converging immigration
policies and comparable immigrant populations. As a result, a sub-
stantial fraction of the French immigrant population has French citi-
zenship, while only a negligible fraction of the corresponding West
German population has German citizenship.
The postwar migrations, to be sure, have placed considerable
strain on French and German traditions alike. The French tradition
of assimilation nds few defenders today: the multiculturalist left
and immigrant organizations argue that immigrants should not be
assimilated, the exclusionary right that they (the North Africans in
particular) cannot be assimilated. The far right, led by Jean-Marie
Le Pen, has embarked on a major campaign to revalorise French
citizenship by restricting immigrants access to it. Le Pens slogan
Etre franais, cela se mrite means roughly: to be French, you
have to deserve it.
Nor is it only the French tradition of inclusion via assimilation
that is under strain. The current conservative government of West
assimilation
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Germany has had to acknowledge that large numbers of Turkish mi-
grants have in fact become permanent immigrants. It has even pro-
claimed a public interest in the naturalization of second-generation
immigrants.
It is too early to predict the outcome of the contemporary poli-
tics of citizenship in France and West Germany. But the bearing of
traditional shared understandings of nationhood on this politics is
clear. French moves toward a more restrictive and German moves
toward a more liberal politics of citizenship have encountered strong
resistance. The French government withdrew its proposed, mildly
restrictive reform of nationality law in December 1986 after meeting
unexpectedly strong opposition. (Dissenters included the venerable
Council of State, which criticized the reform as contrary to republi-
can tradition and principles.) It subsequently appointed a nonpar-
tisan commission to study the issue; the changes proposed in the
commissions report, if enacted, would actually liberalize access to
French citizenship for second-generation immigrants. On the other
hand, every recent proposal to liberalize German nationality law has
foundered in the upper house. A central argument has been that the
current restrictive nationality law is appropriate for a country that, by
inescapable tradition, is not and cannot become a country of immi-
gration.
7

In Sweden, as in France, national feeling and state institutions
developed in tandem long before the age of nationalism. The sense
of nationhood emerged in the course of political and military strug-
gles against Denmark in the late 15th and 16th centuries, before a
distinctively Swedish culture existed. Literature, art, and language
were then permeated by Danish and German inuence. Nor were
there sharp ethnic distinctions between Swedes and Danes. In these
circumstances, national feeling was expressed in an attachment to
political and institutional traditions, not in the sense of ethnic or cul-
tural distinctiveness. Later, to be sure, national feeling did nd ex-
pression in a distinctive culture. And contemporary Sweden certainly
has a relatively homogeneous national culture. But this national cul-
ture has never carried a strong political charge in the Swedish tradi-
tion. It was not harnessed to a project of domestic assimilation and
overseas imperialism, as in France, nor to a movement for national
unication, as in Germany, nor to a campaign for national autonomy
or independence, as occurred in 19th century Finland and Norway,
neither at that time a sovereign state. Swedens long, continuous his-
tory as an independent state with a more or less homogeneous popu-
lation, and its position as the dominant Scandinavian power from
the 17th century on, provided no occasion for the politicization of
cultural identity.
Sweden: absence of
ethnic nationalism
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The absence of a tradition of ethnic or cultural nationalism may
help explain why Sweden has been able to make citizens of its post-
war immigrants with so little fuss or friction. A further reason is to be
found in the composition of the immigrant population, which, until
recently, was two-thirds Nordic and overwhelmingly European. The
ethnic diversity of the immigrant population has increased markedly
in the last decade, as large numbers of refugees from Chile, Turkey,
Vietnam, Iran, and Iraq have been granted immigrant status. And
a small fundamentalist opposition has recently made some gains.
But while this may encourage centrist politicians to adopt a more
restrictive policy on refugee admissions, it seems unlikely to affect
Swedens liberal policy on admission to citizenship.
Early political unication led to the early development of national
feeling in England. Yet neither England nor Britain ever became a
nation-state on the French model a tightly integrated political and
cultural community. English rule over Scotland, Wales, and espe-
cially Ireland gave the state a composite character, and nationhood
an ambiguous character. British national feeling developed, but it did
not supersede English, Scottish, Welsh, or Irish national feeling.
Just as there has been no clear conception of British nationhood,
so too there has been no clear conception of citizenship. The concept
of citizenship as membership of a legal and political community was
foreign to British thinking. Legal and political status were conceived
instead in terms of allegiance in terms of the vertical ties between
individual subjects and the king. These ties of allegiance knit togeth-
er the British empire, not the British nation. Until 1948, all persons
born within the dominions of the king were British subjects. There
was no specic citizenship status for the colonies, for Britain itself,
or even for the independent Commonwealth countries.
With the dismantling of its empire, Britain has had to redene
itself as a nation-state, and to create for the rst time a national citi-
zenship. The transition has been an awkward one. France too had
to negotiate the dismantling of a huge colonial empire. And, unlike
Britain, it became involved in a bloody, bitter, protracted war. But
at least France already had a strong identity as a nation-state and a
well established national citizenship. Britain had neither, and this
contributed to the confused and bitter politics of immigration and
citizenship during the last quarter-century.
Lacking a national citizenship until 1981, Britain lacked a clear
criterion for deciding whom to admit to its territory. In the early post-
war years, inspired by a heady vision of itself as the center of a vast
multiracial Commonwealth of Nations, it continued the traditional
practice of admitting all British subjects a category now includ-
England: fuzzy
conception of
citizenship
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ing citizens of the independent Commonwealth countries. But con-
trols were imposed on this latter group in 1962 after a signicant
immigration developed from Jamaica, India, and Pakistan. This was
inevitable, in view of the huge population disparity between the inde-
pendent Commonwealth countries and Britain itself. More troubling
was the fact that the government later drew distinctions in immigra-
tion law between persons possessing the same formal citizenship
status citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies. While
other countries were debating the citizenship status of immigrants,
Britain was debating the immigration status of citizens.
8

Britain now has a national, postcolonial citizenship, and with it
a clear criterion of admission to the territory. But it achieved this,
in the eyes of some critics, only by drawing the lines of the national
community of citizens too narrowly, and by creating a special sec-
ond-class citizenship status, without the right of immigration, for
residents of Hong Kong and others.
In the domain of economic, social, and political rights, immi-
grants in Britain generally have more rights than elsewhere. This
too results from the fact that Britain has not traditionally dened
itself as a nation-state. British law imposes relatively few disabilities
on aliens; more important, relatively few of Britains postwar immi-
grants have been aliens. Neither Irish citizens nor citizens of inde-
pendent Commonwealth countries are considered aliens. Outside the
domain of immigration law itself, immigrants from the Caribbean,
from India, from Pakistan, and elsewhere have virtually the same
rights as British citizens, including the right to vote and to run for
ofce.
American and Canadian conceptions of citizenship and nation-
hood reect the historical and contemporary importance of immigra-
tion. This distinguishes them sharply from their European counter-
parts. Even before American independence, the pressing need for
settlers had established naturalization as central to the theory and
practice of citizenship. Characteristics of naturalization a process
through which an individual expresses his or her voluntary adhesion
to a state came to be ascribed to American citizenship as such. The
War of Independence reinforced this understanding of citizenship,
for it led to sharp criticism of the British conception of unchosen and
perpetual subjectship.
9
And since the new nation lacked a distinctive
ethnic or cultural identity, American nationhood and nationalism
had to be dened in terms of a universalistic political formula that
would set it apart from the mother country.
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The Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th Amendment of 1868
denitively established birth in the territory (jus soli) as the criterion
Europe vs. America
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for the attribution of citizenship and afrmed, in principle, the pri-
macy of national over state citizenship. In the aftermath of the Civil
War, the afrmation of jus soli and of national citizenship had an
explicitly egalitarian, inclusive meaning.
The traditional inclusive and universalistic self-understanding
of the United States has always stood in tension with a much less
pretty practice. Free blacks, as well as slaves, were excluded from
U.S. citizenship before the Civil War, even when they possessed state
citizenship. Blacks continued to be excluded from full citizenship
after the Civil War through a restrictive judicial reading of the 14th
Amendment. American Indians were not granted automatic citizen-
ship at birth until 1924. And the category of aliens ineligible for
citizenship, rst introduced to exclude Chinese in 1882, was not
nally abolished until 1952. Ethnic exclusion based on national-or-
igin immigration quotas, moreover, persisted until 1965. Still, the
voluntaristic and universalistic understanding of citizenship helped
eventually to undermine the legitimacy of these exclusionary prac-
tices. High rates of immigration, liberal naturalization provisions,
and the jus soli rule have made the United States, for most of its
history, exceptionally open to the political incorporation of ethnically
and culturally distinct immigrants.
This tradition of inclusion has been interrupted by periodic phas-
es of exclusiveness. One such phase, marked by the surge of the
KnowNothings in the 1850s, occurred in response to the dramatic
increase in Catholic immigration after 1830; another, culminating in
the severely restrictive legislation of 1917-1924, occurred in response
to the new immigration from southern and eastern Europe after
1890. Today, after twenty years of the new new immigration ush-
ered in by the liberal Hart-Celler Act of 1965 and twenty years of
high levels of illegal immigration, we may be entering another such
phase. Even in the present political climate, however, debates about
immigration and citizenship continue to be informed by the distinct-
ly inclusive American understanding of nationhood. Thus the legal-
ization program of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986
acknowledged the legitimate membership claims of long-settled un-
documented immigrants and of seasonal agricultural workers. And
it has been taken for granted that legalized immigrants would be-
come citizens. Newspaper reports on the legalization program some-
times described undocumented aliens as applying for citizenship, al-
though in fact they were applying for temporary resident status and,
if successful, would qualify for permanent resident status only after
18 months, and for citizenship only after another ve years.
11

Canada, in some respects, has been even more strongly marked
phases of
exclusiveness
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by immigration than the United States. Immigration has amounted
to as much as ve percent of the total population in a single year
(1913), more than three times the highest percentage ever recorded
in the United States. And the foreign-born are currently twice as nu-
merous, in relation to population, in Canada.
Immigration policy has followed similar rhythms in the two coun-
tries. Canada, too, excluded the Chinese in the late 19th century, re-
stricted entry after World War I, abolished discrimination by national
origin in the 1960s, and has since admitted immigrants of steadily
increasing ethnic diversity. Rapid naturalization has long been pro-
moted in Canada, perhaps somewhat more vigorously than in the
United States.
Yet the centuries-old French-English dualism has complicated
the relation between immigration, citizenship, and nationhood in
Canada. The tensions that peaked in the late 1970s have abated, but
Canadian nationhood remains ambiguous and problematic. The
most basic question is Canada one nation, or two ? remains con-
troversial.
12

Immigration has been related in complex ways to this dualism.
Historically, dualism has not meant pluralism. Immigrants have
been expected to assimilate to the French- or the English-speaking
community. The large majority, even those settling in Quebec, have
done the latter a fact that sparked French resentment of immigra-
tion as an instrument of English domination. On the other hand,
dualism may have engendered in recent years a greater sensitivity to
the cultural identity of immigrants. A few years after becoming bilin-
gual on the federal level, Canada adopted an ofcial policy in support
of multiculturalism. It is not clear what this means in practice. But
it may encourage Canadas increasingly diverse immigrants to natu-
ralize quickly, without feeling that they must thereby abandon their
cultural identity.
Questions of membership
13
The nation-state is doubly bounded. It has a bounded territory and
a bounded membership. States make decisions about whom to ad-
mit to their territories, and about whom to admit as members. This
book is not concerned with admission to the territory. Not that this is
unimportant. Quite the contrary: the intensifying demand for entry
raises urgent and troubling questions about territorial boundaries.
Most fundamentally: what right do states have forcibly to deny entry
into their territories particularly to persons in urgent need of food,
shelter, or protection?
14

territorial
boundaries
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Questions of membership, though, differ from questions of en-
try. Questions of membership concern persons already present in
the territory (although not all such persons: the vast majority of those
admitted to the territory of another state are short-term visitors for
business or pleasure; their membership status is not in question).
Problems of membership arise, rather, for persons whose residence
and participation in the economic and social life of a country have
engendered signicant ties to that country.
15

It is of course impossible to delimit this group with any preci-
sion. Ties develop gradually, and there is no sharp divide between
shortterm visitors whose attachments remain rmly anchored in
their country of origin and persons whose developing attachments
to a new country begin to raise questions of membership personal
questions in the mind of the migrant, and policy questions for the
country in which he or she resides. It is just for this reason that the
personal questions and the policy questions are such difcult ones.
The policy questions are of two sorts. First, under what condi-
tions and on what terms should such persons be admitted to full
citizenship? Second, what is the appropriate status for persons who
are not, or not yet, full citizens? What civil, political, economic, and
social rights should they enjoy? To what obligations should they be
subjected?
Access to citizenship
Citizenship is at the vital center of the political life of the modern
nation-state. Whom should the state admit to the privileges of citi-
zenship, and on what terms and conditions?
The individual essays have much to say about this question.
Without rehearsing their arguments here, let me simply note that
the essays of Part One make arguments about admission to citizen-
ship on two levels, linking political philosophy and public policy.
They raise broad questions of political philosophy, but these ques-
tions have denite and sometimes quite far-reaching policy im-
plications.
Central to the essays of Joseph Carens and Kay Hailbronner, for
example, is a perennial conundrum of political philosophy: how
should one weigh the claims and interests of individuals against the
claims and interests of the state? Professor Carens articulates and as-
serts the claims of individuals, Professor Hailbronner the claims of
the state. These arguments have diametrically opposed implications.
Carens would compel the state to grant citizenship to all persons re-
questing it, providing they meet minimum residence requirements.
Hailbronner defends the states discretionary power to grant or deny
naturalization in accordance with its own interests.
weighing interests
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Tomas Hammar, too, considers the interests of individuals
and the interests of the state in his discussion of dual citizenship.
Traditional antipathy to dual citizenship, he suggests, results from
the tendency to look at the matter primarily from the point of view of
the state. From the point of view of the individual, which Hammar
thinks ought to be given much more weight, the inconveniences of
dual citizenship are minimal, the advantages considerable.
These essays make arguments about how the state should regulate
access to citizenship. My own essay on citizenship law and natural-
ization practice looks at the way states do regulate access to citizen-
ship. I consider in detail the choices open to policymakers. And I
discuss the reasons that have led some countries to base citizenship
on birthplace, others on parentage, some to adopt liberal, others re-
strictive naturalization policies. There is thus no need for further dis-
cussion here of the problem of admission to citizenship.
The membership status of noncitizens
Citizenship is a neat category. It is simple and straightforward from
the point of view of the individual and from the point of view of the
state. One either is or is not a citizen of a particular state. There is no
middle way, no more or less, no ambiguity except, of course, when
one is a citizen of two or more states.
Membership, in contrast, is a messy category. It is complex and
ambiguous from the point of view of the individual and from the
point of view of the state. Unlike citizenship, membership is not an
all-or nothing, yes-or-no variable. The world cannot be neatly divided
into those who are and those who are not members of a particular
state. One can be more or less a member; one can be a member in
one respect but not in another.
One of the major themes of this volume developed in different
ways by Carens, Schuck, and Hammar, and in my own concluding
essay is that membership is a broader and more inclusive category
than formal citizenship. In each of our six countries, there is a large
and growing group of noncitizen members. What sort of member-
ship status should these resident noncitizens enjoy?
There are two ways of approaching this tangled and complex ques-
tion. One can focus on different types of membership. This approach
asks what distinctions should be drawn between citizens and nonciti-
zens, and between different categories of noncitizens. Alternatively,
one can focus on different types of membership goods. One would
then ask what sorts of goods should be reserved for citizens, and
what sorts of goods should be made available to noncitizens as well.
Consider each approach in turn.
ambiguity of
membership
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Types of membership. The ideal of equality more precisely,
formal equality of status is deeply rooted in the Western political
tradition. With philosophical sources in Stoicism and Christianity,
this ideal was elaborated by liberal political philosophers, propagated
by the French Revolution, and gradually realized in practice over the
19th and 20th centuries. I noted above the central place of this ideal
in our inherited understanding of nation-state membership; Peter
Schuck discusses its importance in the American political tradition.
Given the strength of this egalitarian ideal, partial membership is
always in need of special justication. It is always vulnerable to con-
demnation as second-class citizenship. To our modern egalitarian
sensibility, partial membership is legitimate only if it is temporary.
Partial membership may be a way station on the road to full member-
ship; or it may accommodate temporary participants in our society
who remain full members of another. Even ardent egalitarians would
be willing to accept some kind of transitional status for permanent
immigrants and some kind of temporary status for resident sojourn-
ers persons whose attachments remain anchored elsewhere but
whose residence and participation in the society distinguish them
from short-term visitors such as tourists and business travellers.
If the principle of transitional or temporary partial membership
is acceptable, why is the practice so problematic? The reason, I think,
is that the social realities of partial membership do not correspond
to the models just sketched. Millions of people in Europe and North
America have been partial members for a decade or more. They are
not or not any more the sort of temporary participants for whom
partial membership is appropriate. And if they are on the road to full
membership, the road is a long one indeed. By their own accounts,
though, many do not seem to be on the road to citizenship at all.
They seem likely to remain partial members for the indenite future.
There are strong arguments, informed by the principle of equal-
ity, for extending to these long-term residents the rights enjoyed by
full citizens. Yet as Peter Schuck points out, to carry this process of
inclusion to its logical or illogical conclusion would erase the dis-
tinction between citizens and resident aliens and deprive the status
of citizenship of any distinctive value or meaning. Given the impor-
tance of citizenship in the theory and practice of democratic nation-
states, this would be deeply problematic. Indeed, fundamentalists
argue that the process of inclusion has already been carried too far;
they propose to restore value and meaning to citizenship by reserv-
ing a wider range of rights for citizens.
The ideal of equality and the ideal of citizenship are both deeply
ingrained in the political culture of Western nation-states. The two
partial membership
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ideals need not clash. Indeed citizenship is an inherently egalitarian
ideal. It implies full legal and political equality among citizens. Yet
the equality inherent in the idea of citizenship is a bounded equality.
It is necessarily restricted to citizens. Full equality between citizens
and noncitizens would render citizenship meaningless. For this rea-
son, the ideal of citizenship may clash with the principle of equality.
This makes the question of the extent to which long-term resident
noncitizens ought to share in the rights of citizenship a difcult and
deeply contested one. The tendency seems to be to extend many,
even most of the rights of full membership to long-term resident
aliens, while reserving certain core political rights and functions to
citizens.
Another response to long-term partial membership is to encour-
age naturalization. This sounds innocuous enough, and it would
seem to be less controversial than extending citizenship rights to
noncitizens. But in practice it too is controversial. For one can pro-
mote the passage to full citizenship with a carrot or with a stick. One
can liberalize access to citizenship, or one can make partial member-
ship less attractive. The latter can be done by limiting the rights of
partial members or by imposing new obligations on them (e.g., mili-
tary service). At the limit, it can be done by requiring partial mem-
bers to apply for naturalization or leave the country.
16

Partial membership for immigrants, then, too often becomes a
nal station rather than a way station on the road to full citizenship.
Partial membership for short-term sojourners poses a different set of
problems. Should sojourners have the chance to become settlers? If
so, which sojourners, and under what conditions? What provisions
should be made for the passage from temporary to permanent mem-
bership?
These questions are difcult partly because the category of short-
term sojourners is so heterogeneous. It includes all short- to medi-
umterm residents whose attachments and interests remain centered
in their country of origin, but who are in the process of creating a
new set of attachments and interests.
One large group includes those who are resident in order to re-
ceive some kind of education or training. Even this category is quite
heterogeneous, with the education varying from the general to the
highly technical and the length of residence from a couple of months
to several years. Persons resident for work or business represent an
equally heterogeneous category, ranging from unskilled laborers to
the international professional and corporate elite; for this group, too,
stays may be measured in months or in years.
Can the state insist on a sharp distinction between immigrants
naturalization
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and sojourners, keeping the latter in a strictly temporary status? Or
must it grant them the opportunity to become permanent members?
The question is by no means academic. Each of our six countries, wary
of increasing backdoor immigration on the part of persons admitted
for temporary stays, has taken steps in recent years to restrict passage
from temporary to permanent status. When directed against tourists
or persons on short-term business visits, such measures seem un-
objectionable. But when directed against students or workers whose
stays may span several years, they raise difcult questions.
These questions arise even when persons are admitted on the ex-
plicit understanding that they will eventually have to leave. When the
U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service recently announced
that tens of thousands of nurses admitted on non-immigrant H-1
visas would not be able to extend or renew their visas after six years,
it was only conrming the explicit terms on which the visas had been
issued.
17
Yet the decision does seem troubling. The state was under
no obligation, legal or moral, to admit the nurses in the rst place.
But having permitted them to work and live and form ties for six
years, it may have acquired a moral obligation to let them remain.
The debate about seasonal worker programs pivots on similar
questions. Seasonal workers permit states to meet certain manpower
needs cheaply while externalizing various costs, including the cost of
unemployment. Although the limitation of work and residence to
a certain number of months per year is intended to hinder the for-
mation of social ties and thus to prevent settlement, many seasonal
workers particularly those hired year after year develop signi-
cant attachments to the country in which they work. It seems only
fair that they be given the chance to graduate to permanent status.
What about students? Most countries discourage the settlement
and naturalization of foreign students. One important rationale
since many of the students are from developing countries is that
this policy will hinder the brain drain from the third world to the
rst. This is surely a legitimate consideration, but what exactly justi-
es the differential treatment of workers and students? One could
argue that, for equal periods of residence, work in a country creates a
stronger claim to membership than study. Work so the argument
might run makes a direct contribution to the wealth and welfare
of a country, while study primarily prepares an individual for his or
her own projects. But would this apply to all types of work? Does it
apply equally to the executive of a multinational corporation and to
the unskilled laborer? Or is there a sense in which the latter has spe-
cial membership claims, perhaps because his or her presence in the
territory is the result of what some analysts characterize as an un-
immigrants and
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equal exchange? Certainly persons actively recruited by employers
or the state to perform work shunned by citizens as is the case for
the nurses mentioned above would seem to have especially strong
membership claims.
Perhaps the only point on which wide agreement might be se-
cured is one developed in this volume by Joseph Carens. Professor
Carens argues that the claim to citizenship varies directly with the
strength of social ties and thus, normally, with length of residence.
One implication of this view is that whatever right the state might
have to limit noncitizens stays must be exercised sooner rather than
later. It is not a right that can be reserved for eventual use whenever
this might seem opportune. Failure to exercise it within a reasonable
period leads to its expiration. State acquiescence in continued resi-
dence eventually creates an individual right to remain. This, by the
way, is no mere philosophers argument; the principle has been ac-
knowledged by courts, among them the highest administrative court
in West Germany.
Special problems of partial membership are raised by persons
residing and working in the territory without the permission of the
state. This question has dominated the politics of immigration and
citizenship in the United States, and it has been important in France
as well. To what extent should such persons be included in the bene-
ts of membership? In the United States, this is in part a constitution-
al question, resting on the interpretation of the 14th Amendments
equal protection clause. It is on the basis of this clause, for example,
that the Supreme Court ruled that undocumented immigrant chil-
dren could not be excluded from the public schools. But it is more
profoundly a political question. To what extent do their economic
contribution, their de facto integration, and what Senator Simpson
has called the statutory encouragement to migrate illegally (i.e., the
absence of penalties on employers) give undocumented immigrants
a claim to some form of membership? Most would probably agree
that the prolonged government acquiescence in massive employ-
ment of undocumented immigrants gives these immigrants a stron-
ger membership claim than those who entered the country after the
imposition of employer sanctions (assuming that these are actually
enforced).
The goods of membership. An important aspect of citizenship
(and other forms of state-membership) is the access it provides, di-
rectly or indirectly, to a wide range of goods. These include such basic
goods as public order, physical safety, and access to a labor market;
the complex array of civil, political, social, and economic rights; and
even intangibles such as a feeling of belonging or collective identity.
access to goods
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The enjoyment of some of these goods depends directly on mem-
bership status on citizenship, permanent residence, or some other
status. Other goods, though, do not depend directly on membership
status, being available to all persons who happen to be present in the
territory. The public peace, for example, may be enjoyed by those il-
legally or temporarily in the territory as well as by members. Yet even
this good depends indirectly on membership, for only some form
of membership can secure long-term residence and thus long-term
enjoyment of the good.
From a global perspective, the most important basic goods today
are public peace and access to a relatively promising labor market
(one affording a reasonable chance of realizing personal or familial
aspirations). Both goods depend at least indirectly on membership,
and both goods are distributed among states in a highly unequal
manner. It is this that accounts for the unprecedented migratory
pressure and for the increasing salience and urgency of the politics
of immigration and citizenship today.
What is it about the various membership-dependent goods that
makes it reasonable to set different conditions of eligibility for them?
What goods ought to be reserved for full citizens, and why? At the
other end of the spectrum, what goods should be extended to all per-
sons in the territory, regardless of membership?
Michael Walzer has suggested that shared understandings about
the meaning of goods should guide policy deliberations about their
distribution.
18
The principle can be applied to the goods of member-
ship. It is the different moral and political meanings of these goods,
I think, that may explain why some are reserved for citizens, others
extended to permanent residents, and others available to all without
regard for membership.
To agree on this principle is simply to agree on a mode of argu-
ment. It does not, of course, settle any substantive questions of eligi-
bility. Disagreement about the meaning of particular goods or about
the implications of this meaning for eligibility is not only possible,
it is inevitable. The following remarks are merely illustrative; I make
no attempt to establish the meanings of different sorts of member-
ship goods.
Consider voting. Even those who wish to extend to noncitizens
most rights of citizenship often concede that there is something spe-
cial about voting in national elections. The fact that national elections
inuence policy in the domains of defense and foreign affairs may
justify reserving the right to vote in such elections to citizens, bound
to the state by ties of allegiance and obligations of service. Voting
in local elections, however, has a different meaning. It involves lo-
agreement on the
meaning of goods
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cal self-administration, not high politics on the international scene.
Questions of ultimate allegiance, it maybe argued, are simply irrel-
evant to local voting. Thus voting rights in local elections have been
granted to resident noncitizens in a number of European countries.
Or consider social benets. Some derive their meaning and jus-
tication in reference to work: they are intended to replace lost in-
come when a person is unable to work because of injury, involuntary
unemployment, or old age. Such benets are nanced through em-
ployer and employee contributions. Workers compensation, unem-
ployment insurance, and social security are examples. Other social
benets have a different meaning. They are justied with reference
to membership and nanced out of general revenues. Family allow-
ances, housing assistance, and income-supplement programs in
general are examples. A third type of benet is justied with respect
to urgent need: this includes emergency medical care and emergency
assistance generally.
The meanings of these goods have implications for eligibility.
Most people would probably agree that anyone granted access to the
labor market, whatever his or her membership status, should qualify
for such directly work-dependent benets as workers compensa-
tion, unemployment insurance, and social security. Membership-
independent eligibility for family allowances or housing assistance,
however, is more controversial. This is because these latter could be
understood as a form of mutual aid provided by members of a pol-
ity for one another. (Members might be interpreted restrictively to
mean citizens only, or it might include permanent resident aliens as
well.) The meaning of emergency assistance, nally, requires that it
be extended to all persons in need, whatever their membership sta-
tus. This includes illegal immigrants.
eligibility
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Ethnic leadership, ethnic communities political
powerlessness and the state in Belgium
Marco Martiniello
Based on political sociologist Marco Martiniellos doctoral study, which won
the award for best thesis at the European University Institute in Florence in
1993, this article was rst published by the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies in
the same year. Presented here are the results of one of Continental Europes
rst studies on the links between ethnic leadership formation, the role of
the state and the reproduction of political powerlessness among immigrant
ethnic communities. Martiniello articulates a theoretical approach inspired
by Marxian insights combined with Stephen Lukes theory of power and
American theories of ethnic leadership, on the one hand, and a qualitative
empirical research, on the other. The article sparked renewed interest in the
issues of political inclusion, inclusion of immigrants and their descendents
in Western Europe. It also showed how American theoretical categories
need to be reconstructed to t the European migration and post-migration
context.
Introduction
Although to state that no human society is homogeneous appears
to be a banal remark, this simple observation constitutes the very
basis of diverging sociological approaches. In our post-industrial
Western societies there are various principles of division, the rela-
tive importance of which social scientists have long been discussing
and arguing about. For many Marxian scholars class constitutes the
foremost criterion for the breakdown of our societies and, in their
view, should therefore be the basic unit of social and political analy-
sis. For other social scientists gender division seems to be a more sig-
nicant dimension of differentiation in human societies and gender
for them, should therefore be the main unit of research. Yet a third
group stresses the predominance of divisions along racial and ethnic
lines which they consider to be the chief organizational principles in
division principles
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marco martiniello
our societies. Race and ethnicity then become central to their work.
Social scientists who denitely and exclusively choose one rather
than another of these division principles grow fewer and fewer in
number. There is currently some kind of recognition that a better
understanding of our societies stems from a masterly combination
of all those dimensions in sociological analysis. It is more and more
accepted that class, gender, race and ethnicity, seen as research units,
are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In this view, either none of
those principles is crucial or they all are. In other words, indepen-
dently of how they are conceptualized, class, gender, race and, eth-
nicity appear to be interrelated and in some cases even to overlap.
Furthermore, the nature of such interrelations and overlaps is nei-
ther denite nor xed in time. One of the issues facing social re-
search is precisely to try to understand and explain those historical
changes.
The interrelations and overlaps concern class, gender, race and
ethnicity, whether they be considered as analytically distinct research
units or as a basis for individual identity formation, or, as mobiliz-
ing principles for collective action. On the one hand, more and more
scholars seek to discover the connections between race and class
(Anthias 1990), between class and gender, and between class, gender
and race. On the other hand, individuals seldom dene themselves
simply as black, or female or Moroccan. Usually a persons iden-
tity is a combination of several of those dimensions, which prefer to
as many identication processes. At the level of collective action, the
same phenomenon may be empirically observed. Frequently, several
of the four dimensions presented are used simultaneously as orga-
nizing principles.
The aim of the present article is not to tackle the issue of the inter-
connection between class, gender, race and ethnicity in a straightfor-
ward manner. However, in looking at our post-industrial post-World
War II societies especially Belgium as massive international labour
and political immigration countries, it will be dealt with indirectly. The
arrival and settlement of immigrants have had signicant and com-
plex effects on the class, gender, racial and ethnic composition of
Belgium, as well as on the emergence of new forms of identity and
collective action.
In order to avoid a sterile and endless theoretical discussion about
the interconnection between class, gender, race and ethnicity, it is
useful to introduce the concepts of labour and political immigra-
tion as an alternative division principle in our societies. From this
standpoint, Belgium can be characterized by the presence of two
types of human groups: the native population, and the population
labour and political
immigration
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resulting from post-World War II mass immigration. Both are cul-
turally, socially and politically heterogeneous and socio-economically
stratied, even though the socio-economic: stratication follows dif-
ferent patterns in each case.
Situated in that broad context, this article deals mainly with the re-
lations between the Belgian state and political system on the one hand,
and the ethnic communities from immigrant origin on the other. In
Brasss (1985) terms, this is a study of the relations between ethnic
groups and the state in which only specic ethnic groups are con-
cerned. However, the use of the concept ethnic community from im-
migrant origin does not imply that central importance is given to sub-
stantial (i.e., which had a substance, a content) ethnicity. As is shown
in the following section, the proposed denition of ethnic groups is
largely non-ethnic in the primordialist sense of the expression.
In order to clarify the concepts and to avoid confusion about
terms, the next section species the main units of analysis used in
this article. The central hypothesis will be dealt with in the second
section. The third and nal section presents the main results of an
empirical case-study in Belgium and an evaluation of the previously
stated hypothesis as well as two sets of conclusive remarks.
The units of analysis
As Brass (1985) correctly observed, most studies of the relations be-
tween ethnic groups and the state present two limitations. Firstly,
they show a tendency to reify ethnic groups to attribute to mere
categories a reality that they may not necessarily have. Secondly, one
can observe a certain objectication of the units of analysis, where-
by one or other dimension is considered to be of greater importance
than any of the others, the latter being seen as secondary.
One way to avoid such problems is to draw a clear-cut distinction
between objective and subjective social entities. In this article, two
types of ethnic collectivities from immigrant origin are distinguished,
namely ethnic categories
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and ethnic communities. This conceptualiza-
tion is analogous to the Marxist distinction between class-in-itself
and class-for-itself (Marx 1956). An ethnic category is a collection of
individuals who share a set of common objective features and who
live generally in an analogous situation characterized by a set of col-
lective disadvantages that dene a status of minority. The rst objec-
tive feature is national origin (Schermerhorn 1974). It is somehow
linked to cultural features such as language, dietary habits and reli-
gion but these elements are not constitutive of the denition. Here,
the state
ethnic categories
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marco martiniello
ethnicity refers only to national origin (Alba 1976; 1895) that stems
mainly from a juridical classication
2
of human beings.
Paradoxically, the denition of ethnic collectivities is largely non-
ethnic because it is not based at all on cultural or ethnic (in the
primordialist sense) elements beyond national origin.
3
The second
objective feature is the migratory origin that people have in common.
The reason why people are classied in an ethnic category can be
traced back to one and the same phenomenon, namely post-World
War II international labour and political migration. At the origin, an
ethnic category is made up or can be constituted by migrant work-
ers or political refugees, that is, by people who came from abroad.
However, their family and children, often born in their parents ar-
rival country, are also part of the ethnic category, even though they
have no personal experience of migration and cannot therefore be
considered as immigrants. Consequently, and this is the third fea-
ture, ethnic categories are reproduced over several biological genera-
tions (Keyes 1976). Their lifetime is thus of long duration.
The collective disadvantages that people classied into ethnic cat-
egories face can be observed in many spheres of human life. As far
as the socio-economic sphere is concerned, they are usually concen-
trated at the level of manual unskilled or semi-skilled labour, often
in declining industries but also in other sectors, such as the services
sector. This relative homogeneity in the weakest positions on the
labour market is to a certain extent reproduced over the biological
generations.
4
It is rooted in the history of post-World War II labour
migration which concerned mainly unqualied or at least used as
such manpower. In the legal-political sphere their position is also
weaker than that of the natives. As foreigners they are often de-
prived of basic political rights such as the right to vote and to be
elected. Even where they have obtained the relevant nationality, and
consequently those basic rights, they are often the targets of unequal
treatment, for example by the police. Their position in education and
housing is also disadvantaged in many ways. Furthermore, ethnic
categories are numerically small compared to the population of the
society at large. Finally, there can be as many ethnic categories as there
are successive labour or political migratory waves in one country.
The notion of ethnic category as used here, is an abstract one. As
a research construction, it is based exclusively on objective criteria.
To be part of an ethnic category, it is not necessary to have a self-
consciousness or an identity. There is no membership, no belonging
to an ethnic category. People are assigned to an ethnic category by a
researcher on the basis of some objective features that they share and
some common disadvantages that they face.
disadvantages
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Besides this scientic classication, ethnic categories are also
the object of symbolic social categorizations. This means that the
objective features and disadvantages mentioned above are socially
perceived as being valid classicatory items on which a set of more
or less negative images of the ethnic categories is built and repro-
duced until they become a set of prejudices. These prejudices then
become yet another disadvantage that the ethnic category faces. For
example, because many Turks live in an old and deteriorating part
of Brussels (objective disadvantage), they will be spoken of as dirty
Turks (symbolic categorization) and the prejudice that all Turks are
dirty will take the upper hand. In other words, ethnic categories are
the products of both a sociological construction and a social construc-
tion. However, not all the groups constructed as ethnic categories in
the rst way are constructed as such in the second way or vice versa.
Compared to the ethnic category, the ethnic community has two
additional characteristics: identity or self-consciousness and organi-
zation. Along with Barth (1969) and Weber (1971), it is held that the
basic constitutive element of an ethnic community is not a shared
culture but rather a feeling of being a member, a self-consciousness
of belonging. The emergence of this identity may be interpreted as
a response to the symbolic social categorization and the prejudice
mentioned above, though it is not the only possible interpretation of
the process of identity formation. Membership is crucial because it
creates the basis for the appearance and development of the organi-
zational dimension, which is the second basic characteristic of the
ethnic community. In other words, it is only when certain people,
who are ethnically categorized, develop a common subjective self-
consciousness about some of the objective features which they share
or which they are convinced they share, and about some interests
which they believe they have in common, that an organizational, in-
stitutional and relational web will emerge progressively in order to
promote and defend those interests.
As a result of the denitions presented above, the ethnic com-
munity will be much smaller quantitatively than the ethnic category.
All the members of the ethnic community are also part of the ethnic
category but the contrary is not only not necessarily true in theory it
is never true empirically.
It is outside the scope of this article to enter into a detailed discus-
sion about the denitions of state and polity. It sufces here to state,
along with Brass (1985), that the state is looked at neither as a mere
arena for group conicts nor as an instrument of domination in the
hands of one social class against the other. The state is conceived
as a relatively autonomous entity that tends to act independently in
the ethnic
community
state and polity
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marco martiniello
what it presents as the nations interest by classifying and making
distinctions among the population and by distributing collective re-
sources in a differentiated way. In this view, the state acts primarily
to preserve its monopolistic position and the denition, imposition
and representation of the nations values, goals and interest, and also
to preserve its distributive function. In this sense, the state warrants
the conservation and the perpetuation of the existing social order.
Formally, it is a set of persisting institutions about the control of
which there is a constant conict between individual and collective
actors. Nevertheless, there is a minimal consensus between the vari-
ous conicting parties about the fundamental role of the state as de-
ned above.
This study goes beyond the concept of state by using the notion
of polity. By doing so, reference is made to the set of political institu-
tions, or, more precisely, to the set of collective political actors pres-
ent in society. This means that, besides the executive, legislative and
judiciary powers, the notion of polity includes all the other political
actors and institutions who, in one way or another, at least theoreti-
cally in a modern democracy, take part in the denition and the man-
agement of societys collective affairs. For instance, political parties,
unions and lobbies of every kind are all part of the polity.
It is important to underline that in this study about the relation-
ship between the state and the polity on the one hand, and the ethnic
communities on the other, no postulate is made beforehand about
the position of the ethnic communities with regard to the state and
the polity. The object of investigation does not imply a prejudgement
as to whether or not ethnic communities are included in the state
and the polity. Rather, their inclusion or exclusion is precisely a cru-
cial issue to be examined thoroughly: how to characterize the ethnic
communities position with regard to the state and the polity and
how to explain it?
The central role given to the concepts of ethnic leaders and elites
in this theoretical approach appears to be obvious for two reasons.
Firstly, it seems very difcult to analyse the relations between state
and polity on the one hand, and ethnic communities on the other,
without using the units of ethnic leadership and elites. This is be-
cause the state and the politys authorities cannot deal with abstrac-
tions, but have recourse to privileged actors or individuals, namely,
to ethnic leaders and ethnic elites. The theoretical importance of
those units is that they can be used to take into account internal con-
icts within the ethnic communities, their external relations, as well
as several points of intersection between the two. Secondly, dening
ethnic categories in terms of collective features and disadvantages
ethnic leaders
and elites
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does not imply that they are fully homogeneous and undifferenti-
ated. Furthermore, the concepts of ethnic elites and ethnic leaders are
very useful when it comes to grasping the social and economic dif-
ferentiation within ethnic collectivities.
The concept of ethnic elite refers to people from the ethnic catego-
ry who have reached a signicant degree of success as compared
to the average success level of their fellow ethnics in the larger
society involving one or more of the various elds of human activity
(work and profession, arts and culture, politics, business, etc.). Along
with Pareto (1986), one can talk of a plurality of elites, in this case
ethnic elites, each one of them corresponding to one specic eld of
human activity. In any case, ethnic elites are a small but variable sub-
category of the ethnic category. Moreover, the dividing line between
elite and non-elite is dened in relative terms. It depends on each
categorys economic, social and political characteristics and history
in the immigration country.
The concept of ethnic leader refers to those members of the ethnic
community who have the ability to exert intentionally some variable
degree of inuence on the preferences and/or behaviour of the other
members of that community, the aim being to obtain satisfaction of
the groups objective interests as perceived by the leaders. When the
inuence is exerted effectively, it is done through the leaders-follow-
ers interactions in the ethnic communitys institutions. Ethnic lead-
ers necessarily enjoy some degree of recognition by their followers in
the ethnic community on which the leaderships legitimacy is based.
Finally, the approach taken in this article centres on the concepts
of power and powerlessness as a valid alternative to the dominant per-
spective, at least in continental Europe, that focuses on cultural or
ethnic relations using notably the concept of integration (Martiniello
1992). The denitions adopted here are largely inspired by the work
of Lukes (1974; 1986). Power is conceived as the ability of an ethnic
collectivity as a group to control results related to issues affecting its
interests. Consequently, an ethnic collectivity is politically powerless,
if it is unable to promote and defend its collective interests in the web
of political relations in a given society.
On the basis of the units of analysis dened above, the next sec-
tion develops the main theoretical hypothesis of this article before
turning to the case-study.
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marco martiniello
State and ethnic collectivities powerlessness in Belgium
As claried above, the ethnic collectivities dealt with here are mainly
characterized by the objective disadvantages they collectively face in
many elds. Nevertheless, their disadvantaged position is not per-
fectly stable in time and space. Furthermore, it varies according to
the type of migratory experience of each receiving country and the
ethnic, collectivity in question. Consequently, not all ethnic collectivi-
ties face the same degree of objective disadvantage. For example, the
ethnic collectivities from member states of the European Community
[EC] are in many ways privileged compared to non-EC ethnic collec-
tivities. As workers, they are protected by European law and as ethnic
categories they are much less stigmatized than, for example, North
African collectivities.
However, a certain degree of disadvantage always persists and is
reproduced over the biological generations. This can be reduced or.
increased, but fundamentally, the ethnic collectivities studied live in
a chronically disadvantaged position in the receiving society. To the
extent that the continuation of this situation is contrary to the rank-
and-le ethnics objective interests, which are not efciently promot-
ed and defended through an ethnic community collective action, eth-
nic collectivities are politically powerless and this powerlessness is
thus fundamentally persisting as well. This article does not concern
either the so-called middleman minorities (Bonacich 1973) or the
powerful ethnic lobbies acting in particular political systems.
From an analytical point of view, various forms of ethnic collec-
tivities reactions to their condition can be conceived. Firstly, they
can simply accept their position passively, either individually or
collectively, in which case no form of active response is elaborated.
Secondly, a fraction of the ethnic category can seek individual suc-
cess in areas that are left relatively open by the native society through
mobilizing personal resources in individual strategies. This process
of escape or exit gives birth to the ethnic elites. Thirdly, there is in
theory the possibility of elaborating active collective responses to po-
litical powerlessness.
This process of active collective response could be seen analyti-
cally as a two-phased one. In the rst phase, the ethnic collectivity
gives itself some kind of structure and constitutes itself in a single
collective actor or set of juxtaposed collective actors. A more or less
dense web of ethnic organizations and institutions takes shape in
which emerging ethnic leaders play a central initiating role, notably
through moulding and constructing some kind of mobilizable collec-
tive identity. This move towards ethnic-community building can be
collective reactions
two phases
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interpreted as a rst reduction in the degree of political powerless-
ness of the ethnic category. In the second phase, ethnic leaders will
try to promote and defend the ethnic communitys interests, notably
through their relations with the state and the polity. They will also
strive to keep the support of their fellow ethnics and to reafrm con-
stantly the existence of the ethnic community.
The constitution and the structuration of a collective actor is a
crucial and much contested issue but one which is not dealt with
here. Rather, the problem is considered to have been solved by taking
the existence of ethnic communities as dened above as a premiss.
Seen in this context, the relations between the ethnic community
and the state and polity are the main focus of analysis. In this respect,
the study of the role of ethnic leaders in the reduction of the degree
of the ethnic communitys powerlessness through those relations is
thought to be of utmost importance.
The central hypothesis is this. In Belgium, ethnic leaders gen-
erally fail to reduce signicantly their ethnic communitys political
powerlessness. They tend either to increase it or to maintain the
status quo. The fundamental reasons for that inability are not to be
found in the intrinsic characteristics of the ethnic leaders, such as
their political inexperience, say, or their incompetence. Rather, it has
to be explained by reasons that relate to the general political climate
in Belgium and its repercussions on the way in which the state and
polity tackle the relevant issues of the ethnic collectivities. Diffused
racism and xenophobia characterize the political climate in Belgium
and this explains the development of the state and polity exclusion
strategies directed towards ethnic collectivities. In other words, the
current political climate does not seem to be favourable to the em-
powerment of ethnic collectivities through their leaders actions, no
matter how competent the latter may be.
The general will to keep ethnic communities outside or at the
margin of the political system is translated into two related strategies
as far as ethnic leaders and elites are concerned: the neutralization
of ethnic leaders, and the depoliticization of their action. The neu-
tralization of ethnic leaders is done in comparable ways by the state
and other political actors, mainly the political parties and the unions,
notably through the establishment of ad hoc peripheral institutions
or sub-institutions to deal with the problems of ethnic categories.
Furthermore, individual social and economic upward mobility often
accompanies the processes of neutralization and depoliticization of
ethnic leaders. In this second process, politicized ethnic leaders are
transformed into apolitical ethnic elites.
The neutralization and depolitization processes can be claried
maintaining
the status quo
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marco martiniello
by adopting a historical perspective. In the beginning there is a group
of ethnic leaders whose inclusion in the polity follows a threefold
pattern. Firstly, they are often co-opted; that is, they are chosen from
above by the native political institutions. Secondly, they can be sup-
ported by a more or less massive mobilization of the ethnic com-
munity. Thirdly, they can be elected through some kind of formal
representation process. However, after intervention by the state and
other political actors, the previous group of ethnic leaders is divided
into two new groups. On the one hand, some of these leaders contin-
ue to act as defenders and promoters of the communitys interests,
but since they have been included in powerless buffer institutions,
and despite the fact that they are still politicized, they are unable to
produce any signicant effect on the communitys powerlessness.
In this sense, they have been neutralized. On the other hand, some
ex-leaders are no longer involved in ethnic-community politics. They
have been depoliticized and have simultaneously achieved individual
success, thereby becoming ethnic elites or conrming their precious
position above the collectivitys average.
Thus, the role of ethnic leaders is to be analysed in relation to the
state and politys more or less imposed management of ethnic col-
lectivities related issues. It could be claimed that the state and polity
usually tolerate only those leaders who do not oppose the dominant
view on ethnic collectivities issues, one important aspect of this be-
ing the generally shared willingness to keep immigrant communi-
ties outside or at the margin of the political system. Therefore, a cor-
ollary hypothesis would be that ethnic leaders could help to reduce
the ethnic-collectivity powerlessness only if the state and polity were
open enough to accept a real dialogue with them.
These hypotheses have been worked out in eldwork research
concerning the collectivity of Italian origin in French-speaking
Belgium. The next section presents a summary of the results of that
empirical research, as well as a few conclusive remarks.
Italians in French-speaking Belgium: a powerless model
of integration
The history of the Italian presence in Belgium dates back to a remote
past. It is outside the scope of this article, however, to trace the his-
torical origins of the phenomenon. Rather, the focus is put on the
post-World War II period in which Italian labour immigration can be
subdivided into three consecutive phases, according to the type of re-
cruitment of the Italian workforce and its position in the productive
the role of ethnic
leaders originally
published
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system. Between 1946 and 1957 Italian immigrant workers were di-
rectly recruited in Italy by the Belgian coal industry, with the help of
the government and the acceptance of the reluctant unions, to work
in the coal mines. An agreement between the Belgian and Italian
governments, signed in Rome in 1946 (Morelli 1988), provided for
50,000 workers to be exported annually to Belgium. Every week,
tightly controlled rail convoys were organized in Italy to bring immi-
grants to Belgium. In the early years, these contingents of workers
were housed in former German prisoners camps. Immigrants had
all signed temporary contracts to work in the mines, and any occu-
pational mobility outside the extractive sector was legally prohibited.
The period of contingented Italian immigration ended with the ac-
cident at the Marcinelle mine when 136 Italian miners lost their lives.
Between 1958 and 1968 immigration continued at a slower pace and
was mainly spontaneous. Italians were coming to Belgium as tour-
ists and usually found a non-qualied manual job in the building in-
dustry, in the iron industry, metallurgy or the extractive sector quite
easily. Since 1968, Italian immigration in Belgium has slowed down
considerably and is governed by the principle of free movement of
workers in the EC.
5
Italian workers have entered every sector of the
Belgian economy and their settlement has become more and more
visible through the continuation of the family reunication process.
As a result of these three migratory phases, the Italian population
in Belgium nowadays amounts to about 240,000 people (Martiniello
1990). Including Belgians of Italian origin, the Italian collectivity
reaches almost 300,000, which is roughly 3 per cent of the coun-
trys total population and 25-30 per cent of the total immigrant origin
population in Belgium. Italians and Belgians of Italian origin are the
largest ethnic collectivity living in Belgium. Seventy per cent of them

are settled in the French-speaking part of the country (Martiniello
1990).
The Italian population is increasingly presented as a model of
perfect integration, to be followed and imitated by all other immi-
grant origin populations mainly Moroccans and Turks present
in Belgium. In the discourse of politicians and many social scien-
tists, Italians are no longer included in the ethnic categories issue.
However, this is popular science which is not supported by fact. On
the contrary, eldwork results show that Italians in Belgium are still
an ethnic category as dened above. Taking into account their socio-
professional position, their juridico-political status, their positions
in education and housing as well as the prejudices they still face,
Italians are nevertheless disadvantaged compared to native Belgians.
At the same time, when their position is compared to that of the
Maghrebins and to that of the Turks, it is a privileged one.
Italian immigrants
in Belgium
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marco martiniello
The relatively disadvantaged position that Italians occupy in
Belgium can be briey illustrated by the following points. Firstly,
Italians are to a large extent still concentrated in unskilled and semi-
skilled manual jobs. According to different sources, the rate of Italian
male workers occupying such jobs varies between 69 and 76 per cent
(Martiniello 1992). For Belgians the rate is 47 per cent (Martinello
1992), while 88 per cent of male Moroccans and 92 per cent of male
Turks are part of the unskilled or semi-skilled labour force. As stated
above, Italians clearly appear to be in a sort of intermediary posi-
tion between Belgians and other immigrant origin workers. As far as
male unemployment is concerned, a recent study shows that the av-
erage rate is around 6.4 per cent for Belgians, 15 per cent for Italians,
20 per cent for Turks and 25 per cent for Moroccans (Bastenier and
Dassetto 1988). For women, the rates are as follows: approximately
17 per cent for Belgians and between 30 and 40 per cent for Italians,
Moroccans and Turks (Bastenier and Dassetto, 1988).
Secondly, being foreigners Italians are still deprived of the main
political rights, such as the right to vote and to be elected at all levels
(local, provincial, regional, national). In theory, they are free to join a
Belgian political party, a union, or a voluntary association. Before the
end of 1994 EC citizens may be granted the right to vote at local level,
though not necessarily to be eligible, if agreement is reached with-
in the framework of the European Political Union. In practice, this
would mean that Italians could vote in Belgium for the rst time in
the year 2000, since the next local elections will take place in October
1994 and it is improbable that a positive decision on the matter will
be taken before then. As far as Belgians of Italian origin are con-
cerned, they enjoy full citizenship the same as any other Belgian.
Thirdly, the position of the Italian category in the educational
system is as weak as that of the Belgian working class. Italian youth
is largely concentrated in technical schools, which are at the bottom
level of the secondary school system. Not surprisingly, therefore,
they are also underrepresented at university and post-university lev-
el. Fourthly, Italians are still disadvantaged compared to Belgians in
terms of access to housing and the quality of housing. For example,
in Brussels 35 per cent of Belgians own their own house as against
only 27 per cent of Italians taking into account that many of them
are probably European civil servants 12.5 per cent of Turks and 9.5
per cent of Moroccans (Kesteloot 1987).
Finally, there still seems to be a disguised hostility towards
Italians among the native Belgian population, even though the main
targets of racism and xenophobia are the Moroccans and the Turks.
A distinction should be introduced at this stage between Flanders
a disadvantaged
position
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and Wallonia. There are few Italians in Flanders, except in the min-
ing area of Limburg. Nevertheless, the common prejudices against
Italians, notably concerning the maa, seem to nd some echo in
parts of the Flemish population. In Wallonia, one is used to the pres-
ence of Italians. Walloons and Italians mix socially and at work, espe-
cially in working-class areas, None the less, a recent poll
6
shows that
an anti-Italian tendency subsists among the Walloon population. To
paraphrase Romeo and Juliet, nobody knows why there is a war but
there is a war. In the present case, the word war cannot be used, but
the process is the same, since no one can remember the origin of the
hostility.
However, the situation, globally speaking, is better than it was
forty years ago. Italians no longer live segregated in prisoner-of-war
camps like the pioneers who arrived in 1945 to work in the coal
mines. Nowadays Italians are present in almost all sectors of the
economy: furthermore, there are businessmen, doctors, lawyers and
university students of Italian origin. There are even some Belgians of
Italian origin occupying positions of power in politics; For example,
the Minister of Education in the French Community government
7
is Elio Di Rupo, the son of an Italian mineworker who arrived in
Belgium after 1945; The period of gang warfare between Belgian and
Italian youth in the discotheques during the late sixties and seven-
ties is over, and open racism against Italians is often socially con-
demned. Yet this incontestable improvement of the Italians position
in Belgian society is much more the result of general improvements
that have affected the whole of Belgian society since World War II,
and of a collection of individual and familial efforts, than it is of the
collective action of an Italian community organized around its lead-
ers in the Belgian state and polity. In that sense, the Italian commu-
nity as such is still as politically powerless as it was in the past.
Contrary to a largely diffused view, ethnic communities are rarely
strongly structured groups of people obeying a single leadership.
This observation applies perfectly to the present case. The Italian
community is no exception. It is a split, heterogeneous and complex
set of local micro-communities each consisting of people with family
or local association links. These micro-communities are guided by as
many local leaders in competition with one another.
In 1985 there were more than 300 Italian voluntary associations
in Belgium.
8
In the Liege area alone there were already around nine-
ty associations in 1989.
9
Nevertheless, it is important to note that the
web of ethnic institutions effectively gathers together a maximum of
10 per cent of the ethnic category (Martiniello 1989), that is less than
30,000 people. Furthermore, there is no institutional completeness
politically powerless
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marco martiniello
(Breton 1964) in the Italian community, although its organizational
complexity, in spite of the fact that the potential public is decreasing
with time, is very high and stable.
In order to describe the Italian community in Belgium better, a
double distinction can be made. Firstly, some institutions are mainly
orientated towards the well-being of the collectivity, while others are
more orientated towards economic prot (Gans 1962; Nelli 1983).
Secondly, the rst group of institutions is divided into two sub-
groups: the institutions transplanted from Italy, and those created in
Belgium. There are four main types of transplanted institutions: (1)
the institutions emerging from the Roman Catholic Church, whose
main aim is the spiritual welfare of the Italian immigrants; (2) the
national associations that correspond to the social and cultural asso-
ciations organized at the national level in Italy; (3) the patronati, that
is, the social services of the Italian trade unions; and (4) the Italian
political parties sections that usually follow the line dened in Rome
in their respective decision-making centres. Among the institutions
created in Belgium, there are all kinds of cultural, folkloristic and
sports associations especially football. There are also regional as-
sociations that are in touch with Italian regional governments as well
as two newspapers printed in the Italian language for the Italian col-
lectivity.
There is no central coordination of all these institutions at the
national level in Belgium. At local level some coordination exists by
way of various committees linked to the Italian diplomatic institu-
tions. More signicantly, networks of ethnic institutions are formed
on the basis of political allegiance. As in Italy, all the institutions can
be classied as three families: the Catholic family, the Communist
or, more precisely, the ex-Communist family, and the Socialist fam-
ily. It is thus easily understandable that any collective action at the
community level faces serious internal obstacles.
As far as leadership is concerned, the situation is equally com-
plex. There is no unique leadership recognized by the Italo-Belgians.
Italian leadership is as fragmented as the community itself. However,
three empirical proles of Italian political leaders have been distin-
guished. The traditional leaders came to Belgium as migrant work-
ers. They are now in their sixties and have a low level of education,
usually not beyond the end of primary school. Their activity in the
community is voluntary and generally directed towards Italy. They
are recognized as leaders within the community at the local level and
they mainly use cultural references from Italy. Most modern lead-
ers were born in Belgium or arrived there at an early age. They are
between thirty and thirty-ve years old, and have been educated in
fragmented
coordination
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Belgium up to medium or high level. There are professional com-
munity workers among them, but mostly they remain involved in
community affairs on a voluntary basis. They enjoy internal and ex-
ternal recognition at local level and sometimes also at regional level.
They direct their action towards life in Belgium where they are cul-
turally at ease. The imported leaders are neither immigrant workers
nor were they born in Belgium. They came from Italy to take care of
immigrants on a professional basis. Usually they tend to be elderly
people and mostly well educated. Before being recognized within the
community, they are recognized by Belgian and Italian authorities at
local and regional level. Their cultural references and their activity
concern Belgium as much as Italy.
In their relations with members of the community most leaders
tend to adopt an autocratic, sometimes even dictatorial, style. This
is only possible because of the relative apathy of the community. In
their relations with the external society, most Italian leaders tend to
be accommodation leaders in Myrdals (1962) use of the term.
Even though there is no single coordinating body in which all
leaders come together, Italian leadership is to some extent structured
in the following way. An important characteristic of most leaders is
their multipositionality. They are simultaneously members of sev-
eral community institutions of the same political family, in which
they are to a greater or lesser degree always active and inuential.
In addition, they represent one or more of those institutions in the
ad hoc bodies established for the relations between the community
and the states (Belgian as well as Italian). Leaders get to know each
other, therefore, through the various meetings that their multipo-
sitionality implies and a certain form of privileged relationship de-
velops between them. A relatively small circle of competing leaders
is thus constituted inside the same political family. Yet even across
the borders of these political families, the leaders mutually recog-
nize each other as being the only legitimate and valid political op-
ponents. Consequently, there is a kind of common consciousness of
being leaders in leadership circles that must surely be considered as
a structuring factor.
As far as the Italian leaders relations with the Belgian state are
concerned, they mainly develop in two specically created institu-
tions: the immigrants Communal Consultative Councils [ICCC]
that depend on the local level of the state; and the Foreign Origin
Populations Consultative Councils [FOPCC] that depend on the
communitarian level of the state.
10
As far as their relations with the
rest of the polity are concerned, some Italian leaders also belong to
Belgian trade unions and political parties.
autocratic
style of leadership
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marco martiniello
The eldwork based on semi-participant observation, semi-direc-
tive depth interviews and documentary data did not lead to a rejec-
tion of the hypothesis, mentioned above, about the inability of ethnic
leaders to reduce the ethnic communitys powerlessness in spite of
their personal political skilfulness.
11
In that sense, the reproduction
of the groups powerlessness is an indicator of the Italian leaders
powerlessness as ethnic leaders in the Belgian polity. The Italian
leaders incapacity is to be explained by the state and polity mode of
action towards them.
The state and polity have neutralized and depoliticized Italian
leaders in two ways. Firstly, they have been conned in consultative
structures completely subordinated to the state both at the legal level
and at the material level. The weight of structures like the ICCC and,
FOPCC has always been virtually nil in Belgian political life. Trade
unions have followed the same logic by creating specic sub-sections
for immigrants, far removed from their decision-making centre.
Secondly, some Italian leaders and other Italian-Belgians have in-
dividually reached positions of power within the polity some have
achieved signicant success in other elds of human activity too
but have renounced their leadership role in the Italian community.
As such, there are a few important trade unionists of Italian origin, a
minister of Italian origin, and a slowly growing presence of Italians
in the political parties. These people, who were once actual or poten-
tial community leaders, have thus changed into collectivity elites. In
other words, the state and the other main political actors have always
either to keep Italian leaders outside the centres of power or to allow
some of them in on the more or less implicit understanding that
they renounce their leadership role. Moreover, the divisions that ex-
ist within the Italian community have also been stressed by the state
in order to complicate further the task of the ethnic leaders.
The emergence of an Italian elite is just the other face of the ex-
clusion strategies adopted by the state and the polity. Italian lead-
ers have a choice between two options: they can either stick to their
leadership role in peripheral and uninuential institutions or they
can seize the opportunity to achieve individual success by escaping
from the community. That choice is the core of the Belgian model
of insertion of ethnic categories, which is constituted by a certain
level of social and economic achievement and, simultaneously, by
complete political powerlessness. By offering this choice, the state
has kept its autonomy towards ethnic communities and replaced the
never-made, let alone implemented, global and coherent ethnic col-
lectivities policy.
How can one explain these exclusion strategies? Part of the an-
neutralization and
depolitization
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swer is to be found in Belgian political history and part in the inher-
ent characteristics of Belgian political life. Belgium has known po-
litical unity but never national unity. In the view of many observers,
Belgium is a mere accident of history which could be countered at
any time. Belgians themselves often question the reality, the exis-
tence and the survival of their society (Fox 1978). Since its creation,
Belgium has always had to face tensions, divisions, centrifugal forces
towards decentralization and centripetal forces towards centraliza-
tion. In these conditions, a set of processes and mechanisms aimed
at constantly assuring and reassuring the unity and global viability of
the society has emerged and become institutionalized. The famous
pacte la belge is one of them. When critical issues are discussed,
conicting groups never oppose each other beyond a certain point
which is considered to be dangerous for the survival of the state. They
then engage in extraordinary negotiations in an ad hoc commission
aimed at re-establishing harmony and peace between the groups in
a climate of moderation. This willingness to prevent divisions and
conicts which might lead to the dissolution of the state has been ob-
served since its very creation. Belgium has thus developed the art of
temporizing through setting up multiple commissions and councils,
usually consultative bodies, and habitually nding harmonious solu-
tions to serious problems on the quiet. As Fox (1978) lucidly states,
Belgium is sufciently concerned with its potentiality for internal
conicts and with its intrinsic risk of self-demolition to establish and
maintain permanent pacts between the various actors about social
issues considered to be critical.
The hypothesis can be advanced that immigration and the pres-
ence of immigrant origin populations are precisely seen as one such
critical issue. To the extent that ethnic categories represent about
8 per cent of the total population and that they come from various
countries whose cultural differences are commonly underlined, their
presence is considered to be a potential danger because it compli-
cates even more the already intricate ethno-national Belgian context.
This hypothesis is supported by the recent political discourse, admit-
tedly during a period of relatively bad relations between the Flemish
and the Walloons, in the context of the new discussions about the
further federalization of the state after the legislative elections of
November 1991. A large consensus has developed between the vari-
ous Belgian political actors to keep the threat, that is, immigrants
and their descent as communities, outside, or at the margin of, the
polity. The inclusion of ethnic communities in the polity is thought
to introduce a new and dangerous dimension of the ethnicization
of Belgian political life. The generally accepted refusal of this new
potential danger
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marco martiniello
risk of ethnicization of political life is then to be interpreted, in the
dominant approach, as a condition for the survival of the present pre-
carious equilibrium in the state. In this sense, the exclusion of ethnic
communities from the polity can be explained as a survival strategy
by a state that feels itself subjectively threatened as well as constitut-
ing a symbolic sign of a unity that is unfounded.
The issues of the creation and the development of various insti-
tutions and councils to deal with the ethnic categories issues under
the states supervision have to be analysed in that general context.
They represent different forms of exclusion and peripheralization
of ethnic categories through the neutralization and depoliticization
of potential and existing ethnic leaders. The Belgian processes of cat-
egorization, exclusion and reproduction of powerlessness could be
termed immigrization, because the ofcial vocabulary used refers
predominantly to the notions of immigration and immigrants. They
constitute the Belgian model of integration by exclusion: the Belgian
state and polity offer some opportunities of social and economic pro-
motion to ethnic communities whilst simultaneously keeping them
out of the

state and polity by using ethnic leaders.
The Belgian model of integration, as described above, seems to
have worked rather well with the ethnic communities and leaders
whose presence is the result of the rst waves of immigration after
World War II. The Italian leaders have been depoliticized and neu-
tralized quite easily and, consequently, the Italian community has
been kept out or at the margin of the state and polity. Will this model
be equally effective when applied to ethnic categories whose pres-
ence is more recent mainly the Moroccans and Turks not to men-
tion current immigration and the movements of political refugees
that will certainly lead to the settlement of new ethnic categories in
Belgium? At present this crucial question remains unanswered.
What is certain, however, is that the social, economic and political
conditions are very different now compared to what they were in the
sixties, seventies and even the early eighties, so that the viability of
the Belgian model of integration can seriously be questioned. Firstly,
the working-class organizations, especially the unions, which played
such an important role in the processes of creating an Italian socio-
political elite and of neutralizing Italian leaders, are less willing and
able to exert the same role as far as Moroccan and Turkish leaders
and elites are concerned. Secondly, the economic success that some
Italians enjoyed in the past is much less evident today, because of the
continuing economic crisis that began in the early seventies, because
of the high rate of unemployment, and because of a growing dualiza-
tion of society. Thirdly, the electoral success of the Vlaams Blok and
immigrization
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extreme-right-wing parties in the general elections of November 1991
could provoke a further radicalization of the general political climate
and of the discourse of traditional parties on ethnic communities and
immigration issues. Fourthly, the domestic ethnic tension between
the Flemish and the Walloons has never before been as acute and
dangerous for the existence of the Belgian state. The combination of
these four elements can, at least in the short and medium term, lead
to a radicalization of the exclusion processes towards non-European
ethnic categories.
At least three types of reactions can then be expected in terms of
ethnic leadership and elites. Possibly, there will be an emergence of
more radical ethnic leadership, especially among the youth, in self-
made political and cultural organizations. Attempts to create ethnic
lobbies in party politics will become increasingly probable, since
more and more young people of ethnic categories acquire Belgian
nationality. Finally, a further development of individual exit strate-
gies, for example through small businesses and education, can be
envisaged. It should be noted that, in the latter, women could play a
vanguard role in the sense that their results seem to be much better
than those of male counterparts. Will this lead to the emergence of
a female ethnic leadership? This remains another open question. In
any case, it would be a great novelty in ethnic leadership in Belgium,
since until now it has been almost exclusively a male phenomenon.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Rainer Baubck, John Bade, Alec Hargreaves, Ronald
Kaye, Zig Layton-Henry, Jan Rath and Giovanna Zincone for their
helpful comments on a draft version of this article.
Notes
1 In the remainder of this article the phrase from immigrant origin will no
longer be used, since it is now clear that the study deals with populations
whose presence is a consequence of international labour and political im-
migration in the post-World War II period.
2 The expression national-origin category and community from immigrant
origin might have been used instead of ethnic category and community of
immigrant origin to avoid any possible confusion in the meaning of ethnic-
ity. However, for elegance sake, the ethnic vocabulary has been kept.
3 The question until which biological generation does an ethnic category con-
tinue to be named as such will not be addressed here, because it is mainly an
empirical one.
three types of
reactions
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4 Of course, the reproduction is not perfect. There is an individual upward
mobility process among ethnic categories, the importance of which will vary
from case to case.
5 Regulation no. 1612/68 of the EC Council, Ofcial Journal of the European
Communities, no. L257, 19 October 1960.
The poll was published by the weekly, Pourquoi Pas?, 17 March 1988.
7 The Belgian quasi federal state consists of two kinds of federal institutions,
namely the Regions (Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels) and the Communities
(French, Flemish and German). Each Community has a government that is
responsible for culture, education, sport, tourism, etc.
8 Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Direzione Generale dellEmigrazione e degli
Affari Sociali, Associazioni ltaliane nel mondo 1984, Roma, 1985.
9 Ofcial data from the General Consulate of Italy in Lige, October 1989.
10 The very complex structure of the Belgian state is very well synthetized in
Mean (1989).
11 For an extensive analysis of the eldwork results, see Martiniello (1992). For
details about the methodology, see Martiniello (1990).
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Racism in Europe: unity and diversity
Michel Wieviorka
In the early 1990s, the sociologist Michel Wieviorka was one of the leading
specialists on racism in Europe. He published several books in French on the
issue. This article was published in 1994 in a book entitled Racism, Modernity
and Identity. Here Wieviorka convincingly defends the idea that any analysis
of racism in Europe has to recognise the links between racism and moder-
nity. Furthermore, Wieviorka distinguishes four forms of racism: universalis-
tic, the poor white response, anti-modernist and a form of racism linked to
intergroup conict in the modern era. This distinction has become a classic
one in the European study of racism.
Observing growing racist tendencies that affect most European
countries, an increasing number of scholars feel an urgent need for
a comparative reexion that may bring answers to a central question:
over and beyond the empirical evidence of differences, is there not
a certain unity in contemporary racism in Europe? Is it not possible
to elaborate a reasoned set of hypotheses that could account for most
national racist experiences in Europe, while shedding some light on
their specicities?
European unication, in so far as it exists, and the growth of rac-
ism are obviously distinct phenomena, and it would be articial to try
and connect them too directly. The most usual frame of reference for
any research about racism and race relations remains national. And
even the vocabulary or, more deeply, the analytical and cultural cat-
egories that we use when dealing with this issue vary so widely from
one country to another that we meet considerable difculties when
trying to translate precise terms. There may be large differences in
language, and words with negative connotations in one country will
have positive ones in another. Nobody in France, for instance, would
use the expression relations de race, which would be regarded as rac-
ist, although it is commonly employed in the United Kingdom.
unity in racism
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michel wieviorka
The key preliminary task, therefore, is not to contribute direct em-
pirical knowledge about the various expressions of racism in Europe,
as can be found, for instance, in the important survey of Racism and
xenophobia published in 1989 by the European Community (CCE,
1989). Nor is the initial task to compare elementary forms of rac-
ism, such as harassment, stereotypes, discrimination or political rac-
ism in a certain number of countries, in order to prove that they are
more or less similar, or that they follow a similar evolution. Rather
the problem is primarily conceptual. If we want to test the idea of a
certain unity of contemporary racism in Europe, we must elaborate
sociological and historical hypotheses, and then apply them to the
facts that we are able to collect. Thus the most difcult aspect of a
comparative approach is not to nd data, but to organize it with well-
thought-out hypotheses.
My own hypotheses can be formulated in two different ways, one
of which is relatively abstract and the other more concrete.
Racism and modernity
An initial formulation of the problematic, in effect, consists in the
construction of a global argument enabling us to demonstrate that
racism is inseparable from modernity, as the latter developed from
European origins, and from its present crisis (Wieviorka, 1992a).
Racism, both as a set of ideologies and specious scientic doctrines,
and as a set of concrete manifestations of violence, humiliation and
discrimination, really gathered momentum in the context of the im-
mense changes of which Europe was the centre after the Renaissance.
It developed further in modern times, with the huge migrations, the
extension of trading relationships, the industrialization of Western
society and colonization. But racism, in its links with modernity, can-
not be reduced to a single logic, and even seems to correspond to
processes which are sometimes so distinct that numerous demands
are made for the discussion of racisms in the plural. This in fact gives
rise to a debate the terms of which are badly posed. It is effectively
possible to set up an integrated, global argument in which the vari-
ous forms of racism, including anti-semitism, nd their theoretical
place, and which goes in the direction of a sociological, even anthro-
pological, unity of racism. One can also consider each of these forms
in its historical specicity, which goes in the opposite direction. Both
approaches are legitimate and complementary, but since we are
thinking here about the unity of contemporary forms of racism in
Europe, it is clear that we should privilege the former. This leads us
sociological
unity of racism
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to distinguish four main lines of argument which cross the space of
racism in its relation to modernity.
In the rst instance, as the companion of modernity triumphant,
racism is universalist, denouncing, crushing and despising different
identities. Whence the apparition of inferior races as an obstacle to
the process of expansion, in particular colonial expansion, or des-
tined to be exploited in the name of their supposed inferiority.
Next, linked to processes of downward social mobility, or exclu-
sion, racism is the expression, as well as the refusal, of a situation
in which the actor positively values modernity, but lives, or is afraid
he/she will be exposed to a form of expulsion which will marginal-
ize him/her. The actor then assumes a reex or an attitude of poor
white, particularly common in contexts of economic crises or of re-
traction from the labour market. Racism here is a perversion of a
demand to participate in modernity and an opposition to the effective
modalities of its functioning.
A third line of argument corresponds not to a positive valorization
of modernity, the rise of which must be ensured, or from which one
refuses to be excluded, but to appeals to identity or to tradition which
are opposed to modernity. The nation, religion and the community
then act as markers of identity, thus giving rise to a racism which
attacks those who are assumed to be the vectors of a detested mo-
dernity. The Jews are often the incarnation of these vectors, as are,
in some circumstances, those Asian minorities who are perceived
as being particularly economically active. Finally, racism can cor-
respond to anti- or non-modern positions, which are displayed not
against groups incarnating modernity, but against groups dened
themselves by an identity without any reference to modernity. It ex-
presses, or is an extension of, intercultural, intercommunity, inter-
ethnic or similar tensions.
It is therefore possible to represent the space of racism around
four cardinal points:
Modernity against identities
Identities against identities
Identities against modernity
Modernity against modernity
In a space of this type, the racist actors do not necessarily occupy one
single position, and their speech and their behaviour are frequently
syncretic and vary over time. There are even sometimes paradoxi-
cal mixtures of these various positions, when people, for instance,
reproach a racialized group with symbolizing at the same time mo-
the space of racism
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michel wieviorka
dernity and traditional values which they consider deny modernity:
in the past, but also today, Jews, in many cases, full this double
function (Wieviorka, 1992b). They are hated in the name of their
supposed identication with political power, money, the mass-media
and a cosmopolitan internationalism, but also because of their dif-
ference, their visibility, their nationalism and support or belonging
to the state of Israel, or because they aunt their cultural traditions
or their religion.
This theoretical construction of the space of racism may help us
to answer our question. In effect, it enables us to read the European
experience, and above all its recent evolution. The latter has long
been dominated, on the one hand, by a racism of the universalist,
colonial type and, on the other hand, by oppositions to modernity
which have assumed the form of anti-Semitism; today, much more
than previously, it is directed by the fear or reality of exclusion and
downward social mobility, and on the other by tensions around iden-
tity and vague fears of which the most decisive concern the question
of belonging to the nation.
Formation and restructuration of the European model of
national societies
The argument outlined above can be completed by a much more con-
crete historical analysis of the recent evolution of most of the major
western European countries. The latter, throughout this century, and
up to the 1960s or 1970s, can be dened on the basis of a model
which integrates three elements which are then weakened and de-
structured, reinvigorating the question of racism.
The era of integration
In most western European countries, racism, before the Second
World War, was a spectacular and massive phenomenon, much
more widespread than today. Colonial racism postulated the inferior-
ity of colonized people of races, and modern anti-Semitism gave a
new and active dimension to former anti-Judasm. This is why we
must introduce a sense of relativity into our perceptions of contem-
porary racism. This is why we must also think in terms of periods,
with the idea of a certain unity in time for the phenomenon that we
are discussing. This idea means not that there is no continuity in
racist doctrines, ideologies, prejudice or more concrete expressions,
but that a new era in the history of racism began with the retreat, as
Elazar Barkan (1992) says, of scientic racism, the end of decoloniza-
colonial racism
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tion, and, above all, the economic crisis that has in fact meant the
beginning of the decline of industrial societies.
Until that time, i.e. the 1960s and 1970s, most European coun-
tries had succeeded, to a greater or a lesser extent, depending on the
country, in integrating three basic components of their collective life:
an industrial society, an egalitarian state and a national identity.
Most European countries have been industrial societies: that is,
they have had a set of social relations rooted in industrial labour and
organization. From this point of view, they have been characterized
by a structural conict, which opposed the working-class movement
and the masters of industry, but which extended far beyond work-
shops and factories. This conict gave the middle classes a possibil-
ity to dene themselves by either a positive or negative relationship
towards the working-class movement. It brought to unemployed
people the hope and sometimes the reality of being helped by this
movement. It was also the source of important political debates deal-
ing with the social question. Furthermore, it inuenced intellectual
and cultural life profoundly, and acted as a point of reference for
many actors, in the city, in universities, in religious movements and
elsewhere.
European countries, and this is the second basic component of
our model of analysis, have also been able to create and develop insti-
tutions which aimed at ensuring that egalitarian treatment was im-
parted to all citizens as individuals. The state has generally taken over
various aspects of social welfare and security. It has become a wel-
fare state. The state also introduced or defended a distance between
religion and politics. Although countries such as Spain, Portugal
and Greece have recently experienced dictatorial regimes, states in
Europe have generally behaved, since the Second World War, as war-
rants for democracy.
Lastly, most European countries have given a central importance
to their national identity. This identity has usually included two dif-
ferent aspects, sometimes contradictory, sometimes complementary.
On one hand, the idea of a nation has corresponded to the assertion
of a culture, a language, a historical past and traditions, with some
tendencies to emphasize primordial ties and call for a biological de-
nition loaded with racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism. On the
other hand, the nation has also been dened in a more positive way,
as bound to the general progress of mankind and to universal values
that could be dened in economic, political or ethical terms. In this
last perspective, a nation is related to reason, progress, democracy of
human rights.
Industrial society, state and nation: these three basic elements have
industrial society,
state and nation
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michel wieviorka
never been consonant with their highest theoretical image. One can
easily show the weakness of the working-class movement in some
countries, or its constant subordination to political forces, the limits
of the welfare state everywhere in the past, and the domination of the
reactionary and xenophobic aspects of nationalism in many circum-
stances. Moreover, some European countries have dened them-
selves as bi- or plurinational. But since we recognize these limits,
and since we recognize many differences between countries, we can
admit, without the danger of creating a myth, that our three basic ele-
ments are typical of European countries until the 1960s and 1970s.
Not only have they characterized three countries, but they have also
been relatively strongly articulated, so much so that various terms
are used to express this articulation: for instance, integration, nation-
state and national society. We must be very cautious and avoid de-
veloping the articial or mythical image of countries perfectly suited
to the triple and integrated gure of an industrial society, a two-di-
mensional nation and a modern and egalitarian state. But our repre-
sentation of the past is useful in considering the evolution of the last
twenty or thirty years, an evolution which is no doubt dominated by
the growing weakness and dissociation of our three basic elements.
The era of destructuration
All European countries are experiencing today a huge transforma-
tion which affects the three components of our reection, and de-
nes what I have called, in the case of France, une grande mutation
(Wieviorka, 1992c).
Industrial societies are living their historical decline, and this phe-
nomenon should not be reduced to the spectacular closing of work-
shops and factories. More important in our perspective is the decay
of the working-class movement as a social movement. In the past,
the working-class movement was, to various degrees, capable of in-
corporating in a single action collective behaviour corresponding to
three major levels. There could be limited demands, struggles based
on the professional defence of political demands, dealt with by the in-
stitutional system, and, at the highest level of its project, orientations
challenging the control and the direction of progress and of indus-
try. These orientations are quite out of place today: the working-class
movement is breaking up, and this decomposition produces various
effects (Touraine et al., 1987). Among workers, there is a strengthen-
ing of tendencies towards corporatism and selshness those work-
ers who still have a certain capacity of action, because of their skill or
their strategic position in their rm, develop struggles in the name of
their own interests, and not in the name of more general or universal
ones.
transformation
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Sometimes workers demands can no longer be taken up by the
trade unions, which have been considerably weakened. This can re-
sult in violent forms of behaviour, or in spontaneous forms of or-
ganization, such as the recent co-ordinations in France, which are
easily inltrated by extremist ideologies.
In such a context, the middle classes no longer have to dene
themselves by reference to class conicts, and they tend to oscillate
between, on the one hand, unrestrained individualism and, on the
other, populism or national-populism, the latter being particularly
strong among those who experience downward mobility or social
exclusion. These two distinct phenomena are closely related to so-
cial and economic dualization. In the past, most people could have a
strong feeling of belonging to a society, down as workers, or up as
ites, or middle classes. Today, a good number of people are in, and
constitute a large middle class, including those workers who have
access to jobs, consumption, health or education for their children,
while a growing proportion of people are out, excluded and margin-
alized.
Such an evolution may lead to renewed expressions of racism.
Those who are out, or fear to be, have a feeling of injustice and
loss of previous social identity. They think the government and the
politicians are responsible for their situation, and may develop pop-
ulist discourses and attitudes in which anti-migrant or ethnic mi-
norities racism can take place. They then impute their misfortune
to migrants, even if these migrants share the same experience. And
those who are in may develop more subtle forms of racism, trying to
secure themselves with a colour bar or by individual or collective be-
haviours that create social and racial segregation and build symbolic
but also real barriers. Furthermore, the logic of segregation, particu-
larly at the political level, is always likely to become indistinguishable
from a national and populist form of discourse which amalgamates
the fears, anger and frustrations of the excluded and the social self-
centredness of those who wish to defend their status and their way of
life. This merging therefore gives a result which is only paradoxical
in appearance, since it results in an identical form of racism in those
people who have experienced living with, or close to, immigrants or
similar categories of people, and in those who have not actually done
so, but who have heard about it through the mass-media or from
rumours.
A second element of destructuration deals with the state and pub-
lic institutions, which encounter increasing difculties in trying to re-
spect egalitarian principles, or in acting as welfare states. Everywhere
in Europe, the number of unemployed people has grown, creating
social and economic
dualization
crisis of state and
public institutions
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michel wieviorka
not only a great many personal dramas, but also a scal crisis of the
state. The problems of nancing old-age pensions, the health care
system, state education and unemployment benets are becoming in-
creasingly acute, while at the same time there is a rising feeling of in-
security which is attributed, once again, to immigrants. The latter are
then perceived in racist terms, accused not only of taking advantage
of social institutions and using them to their own ends, but also of
beneting from too much attention from the state. At the same time,
the ruling classes have been tempted since the 1970s by liberal policies
which in fact ratify and reinforce exclusion and marginalization.
The crisis of the state and the institutions is a phenomena which
must be analytically distinguished from the decline of industrial so-
ciety and the dualization which results from its decline. But the two
phenomena are linked. Just as the welfare state owes a great deal,
in its formation, to the social and political discussions which are in-
separable from the history of the working class, which is particularly
clear in the countries endowed with strong social democracy, so too
the crisis of the welfare state and the institutions owes a great deal to
the destructuration not only of these discussions and conicts, but
also of the principal actor which informed them, the working-class
movement.
A third aspect of the recent evolution concerns the national is-
sue, which becomes nodal all the more so as social issues are not
politically treated as such. In most European countries, political de-
bates about nation, nationality and citizenship are activated. In such
a context, nationalism loses its open and progressive dimensions,
and its relationship with universal values, and is less and less linked
with ideas such as progress, reason or democracy. National identity
is increasingly loaded with xenophobia and racism. This tendency
gains impetus with the emergence or growth of other identities
among groups that are dened, or that dene themselves, as com-
munities, whether religious, ethnic, national or regional. There is a
kind of spiral, a dialectic of identities, in which each afrmation of a
specic identity involves other communitarian afrmations among
other groups. Nationalism and, more generally speaking, communal
identities do not necessarily mean racism. But as Etienne Balibar
explains, racism is always a virtuality (Balibar and Wallerstein, 1988).
This virtuality is not nurtured uniquely by the presence, at times
exaggerated and fantasized, of a more or less visible immigration.
It also owes a considerable amount to phenomena which may even
have nothing to do with it. Thus national identity is reinforced in its
most alarming aspects when national culture appears to be threat-
ened by the supercial and hypermodern character of an internation-
nationalism
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al culture which originates primarily in America, by the political con-
struction of Europe or, again, by the globalization of the economy.
At the same time, it becomes more and more difcult to assert
that society, state and nation form an integrated whole. Those who
call for universal values, human rights and equality, who believe that
each individual should have equal opportunities to work, make mon-
ey and then participate fully in cultural and political life in other
words, those who identity themselves with modernity are less and
less able to meet and even to understand those who have the feeling
of being excluded from modern life, who fear for their participation
in economic, cultural and political life, and who retire within their
national identity. In extreme cases, social and economic participa-
tion are no longer linked with the feeling of belonging to a nation,
the latter being what remains when the former becomes impossible.
Reason, progress and development become divorced from nation,
identity and subjectivity, and in this split, racism may easily develop.
In the past, industrial society often offered workers disastrous
conditions of work and existence. But the working-class movement,
as well as the rulers of industry, believed in progress and reason, and
while they were opposed in a structural conict, this was precisely
because they both valorized the idea of progress through industrial
production, and both claimed that they should direct it. The nation,
and its state, as Ernest Gellner explains (1983) were supposed to be
the best frame for modernization, and sometimes the state not only
brought favourable conditions, but also claimed to be the main agent
of development. Nationalism could be the ideology linked to that
perspective, and not only a reactionary or traditionalist force. Today,
waters divide. Nationalism is mainly expressed by social and political
groups frightened by the internationalization of the economy and
culture. It is increasingly differentialist, and racism develops as so-
cial problems such as exclusion and downward mobility grow, and as
anxiety develops in regard to national identity.
The categories of the sociological analysis of racism
The argument outlined above is historical and sociological in nature,
but a closer examination of the contemporary phenomena of racism
requires explicitness in the instruments and, therefore, the catego-
ries of analysis of racism properly speaking (Wieviorka, 1991).
The two logics of racism
Contemporary sociological literature increasingly insists on the idea
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michel wieviorka
of changing forms of racism. Some scholars, relying on American
studies, oppose the old agrant racism to the subtle new versions
(Pettigrew, 1993). Others emphasize a crucial distinction, which
could, in an extreme interpretation, lead to the idea of two distinct
kinds of racism. Following authors such as Martin Barker or Pierre-
Andr Taguieff, we should distinguish between a classical, inegali-
tarian racism and a new, differentialist one (Barker, 1981; Taguieff,
1988). The rst kind considers the Other as an inferior being, who
may nd a place in society, but the lowest one. There is room for
inferior people in this perspective, as long as they can be exploited
and relegated to unpleasant and badly paid tasks. The second kind
considers the Other as fundamentally different, which means that
he/she has no place in society, that he/she is a danger, an invader,
who should be kept at some distance, expelled or possibly destroyed.
The point is that for many scholars the new racism, sometimes also
referred to as cultural racism, is the main one in the contemporary
world, while the inegalitarian one becomes secondary.
As long as this remark is intended as a statement of historical
fact, based on the observation of empirical realities of present-day
racism, it is acceptable. But it must not take the place of a gener-
al theory of racism. First, cultural or differentialist perspectives in
racism are not new. It is difcult to speak of Nazism, for instance,
without introducing the idea that anti-Semitism in the Third Reich
was deeply informed by these perspectives. Jews were said to corrupt
Aryan culture and race, and the nal solution planned not to assign
them to the lowest place in society, but to destroy them. Second, the
opposition between the two main logics of racism should not conceal
the main fact, which is that a purely cultural denition of the Other,
as well as a purely social one, dissolves the idea of race. On one hand,
Claude Levi-Strauss is not a racist when he emphasizes cultural dif-
ferentiation. One is a racist only when there is any reference to race
in a cultural opposition, when beneath culture we can, explicitly or
implicitly, nd nature: that is, in an organicist or genetic represen-
tation of the Other as well as oneself. On the other hand, when the
Other is dened only as socially inferior, exploited or marginalized,
the reference to race may disappear or become, as William J. Wilson
suggests (1978), less signicant.
In fact, in most experiences of racism, the two logics coexist, and
racism appears as a combination of them both. There are not two
racisms, but one, with various versions of the association of cultural
differentialism and social inegalitarianism. The general analysis that
has been presented for contemporary Europe helps us to refuse the
idea of a pure, cultural racism, corresponding to a new paradigm that
classical racism
differentialistic
racism
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would have taken the place of an old one. The sources of European
contemporary racism, as I have suggested, are in the crisis of na-
tional identities and in the dualization of societies, which favour a
differentialist logic. But they are also connected with phenomena of
downward social mobility and economic crisis, which lead to popu-
lism and exasperation and have an important dimension in appeals
for an unequal treatment of migrants.
Two main levels
As I have indicated in a recent book (Wieviorka, 1991), we may dis-
tinguish four levels in racism. The way that experiences of racism
are articulated at the different levels where they act may change with
their historical evolution. Our distinction is analytical, and should
help us as a sociological tool.
A rst level refers to weak and inarticulated forms of racism,
whatever they may consist of: opinions and prejudice, which are
more xenophobic and populist than, strictly speaking, racist; and dif-
fuse violence, limited expression of institutional discrimination or
diffusion of racial doctrines, etc. At this rst level, racism is not a
central issue and it is so limited, quantitatively and qualitatively, that
I have chosen to use the term infraracism to characterize it.
We may speak of split racism at a second level, in reference to
forms of racism which are still weak and inarticulate, but stronger
and more obvious. At this stage, racism becomes a central issue, but
does not give the image of a unied and integrated phenomenon,
mainly because of the lack of a strong political expression.
We may speak of political racism, precisely, when political and in-
tellectual debates and real political forces bring a dual principle of
unity to the phenomenon. On the one hand, they give it an ideologi-
cal structure, so that all its expressions seem to converge and dene
a unique set of problems; on the other hand, they offer it practical
forms of organization.
At the fourth level, we may call total racism those situations in
which the state itself is based on racist principles. There is nowa-
days no real threat of total racism in our countries; and we may now
simplify the distinction into four levels of racism by reducing them
to two main ones, the infrapolitical level, including infra and split rac-
isms, and the political one.
We can now come back to our general analysis of European con-
temporary racism and be more precise. This rise of the phenome-
non, following what was previously said, is due to the evolution of
three basic elements, and to their destructuration. We may add that
it appears rst at an infrapolitical level, and that it then ascends to the
political level, with variations from one country to another.
four levels of racism
infrapolitical to
political level
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michel wieviorka
In certain cases, a rather important political party appears and
develops quickly, as in France with the Front National. In other cases,
such a party appears but quickly declines, which means not that rac-
ism necessarily stays at the infrapolitical level, but that it informs
political debates without being the ag of one precise strong orga-
nization this could dene the English experience. But above all,
the analytical distinction into levels enables us to introduce a central
question: is there not throughout Europe the same danger of seeing
political actors capable of taking over and of directing infrapolitical
racism?
On the one hand, we observe in several countries the growing in-
uence of racist ideologies, but also of political organizations which
are no longer small groups of activists and which may occupy an
important space in political life. The French Front National appears
as a leader in Europe, and sometimes as a model, but other parties
or movements should be quoted too: the Deutsche Volksunion and the
Demokratische Partei Deutschlands in Germany; the FPO in Austria,
which gained 22.6 per cent of the votes in the November 1991 elec-
tions in Vienna; the Vlaams Blok in Flanders, with twelve members
of Parliament since November 1991; and the Italian Leagues.
One must be careful, however, not to exaggerate. The more ex-
treme-right parties occupy an important place, the more they appear
as populist rather than purely racist. Racism, strictly speaking, is
only one element, and sometimes a minor one, along with strong na-
tionalism or regionalism. Moreover, political and electoral successes
force these parties to look respectable, and avoid overtly agrant ex-
pressions of racism.
On the other hand, racism appears in non-political contexts, when
prejudice and hostile attitudes to migrants develop, when social and
racial segregation is increasingly visible (which is the case in France,
where the issue of racism is constantly related to the so-called urban
crisis and the suburban problem), when violent actions develop,
sometimes with a terrorist aspect, when various institutions includ-
ing the police have a responsibility for its growth, when discrimina-
tion is obvious (for instance, in relation to housing or employment),
and when the media contributes to the extension of prejudice. In
such a perspective, all the European democracies have to face the
same problem. There is a growing opportunity for extreme-right
forces to capitalize on fears, frustrations, unsatised social demands
and feelings of threat to national identity. Even worse, there is a dan-
ger that these forces will introduce new elements into infrapolitical
racism. This is the case in France, for instance, where popular racism
is strongly hostile to migrants, to black people and to gypsies, rather
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than to Jews, and where the Front National tries constantly to instill
anti-Semitism.
More generally, there is still a real distance between infrapoliti-
cal and political racism, and this means that racism is not so much
a widely extended ideology offering people a general framework in
which to interpret their own lives and personal experiences, but rath-
er a set of prejudices and practices that are rooted in these concrete
lives and experiences, and which could possibly evolve.
In the present state of things, the development is dominated by
a process of populist fusion in which popular affects and political
discourse converge, but which, paradoxically, protects our societies
from extreme and large-scale racist episodes. However, populism is
never a stable phenomenon and is always potentially open to more
frightening processes.
The diversity of European racist experiences
In contemporary Europe, our general analysis does not apply every-
where in the same way. Many factors intervene, which do not invali-
date our global hypothesis, but which oblige us to introduce much
more diversied images.
Some are related to the social history of each country, to its indus-
trialization, or to the making of its working-class movement. Some
are related to its political history, to the making of its state, institu-
tions and political system, and, possibly, to its dictatorial or totalitar-
ian recent past. Some also deal with the specicity of its culture and
national identity, and with its international past. Countries that have
experienced colonization and decolonization, or that have to face do-
mestic tensions due to what many nationalist actors and intellectu-
als have called internal colonialism differ between themselves, and
from countries that are not concerned with these issues. For many
years, some European countries have experienced the presence of
migrants who have been attracted by agriculture and industry, or
who came for other reasons, including political ones. Others, like
Italy, are only now discovering this phenomenon.
The list of factors of this kind could certainly be extended, but the
most important thing is to see that they each affect at least one of the
three basic elements of our global analysis. The latter insists on the
twofold idea of a process in which, in the rst place, industrial society
breaks down, the egalitarian state enters into crisis and the nation be-
comes paralysed in differentialist and defensive terms; and in which,
secondly, these three elements are increasingly dissociated. The pat-
diversifying factors
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michel wieviorka
tern of this process of destructuration and dissociation depends on
the various capacities of resistance to decline or crisis of each basic
element, and consequently on the various factors listed above.
In Germany, for instance, industrial society adapted to the change
more efciently than elsewhere. Trade unions, and mainly the DGB,
maintain a much higher capacity for action and bargaining than most
of their counterparts in the world. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall,
West Germany had a state and a political system which seemed less
affected by the crisis than other countries, and it is only recently, with
the huge price of the reunication with East Germany, that scal and
political problems developed and took on acute forms. At the same
time, the third element of our general analysis, the national issue,
appears as a crucial topic. Racist and neo-Nazi violence, and the ex-
tension of skinhead groups, express primarily symbolic and concrete
difculties in implementing national unication, and are particu-
larly important in the former East Germany, where immense social
tensions and fears for the future are interpreted within the category
of nation. The centrality of this issue is also important in Austria. In
these two countries, the experience of the 1930s and 1940s informs
present political debates, and references to a national culture and
identity are so signicant that theoretical priority should be given to
the national issue. The strength of popular and political anti-Semi-
tism in these countries reinforces this point; it strongly supports the
hypothesis of anti-modern attitudes linked to a traditional national-
ism, or to its revival due to the economic crises that transform social
demands into nationalist and racist attitudes.
In Italy, to introduce a different case, the decline of industrial so-
ciety and the crises of trade unions are obvious, but they do not con-
stitute the main problem. In this country, national unication came
late, and localism or regionalism are strong, but they do not consti-
tute the heart of the problem. Analysing the emergence of racism
in Italy, interest must focus on the crisis of the state, of institutions
and of the political system, which is expressed by the recent electoral
successes of the Leagues in the northern part of the country, by the
incapacity of the state to deal with the maa, and by the renewal of
debates concerning the mezzogiorno. Italy has long been a country of
emigration, and is just discovering that it has now become a country
of immigration. The rst expressions of racism should not be overes-
timated. The Leagues are much more populist than racist, and con-
crete discrimination and acts of violence are not so frequent. When
they appear, they express a will for the economic inferiorization of
black or Arab migrants; they are not strongly linked to a cultural
and differentialist afrmation. The possible extension of the racist
Germany
Italy
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phenomenon, at least at the political and ideological level, should be
analysed in terms of the crisis of the state and the political system.
This implies paying special attention to intellectual and political ac-
tors, who in Italy sometimes have a paradoxical role: by importing,
mainly from France, the issue of anti-racism in a context of weak
forms or racism, and by developing the image of a differentialist rac-
ism. While the main popular expressions are inegalitarian, they are
perhaps creating a self-fullling prophecy.
In other countries such as France, Belgium or the United
Kingdom, there is a temptation to use as a starting point for analysis
the decay of industrial society and the decline of the working-class
movement, one consequence of this being that migrants are dened
less as workers and more as members of religious or ethnic commu-
nities, even if the very existence of these communities may be over-
estimated. But French, Belgian and British experiences deserve in
fact an analysis that is directly three-dimensional and that gives equal
importance to the decomposition of industrial society, to the crises of
the state and institutions, and to the national issue. Let us add that, at
least in the Belgian and British cases, the unit for analysis of racism
should not be the whole country, but smaller entities, so that differ-
ences between, for instance, Scotland and England, or Flanders and
Wallony could be seriously taken into account: English nationalism,
for example, is much closer to xenophobia and racism than Scottish
nationalism.
There are therefore considerable differences between countries,
but these do not fundamentally challenge our global analysis. Each
national experience must be approached in its three-dimensionality,
even if, depending on the country, it is better at the outset to focus
thinking on only one or other of the three basic elements in our argu-
ment. In any event, it is effectively the image of the dissociation of
these three elements society, the state and the nation which is the
origin of the spread of racism.
References

Balibar Etienne, and Wallerstein, Immanuel (1988) Race, classe, na-
tion, Paris: La Dcouverte.
Barkan, Elazar (1992) The Retreat of Scientic Racism, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Barker, Martin (1981) The New Racism, London: Junction Books.
CCE (1989) Eurobaromtre: Lopinion publique dans la Communaut
Europenne, Brussels: Commission des Communauts Europen-
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society, state and
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Gellner, Ernest (1983) Nations and Nationalism, Oxford: Blackwell.
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posants et mesure, in Racisme et Modernit (under the direction of
M. Wieviorka), Paris: La Dceouverte.
Taguieff, Pierre-Andr (1988) La force du prjug, Paris: La Dcouverte.
Touraine, Alain, Wieviorka, Michel, and Dubet Franois (1987) The
Working Class Movement, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wieviorka, Michel (1991) Lespace du racisme, Paris: Seuil.
Wieviorka, Michel (1992a) Racism and modernity, paper pre-
sented at the Congress of the American Sociological Association,
Pittsburgh.
Wieviorka, Michel (1992b) Analyse sociologique et historique de
lantsimitisme en Pologne, Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie,
vol. 93, pp. 237-49.
Wieviorka, Michel (ed.) (1992c) La France raciste, Paris: Seuil.
Wilson, William J. (1978) The Declining Signicance of Race, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
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Changing the boundaries of citizenship:
the inclusion of immigrants in democratic polities*
Rainer Baubck

Normative political philosopher Rainer Baubck has been a leading world
scholar on citizenship issues for over twenty years. This article is the last
chapter of his edited book from 1994, From Aliens to Citizens: Redening the
Status of Immigrants in Europe. He suggests a threefold typology of mem-
bership in contemporary liberal states: territorial sovereignty, nominal citi-
zenship and social membership. Baubck is one of the very rst European
thinkers to argue forcefully that a substantial improvement of the legal inte-
gration of immigrants can be achieved by combining residential citizenship
for foreigners with optional naturalisation as well as the toleration of dual
citizenship. To this day, these arguments are hotly debated, though not as
much as they were during the early 1990s. In any case, this article remains
an important contribution to European citizenship and migration studies.
And the resident alien feels himself equal to the citizen and the citi-
zen to him (Plato on the anarchic temper of democracy, Republic,
VIII, 562e)
Who is included in democratic legitimation?
Every scientic discipline has its own core question. For the philo-
sophically oriented branches of social science, their core questions
seem to be unanswerable in the sense of nding a denite solution
that will be accepted by all rational participants in scientic dis-
course. At the same time, these questions appear to be unavoidable
and capable of stimulating never-ending debates that reassure social
theorists that there is, after all, a raison dtre for their disciplines.
I think that the core question for normative political theory has
been: What are the conditions for making political rule legitimate?
A general answer that has strongly prevailed, at least since Thomas
legitimating
political rule
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rainer baubck
Hobbes, is the following one: Political rule must be of a kind that
those who are subject to it could rationally consent to being ruled in
this way. Theories that have tied political legitimacy to democratic
rule have specied further conditions, such as the following ones:
The collective of all subjects must be regarded as the ultimate sov-
ereign in a political system. Subjects are entitled to elect their politi-
cal representatives, counting every vote as one and one only. They
can appeal to an independent judiciary against the unlawful exercise
of political power and enjoy a right of resistance against illegitimate
rule. It is conditions like these that mark the transformation of sub-
jects into citizens. When elaborating such answers we will nd that
the core question can be split into two separate ones: How can po-
litical rule be made legitimate? and Who are those towards whom it
must be legitimated? It appears that most contemporary democratic
theories regard the how as much more important than the who.
There are two reasons for this unequal emphasis. First, contempo-
rary liberal democracies differ strongly in their constitutional struc-
tures such as in their legal traditions, electoral systems or separation
of powers; this variety stimulates the comparison of the virtues and
disadvantages of different solutions to the problem of democratic
legitimacy. In contrast, the ranges of inclusion appear to be rather
similar in all these political systems and minimum standards are
much more rmly established in this regard. The exclusion of blacks
or women from the franchise, or a decision to deprive an ethnic mi-
nority of its citizenship, would be clearly regarded as unjustiable
today.
1
The second reason is that most people would probably agree
that there is a straightforward answer to the who-question: All those
who are affected by political decisions, and who are able to participate
in the legitimating activities, should be included in the democratic
polity.
Of course there are some signicant exceptions where contempo-
rary democracies seem to fail by this principle. It is by examining the
reasons for these exceptions that we can best distinguish the inher-
ent limitations of democratic inclusion from unjustied exclusion. I
will group these exceptions into three; (1) external exclusion, (2) in-
ternal exclusion and (3) internal exclusion with reference to external
afliation.
(1) Citizens of state A may be strongly affected by political decisions
taken by state B and legitimated only towards Bs citizens. The wag-
ing of an offensive war, occupation and colonization of another coun-
try are the most blatant cases where, by denition, the victimized
population is excluded from legitimation of the action (although
rational consent
external exclusion
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many of these actions have been labelled by the aggressors pro-
paganda as liberating or civilizing missions). In other examples, a
damage inicted upon the population of A may be the by-product
of some action on the part of B, which is less intended to harm A
than to serve Bs interests. Take, as an illustration, the depletion of
natural resources at the detriment of some neighbouring country
(e.g. when the water of a river is diverted or used at the expense of
those living downstream at the other side of the border). Regarding
environmental pollution across international borders it is not only
the neighbouring areas which suffer, but generally the damage is
even greater among the population of the country from which the
emissions originate. Politically speaking, the former are nonetheless
in the worse position because they and their representatives are for-
mally excluded from controlling what affects them. In these cases
interstate treaties, rules of international law or pressure may help to
restrain the ruthless pursuit of a national policy which does not con-
sider the effects on populations beyond the border. However, a fun-
damental difference remains between such remedies and the kind of
popular involvement which is regarded as essential for democratic
legitimacy.
Yet another problem of external exclusion results from the opera-
tions of a global economy. In the 1980s monetarist policy of Western
states pushed up interest rates with the effect of reducing the ability
of highly indebted countries in both Eastern Europe and the so-called
Third World to pay back credits, forcing many of them to adopt se-
vere austerity policies. One could argue that in this example, gov-
ernments of debtor nations had agreed to terms of contract which
included such a risk. Yet this objection does not fairly represent the
unequal balance of power by virtue of which creditor nations can
unilaterally inuence the capacity of debtors to comply with their
obligations.
Many more examples could be given of policies that strongly af-
fect populations which are excluded from democratic legitimation
simply because they live outside the territory of the state which de-
termines and controls this policy. The general problem is that of the
disjunctures of globalization (Held, 1991; Held and McGrew, 1993).
The territorial ranges of ecological systems do not coincide with the
boundaries of states and modernization makes economic systems
increasingly transnational or even global. The modern bureaucratic
state, however, is solidly tied to a territory within which it claims a
monopoly of legitimate violence. Democratic legitimation therefore
also refers to a territorially bounded population. Involving the popu-
lations of other countries in the legitimation of national political de-
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rainer baubck
cisions can normally only be achieved indirectly within a framework
of peaceful international cooperation.
(2) However, democratic legitimation may in certain ways also ex-
clude parts of the population living in the territory of a state. In
pre-modern democratic constitutions, free citizens were generally a
minority of the population. Slaves and women were not considered
to be members of the polity. Nineteenth-century democracies still
maintained gender and property requirements for active citizenship
2

and racist exclusion was widespread. In contemporary liberal democ-
racies three groups remain internally excluded: minors, the severely
mentally handicapped and convicts. There are two signicant shifts
in the patterns of justication from pre-liberal to contemporary ex-
clusions.
Firstly, pre-liberal requirements for citizenship referred to gener-
alized social conditions for individual autonomy which were seen as
preconditions for the formation of an independent judgement about
the common good and the interests of the state. Paupers, workers
and women had to be excluded from full citizenship because their
economic dependency and lack of education presumably prevented
them from developing that kind of judgement. This was clearly also
a self-defeating ideological argument. How could the privileged class
of male property owners be trusted to develop an unbiased view of
the common good? Isnt it more reasonable to assume that they
would rather defend their own interests against those of excluded
groups? Since then it is not only the argument but also social condi-
tions which have changed so that the argument has lost whatever
force it once might have carried. On the one hand, almost everybody
receives nowadays that kind of elementary education which may be
said to be necessary for an active citizen and, on the other hand, a
broad middle class now has to rely on wages and salaries for their
income and on state bureaucracies for their social security. The capi-
talist welfare state has thus created a new social basis for including
broader populations into citizenship by generalizing education as
well as economic dependency. Any remaining citizenship disabili-
ties are seen to result from a lack of relevant mental capacities and
moral qualities of individuals rather than being attributed to them as
permanent members of ascriptive social groups. Minors are automati-
cally included on reaching their age of majority and convicts may
regain the status of full citizenship when being released from prison.
Mentally handicapped persons may remain permanently disenfran-
chised but this is justied with regard to a minimum of dialogic ca-
pacities that are essential for participating in political deliberation
(see Ackerman, 1980: 78-80).
internal exclusion
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Secondly, and I think more importantly, those who remain dis-
enfranchised are no longer excluded from citizenship. Minors, men-
tally handicapped persons and even criminal convicts are citizens in
the latter sense even though they may be excluded from the vote.
Basic mental capacities and moral qualities are not required for
membership in the polity but serve as criteria for the distribution of
the core rights of political participation within the polity. Citizenship
is acquired at birth rather than at the age of majority and generally
it cannot be taken away by the state or abandoned by citizens them-
selves as long as they live in the territory. From a liberal democratic
point of view, the status of citizenship, by which a state recognizes
an individual as its member, is not a formal legal concept lacking any
particular content;
3
it implies substantial rights to protection, as well
as those against interference, by the state. Democratic legitimation
is not conned to the activity of political participation but rests on
this more comprehensive bundle of rights. For a liberal conception,
in contrast with the republican tradition of Aristotle, Rousseau or
Hannah Arendt, the inclusion of the inactive and even the incom-
petent as equal members in the polity is a basic achievement of con-
temporary democracy. This is a guarantee against the degeneration
of democracy into the rule of a self-proclaimed enlightened elite.
Modern liberal citizenship therefore emerges from a dual movement
of (a) turning the narrow privileges of active political participation
into general rights and (b) enriching the generalized condition of
protected subjecthood with the enjoyment of basic rights.
(3) There is, however, one kind of persistent internal exclusion which
can only be justied by arguments for external exclusion. This is the
peculiar status of resident aliens. Their position in contemporary de-
mocracies is a paradoxical one. They are clearly affected by political
decisions in much the same way as citizens. Provided that they speak,
or have learned to speak, the language of their country of residence,
they are not different in their general capacities that quality them for
citizenship. They do, in most cases, enjoy fundamental rights, such
as equal rights in court, civil liberties, social rights to elementary
education and equal employment-related benets of social security.
Their rights thus go considerably beyond universal human rights,
however, they are granted to them as residents rather than as citi-
zens. On the one hand, this convergence between the rights of resi-
dents and of citizens demonstrates that the basic democratic norm of
legitimation applies to a resident population rather than only to those
individuals who are formally recognized as members of a polity. On
the other hand, why are there still so many signicant distinctions
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between the status of aliens and of citizens, especially concerning
the right to permanent residence and voting rights? Do not states of
immigration with a large and growing disenfranchised alien popula-
tion fail to meet the norm of inclusion which characterizes liberal
democracy? Yet the charge that these distinctions of rights and status
between citizens and foreigners lack democratic justication raises
some additional questions which might be more difcult to answer.
Should one draw from this the consequence of automatically natu-
ralizing all alien residents? Or should one go even further and aban-
don the formal concept of citizenship altogether? What do we need
a formal status of citizenship for if all residents already enjoy equal
rights? The dynamics of modernization implies a long-term trend
towards increasing international migration. Assuming that liberal
democracies will be preferred targets and should be relatively open
to new admissions, they will have to rethink their principles for the
allocation of rights and membership among citizens and foreigners.
This will inevitably break up national frameworks which have been
used to dene the boundaries of membership. But what should re-
place them? These are some of the questions I aim to address in this
paper.
Limits for inclusion: individual choice, political allegiance
and societal membership
Two kinds of reasons might be given for the substantial curtailment
of rights and formal exclusion of foreign residents. The rst one
is that this alien status is essentially a chosen one. Immigrants are
supposed to have come of their own free will and to know that they
will not be regarded as equal citizens.
4
Their discriminated status
as aliens is the result of a social contract by which they gained the
desired admission. Furthermore, many who could have naturalized
have not chosen this option and thus seem to voluntarily accept their
exclusion and discrimination. This line of argument does not apply
to those who have come as refugees rather than as voluntary immi-
grants. They have not chosen their fate and have been deprived of
their rights as citizens of their home countries. If there is a reason-
able presumption that the situation causing their ight will not per-
sist for long, they will need temporary protection and assistance in
order to return to their homes. But if they need more permanent
protection, an appropriate answer to their plight is to offer them the
citizenship of the country which has granted them asylum.
5

However, the argument referring to choice is difcult to accept,
reasons for
exclusion
choice
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even for voluntary migrants. Most foreign citizens are not given the
option of naturalization. Admission procedures in ordinary natural-
izations are normally discretionary - the nal decision is taken by the
naturalizing state, not by the applicant.
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Now suppose, for the sake
of argument, that naturalization became fully optional, i.e. available
upon request after a relatively short time of residence and without
further conditions attached.
7
Even then, the question remains why
full rights for resident immigrants should depend upon their opting
for legal membership. Native citizens who enjoy these rights have
not chosen to be members, but have acquired their status at birth
and they are generally denied an option to renounce it while stay-
ing in the country. This indicates that, from the perspective of a lib-
eral democratic polity, inclusion seems to be more important than
choice. If a substantial number of the population is excluded from
the polity because of their foreign citizenship, this creates a problem
for the legitimacy of political decisions even if this exclusion were
a voluntary one. Nevertheless, migrants may have special reasons
not to choose naturalization which ought to be taken into account.
Intuitively, it seems obvious that forcing a migrant to adopt a citizen-
ship she or he does not want cannot be compared to the automatic
attribution of citizenship at birth. So the balance between inclusion
and choice should be a different one for native citizens and migrants.
However, this argument does not provide a justication for any kind
of discrimination. The question which I shall take up again in the
concluding section is rather: How different should the status of citi-
zens and resident aliens be in terms of rights in order to make opting
for naturalization a meaningful choice?
The second type of reasoning for maintaining a clear line between
foreigners and citizens emerges from the perspective of the receiv-
ing state. The argument is that this line is constitutive for the pol-
ity itself and thus cannot be blurred by some democratic principle.
Democracy would become self-destroying if the imperatives of legiti-
mation made it impossible to maintain the boundaries of the polity.
In the framework of Carl Schmitts politics of friend and foe, and
Thomas Hobbess view of international relations as a latent state of
war, it is quite plausible to deny foreigners essential rights of citi-
zenship as well as the optional access to naturalization. The reason
for this is that their allegiance and obligations tie them to another
sovereign. It may be in the interest of a state to encourage immigra-
tion (if there is a strong demand for labour), it may even be expedi-
ent to naturalize immigrants in great numbers (if there is a lack of
soldiers). However, admission to the polity must remain under the
control of the receiving state in the same way as immigration
8
and
political allegiance
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the essential qualifying criterion for naturalization is not the period
of residence but a credible change of loyalty.
In this view, the boundaries of a polity do not relate to a territory
or to the population living there, but dene mutually exclusive sets
of persons who are citizens or subjects of sovereign states. These
boundaries emerge in interaction and confrontation with other poli-
ties by identifying those who cannot be included because they belong
somewhere else. Such a denition of external boundaries is not ar-
bitrary and can be well combined with a broad internal inclusion.
It need not fall back on Joseph Schumpeters dictum that a general
theory of democracy must leave it to every populus to dene himself
(Schumpeter, 1950: 245).
9
At the same time, it postulates that the
democratic norm of inclusion ceases to apply where another sover-
eign state has a prior claim to regard some individual as its member.
A foreigner may live permanently in the territory of state A, but, as
a citizen of B, all claims of democratic legitimation which she or he
might raise are addressed to that state. Such membership is not a
social relation which might become weaker as time passes but a le-
gal one that retains its binding force over time and might even be
transferred to the immigrants children. As above with the argument
referring to voluntary choice, this argument about the mutually ex-
clusive nature of sovereignty does not apply to refugees and stateless
immigrants. But it is still the

conventional wisdom which supposedly
justies the legal discrimination of foreigners and the discretionary
procedures of naturalization.
I believe that this view is at odds with modern liberal conceptions
of democracy. It is also incapable of accounting for the dynamics of
the extension of legal rights for long-term resident foreigners, for the
tendency to recognize that immigrants may acquire a moral entitle-
ment to be naturalized and, nally, for a trend in Western Europe to
tolerate dual citizenship. Just as I have acknowledged that a certain
differentiation of status between foreigners and citizens may be jus-
tied within a framework of choice, I am also inclined to support the
idea that in an international system with a multiplicity of states, poli-
ties have to be externally bounded. However, it is far from obvious
that these boundaries have to be mutually exclusive in the way that
territorial ones are. If it is not membership in a different polity which
sets the external limits for the range of inclusion in democracy, what
could then determine these limits?
I want to defend the proposition that the basic standard for inclu-
sion in a liberal democratic polity is based on a specic notion of so-
ciety the outlines of which can be determined by applying the norm
of democratic legitimacy to the social instead of the political sphere.
societal membership
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From the perspective of individuals, a society in this sense comprises
all whose social position durably relates them to a certain state so that
they depend on this state for their protection and rights. Seen from
the perspective of a state, a society is the basic ensemble of popula-
tions permanently affected by its collectively binding decisions.
We might characterize this as the political concept of society. It
contrasts with the narrower notion of the polity, on the one hand, and
with the wider sociological concept of society as an open system of
interaction and communication, on the other. A polity only includes
citizens, i.e. those whose state membership is of a political rather
than a social nature. The boundaries of polities can be controlled by
the political decisions made on membership so that individuals who
are not admitted, or who are excluded, will clearly not be members
regardless of their social relation to the state. The boundaries of so-
ciety are not subject to political decision in this way but they result
from the exercise of political power. Liberal democratic legitimation
requires inclusion of the whole society in the sense that the distribu-
tion of rights must correspond to the impact of political power and in
the sense that the polity must be genuinely open for the admission
of everybody who can claim membership in society. As we shall see
later on, this does not bring with it a total equality of political status
and rights of citizenship throughout society.
In contrast with the world economy of modern capitalism and
global ows of information, the global political system remains seg-
mented into a multitude of states. This is why there is also a mul-
tiplicity of societies which relate to these states. However, while
the political image of societies (in contrast with a sociological or
economic one) is always one of bounded populations, the shape of
these boundaries remains to be determined. I will defend the idea
that from the perspective of a system of liberal democratic states they
are permeable and overlapping, and they include foreign residents
in the territory as well as citizens, and even some foreigners living
abroad. Nevertheless, political societies are not unbounded and soci-
etal membership will set the limits within which the norm of inclu-
sion applies.
Orders of membership: territorial sovereignty, nominal
citizenship and societal membership
Before discussing the norms that can be applied to determine the sta-
tus and rights of immigrants in receiving societies in more detail, let
me rst take a birds-eye view of the kinds of orders of membership
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that states produce among populations. As I use the term here, an
order does not refer to an internal structure (such as the hierarchical
or egalitarian features of a political system) but simply to the sorting
of individuals into different sets which are characterized by their re-
lation to a state. The following diagram graphically symbolizes three
different types of orders for three states A, B and C.
A B
C
A B
C
A B
C
The simplest order is that of territorial sovereignty. Each state rules
a particular stretch of land and everybody who happens to be in that
land is, in an elementary way, subject to that states monopoly of
violence. States generally also claim the right to make laws that are
binding for anybody who is in the territory even for a short time.
Exceptions do exist but they are few and well-dened. Apart from sit-
uations of military conict, these exceptions result from legal norms
or coordinated actions of the international community of states rather
than from uncoordinated policies of individual states. Foreign diplo-
mats enjoy a special immunity that partially exempts them from the
rules of territorial sovereignty as they apply to persons. Exceptions
with regard to unique sovereignty over a territory may occur after
a war when one or several victorious powers occupy the aggressor
state (as was the case with Germany and Austria after the Second
World War), or when an embattled territory is temporarily put under
the authority of the United Nations. Another unique exception is the
international status of Antarctica which, however, is due to the fact
that there are no permanent resident populations in this territory.
Apart from this continent, the whole land mass of the globe is now
divided into mutually exclusive state territories and all human beings
relate to the state of their present abode as their territorial sovereign.
A substantial body of international law has attempted to resolve any
remaining ambiguities such as that concerning the status of persons
on board of ships in international waters.
The order that territorial sovereignty produces can thus be called
complete and discrete. I dene these two features in the following
states monopoly
of violence
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way: Completeness means that everybody is at any point in time sub-
ject to the territorial sovereignty of a state; discreteness implies that
nobody is subject to more than one state simultaneously. Such an
order can be represented, as in the above diagram, by a political map
of states without stretches of no-mans land or water between them.
However, in contrast with such a geographical representation, this
order can be highly volatile. We can dene the stability of an order
as the average probability that an individual who is classied as a
member of set A in t
1
will be classied as a non-member of this set
in t
2
. Individuals who cross international borders will be subject to
different territorial sovereigns before and after this move.
The second kind of order is that of citizenship in the sense which
is also called nationality. I will use the term nominal citizenship
when I want to distinguish it from the substantial aspect of citizen-
ship as a bundle of rights and obligations that individuals hold in
their relation to a state. Citizenship in the former sense identies
persons in the international arena by using the name of a country
in a manner similar to the use of family names in social interaction
outside the family. Both indicate that an individual belongs to a state
or family, but the name also belongs to the individual; it is a personal
attribute which the individual has the right to carry.
10
If we put in-
dividuals into sets, rst, with regard to their subjection to territorial
sovereignty and then once more with regard to their citizenship, we
shall nd that the sets broadly overlap but are usually not identical.
Foreign residents will be included in the former but excluded from
the latter, while the reverse is the case with emigrant citizens.
Apart from this incongruency, the above-mentioned characteris-
tics clearly distinguish the two kinds of orders from one another.
Firstly, the order of nominal citizenship is more stable than that of
territorial sovereignty, secondly, it is neither discrete nor complete.
Citizenship is acquired at birth and most people never change it dur-
ing their lives. Citizenship is not an ascriptive feature like gender
or race where the immutability of societal membership is empha-
sized by relating it to innate differences of human bodies, but it is
still intended to last for life. All states rules for naturalization em-
phasize this temporal stability by inhibiting frequent change. This
can be achieved by residence requirements, by extended waiting pe-
riods prior to naturalization, by an oath of allegiance which is meant
to express commitment for an indenite future and by denying or
delaying expatriation even after emigration. There are important
political reasons for enhancing stability. The exercise of state power
that turns people into subjects is spatially constrained by the range
of territorial sovereignty, but it does not require all who are liable to
nominal citizenship
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obey the law to be bound to the state by any lasting ties of member-
ship. However, any system of government also calls for a durable
relation between the state and those who can be identied as subjects
in a narrower sense of the term. Obligations that states impose on
their subjects can only be enforced when the relation is relatively
stable. Conscription, collecting taxes or enforcing criminal punish-
ment require that people can be identied and that they cannot evade
their obligations by simply moving somewhere else. There is also a
strong democratic argument in favour of stability. Citizens who par-
ticipate in political deliberation or who elect representatives who are
to take collectively binding decisions need a common temporal per-
spective that reaches back into the past and forward into the future.
They cannot form reasonable judgements on political matters unless
they share some experience with past decisions and given institu-
tions of their state. Furthermore, they must also share a perspective
of knowing that they themselves, or their children and others close to
them, will be affected by the decisions they support. In contrast with
republican thinking, liberal democracy allows for a wide diversity of
interests that can be legitimately expressed in political choices. While
in such a polity common interests may be reduced to quite a small
number, there must nevertheless be a common time-horizon for all
interests that are put forward in the process of political deliberation.
While the nominal order of citizenship is more stable over time
than that produced by territorial sovereignty, it is at the same time
less perfect with regard to the criteria of discreteness and complete-
ness. Individuals may be multiple citizens or stateless. These phe-
nomena are widely perceived as irregular. Yet, in contrast with a
breach of the principles of territorial sovereignty, such irregularities
generally do not cause conicts between states and they emerge from
the very rules that guide the allocation of nominal citizenship in the
international system of states. State sovereignty ends where the ter-
ritory of a neighbouring state begins, but it does not necessarily end
where another state claims an individual as a member. Each state
reserves the right to set up its own rules for the acquisition and loss
off citizenship as a core expression of its sovereignty. Statelessness
and multiple citizenship can thus emerge from a conscious policy of
ignoring the rules of another state or as an unintended side-effect of
rules applied separately by each state involved.
Let me give a few examples. Political refugees who want to natu-
ralize in their state of asylum are sometimes denied voluntary ex-
patriation by their state of origin or they are unwilling to submit to
the procedures for obtaining it from the authorities of the persecut-
ing state. Western democracies normally accept that the person will
stateless
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become a dual citizen in this case. Dual citizenship may also result
from rules of optional or automatic admission that are applied by
some Western European states to foreigners born in the country
when attaining their majority or to those who have been married to a
citizen for a certain time. Most cases of dual citizenship emerge from
birth in mixed marriages if both countries involved apply ius sangui-
nis from both parents
11
or result from a simultaneous application of
ius soli by the state of birth and ius sanguinis by the parents state. In
contrast to dual citizenship, statelessness may be the intended effect
of a policy of disenfranchising an ethnic minority or depriving it of
any kind of state protection. Another origin of statelessness is the de-
naturalization of emigrants regardless of whether they have already
acquired their host countrys citizenship or not. Finally, statelessness
may also result from voluntary expatriation. The right to a national-
ity has been established in Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights of 1948 and many states have signed the 1961 United
Nations Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. I think that
normative arguments for avoiding statelessness are strong enough
to warrant making the emigrants right to expatriation conditional
upon another states willingness to naturalize them. However, the
rules of international law still do not provide sufcient guarantees
for preventing the re-emergence of these areas of no mans land in
the international order of citizenship.
What I have called the political concept of society points to a third
kind of order. In contrast to the two preceding ones, this order of
societal membership is not formalized in the legal relations between
individuals and states. Its contours emerge, on the one hand, from
sociological observations about the role the state plays in regulating
the conditions for the individuals life prospects and opportunities.
On the other hand, the order is constructed from a normative point
of view in order to answer the question posed in this paper: Who
can claim a right to inclusion in a liberal democratic polity? As illus-
trated in the diagram above, such an order resembles that of nominal
citizenship because there are overlapping areas, only that here these
are much more extensive. Individuals can be members of more than
one society simultaneously without this fact being reected in mul-
tiple citizenship. At the same time, the order of societal membership
shares the feature of completeness with that of territorial sovereign-
ty. There are hardly any individuals for whom we cannot identify at
least one state to which they are socially tied. Statelessness is not a
condition of cosmopolitan detachment but just on the contrary; it is a
status of extreme dependency upon the protection offered by specic
states without the formal entitlement to claim that protection.
societal membership
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Within the state territory international migration makes the num-
ber of societal members larger than the population of nominal citi-
zens, but smaller than the aggregate of everybody physically present
at a certain point in time. Resident foreigners have to be regarded as
members of society but individuals who are passing through on their
way to another destination or who have come for a short temporary
stay need not be counted.
12
Outside the states territory the number
of societal members may be either larger or smaller than that of emi-
grant citizens. If a state adopts a policy of indenite transmission of
citizenship by ius sanguinis, a third or later generation may still be
registered as citizens of the state where their ancestors have come
from without having any signicant social ties to that country them-
selves. Conversely, an individual may have strong social ties to a state
or depend upon its protection without living there or being one of its
citizens. Two relevant examples may be mentioned as an illustration.
The rst is ethnic diaspora minorities who regard a foreign state as
their national homeland from which they expect protection of their
rights. Frequently, these rights will include that of being admitted
to the territory of that state. Some states recognize these claims and
treat such minorities as ethnic citizens abroad without nominal
membership. Germany and Israel are extreme cases who grant their
co-ethnics not only a right of immigration but also immediate access
to nominal citizenship thereafter.
13
A second example is that of fam-
ily members of immigrants who have stayed in the country of origin,
or of migrants who had to return there after a long residence abroad.
Maybe the most obvious case of societal membership of foreigners
who are neither citizens nor residents is that of second-generation
young people who were born in the country of immigration but were
turned into aliens by ius sanguinis and later had to return to their
parents country of origin, either because their parents demanded it
or because they had lost their residence permit.
14

In its temporal aspects the order of societal membership is cer-
tainly more stable than that of territorial sovereignty but need not be
as rigid as that of nominal citizenship. People can change their social
afliations that tie them to a state several times during their lives
and, coming to a country where one takes up a permanent residence
does not imply a promise or commitment to stay there for good.
Societal membership does not strictly require a perspective which
reaches back into the past and forward into the future (as democratic
citizenship does). The time of residence is no more than a general
indicator for the consolidation of social ties.
Along the time axis, the transition from one societal membership
to another may follow different paths for different categories of mi-
general indicator
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grants. For some, emigration means dissolving their households in
their country of origin and dissociating themselves from that state.
This will be often true for refugees who have little hope of returning
but it may also be the case for some long-distance migrants who con-
sciously choose another state as their home for the rest of their lives.
For these people, migration does not generate an overlapping area
of societal membership. They simply cross a societal border and a
territorial one simultaneously. The number of migrants of this kind
is rapidly diminishing and has probably always been overestimated
for most migration ows. Even for the classical overseas labour mi-
gration from Europe to North America around the last turn of the
century the idea that most immigrants had simply burned the bridg-
es is a misconception. Immigration history is always written from
the perspective of the receiving country and if that country, more-
over, sees itself as a nation of immigrants, cyclical and return migra-
tion simply drop out of sight. For a second group of migrants the
time of dual societal membership may be a transitional period. They
leave family members behind and frequently contribute remittances
to their household budget; they visit their country of origin during
vacations or at least on the occasion of important family events such
as births, marriages, or deaths; they often also plan themselves to
return after having achieved a certain target in savings, when retiring
or when the economic and political situation has improved there. For
some, these plans may work out and their dual membership was a
temporary extension of their societal afliation during a certain pe-
riod of their lives. If their stay abroad has been a prolonged one, they
will, nevertheless, normally also retain signicant social ties to that
country after returning to their country of origin. Others may nally
bring all their close family into the country of immigration and cut
their ties to the society of origin after a long residence abroad. In this
case, the overlapping area forms a passage in a slow but unidirec-
tional shift of membership. An ever-growing number of migrants,
however, acquires a social status as dual members for the rest of their
lives, regardless of whether they stay or return.
Contractarian, libertarian, republican and nationalist
inclusion
I have said above that the political concept of societal membership
emerges not only from sociological observation but also from a nor-
mative perspective of inclusion in a liberal democratic polity. This
seems to lead into a circular argument where the norm of inclusion
liberal democratic
polity
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rst refers to the reality of spatially bounded societies whose bound-
aries are, then, dened by specifying to whom the proposed norm
should apply. I admit that some circularity of this kind appears to me
unavoidable. It mirrors the fact that transnationally mobile societies
do not only overlap but are also blurred at their margins. There is
thus always some latitude for the contestation of societal member-
ship which can only be decided by specifying normative criteria with-
in the context of a particular society. By contrasting the liberal demo-
cratic perspective with alternative ones, I hope to be able to show that
it is not quite so indeterminate as it might seem. No comprehensive
political ideology and system of political rule can do without a po-
litical concept of society that sets a standard for inclusion. However,
rival strands of political thought differ in how they construct their
respective concepts of societal membership.
(1) For a Hobbesian Leviathan the basic relation between individuals
and states is that of subjection to a territorial sovereign. However, as
I have already pointed out above, the dense web of obligations that
binds the subject to the sovereign does not necessarily include every-
body in the territory nor exempt all those living abroad. The question
is how those who are permanently obliged in this specic way can be
distinguished from those who are only temporarily subject to territo-
rial sovereignty. The most plausible answer to this is that anybody
born within the territory has to be regarded as a subject by birth. Ius
soli has its roots in feudal and absolutist systems where the rule over
people is derived from ownership of the land. The basic idea about
the status of foreigners under the latter kind of rule is concisely ex-
pressed by Hobbes:
But he that is sent on a message, or hath leave to travel, is still
Subject; but it is, by Contract between Soveraigns, not be vertue of
the covenant of Subjection. For whosoever entreth into anothers do-
minion, is Subject to all the Laws thereof; unlesse he have a privilege
by the amity of the Soveraigns, or by speciall license (Hobbes, 1973,
XXI: 117).
John Lockes reformulation of the social contract allows for a differ-
ent and somewhat more liberal interpretation that concedes a claim
to protection to foreigners and opens the door to voluntary natural-
ization but still emphasizes their exclusion, as foreigners, from the
commonwealth:
subject by birth
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[F]oreigners by living all their lives under another government, and
enjoying the privileges and protection of it, though they are bound
even in conscience to submit to its administration as far forth as any
denizen, yet do not thereby come to be subjects or members of that
commonwealth. Nothing can make any man so, but his actually en-
tering into it by positive engagement, and express promise and com-
pact (Locke, 1956, VTII, 122: 62-63).
The status of foreign residents is dened as one of non-membership
in both cases. At the times of Hobbes and Locke, the very idea of
society as a conceptual unit for the study of human relations and in-
teraction, independent of a countrys political constitution, probably
made no sense. The notions of commonwealth or civil society refer,
in Lockes words, to a political society constituted by the original
contract of which resident foreigners were clearly not seen to be party.
(2) A political theory which would tie societal membership even
more strongly to territorial sovereignty is the libertarian utopia of
Robert Nozick (1974). Nozicks world is one of minimal states whose
functions are reduced to exercising a territorial monopoly of vio-
lence. Nozick dismisses the idea of social compact (p. 131-132) and
replaces it with an invisible-hand explanation (p. 118-119) of how
such a state might come about from the rights of individuals to own-
ership, self-defence and free association for purposes of protection.
In contrast with an ultraminimal state whose monopolistic protec-
tive agency only protects clients who have purchased its services, a
minimal state protects everybody living permanently in a territory.
So resident foreigners cannot be excluded just because they have
never formally joined and this kind of protective association neither
has the right not to admit them as formal members if they wanted to
join. As far as Nozicks extreme individualism allows for any concep-
tion of society at the level of states,
15
the range of this society should
relate to all residents of a state territory. I refrain from speculating
how Nozick would dene the status of transient migrants and tem-
porary residents. Generally speaking, his kind of theory would maxi-
mize inclusion with regard to territorial sovereignty while leaving
little scope for also taking the social afliations that go beyond this
into account. More importantly, the deciency of the theory is that it
achieves inclusion only at the expense of reducing the substance of
rights, which citizens expect to enjoy in a democratic state, to a bare
minimum.
libertarian utopia
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(3) The republican tradition of political thought has emphasized ac-
tive participation by citizens in politics more than passive recipience
of protection by a state. Citizenship is seen as a set of obligations
more than of rights, as an ofce more than a status.
16
Inclusion in cit-
izenship is not so much connected to territorial residence but to mu-
tual recognition within a community of equal members of the polity
who experience themselves to be the sovereign political authority. In
this approach, the order of citizenship seems to be the only reference
point to which the norm of inclusion can be applied. A republican
conception thus appears to come close to Schumpeters self-dening
populus. However, republican norms of inclusion would still not be
completely redundant. Firstly, they can specify certain features of a
desirable order of citizenship. Republican thought has always strong-
ly objected to multiple membership in different polities, whereas
multiple subjecthood in a Hobbesian world could be perfectly ac-
ceptable as long as it is supported by the amity of the soveraigns. A
person can be the loyal servant of two masters but nobody can simul-
taneously be a full member of two collectives that regard themselves
as sovereign. Secondly, in contrast with the ancient conception of the
polis, modern republicanism has to answer the question: What status
should be given to those who do not qualify as active citizens? Even
if active citizens are seen as an egalitarian political elite among a
broader population, they must refer to a broader concept of society in
their pursuit of the common good. Passive citizenship thus comple-
ments the activist conception as a second and wider frame of inclu-
sion. In this respect, the problem with contemporary neo-republican
thought is not the range of inclusion but the dichotomy of active and
passive citizenship that is overemphasized within this range. Seeing
active political participation and voluntary compliance with civic du-
ties as the core expression of citizenship leads to a devaluation of
the enjoyment of rights and liberties as a merely passive experience.
In contrast, a liberal democratic perspective would emphasize the
enabling and activating qualities of civil and social rights which are
the essential precondition for making democracy representative of a
broad population with widely diverse interests, rather than of a small
and socially homogeneous political elite.
The active/passive dichotomy that tends to split the polity into
two classes of citizens is complemented by a second one that divides
a states population into those included in, or excluded from, the pol-
ity. Republicanism conceives the bond of citizenship as the essential
factor of social cohesion. From classic contractarian doctrines it in-
herits the idea that the mere social fact of residence in a territory can-
not qualify individuals for full membership. This does not rule out a
republican
conception
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policy of encouraging naturalization. Citizenship results from an act
of will and mutual consent, and each naturalization is a particular
instance which highlights and celebrates this general idea that citi-
zens freely consent to their membership. However, the republican
view is incompatible with a attening of the threshold of citizenship
by granting foreigners rights that ought to remain a prerogative of
active citizens only. Voting rights of any kind (even at the local level)
must be strictly denied to those who have not been recognized as citi-
zens. In contrast with Lockes proposal that each individual should
individually decide on her or his membership on attaining the age of
majority (see section Tensions between... below), Rousseaus for-
mula for the social contract envisages a ritualistic mutual conrma-
tion of membership:
Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under
the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate ca-
pacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole
(Rousseau, 1973, VI: 192).
If a common will, rather than a shared experience of dependency and
need for protection, unites the political community, then the act of
will that marks the boundary between foreigners and citizens must
be regarded as truly constitutive for the polity.
(4) Ethnic nationalism is the strongest rival for liberal democracy,
not in the eld of political theory where it has hardly a signicant
following, but in the discursive struggles for political legitimation
that unfold in the public arenas of Western democratic states. The
two competitors have one feature in common: both support a strong
norm of inclusion that applies to a conception of society which does
not coincide with the polity. However, they are fundamentally op-
posed to each other in the way they determine the boundaries of so-
ciety. A nation shares a comprehensive and peculiar culture and his-
torical experiences which reach back many generations into the past.
Ethnic nationalism conceives of the nation also as a self-reproducing
biological group of common descent. In nations like the French or
U.S. American ones the ethnic interpretation that searches for its
origins in some mythical ancestry (the Gauls or the Pilgrim Fathers)
is counterbalanced by others which refer to a historical event of state
foundation (the French and American Revolutions). This political
nationalism comes much closer to the truth, i.e. that it was the mod-
ern nation-state which created the nation as a cultural community
rather than the other way round (Gellner, 1983). However, even this
ethnic nationalism
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version is still fundamentally opposed to a liberal conception of soci-
ety. For nationalism of any kind, the character and boundaries of the
community have been shaped by some irreversible historical process
or event. They are thus given independently of the present shape of
a state territory or the network of social interactions that connect a
population to a state. The nationalist programme is to emancipate
the nation in a sovereign state by uniting its dispersed communities,
by conquering or liberating the territories they inhabit or where their
origins lie, and by assimilating, expelling, or keeping out minori-
ties that do not t into the national community. Nationalism thus
attempts to make the boundaries of territory and of cultural groups
coincide (Gellner, 1983). Nationalisms success is rooted in the drive
for cultural homogenization of populations within state territories
that comes with the development of industrial economies and of the
modern state bureaucracy. Nationalisms failure lies in the prolifera-
tion of rival claims to nationhood that have led to an uneasy truce be-
tween national factions in pluri-national states, to the survival or new
formation of ethnic and linguistic minorities resisting assimilation,
and to chain-reactions of separation into ever smaller states that can
hardly claim to be independent in their economic or foreign policies
(Hobsbawm, 1990).
Nationalisms operate with an imaginary map of spheres of hege-
mony that nations claim over territories and populations. Seen from
the point of view of each single nation, this map resembles that of
territorial sovereignty. It is discrete in terms of populations nobody
can be simultaneously a member of two nations and complete in
terms of territories. It need not, however, be complete for all human
groups: some have been denied the capacity of belonging to any na-
tion or of forming one themselves. This is a characteristic of racism
in both its anti-Semitic and anti-Black varieties. Moreover, the terri-
torial map is no longer discrete when combining the perspectives of
nations that raise rival claims to the same stretch of land.
Inclusion in mobile societies
A liberal democratic norm of inclusion with reference to a political
concept of society faces a paradox. On the one hand, if people did
not move across state borders the whole range of inclusion would be
perfectly identical with that of territorial sovereignty and the very no-
tion of social ties as different from political subjection would become
redundant. On the other hand, once societies become transnationally
mobile, there is no hard criterion for determining individual mem-
bership.
paradox
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We might reassure ourselves that only borderline cases will be
indeterminate. There is no natural threshold in the time of residence
after which a foreigner must be regarded as a member of society.
However, agreement about when a person has in fact acquired a kind
of residential membership should be rather easy to nd if one de-
taches the question in a rst step from its political consequences in
terms of the implied entitlements. It should neither be difcult to es-
tablish a list of indicators that obviously turn a person into a member
of society in a liberal view, although they might not qualify from the
nationalist or republican perspectives: being born in a country and
spending ones early childhood there;
l7
being a member of a house-
hold where one lives for at least several months each year; going to
school or being regularly employed. Other criteria are of a more dubi-
ous nature. Consider for example the frequently heard argument that
immigrants ought to be given the vote because they pay taxes just
as citizens do. However, tax requirements have been generally abol-
ished for the franchise. Why should the political rights of foreign-
ers depend upon their contributions if modern liberal citizenship
has generally dissolved the former nexus between such rights and
obligations of this kind? A more difcult criterion is that residence
must have been legal in order to qualify for membership. Certainly,
a liberal welfare state must be interested in maintaining the rule of
law and, more specically, in preventing the spread of illegal employ-
ment. However, the facts of societal membership depend on the time
of residence more than on legal status. If a state has been unable
or unwilling to control illegal entries, residence and employment,
it ought to consider the claims of those who have been residing in
the country for a long period of time as relevant. This line of reason-
ing could support a general amnesty or an individual procedure for
regularization of long-term irregular immigrants. The implications
of liberal norms of inclusion are more obvious with regard to depor-
tations of legally resident foreigners who have committed a crime.
There can be little objection against expulsion when the crime has
been committed shortly after a temporary admission into the coun-
try. But the current practice of some European states (among them
my own country, Austria) of deporting even young foreigners, who
have committed minor offences, from their state of birth is certainly
indefensible.
This idea of inclusion with reference to membership in politically
bounded societies would fail to provide a satisfactory solution for no-
mads. However, the post-modern metaphor of the new nomads for
modern migrants is completely besides the point when applied to
modern migrants. Nomads do not move as individuals but it is rather
the new nomads
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their societies which move. Social structures, and the individuals
positions in them, are generally rigidly xed. This creates a kind of
societal membership which is dissociated from territorial location.
Contemporary migrations show hardly any resemblance with those
societies whose movement in space does not expose their internal
structure to change. Modern states are strictly tied to a territory not
only with regard to their boundaries but even in their microstructure
of local administrations. Societies, however, become mobile in the
transition from the agrarian to the industrial age and this territorial
mobility increasingly affects large majorities. The process is like the
transition of a liquid matter into a gaseous state with the effect that
the rapid movement of molecules can no longer be contained within
the old vessel. International migration expands mobile societies be-
yond the borders of territorial states. This does not dissolve the bor-
ders; it even leads to their fortication in attempts to enforce political
control over the movement of people, but it changes the composition
of society as well as internal social and cultural structures. In demo-
cratic political systems this change must be reected in the member-
ship composition of the polity as well as in the public recognition of
specic interests of migrants.
From the perspective of individual migrants, the difference be-
tween their situation with that of nomads is that their homes do
not move along with them but they have to leave them in search of
new ones.
18
Two different types of migration result from this, none
of which resembles nomads: those who have lost their membership
without gaining a new one and those who have retained it until, or
even after, they have found a new one. For the latter group, three
policy propositions can be derived from the liberal norm of inclu-
sion: optional naturalization, toleration and recognition of dual citi-
zenship and residential citizenship, i.e. equal basic rights for all resi-
dents independent of their nominal citizenship.
The former category is that of refugees. In refugee policies norms
of admission must precede and supplement those of inclusion.
Refugees can raise a claim to be admitted because they have been de-
prived of membership whereas family members of immigrants can
raise similar claims that are based on their existing ties of member-
ship. I think that both claims are strong and there is no need to give
general priority to one or the other.
19

The question as to which norms of admission could be defended
from a liberal democratic point of view goes far beyond the scope of
this paper.
20
Here I only want to point out that the perspective of in-
clusion may be widened in order to address one of the most difcult
normative problems of refugee policies. The problem can be stated
three policy
propositions
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generally as that of unallocated state obligations (see ONeill, 1991).
One may easily agree that those who have been deprived of their
states protection and have left that states territory can raise indi-
vidual claims towards liberal democracies to receive protection there.
However, which is the one state, among all possible states of asylum,
that is obliged to honour this claim? Virtually all states of Western
Europe have now adopted the principle that it is only the rst state on
the asylum seekers route where he or she could le an application
for admission. Yet this principle of rst country of asylum obviously
leads to an inequitable distribution of obligations and burdens and
means that large numbers have no chance to be admitted into those
countries where they could be most easily accommodated. Even the
fact that refugees may already have close family members in some
European state is deliberately ignored in order to curb the inows.
After serious consideration one can come to the conclusion that quite
often the same circumstances that drive refugees to seek specic des-
tinations should also be given some weight in deciding whether a
particular state rather than another one ought to admit them. Among
such factors may be: economic prosperity which enhances immigra-
tion capacities, a common history (often that between a former colo-
ny and its colonizing state), cultural ties such as a common language
or religion, economic or political involvement of the target state in
the state of origin and, nally, geographical proximity. The logic of
inclusion might in all these circumstances be extended beyond the
boundaries of societal membership in order to determine the special
obligations of receiving states. There will be many remaining catas-
trophes such as the present one in Rwanda where only a joint effort
by the international community and a commitment to cooperate in
schemes of burden-sharing will be an adequate answer to a refugee
crisis. However, in a world of sovereign states, special obligations
always carry more weight than those that fall upon the community of
states.
These rather sweeping generalizations do not exclude the pos-
sibility that there are, or will be in the future, new nomads whose
inclusion in territorial states raises a different set of problems. It is
quite possible that we may see the emergence of tightly-knit ethnic
groups who develop a nomadic way of life because they adapt in this
way to special niches in a global economy. However, in most cases,
those who are perceived as nomads in Western societies are sim-
ply forced to move because they are not allowed to stay anywhere.
Central Europes Romanies have been often quoted as an example
for the former category, i.e. as an ethnic group whose nomadic be-
haviour results from a mutual reinforcement of cultural traditions
forced movement
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with a specialization in certain trades. Today, however, they clearly
nd themselves, once again, in the latter situation of people who
are forced to cross borders in order to escape racist discrimination
or miserable economic conditions. What often distinguishes them
from refugees with similar motives is that they have learned not to
expect protection from state authorities and consequently frequently
resort to irregular routes of entry. Without societal membership ac-
quired through continuous residence and without seeking protection
by a state, how can they be included in a liberal democratic polity?
The answer probably lies in the difcult task of combining a general
improvement in their social conditions with respect for cultural dif-
ferences and with the recognition of special minority rights, includ-
ing an extended right to travel across borders.
The overall direction of policies suggested in this section can be
characterized as an enrichment of liberal democratic citizenship
with transnational elements. How does this compare with the supra-
national citizenship of the European Union that has been strength-
ened by a number of provisions in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty? In
addition to existing protection against the discrimination of citizens
of other member states with regard to civil and social rights, the trea-
ty creates three new rights, two of which penetrate into traditional
spheres of national sovereignty. These are: equal active and passive
voting rights for resident citizens of other member states in local
elections and in elections for the European Parliament (Article 8b),
diplomatic protection of European Union citizens in third countries
by the representatives of other member states if there is no represen-
tation of their own state (Article 8c) and a right to petition European
Parliament (Article 8d). The most essential rights conferred by EU
citizenship are, however, those of free movement across internal
borders and of settlement and access to employment for EU resi-
dents in other member states. Such rights to admission go beyond
imperatives of inclusion derived from societal membership. In other
aspects, European Union citizenship has remained decient with re-
gard to this same norm. There is as yet no generalized option of natu-
ralization for EU citizens in other states of the Union. Cases of multi-
ple citizenship have strongly increased in number, some states have
recently changed their laws and have abandoned the requirement to
renounce a previous citizenship on naturalization and there are at-
tempts at the level of the European Council to eliminate obstacles to
the toleration of multiple citizenship which have been enshrined in a
1963 convention. However, so far there is no policy of harmonizing
and liberalizing citizenship laws at the level of the Union.
liberal citizenship
with transnational
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The most glaring discrepancy between the supranational model of
European Union citizenship and the transnational approach which I
try to defend concerns the exclusion of third country aliens. Only
those foreigners who are nationals of a member-state are also recog-
nized as members of the wider community and can enjoy the new
rights conferred by citizenship of the Union. Constitutional amend-
ments have become necessary in several member states in order to
extend local voting rights and access to employment in the civil ser-
vice to all Union citizens. By simultaneously conrming the exclu-
sion of extracommunitari from these rights, the states of the European
Union have actually moved away from a liberal democratic model of
inclusion.
21
Instead of widening the range of inclusion beyond the
combination of national citizenships, EU membership has been con-
structed by using them as the elementary building blocks. It links the
separate columns of national citizenship by developing the common
structure of a roof above them. The foundations of residential rights
for all remain as low, and spaces between the columns as empty, as
before, only that now these gaps have become much more visible as
an element in the design of the building. It looks like the lofty struc-
ture of a Greek temple rather than like the much-quoted European
house that would accommodate all who live on this continent in its
many rooms.
A general objection might be raised against my model. Inclusion
of migrants will increase the internal heterogeneity of political com-
munities and could thereby diminish social resources for solidarity
among its members. If those who have not been born and raised in
the society, and who have not pledged their commitment by naturaliz-
ing, are given equal rights of membership, will this not further strain
the attenuating sense of mutual obligations in modern societies? I
readily concede that it is generally easier to foster such motivations
within homogeneous and immobile communities. However, I do
not think that this argument provides support for maintaining pres-
ent forms of exclusion. Firstly, it could also have been used against
the dismantling of gender, race and class barriers which had main-
tained a high level of homogeneity among the citizenry for a long
time. Achieving the minimum levels of social welfare throughout
society which are essential for participatory citizenship was relative-
ly easy in earlier forms of democracy, when citizens were a socially
rather homogeneous group. This has become a much more difcult
task in modern welfare states where it requires extensive redistribu-
tion. Secondly, the exclusion of immigrants from rights of citizen-
ship reinforces their social segregation within receiving societies. It
makes these societies more unequal and their democratic systems
increase of internal
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less representative over time. Thirdly, cutting back immigration can-
not be accepted as a long-term strategy to increase homogeneity for
both pragmatic and normative reasons. The acceleration of territorial
mobility is inherent in the process of modernization. Contemporary
democracies have to accept this as a fundamental condition of mo-
dernity which will undermine their bases of legitimacy unless they
adjust to it. This does not mean denying the necessity or legitimacy
of immigration control, but it does imply that such control must it-
self be constantly scrutinized for how well it complies with universal
human rights and with specic rights that can be derived from exist-
ing ties of membership.
Tensions between inclusion, equality and consent
Inclusion is not the only relevant norm for the allocation of member-
ship status and rights in liberal democratic polities. After discussing
the range of claims to societal membership let me now turn to the
question as to how such wider inclusion could affect the two other
norms for the allocation of membership in liberal democratic poli-
ties: the norms of equality and choice.
The liberal idea of equality is much stronger with regard to the
polity than with regard to society. As citizens, individuals must be
treated with equal respect and concern (Dworkin, 1977), no matter
how unequal they may be in their social status. This equality of citi-
zenship rests on a foundation of basic individual rights, such as those
of equal status in court, equal entitlement to school education or vot-
ing rights. However, not all rights of citizenship are perfectly equal
and individual. The wider the social range of inclusion becomes, the
stronger becomes the urgency to take social inequalities and differ-
ences into account by differentiating rights according to social posi-
tions and groups. Citizenship in a multi-ethnic welfare democracy
is a complex bundle of equal individual rights, as well as of highly
differentiated collective ones. Nevertheless, the norm of equality pro-
vides the yardstick. A justication of collective rights must show that
they contribute towards equalizing the standing of individuals in the
polity. In contrast with Hannah Arendts strict division between the
polity as the sphere of equality, and society as that of discrimination
(Arendt, 1958), a liberal democratic approach uses political instru-
ments for combating social discrimination. This ght is a precondi-
tion for including discriminated groups as equal citizens in the pol-
ity. The norm of equality is thus in a relation of productive tension
rather than of contradiction or identity with that of inclusion. Wider
equal polity
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inclusion transforms simple into complex equality (Walzer, 1983:
330), while liberal equality drives formal inclusion in terms of legal
status towards substantial inclusion in terms of positive rights.
Equality thus implies, rst and most obviously, that the status of
nominal citizenship is a homogeneous one. Distinctions between le-
gal categories of citizens that exclude some from the enjoyment of
basic rights are not permissible (with the three exceptions of minors,
convicts and mentally handicapped mentioned above). This is a rath-
er recent achievement. Until not so long ago, a number of Western
democracies distinguished citizens according to their country of
birth or their mode of acquiring citizenship. In France naturalized
citizens were excluded from public ofces until as late as 1983. Only
last year Belgium abolished the distinction between naturalisation
ordinaire and grande naturalisation which reserved voting rights to
those who had passed the second admission procedure. An example
of largely symbolic signicance is that in the USA only a native-born
citizen can become President.
The more important question is: In which ways does the norm
of equality extend beyond nominal citizenship and territorial resi-
dence? The bundle of rights enjoyed by emigrant citizens can never
be the same as that of citizens living in the territory. Too many ele-
ments of citizenship are conditional upon residence. Emigrants will
also require specic rights that only concern them, such as diplo-
matic protection by their country of citizenship or the right to return
to this country. However, monetary entitlements of social citizenship
and voting rights can also be exercised while staying abroad. Social
security benets such as retirement pensions are now mostly trans-
ferable between states and bilateral agreements often also allow con-
tributions and employment periods accumulated in other countries
to be added to the claims attained in the country of present residence.
Others, like unemployment benets generally cannot be transferred
in this way because they are granted under the condition of searching
for a job in a national labour market. Traditional states of emigra-
tion often not only discourage expatriation but also try to integrate
emigrant citizens actively into the polity by granting them the right
to participate in national elections. From the point of view of liberal
democracy this may be seen as an ambiguous achievement. On the
one hand, retaining ones citizenship voluntarily when living abroad
can be taken as an indicator of subjective afliation and possible in-
tentions of returning which give some credibility to the claims of
emigrants to be included in elections on equal terms. On the other
hand, most among them will not be affected by the decisions taken
by their representatives in parliament and they cannot participate
nominal citizenship
and territorial
residence
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fully in public political discourse and deliberation before elections
and referenda. There is certainly some scope for reasonable differ-
ence of opinions on this. States with a long tradition and constant
stream of emigration will have stronger reasons for enfranchising
emigrant citizens than nations of immigrants. In this respect, the
limit to acceptable diversity in this regard should be that subsequent
generations born abroad might have a claim to their parents citizen-
ship but certainly not to representation in political decision-making
if they have never lived in the country.
The norm of equality applies much more extensively to resident
foreigners than to emigrant citizens.
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This means that foreigners do
not just enjoy protection and rights in their host states (as is already
implied by John Locke in the above citation), but that the rights of
resident citizens provide the benchmark for the normative evalua-
tion of their claims. This idea could be operationalized as a constitu-
tional principle: There ought to be a general presumption in favour
of the equal treatment and rights of foreign residents and citizens
unless expressly decided otherwise by legislation. Furthermore, no
such discriminatory exception should be derived from criteria such
as national, ethnic, or racial origins. This seems to conform to
the current interpretation of the equal protection clause in the U.S.
American constitution. However, most continental European consti-
tutions still do not support such a principle but assume the contrary,
i.e. that foreigners will be unequal with regard to public law unless
their rights have been explicitly legislated. Only in the realm of pri-
vate law is there a general presumption of equality independent of a
persons citizenship.
Listing all the different areas of legal discrimination of foreign
residents in European countries of immigration would take up too
much time and space. I will thus concentrate on the issue which
is probably the most controversial one from the point of view of a
normative theory of democracy. This is the question of voting rights.
Voting rights for foreigners in general and state elections have a ven-
erable tradition which starts with the French revolution. In the USA
in the 1880s, 18 states granted alien suffrage to foreigners who had
simply led a declaration of intent to naturalize. These voting rights
were only nally abolished after the First World War (Ueda, 1982:
128f.). Today, New Zealand is the only country I know of that grants
foreign citizens a general franchise in national elections. Others like
Great Britain, give, however, such rights of political participation to
a large number of non-citizens from Ireland and Commonwealth
states. In Sweden, plans to introduce national suffrage for foreigners
were seriously considered in the 1980s but were later abandoned.
voting rights
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Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, the Irish
Republic and the Swiss cantons of Neuchtel and Jura do, however,
grant active and passive local voting rights to foreigners. In France
and Germany, an extensive debate during the 1980s ended with a
defeat of the proponents of local franchise for foreign residents.
Local voting rights have been proposed or defended with the ar-
gument that municipalities, in contrast with provincial or national
parliaments, do not exercise legislative functions. This would imply
that foreigners could only be admitted for second-rate political par-
ticipation. I think there is a much stronger argument for a specic
priority of access to the local vote. Firstly, just as nominal citizens,
foreigners do not formally choose to be members of a certain local
community; membership results automatically from residence. It
therefore makes sense to also derive the rights of active participation
directly from that fact of residence rather than from nominal citizen-
ship. Secondly, in contrast with nation-states, local communities are
without proper borders. They are open for access to anybody who has
a right to live in the national territory, citizens and foreigners alike.
23

Local democracy does not have to operate under the same constraints
of bounded territorial sovereignty as democracy at the national level.
This shows that, ultimately, the control over the movement of people
is also no necessary condition for democratic legitimacy within ter-
ritorial states. A further implication of this view is that municipalities
are no longer seen as merely the local sub-units of a single sovereign
political power, but on the contrary. They are political communities
of a particular character whose rights to local self-determination of
their own affairs under democratic control of their own citizenry can
be seen as an important contribution towards making representative
democracy less indirect.
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Thus, the justication for equal political
rights of foreigners at the local level could enhance rather than de-
valuate this form of citizenship.
Still, this argument does not fully satisfy the criterion of demo-
cratic legitimation. There is no reason to assume that local decisions
affect foreigners more than national ones. Just on the contrary, their
specic discrimination as aliens is rooted in national legislation and
this seems to provide a strong argument for also including them in
parliamentary elections. I think that this demand is irrefutable from
a liberal democratic point of view, as long as we only apply the norms
of inclusion and equality.
It is at this point that we have to consider whether contractar-
ian and republican arguments still carry some weight when deciding
about the rights of resident foreigners. In my view, they fail to pro-
vide any reason for denying long-term immigrants the quintessential
second-rate political
participation
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right which enables them to claim substantial equality with citizens:
the right of permanent residence (which in a wider sense includes
the right to family reunication and to return after a temporary stay
abroad). Once this is granted, the scope for redening the rights of
citizenship so that they become rights of residents instead has been
considerable extended. Why would this not also apply to national vot-
ing rights? The answer is that nominal citizenship would then no
longer make any difference. But why should it? What is the value of
a status that merely serves to discriminate against some residents?
The basic idea captured by contractarian and republican doctrines
is that the status of citizenship is not only inclusive and egalitarian,
but also expresses consent. As I have stated in the rst section, demo-
cratic legitimacy is based on rational consent, but not necessarily on
active, direct, and explicit consent of each individual with each collec-
tive decision by which she or he is affected. In some theories, political
legitimacy is achieved by hypothetical consent only. Representative
democracy requires more than this, although it generally gives only
mediated and diluted expression to popular consent in legislation
and government. Individuals must be empowered to actually express
consent or dissent in a way that has an impact on collectively binding
decisions. Public discourse and deliberation among citizens precede
decision-making by their representatives.
A similar pattern of mediated consent can also be found in the
allocation of nominal citizenship. For contractarian theorists it was
essential to demonstrate that legitimate rule depends upon individ-
ual consent in membership of the polity. Locke was the most radical
thinker in this respect when he stated that
a child is born a subject of no country or government. He is under his
fathers tuition and authority till he comes to age of discretion, and
then he is a freeman, at liberty what government he will put himself
under, what body politic he will unite himself to (Locke, 1956, VIII,
118: 61).
Yet this requirement is not met by any contemporary liberal democ-
racy. Consent to membership is generally not expressed on its acqui-
sition but only on its loss in voluntary expatriation and even then the
choice of exit from citizenship is made conditional upon a previous
exit from the territory and society. In naturalization, on the other
hand, the requirement is heavily biased against the individual who is
not at all at liberty to decide what body politic he will unite himself
to. The choice is restricted to that between the countries of origin
and of present residence and it is normally the state authorities who
consent
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grant admission rather than the applicant who simply chooses a new
membership.
As I have explained above, I think that a strong case can be argued
in favour of enhancing the element of choice by making expatriation
and naturalization symmetrical. Both should be individually chosen
rather than either imposed or discretionarily denied and the option to
change ones membership should be only conditional upon the cri-
teria of residence and societal membership in both cases. Liberalism
increases the scope of individual rights and choice by normatively
constraining the requirement of collective or majoritarian consent
where it threatens to interfere with equal individual liberties and op-
portunities. This should hold for naturalization in the same way as it
holds for expatriation.
However, why should nominal citizenship not be imposed on
foreigners if the norms of inclusion and equality are of overriding
importance for liberal democracy? The answer is obvious, as long
as we assume that multiple citizenship is not generally tolerated. In
contrast with new-born natives, foreigners have a citizenship to lose
which might be of essential value for their life-projects. Their mul-
tiple societal membership gives migrants a strong claim that a natu-
ralizing state must respect their existing afliation and should not
require its renunciation as the price for the ticket of entry. However,
I do not think that choice loses all importance once dual citizenship
has been granted. A receiving state should not naturalize foreigners
without their consent even if their previous citizenship remains un-
affected.
One potential consequence of citizenship which makes the im-
portance of choice obvious is that of military conscription. Not every
state imposes this obligation on its citizens and most states which
do, impose it only on their male citizens of a certain age group.
Moreover, liberal democracies permit conscientious objectors to
refuse military service without forcing them out of the country or
denaturalizing them. Even under these preconditions, I think that
resident foreigners have a stronger reason not to be drafted than
either native or naturalized citizens. U.S. law is rather unique in
making foreign residents liable to be drafted (in case that general
conscription were introduced). This seems to result from a biased
view on immigration that sees the choice of a country of residence
as already implying a decision for the rest of ones life and regards
naturalization as the natural outcome of the process of settlement.
If there is any obligation of citizenship which can be said to require
a conscious expression of consent, it must certainly be that to kill or
die in the defence of ones country. While under certain conditions of
making
expatriation and
naturalization
symmetrical
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emergency, conscription of native citizens may be justied by invok-
ing their hypothetical rational consent without giving them an actual
choice, I believe that no such implication can be inferred from the
fact of residence and societal membership of foreigners.
Apart from this example, the main reason for insisting on the
importance of choice of membership in the polity is the following
one: When applied to migration, liberalisms emphasis on individual
rights and choice means that the long-term political target is to turn
all migration into voluntary movement, rather than to eliminate all
root causes of emigration. Enhancing the scope of choice between
different migration targets is one principle that can be derived from
this guideline. As I have argued above, it applies even to involuntary
forms of migration such as refugee migration. It would be inconsis-
tent with this line of argument to deny immigrants the choice as to
whether they want to become nominal citizens of their country of
residence. The imperatives of inclusion and equality are not strong
enough to override the manifold individual reasons migrants may
have to refuse applying for naturalization. This is only so because
substantial and nominal citizenship need not be strictly tied to each
other. Resident foreigners can be included and enjoy equal rights
without and before naturalization as residential citizens or, in the
terminology revived by Tomas Hammar, as denizens (Hammar,
1990).
In spite of its emphasis on choice, this is not an altogether vol-
untaristic conception of citizenship. Inclusion primarily relates to
an objective criterion of societal membership and makes optional
naturalization only available to persons who have entered this range
just as voluntary expatriation is only offered to those who have
moved out of it. The same criterion also prevents that the toleration
of dual citizenship could lead to an accumulation of memberships
which no longer correspond to a social involvement of individuals in
the affairs of the polity whose members they are. Neither is mutual
consent replaced by unilateral individual choice. It is still the politi-
cal community which grants naturalization and thereby expresses its
consent. What changes with the move from discretionary to optional
naturalization is the sequence of interaction. In the usual procedure,
the last word is said by the authorities of the receiving state after the
applicant has already documented her or his will and qualication.
In optional naturalization, the state rst lays down the rules for eligi-
bility and the nal decision is then the applicants.
This still does not fully answer the question where the impor-
tance of the choice lies if it does not imply any consequences for the
legal status and rights of those who have to choose. I think that there
denizens
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are two different answers to this question and each of them seems
to me defensible from a liberal democratic point of view. The rst
answer could be called a liberal-communitarian one. It would afrm
that in spite of reasons for differentiating certain obligations such
as military service between citizens and foreigners, there is indeed
no reason for differentiating citizenship rights. This means that in
addition to all the rights foreigners have already been granted in dif-
ferent countries, they ought to enjoy the full franchise as soon as they
satisfy the general conditions of residence. This total equalization of
rights need not deprive the status of nominal citizenship of any at-
traction and meaning. It would retain its symbolic value as a formal
expression of membership in the polity, whereas the others would be
only informal members. Immigrants could choose this status as an
expression of their commitment to their society of residence. Indeed,
we can assume that an equalization of rights before naturalization
will strengthen such feelings of commitment and compensate for
the decline in instrumental rationality of naturalization.
25
. As long
as a sufcient number of immigrants can be motivated to make a
voluntary choice in favour of naturalization, there is little reason to
abandon the nominal distinction between foreigners and citizens,
even though it might have turned into a largely symbolic one. One
might object that commitment of a purely symbolic nature is always
likely to assume a nationalist tinge. However, opting for naturaliza-
tion under conditions where full rights can also be enjoyed without
taking this step would express a rather harmless kind of patriotic
pride in the achievements of a liberal democratic polity.
There may be reasonable disagreement about such a total dis-
sociation of legal status and rights of citizenship. If the essence of
democratic legitimacy lies in the kinds of rights that it establishes for
citizens, should not admission to the polity be more than a merely
symbolic inclusion into the community whose process of demo-
cratic decision-making establishes and conrms the validity of these
rights? After all, individuals are actively involved in democratic legiti-
mation as members of the polity rather than of society. A collective
constitutes itself as a polity distinct from society by institutionalizing
democratic deliberation at the highest level of sovereignty. Should
this not be reected in making the suffrage at this level conditional
upon a decision to become a member of the polity for all those who
had previously been a member of a different polity? Again, I think
there are some drawbacks in this argument. The most important one
is that if the incentives for naturalization are not strong enough, a
large percentage of the population in societies of immigration might
remain permanently excluded from the most important mechanism
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of democratic legitimation. However, under ideal conditions of op-
tional naturalization, there is little reason to fear such an outcome.
This solution, which we could call liberal-republican, would there-
fore be equally permissible as the liberal-communitarian one. In any
case, both solutions go far beyond present policies of inclusion in all
Western democracies. There is considerable scope for a simultane-
ous improvement of records along all three normative dimensions of
inclusion, equality and consent before one reaches the point where
tensions between them might manifest themselves as dilemmas.
Conclusions
I have argued in this paper that the norm of inclusion is central to
a liberal understanding of democracy and that it refers to a concept
of society that is wide enough to include foreign residents and their
family members abroad as well as emigrant citizens. Nonetheless, in-
clusion is not the only relevant norm for liberal democracy. Equality
of membership and of rights in the polity, and consent expressed
in political deliberation and in agreement to membership are of the
same signicance.
Inclusion and equality may come into conict when individuals
enjoy a common status of membership, but unequal rights or, in-
versely, when they enjoy equal rights, but unequal nominal status.
While the former tension develops with the accumulation of collec-
tive rights in addition to individual ones, the latter one results from
the extension of citizenship rights beyond nominal membership in
the polity. Both these outcomes can be well justied in a liberal ap-
proach.
Inclusion comes into tension with consent already with the auto-
matic attribution of citizenship at birth. The conditions of consent in
membership can, however, be restored by making both expatriation
and naturalization optional. This may diminish formal inclusion of
resident foreigners compared with a solution that would attribute a
status of citizenship automatically after some time of residence. But
that latter policy would ignore the specic interests and autonomous
choices of immigrants. So the balance seems to be well-drawn in the
way that I have suggested.
Finally, equality and consent seem to conict with each other if
equal rights can be had without any conscious decision for member-
ship. However, as I have argued, even this radical solution would not
make the choice of membership meaningless. A different position
that insists on tying national voting rights to nominal citizenship
conicts
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seems to be equally defensible within a framework where resident
foreigners can freely choose to be naturalized.
None of these solutions takes fully into account the situation of
those who have not, or not yet, achieved full societal membership.
Transient and temporary migrants as well as those who have just
arrived but intend to stay will not be fully included, will not enjoy
completely equal rights, and will not be offered all the options of
membership. However, in Michael Walzers words, the basic norm
of inclusion requires that they must be set on the road to citizen-
ship (Walzer, 1983: 60).
At rst sight, the overall distribution of rights and legal status in
liberal democracy, which emerges from our normative discussion,
seems to violate all three principles of inclusiveness, equality and
consent. Instead of being a homogeneous status, citizenship is ac-
quired in a different way by natives and naturalized immigrants; it
is different in its meaning of afliation to a polity for single and dual
citizens; it is different in its substance of rights for emigrant citizens,
for temporary immigrants and for long-term residents. Nevertheless,
this multi-layered structure of citizenship can be regarded as a conse-
quence of combining the three norms and applying them to a world
where societies have become mobile across state borders. However,
the very same principles which can justify such distinctions also
point to many obstacles which ought to be removed from the path to
citizenship before the terms of admission can be regarded as fair.
Notes
* This contribution draws on arguments developed at more length in a
forthcoming book: Transnational Citizenship. Membership and Rights in
International Migration, Edward Elgar, Avebury, UK, 1994. It was rst pre-
sented at a panel organized by Joseph Carens at the 90th Annual Meeting
of the American Political Science Association, 14 September in New York.
Amy Gutmans critical comments at the conference stimulated some clari-
cations in revising the paper. Credits are also due to Ulrike Davy for chal-
lenging me to elaborate the apparent contradictions between a strategy of
equalizing rights for foreign residents and citizens and one of making natu-
ralization optional.
1 The last relics of gender discrimination in Western European systems of
franchise have been abolished with the recent introduction of full voting
rights for women in the Swiss canton Appenzell-Innerrhoden. The problem
of denaturalization of ethnic minorities is still acute in some newly democ-
ratized states of Central and Eastern Europe. In June, the Latvian parliament
adopted a citizenship law that would make 500,000 ethnic Russians who
have immigrated after 1940 stateless until the year 2000. (The Latvian presi-
guiding principles
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dent objects to the law which has not yet come into force.) In July, the Czech
republic turned 70,000 Roma into a stateless minority because they had not
applied in time for citizenship of the new state.
2 John Stuart Mill, for example, denounced the exclusion of women but de-
fended a franchise limited to taxpayers and a system of plural votes for
citizens with a higher education (Mill, 1972, On Representative Government,
chapter 8).
3 As regarded by legal positivists (see de Groot, 1989: 10-17).
4 Joseph Carens has objected that [a]fter a while, the terms of admission be-
come irrelevant (Carens, 1989: 44).
5 Article 34 of the Geneva Refugee Convention obliges states of asylum to
facilitate the integration and naturalization of refugees and to reduce the
costs of the procedure as far as possible. A number of signatory states take
this into account by reducing the required period of residence prior to the
naturalization of refugees.
6 In some Western democracies an option exists for those foreigners who are
not immigrants but have been born in the country, or for immigrants who
have married a citizen.
7 Canada and Australia are probably the two countries of immigration that
today come closest to this model of optional naturalization. The Canadian
Citizenship Act includes ordinary naturalization in a section under the title
The Right to Citizenship. Article 5 of the Act species that the Minister
shall grant citizenship to any person who meets the requirements whereas
the Minister may, in his discretion, waive on compassionate grounds some of
these requirements in favour of the applicant.
8 David Hendrickson points out that in a realist perspective [t]he acquisition
of nationality is a more momentuous step, and it would not be inconsistent
with this formulation to hold that the states discretion is much wider in
deciding upon membership and nationality than in rejecting admission to
visitors (p. 219).
9 A view which has been strongly criticized by Robert Dahl, who insists that
[t]he demos must include all adult members of the association except tran-
sients and persons proved to be mentally defective (Dahl, 1989: 129).
10 See de Groot, 1989: 12-13.
11 This has been an unintended effect of eliminating gender discrimination
in citizenship laws. Until well after the Second World War, citizenship was
transmitted only by the father in most Western democracies. The mothers
membership became then only relevant if the child was born out of wedlock.
12 Apart from being subjected to territorial sovereignty these transients
(Robert Dahl) may certainly have rights towards their temporary host coun-
try but such rights are not based on their societal membership. They result
rather from a commitment to respect human rights when no signicant
ties of membership are involved. This same kind of commitment opens the
boundaries of liberal polities to claims of refugees that their admission is a
matter of right rather than merely of generosity, clemency or expediency.
13 Claims to external ethnic membership can be based on a purely nationalist
line of argument that replaces the political concept of society with that of
a national community of descent and culture. In a liberal democratic view
membership requires ongoing social ties of interaction and communication
and/or dependence from a state for protection. Where neither is the case the
claims to national solidarity beyond borders become spurious.
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14 The German Aliens Act of 1990 has, for the rst time recognized that young
foreigners who had to return to their parents country of origin enjoy a right
to re-immigration into Germany, i.e. a prerogative that has traditionally been
reserved for citizens only. However, beneciaries are dened very narrowly
as those who have spent at least eight years in Germany and have visited
school there for six years, who have sufcient means of subsistence and who
apply for return between their 15th and 21st birthdays and within ve years
after leaving Germany (Gesetz zur Neuregelung des Auslnderrechts, 16).
15 Nozicks theory defends an atomistic individualism only at the level of states
but envisages the ourishing of a multiplicity of associational communities
within that framework (Nozick, 1974: chapter 10).
16 See, for example, Oldeld (1990) or van Gunsteren (1992).
17 The extreme interpretation of ius soli in the USA, which merely focuses on
territorial birth and attributes citizenship automatically even if a child is born
on board an aircraft ying over the territory, need not necessarily be seen as
a model for other countries of immigration. (For an interesting controversy
about the attribution of citizenship to native-born children of illegal immi-
grants see Schuck and Smith, 1985 and Carens, 1987.) For European states
that consider reforming their ius sanguinis laws, it would probably make
more sense to apply ius soli to native-born children under the condition that
one parent has been resident in the country for at least a short period of time.
The solution that seems most attractive to me would be to give alien parents
a choice, whether they want their children to acquire citizenship at birth and
to give the children themselves a second option at an age well before they
attain the age of majority. However, a third generation, i.e. children born in
the country of parents themselves born in the country, ought to be attributed
automatic citizenship. This is the rule of double ius soli which is, among oth-
ers, established in French and Belgian law.
18 This criterion distinguishes migrants not only from nomads but also
from tourists who visit other countries without searching for a new home.
International tourism is a major consequence of the modern revolution in
transportation technology. It strongly affects the economy, ecology and cul-
ture of states but it raises no challenge for their denitions of membership.
In nomadic migration, societies move while individuals stay put within their
structure; in tourism, societies stay put while individuals move. In modern
migration the movement of individuals causes an expansion of the social
basis of membership.
19 As Mark Gibney does when he defends a liberal admission policy for refu-
gees by attacking the U.S. immigration priority for relatives of citizens and
immigrants (Gibney, 1986).
20 I have tried to address this question in two other papers (Baubck, 1994a,
1994b).
21 See Marco Martiniellos contribution in this volume.
22 The third category of persons to whom the norm of inclusion may apply are
those who are neither citizens nor residents. For them there is little substan-
tial equality. They may claim admission to the territory but not many other
rights which they could exercise beforehand.
23 See Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 12
of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
24 The classical statement on this point is Tocquevilles analysis of New England
township democracy (Tocqueville, 1954: chapter 5).
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25 Relatively high rates of naturalization in countries such as Sweden, Australia,
Canada, which grant both easy naturalization and substantial rights for for-
eign residents, seem to provide empirical illustration for this point.
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Locke, John (1956) The Second Treatise of Government and A Letter
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third edition. New York: Harper Torchbooks.
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Mixed embeddedness: (in)formal economic
activities and immigrant businesses in
the Netherlands
*
Robert Kloosterman, Joanne van der Leun and Jan Rath
In the eld of immigrant or ethnic entrepreneurship, several theoretical ap-
proaches have emerged. Some emphasise the cultural endowments of im-
migrants (such as a cultural inclination in certain groups towards risk-taking
behaviour), while others highlight racist or ethnic exclusion and blocked mo-
bility in the mainstream labour market. Other approaches revolve around
issues of social embeddedness, arguing that individual entrepreneurs take
part in ethnically specic economic networks that facilitate their business op-
erations. The economic geographer Robert Kloosterman, the criminologist
Joanne van der Leun and the sociologist Jan Rath have explored these com-
plex interactions along with the array of regulatory structures that promote
certain economic activities while inhibiting others. This innovative approach
dubbed mixed embeddedness emphasises the importance of regulation
and market dynamics. It is more encompassing in that it links social rela-
tions and transactions to wider political and economic structures. Moreover,
it acknowledges the signicance of immigrants concrete embeddedness in
social networks while understanding that their relations and transactions
are more abstractly embedded in wider economic and political-institutional
structures.
Immigrant entrepreneurs and advanced urban economies
The impact of immigrants has very noticeably changed the outlook
of larger Dutch cities in the last quarter of this century. Beginning
with the crowds in the streets, by now this demographic shift has also
manifested itself in the rising number of immigrant entrepreneurs.
Because of this, the four largest Dutch cities (Amsterdam, Rotterdam,
The Hague and Utrecht) have not only acquired a distinctly more cos-
mopolitan outlook (Rath and Kloosterman, 1998b), but have also be-
cosmopolitan
outlook
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robert kloosterman, joanne van der leun and jan rath
come more like other advanced urban economies, such as New York,
Los Angeles, London, Paris and Marseilles, where immigrants and
immigrant entrepreneurs are a prominent presence as well (Body-
Gendrot and Ma Mung, 1992; Barrett et al., 1996; Huermann and
Oswald, 1997). These immigrant entrepreneurs are affecting cities in
numerous and sometimes quite unexpected ways, as, for exam-
ple, by revitalizing formerly derelict shopping streets, by introducing
new products and new marketing strategies (Rath and Kloosterman,
1998a), by fostering the emergence of new spatial forms of social
cohesion (see, for example, Tarrius and Praldi, 1995; Simon, 1997),
by opening up trade links between faraway areas that were hitherto
unconnected through so-called transnational communities (Tarrius,
1992; Portes and Stepick, 1993; Portes, 1995b; Guarnizo, 1996;
Faist, 1997; Wallace, 1997; The Economist, 1998) and by posing chal-
lenges to the existing regulatory framework through being engaged
in informal economic activities (Kloosterman et al., 1998). As for the
latter, contemporary urban economic sociological studies suggest
that immigrants and especially immigrant entrepreneurs play a piv-
otal role in these informal economic activities. According to Portes
and Sassen-Koob (1987: 48), immigrant communities have provided
much of the requisite labor for these activities, have frequently sup-
plied sites for their development, and have furnished the entrepre-
neurial drive to initiate them.
Below, we explore the role of immigrant entrepreneurs in in-
formal activities. We will show that the socio-economic position of
immigrant entrepreneurs and, consequently, also their prospects
with respect to upward social mobility can only properly be under-
stood by taking into account not only their embeddedness in social
networks of immigrants but also their embeddedness in the socio-
economic and politico-institutional environment of the country of
settlement. We therefore propose the use of a concept mixed embed-
dedness, which encompasses both sides of embeddedness to analyse
processes of insertion of immigrant entrepreneurs. Complex con-
gurations of mixed embeddedness enable immigrant businesses to
survive partly by facilitating informal economic activities in seg-
ments where indigenous rms, as a rule, cannot.
With the rising number of immigrants and, more particularly, of
immigrant entrepreneurs in Dutch cities, the issue arises of whether
the small shop run by an immigrant is a step up on the avenue of so-
cial mobility or whether it is located on a dead-end street. Exploring
these forms of mixed embeddedness among immigrant entrepre-
neurs in concrete Dutch metropolitan milieus will eventually allow
us to assess to what extent immigrant entrepreneurship in conjunc-
mixed
embeddedness
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tion with informal economic activities constitutes a distinct trajectory
of incorporation.
We will start with a short overview of recent developments in
immigrant entrepreneurship in the Netherlands. After that, we will
present a more thorough account of mixed embeddedness and its
relationship with informal economic activities. We will then use this
concept to explore a case study of a specic group of immigrant en-
trepreneurs in more depth, namely, that of Turkish and Moroccan
Islamic butchers. Finally, we will offer some conclusions on the re-
lationship between immigrant entrepreneurs and the context of the
receiving country.
The rise of immigrant entrepreneurs in the Netherlands
At rst glance, the rise in immigrant entrepreneurship in advanced
cities seems to be the obvious outcome of, on the one hand, the inow
of immigrants and, on the other, the resurgence of self-employment
in general (OECD, 1992; Martinelli, 1994; Light and Rosenstein,
1995). The share of a particular group or category among the ranks of
the self-employed is, however, anything but a straightforward reec-
tion of its share of the population as a whole. The rate of participation
in entrepreneurship of a particular group of immigrants depends on
the intricate interplay between socio-economic and ethno-social char-
acteristics of the group in question and the opportunity structure.
This opportunity structure which in itself is primarily a function
of the state of technology, the costs of production factors, the nature
of the demand for products and the institutional framework deter-
mines when, where and to what extent openings for such businesses
will occur.
Immigrants in the Netherlands, have found themselves from
a socio-economic point of view in a rather marginalized position.
Despite the fact that the Dutch job machine has been churning out
jobs at a very high rate almost continually in the 1990s, unemploy-
ment among immigrants has remained relatively high. In 1997, when
the Dutch economy was booming, the average rate of unemployment
among immigrants still stood at 18%; whereas only 6.3% of the indig-
enous workforce was out of work. Turks (31%) and Moroccans (24%)
are especially hard hit by unemployment (CBS, 1998). Excluded to a
considerable extent from the mainstream labour market, an increas-
ing number of immigrants have opted to set up shops themselves. In
1986, 11,500 rms in the Netherlands were run by immigrant entre-
preneurs. This number had doubled in 1992 and trebled to 34,561 in
opportunity
structure
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1997, which amounts to about 5.5% of all non-agricultural rms in
the Netherlands. The share of self-employed in the total population
of immigrants from non-industrialized countries rose from 3.3% in
1986 to 7.4% in 1997 (Tillaart and Poutsma, 1998: 40-6).

Figure 1 The number of immigrant entrepreneurs in the four largest
Dutch cities, 1989-97
Amsterdam
Rotterdam
Den Haag
Utrecht
1989
0
7000
6000
5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
1991 1993 1995 1997
Source: Based on van den Tillaart & Poutsma 1998: 186
This spectacular rise of immigrant entrepreneurship has not been
evenly distributed in a spatial sense nor with respect to economic
activities (cf. Kloosterman, 1996; Kloosterman and Van der Leun,
1999). Firstly, immigrant entrepreneurs are heavily concentrated in
the four largest cities and especially in Amsterdam. In 1997 about
40% of all immigrant entrepreneurs could be found in these cities
and about 20% in Amsterdam alone. The rise of the number of im-
migrant entrepreneurs in the four largest Dutch cities is shown in
Figure 1.
This specic spatial pattern clearly reects the demographic
distribution of immigrants in the Netherlands: about 44% of the
population of immigrants from non-industrialized countries live
in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague or Utrecht (CBS, 1997).
Kloosterman and Van der Leun (1999) have shown that the rela-
tionship between demographic trends and the development of im-
migrant entrepreneurship also holds within cities. Neighbourhoods
with high shares of immigrants in their population turn out to be
those with a relatively high number of business start-ups by immi-
grants compared to business start-ups by indigenous entrepreneurs.
1

This relationship suggests the importance of social networks that are
mainly based on the proximity of co-ethnics for edgling rms run
by immigrants.
uneven distribution
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Immigrant entrepreneurship is not just selective in a spatial
sense but also heavily skewed towards specic economic activities.
Lacking in most cases access to substantial funds of (nancial) capi-
tal and also deemed lacking in appropriate human capital (educa-
tional qualications), most edgling immigrant entrepreneurs from
non-industrialized countries can, generally, only set up shop at the
lower end of this opportunity structure, i.e. in markets with low bar-
riers of entry in terms of capital outlays and required educational
qualications. Notwithstanding these ostensibly atavistic characteris-
tics, these markets are part and parcel of advanced urban economies
(cf. Sassen, 1991; Barrett et al., 1996).
As Figure 2 shows, about three in ve of the immigrant entrepre-
neurs in the largest four cities in the Netherlands have set up shop in
either wholesale, retail or restaurants.
Figure 2 Immigrant entrepreneurs in wholesale, retail and restaurants
as a share of the total number of immigrant entrepreneurs
in the four largest Dutch cities, 1997
Wholesale
Retail
Restaurants
0
30
25
20
15
10
5
R
o
t
t
e
r
-
d
a
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T
h
e

H
a
g
u
e
A
m
s
t
e
r
-
d
a
m
U
t
r
e
c
h
t
Source: Based on van den Tillaart & Poutsma 1998: 186
These are not only economic activities that may cater for an ethnic
demand (ethnic foodstuffs, specic clothing), but also sectors where
businesses may be started with, in principle, relatively small outlays
of capital and limited educational qualications. Our research nd-
ings show that immigrants gravitate to businesses at the lower end of
the market (Kloosterman et al., 1997; Rath, 1998b; 1999a).
Low barriers of entry is one side of the coin, erce competition
the obvious ip side in these highly accessible economic activities.
Survival, therefore, is generally difcult and prots can be very low
and in many cases even non-existent. The survival of immigrant
businesses in these cut-throat markets depends to some extent on
specic economic
activities
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the fact that many immigrant entrepreneurs (and their families)
have different sets of preferences still partly rooted in the sending
countries that allow for long hours and low pay (Waldinger, 1996).
Their survival is, however, also possible because of the fact that en-
trepreneurs are embedded in specic social networks that enable
them to reduce their transaction costs in formal but also in informal
ways (Zhou, 1992; Portes and Sensenbrenner, 1993; Roberts, 1994;
Portes, 1995a). Informal practices can thus be seen as an intrinsic
part of contemporary capitalism, especially as the rise of the service
sector contributes to a more favourable environment for small rms
that partly rely on informal production (Castells and Portes, 1989;
Fainstein et al., 1992; Tarrius, 1992; Engbersen, 1997; Kloosterman
et al., 1997; 1998; Rath, 1998b).
Informal economic activities
Informal production encompasses those activities aimed at produc-
ing a positive effect on income (for the person executing the activities
and/or for the person receiving the results), for which the terms of
legislation and regulations (planning requirements, social security
legislation, collective labour agreements, and the like) applicable
to the activities are not being met (Renooy, 1990: 24). Portes and
Sassen-Koob (1987: 31) explain that although this denition encom-
passes criminal activities, the term is customarily reserved for such
activities as those in the food, clothing, and housing industries that
are not intrinsically illegal but in which the production and exchange
escape legal regulation. The informal economy is thus conceived as
a process of income generation rather than a characteristic of an in-
dividual (if only because a moonlighter may have an entirely legal job
at another time of the day). The decisive characteristic of the infor-
mal economy which distinguishes it from the formal economy is the
lack of governmental control (Renooy, 1990: 25).
Although a useful denition, ve observations have to be made.
Firstly, this denition is wholly contingent on the regulatory con-
text and this may differ from time to time and from place to place.
What is informal in one place may be completely legal in anoth-
er. Prostitution, for instance, is completely illegal in a number of
American states but (partly or entirely) legal in other states such as
Nevada or in countries like the Netherlands. Moreover, specic regu-
latory contexts may even create distinct informal economic activities.
By establishing monopolies for the sale of cigarettes, the Italian gov-
ernment inadvertently, one presumes also created the somewhat
income generation
ve observations
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peculiar sight of African immigrants selling cigarettes along major
exit routes in cities. This points to the dynamic character of the in-
formal economy. Activities that are entirely legal at one time, may
turn out to be illicit at another. Only three decades ago, the Dutch
government welcomed undocumented immigrants who were rep-
resented as spontaneous guestworkers (Wentholt, 1967: 189; Rath
and Schuster, 1995: 103). They were duly regularized as soon as they
found a job. Today, the Dutch government perceives undocumented
immigrants as proteers who should be expelled instantly.
Secondly, being contingent on the regulatory framework also pre-
cludes an unequivocal description of the nature and extent of the in-
formal economy. Depending on the rules and regulations one takes
as a point of departure, one may, in one case, describe and measure
the informal economy in terms of money (e.g. the amount of evaded
tax money). In another case, however, the unit of measure could be
in terms of persons (e.g. the number of undocumented workers).
Thirdly, the difference between informal economic activities and
criminal activities is not always easy to make. If certain activities are
illegal under certain circumstances, does breaching of the rules im-
ply an informal or a plain criminal activity? In the Netherlands, legal
actions are taken against people who trade in hard drugs; their eco-
nomic activities are considered as violations of the Criminal Law.
The tax authorities, however, usually consider these same activities
as just another form of income generation and, accordingly, levy
taxes. By the same token, the criminal is entitled to the same kind of
tax deductions with respect to the costs accrued in the process of in-
come generation. Having said this, it can be argued that the risks of
criminal activities are higher and this may affect the strategies of the
(criminal) entrepreneur. However, this makes the criminal economy
at best a special variant of the informal economy.
Fourthly, within one given regulatory context and regardless of
its potential criminal content, it may still be hard to delineate for-
mal and informal economic activities. If an employee of a rm parks
their van without paying the parking fee to deliver a package, should
this be considered as a form of informal production? Furthermore,
no ordinary person of esh and blood is capable of knowing all the
rules and regulations by heart, let alone live by them. Especially in
advanced welfare states such as the Netherlands with its enormous
corporatist legacy of rules and regulations, it seems nigh impossible
to avoid some form of informal production. What is considered to
be an informal economic activity then becomes, to a certain extent, a
matter of arbitrariness.
Fifthly, to examine informal economic activities one also has to
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take into account the ways in which government agencies actually
deal with these activities. Law enforcement is not self-evident nor
does it follow a xed course. This has, amongst other things, to do
with the way in which it is organized. The government may assign
many or only a few powers to enforcement agencies, and/or may
give them the power to establish their own priorities. These priorities
are affected by political decisions as well as the caseload, the inter-
pretation of the job, the motivation and the efforts of the law en-
forcers themselves. The system of law enforcement may undermine
itself when the nancial or other costs of policing the rules become a
greater burden to society or to the industry concerned than taking a
more lenient position. For this reason, the new Labour government
in Britain intended to relax the procedures regarding the employ-
ment of illegal immigrants (The Independent, 29 May 1997). Labour,
moreover, believes that strict law enforcement has deterred many
employers from giving jobs to immigrants and that it has created a
new market for false ID papers. By relaxing the rules the government
tries to prevent such perverse effects. This actual law enforcement
is to some extent dependent on the culture of public administration
in general and the enforcing agencies in particular. Perhaps part-
ly as a result of their plethora of rules, the Dutch have developed a
rather awkward way of dealing with certain infringements: they are
ofcially tolerated as part of the typical Dutch policy of gedogen, a
nigh-untranslatable term that means looking the other way when you
must (The Economist, 12 October 1996; see, for a more sophisticated
view, Blankenburg and Bruinsma, 1994). Most famous (or notori-
ous) in this respect is the Dutch policy towards soft drugs; although
illegal, they are tolerated within certain limits. This same approach
of gedogen is also used towards certain activities by immigrants. The
sale of foodstuffs in mosques in Rotterdam, for instance, provides
the cemaat with important nancial resources which it otherwise
cannot obtain. This sale is illicit but nevertheless tolerated (Rath et
al., 1996). Likewise, the government has designed a quite exible
set of transitional arrangements for Islamic butchers working with
no permits because of the prevailing importance of the sale of hlal
meat. We will turn to this issue in more detail below.
The implications of these observations are far-reaching. Against
the grain of many popular views, there is no sharp demarcation be-
tween the formal and the informal economy. On the contrary,
there is an extensive and ever changing transitional area in which
the formal economy gradually transforms into a more informal one.
How can the emergence of immigrant businesses and their involve-
ment in the informal economy be understood?
implications
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Mixed embeddedness
Embeddedness has become a crucial concept in explaining the suc-
cess of entrepreneurs in general and that of immigrants in particular
(Granovetter, 1985; Granovetter and Swedberg, 1992; Portes, 1995a;
Waldinger, 1995; 1996; Rath, 1999b), in the latter case especially with
respect to informal economic activities as they take place outside the
regular framework (Epstein, 1994; Roberts, 1994). Embeddedness,
however, tends to be mainly used in a rather one-sided way, referring
almost exclusively to the social and cultural characteristics of groups
that are conceived a priori to consist almost solely of co-ethnics.
Using embeddedness in this circumscribed way, neglects the wider
economic and institutional context in which immigrants are inevi-
tably also inserted or embedded (cf. Cassarino, 1997; Rath, 1997;
1999b; Rath and Kloosterman, 1998a). We therefore propose to use
the more comprehensive concept of mixed embeddedness a con-
cept that is much closer to the original meaning of embeddedness as
intended by Polanyi (1957) encompassing the crucial interplay be-
tween the social, economic and institutional contexts (Kloosterman
et al., 1998). In this view, the rise of immigrant entrepreneurship is,
theoretically, primarily located at the intersection of changes in socio-
cultural frameworks on the one side and transformation processes in
(urban) economies on the other. The interplay between these two
different sets of changes takes place within a larger, dynamic frame-
work of institutions on neighbourhood, city, national or economic
sector level. As such, relevant research into immigrant entrepreneur-
ship (and its relationship to informal economic activities) has to be
located at the crossroads of several disciplines (cf. Granovetter, 1994:
453; Martinelli, 1994: 487; Rath and Kloosterman, 1999).
The exact shape of the opportunity structure with respect to open-
ings for businesses that require only small outlays of capital and rela-
tively few educational qualications constitutes a crucial component
in this mixed embeddedness. Market conditions determine to a very
large extent in which segments these kinds of openings occur. These
conditions have to be taken into account to explain (immigrant) en-
trepreneurship. Markets and economic trends themselves, however,
are embedded and enmeshed in institutions (cf. Esping-Andersen,
1990; 1996). Institutions such as the welfare system, the organiza-
tion of markets, the framework of rules and regulations together
with their enforcement, housing policies (impacting on the residen-
tial distribution of immigrants) and also business associations and
specic business practices which regulate particular markets signi-
cantly affect opportunity structures at national, sector and local lev-
interplay
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els (Freeman and gelman, 1999; Kloosterman, 1999; Kloosterman
and van der Leun, 1999; Rath, 1999b).
In the case of the Dutch corporatist welfare state, as in other con-
tinental European welfare states, the opportunity structure at the
lower end is in marked contrast to the United States curtailed
by relatively high minimum wages which choke the growth of low-
value added activities. These low-value added activities include loca-
tion-bound manufacturing such as sweatshops, but also potentially
booming post-industrial personal services such as child care and
housecleaning.
Openings at the lower end of the opportunity structure do oc-
cur even in these highly regulated welfare states as invasion and
succession processes in neighbourhoods affect local businesses
(Kloosterman, 1999). Two types of processes by which openings
are created can theoretically be distinguished, although they tend to
blend in the real world. Firstly, openings are created by the emer-
gence of a demand for ethnic products, such as specic clothing
and foodstuffs. Secondly, long-established, native shop owners leave
neighbourhoods where the number of immigrants rises and they
are replaced by immigrant entrepreneurs. Partly driven by the lack
of prospects as employees, and by the near absence of openings in
personal services, immigrant entrepreneurs in continental European
states ock towards these kinds of opportunities and set up shop in
especially wholesale, retail and restaurants (cf. Body-Gendrot, 1992;
Body-Gendrot and Ma Mung, 1992; Barrett et al., 1996). As we have
seen, this pattern is also found in the Netherlands (Figure 2).
Many of the markets where these kind of openings emerge will
be near saturation given the easy entry and the push to become self-
employed due to exclusion from the labour market. Inevitably, cut-
throat competition will evolve in these already shrinking markets.
Firms that operate in these markets at the lower end of the opportu-
nity structure, compete primarily on exibility of supply and on price
rather than on quality. Hence, the most evident route to survival is
cutting (labour) costs. This strategy, however, is only partly feasible
within the prevailing regulatory framework. If one goes beyond
this framework, by, for instance, evading payment of taxes or social
contributions or by ducking the minimum wage and working-hour
regulations, the room to manoeuvre increases considerably. These
strategies illegitimate as they may be can be very protable, as
production at the lower end of the opportunity structure is typical-
ly very labour intensive. The entrepreneurs may, moreover, tap re-
sources such as social capital. Through their networks of relatives,
co-nationals or co-ethnics they have privileged and exible access
low-end opportunity
structure openings
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to information, capital and labour at relatively little (monetary) cost.
The use of social capital within the current opportunity structure
gives these businesspeople a competitive advantage, both within the
formal and informal economies.
Mixed embeddedness does not only refer to market conditions on
a more structural level. Immigrant entrepreneurs are also concretely
embedded in Dutch society in other ways as they operate in cities
with their own morphology, socio-economic, cultural and political
dynamics as well as in sectors with more or less established traditions
of doing business. Immigrant entrepreneurs in the Netherlands are
predominantly to be found in neighbourhoods with high shares of
immigrants. Due to the particular history of migration in conjunc-
tion with Dutch housing policies, levels of ethnic concentration in
most of these neighbourhoods remain rather low (Musterd, 1997).
This implies that immigrant neighbourhoods in the Netherlands
have a very diverse immigrant population and cannot be equated
with American ethnic neighbourhoods. This diversity may reduce
the possibilities for immigrant entrepreneurs catering for a group-
specic demand by lowering the number of potential consumers in
the vicinity.
Being embedded in Dutch society may also refer to (voluntary or
obligatory) membership of organizations such as shop-owner asso-
ciations (based either on operating in a common line of business or
on being located in the same street). These organizations may pro-
vide mutual assistance and may also furnish a common set of largely
unwritten rules with respect to business practices. In Dutch society,
displaying its outspoken corporatist legacy, these kinds of organiza-
tion are quite important. They tend to protect the insiders the al-
ready established entrepreneurs at the expense of the outsiders
the would-be entrepreneurs by throwing up barriers of entry such
as minimum requirements with regard to the shop interior.
Congurations of mixed embeddedness may be very complex and
manifold. We now turn to a specic case of immigrant entrepreneur-
ship to investigate this mixed embeddedness in more depth.
The case of Islamic butchers
In their recent report to the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs,
Tillaart and Poutsma (1998: 50) counted 360 butcher shops run by
immigrant entrepreneurs in the Netherlands in 1997. These shops
are almost exclusively run by Moroccans (51%) and Turks (38%).
Islamic butchers are located at the lower end of the market where
low levels of
ethnic concentration
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openings are created by vacancy-chain processes of markets in neigh-
bourhoods where indigenous butchers quit the business. In the case
of Islamic butchers, the vacancies are, however, only part of the story.
Islamic butchers cater for a group-specic demand by selling hlal
meat. Islamic dietary laws prescribe Muslims to refrain from eat-
ing pork and animals that have not been slaughtered according to
the Islamic rite. These products are considered unclean (haram) and
therefore strictly taboo.
Consequently, the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Islamic
immigrants, particularly immigrants from Turkey and Morocco,
from the 1960s onwards has had a substantial impact on the mar-
ket for meat in the Netherlands. In the early 1960s, when the rst
Turkish and Moroccan guestworkers arrived, hlal meat was obtain-
able virtually nowhere. This was, of course, due to the then extremely
small size of the market, but also to the fact that there were legal
impediments to Islamic slaughtering. Jews, long-term citizens in the
Netherlands, had already obtained special statutory arrangements for
slaughtering but these did not apply to Muslims. In order to meet
the demand for hlal meat, immigrants from Turkey and Morocco
slaughtered animals illegally. These illegal butchers got caught every
now and then and were ned under the Law on Economic Criminal
Offences.
According to Bakker and Tap (1985: 37), the rst Islamic butch-
ers set up shop in the late 1960s. They started without the proper
permits and in accommodation that hardly resembled that of regular
butchers. The demand for hlal meat rose steadily, however, and in
the 1970s a few dozen Islamic butchers were already running their
businesses. It was not until 1975, that a small number of butchers re-
ceived temporary ofcial permission to slaughter animals according
to the Islamic rite. This interim ruling was replaced two years later
by a more denitive regulation when the Ministry of Public Health
and Environmental Protection altered the Ministerial Order on Meat
Inspection (Vleeskeuringsbesluit) (Bakker and Tap, 1985: 36; Rath et
al., 1996).
In 1985, the total number of Islamic butchers amounted to
224, 138 of which were in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and
Utrecht. Today, the number of Islamic butchers ofcially stands at
340. However, according to the Commodity Board for Cattle, Meat
and Eggs (Produktschap voor Vee, Vlees en Eieren) there are actually
more than 500 butchers, as some Islamic butchers work on the sly
(de Volkskrant, 8 March 1996). Some slaughterhouses supply private
customers too, while meat is also obtainable (informally) from coffee
shops and mosques.
illegal butchers
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Islamic butchers initially catered almost solely for a specic
ethno-religious clientele, mainly made up of Turkish, Moroccan,
Surinamese and other Muslims from other countries. This clientele
can be seen as a captive, but relatively stable market in the sense
that Islamic customers will rarely if ever buy their meat from native
Dutch butchers. Whether this will continue remains to be seen as
some Dutch supermarkets have started selling pre-packed hlal meat
and have thus become potential competitors (de Volkskrant, 27 March
1996).
On the other hand, there seems to be a growing native Dutch cli-
entele. These customers, mostly living nearby in these mixed neigh-
bourhoods, want to prepare exotic meals, are attracted by the low
prices or do not want to queue up in supermarkets. Some of the in-
digenous Dutch customers also appreciate the cutting of the meat in
their presence (Baetsen and Voskamp, 1991: 55-6). Islamic butchers,
however, are still trapped in severely limited markets as many native
Dutch customers do not feel encouraged to enter their shops, partly
because of doubts concerning hygiene.
These limited opportunities for market expansion are reected in
the fact that only a few Islamic butchers are doing well. In the 1970s,
on Fridays and Saturdays, numerous customers queued at their
shops; but these golden years are over as the market has become
saturated with Islamic butchers. Too many butchers set up shop in a
neighbourhood, which subsequently leads to cut-throat competition.
A Turkish entrepreneur wonders:
Who starts a butcher or greengrocers where four others are perish-
ing? I do not understand how they can make a living, really I dont.
But I do know three businessmen who are nearly bankrupt (quoted
in de Volkskrant, 4 June 1995).
This saturation of the market has led to high turnovers and a rela-
tively short average life span of Islamic butcher shops (Bakker and
Tap, 1985: 82). Most do not exist for more than three or four years.
Operating in saturated markets, Islamic butchers are clearly con-
strained on the demand side. They do possess, however, certain
competitive advantages with respect to their production costs in
comparison to indigenous Dutch butchers. Firstly, Islamic butch-
ers can make use of many more parts of a body of an animal than
their Dutch counterparts who mostly only sell legs and haunches.
Secondly, they can keep a smaller range of meat and related products
and they also invest much less money in their presentation and their
shop interior. The Trading Association of Butchers (Bedrijfschap
limited
opportunities for
market expansion
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Slagersbedrijf) a key institution in the eld promoting the inter-
ests of butchers voices the opinion that the shop ttings, the range
of products and the marketing strategy are rather unusual, messy
and old-fashioned. Thirdly, they accept smaller prot margins than
Dutch butchers do.
Faced with stiff competition, Islamic butchers in many cases re-
vert to cutting costs by paying workers off the books, by saving on
investments, or by selling products that are allegedly not in their line
of business like bread and other foodstuffs. They also cut corners by
insufciently observing the Code of Hygiene for Islamic Butchers
(Groeneveld-Yayci, 1996). In particular, butchers reduce labour
costs, rstly, by only employing assistants during peak hours, espe-
cially on Friday afternoon. These predominantly male assistants
females are rarely to be found behind the counter, they do mostly
back-ofce tasks are generally recruited from their own group of
relatives and friends of co-ethnics and are in many cases employed
on an informal basis. Sometimes families enter into an agreement to
assist each other (Bakker and Tap, 1985: 110-12). The rewards can be
in nancial terms, but also payment in kind or in terms of strength-
ening social relationships. The shop assistant, for instance, may be
allowed to bring foodstuffs home, learn the tricks of the trade as an
apprentice or invest in his social relations with his dad or uncle. The
butcher, for his part, gets the opportunity to invest in social relations
with people that might be benecial to his enterprise either as poten-
tial employees, clients or suppliers. This constitutes a clear case of
Portes relational embeddedness (Portes, 1995a).
These informal economic activities are not only enabled by so-
cial networks based on trust, but also by management practices that
contribute to obscuring what is going on in these butcher shops.
There are reports that nancial management is in many cases to-
tally unsound. Financial reserves are practically non-existent, part-
ly due to the cut-throat competition, but also due to the inefcient
way of price-xing. A (Turkish) counsellor working for the Trading
Association of Butchers commented that those people lack the nec-
essary know-how in the eld and just mess around with the meat.
They:
havent a clue about bookkeeping.... A kilo of minced meat for which
they themselves paid six guilders is sold in the shop for eight guil-
ders. They seem to forget completely that they have to pay taxes, lev-
ies and rent (quoted in de Volkskrant, 8 March 1996).
relational
embeddedness
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In the corporatist and highly regulated Dutch economy, every butch-
er is legally obliged to register at the Chamber of Commerce and the
Trading Association of Butchers and is also required to have proper
professional qualications. Exemption from the legal requirements
regarding professional skills can be granted if the applicant supplies
a need that otherwise cannot be lled. Such exemptions have often
been granted. Initially, it was assumed that butchers were eligible
to exemption if catering to less than 1000 Islamic inhabitants in a
neighbourhood. In the meantime, this threshold has been raised to
2000 inhabitants for the rst butcher in an area, 3000 for the second
one, 5000 for the third one and so forth.
2

Butchers-to-be mostly do sign up at the Chamber of Commerce.
However, many of them do not have the proper professional quali-
cations, according to the Trading Association of Butchers. Due to
communication difculties, inadequate counselling and the immi-
grants poor insight into the highly opaque Dutch bureaucracy, many
forget to apply for an exemption, making their enterprise infor-
mal outright. This also excludes them from support by the Trading
Association of Butchers. The Chambers of Commerce are not au-
thorized to close a shop down, while the Economic Control Service
has given its priorities to other matters and does not take rm action
(anymore). De facto, Dutch authorities tend to turn a blind eye to this
kind of informal economic production by immigrant entrepreneurs.
Butchers can qualify for proper professional qualications after
following courses at centres of the Butchers Vocational Training
(Slagers Vakopleiding SVO). Not all of the Islamic butchers who are
aware of this are willing or able to leave their (informal) shop for
these courses. In addition, for many candidates who did follow these
courses, the exam proved to be too difcult. The Dutch language
appeared to be an insurmountable obstacle and the same could be
said for the questions on pork (Tunderman, 1987: 23). In 1975, the
exam was replaced by a professional test on the Mohammedan rite.
3

In the late 1980s, the Trading Association of Butchers announced
that it would provide training specic to immigrants (Tunderman,
1987: 24), but it was not until 1993 that the training really proceeded.
Since then the special policy regarding Islamic butchers including
the right to obtain an exemption from the legal requirements has
entered a new stage. The changes add up to a policy that is suppos-
edly more strict on these matters, although it is still possible to apply
for an exemption if the entrepreneur supplies a need that otherwise
cannot be lled. An Islamic butcher is now eligible to exemption if
the owner enrols in the Butchers Vocational Training and passes
its exam and if the manager receives the Training on Commercial
different forms
of regulation
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Practice (Cursus Handelskennis see Handboek Minderheden, 1994:
8).
Whereas informal production by Islamic butchers is, at least
partly, tolerated by Dutch state agencies, the Trading Association of
Butchers has actively set out to reduce informal production by Islamic
butchers (and thus stamp out, in a typically corporatist fashion, what
is considered as unfair competition). They have appointed a special
councillor and set up a special Committee for Islamic Butchers, the
objective being to bring the Islamic butchers to a higher standard of
quality. By improving communication with Islamic butchers, pro-
moting the Butchers Vocational Training, and by making an invento-
ry of specic problems, the Trading Association of Butchers attempts
to combat informal economic practices. The association has entered
into discussion with the Chambers of Commerce about reducing the
mushrooming of Islamic butchers. Furthermore, they have also
put pressure on the Economic Control Service as well as the Social-
Economic Council to enforce the laws more strictly and put a halt to
tolerating informal economic activities.
These endeavours are hampered by the fact that the Trading
Association of Butchers has not managed to organize Islamic butch-
ers yet. A key-informant of the Association told us that these people
are not capable of organizing. It is not in their culture. Although
this culturalistic statement is clearly at odds with evidence from
other elds (cf. Tillie and Fennema, 1997), it does show that there
is still a gulf between an established and formal institution like the
Association on the one hand and Turkish and Moroccan Islamic
butchers on the other.
Conclusions
An increasing number of immigrants from non-industrialized coun-
tries are starting businesses in advanced urban economies. Lacking
both in nancial and human capital, many of these edgling entre-
preneurs can only set up shop in specic segments of these urban
economies that allow for small-scale, labour-intensive, mainly low-
skill production. In the Netherlands, with its extensive welfare sys-
tem and its relatively high minimum wage, these kinds of openings
primarily occur in wholesale, retail and restaurants.
To survive in these mostly saturated markets, many (immigrant)
entrepreneurs cut corners by engaging in informal economic activi-
ties. This informal economic production can only take place on a
more permanent basis if a framework of trust exists. This trust can
informal economic
activities
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be generated by social networks that are based on either a shared
migration experience or a shared non-indigenous identity. Because
of its link with social capital and its subsequent enabling of infor-
mal economic activities, the embeddedness of immigrants has quite
rightly come to occupy central stage in research into the socio-eco-
nomic aspects of immigration.
Focusing on embeddedness this way, however, tends to cloud
other aspects of embeddedness. Economic activities by immigrants
are situated in a wider institutional context. To a large extent this
institutional context determines on a macro-level the opportunity
structure for businesses in general. Firms are not only embedded in
these macro-economic structures but also in sets of rules and regu-
lations, neighbourhoods, associations and business traditions. To
address the socio-economic position of immigrant entrepreneurs in
general and in particular with respect to informal economic activi-
ties, one has to incorporate this side of embeddedness as well. We
have, therefore, proposed the use of mixed embeddedness to grasp im-
migrant entrepreneurial activities.
We have illustrated this mixed embeddedness by exploring the
case of Islamic butchers in the Netherlands. A complex conguration
of different types of embeddedness emerged. Islamic butchers in the
Netherlands are clearly located at the lower end of the opportunity
structure in openings that are partly vacancy-chain and partly group-
specic (hlal meat) driven. They set up butcher shops in neighbour-
hoods with high shares of immigrants. Low barriers of entry and a
lack of opportunities in other segments funnels many would-be im-
migrant entrepreneurs towards this specic line of business.
The ensuing cut-throat competition in these highly saturated
markets puts pressure on the entrepreneurs to cut costs. This is part-
ly done in informal ways, for instance by selling meat off-the-books
and employing relatives who are (partly) paid in kind or not at all and,
moreover, by setting up a butcher shop without the necessary quali-
cations. This informal production is clearly linked to the fact that
Islamic butchers in the Netherlands benet from being embedded in
social networks that mainly consist of co-ethnics and co-religionists.
These networks generate clients, employees, capital and trust, en-
abling them to start a business and engage in informal economic
practices.
These informal economic activities by Islamic butchers clearly
show the dynamic interaction between different domains of embed-
dedness. Although by denition unlawful, informal production is
to some extent tolerated by government agencies as they consider
Islamic butchers to be meeting a demand that otherwise would not
mixed
embeddedness
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be met. Moreover, some rules and regulations are changed in such
a way that specic informal economic activities become formalized.
The case of Islamic butchers also shows that in the specic corporat-
ist context of the Netherlands, the role of business associations is very
important in embedding entrepreneurs. The Trading Association of
Butchers is much more active in combating informal production by
Islamic butchers than state agencies. Both immigrant entrepreneurs
and indigenous institutions are thus interactively negotiating new
territories and, hence, creating new forms of mixed embeddedness.
These dynamic processes of constructing new forms of mixed
ernbeddedness will be crucial in determining to what extent forms
of self-employment will constitute an avenue of social mobility in
post-industrial Netherlands. Islamic butchers are located in a specic
corner of a stagnant market selling hlal meat in neighbourhoods
with high shares of immigrants. A successful trajectory of incorpora-
tion of immigrant entrepreneurs will after having started on the
basis of being embedded in immigrant networks largely depend on
the way they manage to become embedded in the overall Dutch con-
text. The case of the Islamic butchers shows that this is not a wholly
one-way process nor solely a government affair. Changing the mix of
embeddedness is an open, contingent social process in which many
social actors may take part and on which the insertion of immigrant
entrepreneurs depends.
Notes
* This research project is part of Working on the Fringes: Immigrant
Businesses, Economic Integration and Informal Practices, a thematic
European network for exchange of knowledge and experiences. This interna-
tional network, coordinated by Jan Rath and Robert Kloosterman and funded
by the European Commission under the Fourth Framework, involves both
international comparison and collaboration with regard to research on im-
migrant entrepreneurs in Austria, Britain, France, Germany, Israel, Italy
and the Netherlands.
1 This relationship between the share of the immigrant population and the
ratio of immigrant business start-ups and indigenous business start-ups was
found to be statistically signicant across all neighbourhoods in Amsterdam
and Rotterdam (excluding the centres). By using this ratio, other neighbour-
hood characteristics that may inuence the number of business start-ups
in general (such as the availability of cheap business accommodation) were
eliminated and the focus was solely on the number of rms set up by im-
migrant entrepreneurs relative to those started by indigenous entrepreneurs
(see Kloosterman and Van der Leun, 1999).
a social process
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2 See Handboek Minderheden (1994: 8). Recently it was decided that the Social-
Economic Council had to grant exemptions, but the Trading Association of
Butchers was still unfamiliar with its policy (see Groeneveld-Yayci, 1996).
3 There too, a separate set of regulations was drawn up, which was approved in
1977 by the Ministry of Economic Affairs (see Bakker and Tap, 1985: bijlage
III).
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The mosaic pattern: cohabitation between
ethnic groups in Belleville, Paris
Patrick Simon
In the early 1990s, the demographer Patrick Simon studied the multiethnic
neighbourhood of Belleville, Paris. He analysed how different social groups
live together to constitute a complex network of relations organised around
cultural associations, community services or economic niches. Simon
showed how the various concrete forms of ethnic cohabitation at the local
level cannot be adequately captured by integration models e.g. assimila-
tion, multiculturalism that always refer to the nation. Neither can this real-
ity be understood in bipolar terms such as whites versus blacks. In a local
context, the various social and ethnic groups need to negotiate their position
vis--vis the others and, in doing so, they follow a rationale that is not neces-
sarily compatible with national integration models. The division of urban,
political and symbolic space may, paradoxically, promote a certain degree
of social cohesion, provided that specic conditions be met for a sharing of
these divided spaces.
The image of Paris as a cosmopolitan city is as old as Paris itself
is. However, only in the 1920s and 1930s did Paris earn its reputa-
tion of being a writers city, an international republic of artists, to
quote Alejo Carpentier. It became a centre of attraction for the intel-
ligentsia worldwide.
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After a period of decline, Paris has once again
become a centre of convergence for the worlds elite, a global city
where international executives and nanciers run the global econo-
my and redistribute the worlds resources. The City of Light owes its
cosmopolitan nature not only to its cultural and artistic aura, or to
its role in economic exchanges and technological innovation. It also,
and maybe even especially, owes it to the fact that from the end of the
nineteenth century onwards, immigrants from foreign countries and
from the provinces began to ow in massively, fostering an unprec-
edented economic and demographic boom.
As in all the other international metropolises, immigrants arriv-
a global city
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patrick simon
ing in Paris were sorted and oriented towards different parts of the
segmented city. Throughout the twentieth century, Paris has consis-
tently been a centre of attraction and integration. The 1901 census
shows that, at the time, a little over 9 per cent of the population was
of foreign origin and 56 per cent had been born in the provinces.
In 1990, over 25 per cent of the population of Paris were of foreign
origin. Since 1982, the proportion of immigrants, which had risen
sharply between 1954 and 1975 (from 6 to 14 per cent), has not much
changed. As the presence of immigrants in the city increased, two
main transformations occurred. First, the origins of the migrants
changed as new waves of immigration followed in the wake of those
of the 1920s and 1930s. And second, the citys functional reorganiza-
tion modied their distribution in space (Guillon, 1996). One can
identify a succession process according to the classical model estab-
lished by the urban ecologists of the Chicago school. The Italians,
Belgians and Poles who came in the 1920s were followed in the
1950s and 1960s by Algerian, Portuguese and Spanish immigrants.
Thus emerged the ethnic neighbourhoods, as they are now called,
and as a result, the immigrants became highly visible in the city.
The aim of this chapter, however, is not to provide a detailed list
of Pariss immigrant neighbourhoods, but to study their multiethnic
aspects.
2
One of the most striking characteristics of Pariss ethnic
neighbourhoods is that they bring together people of many different
origins. In addition to ethnic diversity, there is also a certain amount
of social diversity. Indeed, the social and symbolic value of neigh-
bourhoods with high immigrant concentration has changed since the
1970s. Gentrication has led many middle- and upper-class house-
holds to move to immigrant and working-class neighbourhoods. For
these reasons, the bipolar model, such as the whites versus blacks
model, does not really apply to the patterns of segregation and co-
habitation observed in Paris. We must imagine a complex network
of relations involving many different groups that are more or less
organized around cultural associations, community services or eco-
nomic niches, and often circumscribed within a specic area. The
various integration models assimilation, multiculturalism, plural-
ism, melting-pot whose context of reference is always the nation,
can thus be re-examined and contrasted with actual local situations
of ethnic cohabitation. Indeed, by analysing situations from a local
point of view, one can avoid the political implications of an analysis
of social interactions carried out at the national level. By looking at a
neighbourhood, we need not be concerned by questions of national-
ity and citizenship, which are of crucial importance in France. Their
importance there results from the historical signicance of the na-
tion as a political concept in the organization of French society.
multiethnic aspects
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In a local context, social and ethnic groups negotiate their posi-
tion with their own rationale, which often differs from the national
integration model. To quote de Certeau (1986), theirs is a pedagogy
of diversity. We study inter-ethnic situations to analyse the condi-
tions for the creation of new sociopolitical contracts and in particu-
lar shed light on the internal transformations which occur within
a dominant group as a result of the presence of other groups (de
Certeau, 1986: 790-1). To illustrate this point, we have chosen to look
at ethnic and class relationships in a formerly working-class neigh-
bourhood of Paris, the Belleville quarter, which has become today an
emblematic place for several ethnic groups. Our approach is to study
the system of regulation of ethnic differences by examining how ur-
ban, political, symbolic space is shared between different groups that
play an active role on the local scene. We will show how this system,
by ensuring a certain degree of social cohesion, promotes the inte-
gration of the inhabitants into the city, if not into the nation.
The Belleville context
The Belleville quarter, one of Pariss former working-class neigh-
bourhoods, is located in the eastern part of the city. It was urban-
ized at the end of the nineteenth century and its architecture is typi-
cal of working-class areas, with artisan workshops and low-quality
apartment buildings. By the early 1960s, the state of upkeep of these
buildings was so poor that Belleville had become one of the most in-
salubrious neighbourhoods in Paris. The rst massive demolitions,
carried out in 1956, forced much of the native population out of the
neighbourhood. As a consequence of urban renewal, the area ceased
to act as a shelter for needy people, as it had since the end of the
nineteenth century. We have chosen the term shelter in reference
to Bellevilles role in the wider context of the Paris area housing mar-
ket. Indeed, since housing in this neighbourhood was cheap, poor
households still wishing to remain in Paris could, as a last resort,
nd affordable housing in Belleville. The low level of rents was also
due to the neighbourhoods poor reputation. Belleville, home of the
lower classes, was considered a dangerous hideout for criminals and
political troublemakers, anarchists or communists; for this reason,
the area came to represent the epitome of all social ills.
Those who rst came to live in Belleville were the households
evicted from the centre of Paris during Haussmanns renovations in
the 1860s. This population was socially homogeneous: for the most
part skilled workers working in small artisan industries. In 1871,
shelter
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patrick simon
during the Paris Commune, this working-class identity was empha-
sized: the actions of revolutionaries from Belleville gave the neigh-
bourhood the reputation of a hotbed of rebellion, a reputation it has
practically never lost since (Merriman, 1994; Jacquemet, 1984). As a
result, Belleville became a socially isolated area with a strong sense
of its own identity. In the 1920s, Armenians, Greeks and Polish Jews
began to move in. At this time, Belleville became the social and politi-
cal centre of the Yiddish and Armenian communities. Stores, work-
shops, cafs, places of religious worship or assembly, political news-
papers, Zionist, Bundist or communist discussion groups, common
interest groups, Jewish or Armenian trade unions formed a dense
and dynamic network of community organizations (Roland, 1962).
During the 1950s, the neighbourhoods Yiddish period slowly
became history, while a new era of immigration dawned with the
arrival of massive contingents from Algeria; also came the Tunisian
Jews eeing North Africa in the throes of decolonization. This new
wave marked the beginning of Bellevilles North African period. At
the same time, the neighbourhoods social composition was chang-
ing as French workers, who previously lived in insalubrious housing,
moved to the new public housing buildings at the citys outskirts, or
to the suburbs. Immigrants from the transit housing projects or oth-
er forms of temporary housing then replaced them and, as a result,
the insalubrious housing stock remained permanently occupied.
Contrary to what is commonly thought, the departure of French resi-
dents was not caused by the arrival of immigrants; instead, the lat-
ters arrival was made possible by the departure of French residents
and the resulting vacancies. Between 1954 and 1982, in a context
where the overall density of the neighbourhood dropped consider-
ably, the population of French citizens fell to one-half of what it had
been (from 45,263 to 24,654), whereas the number of foreigners
doubled (from 4696 to 9470). The diversity of origins is quite im-
pressive. In 1990, the major groups were Algerians (15 per cent of
immigrants), Tunisians (15 per cent), sub-Saharan Africans (9 per
cent), Moroccans (8 per cent) and former Yugoslavs (7 per cent).
Asians, Turks and Sri Lankans complete the picture of Belleville as a
global village (Simon, 1993).
Added to the diversity of ethnic origins, there has been a recent in-
crease in the variety of socio-professional statuses. Whereas in 1954
the neighbourhood was essentially working class, the professional
prole of the working population is now changing. The gentrica-
tion process began in 1980, after the partial renovation of several old
buildings and the launching of urban renewal programmes. Middle-
and upper-class households moved into new apartment buildings
Yiddish and North
African period
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and into existing buildings that were still in good condition; the nu-
merous new public housing programmes in renovated areas also
attracted new residents. The working-class population fell from 59
per cent in 1954 to 31 per cent in 1990, whereas the proportion of
liberal and upper-level professionals increased from 4 per cent to 13
per cent.
Over a period of 30 years, from 1955 to approximately 1985, the
neighbourhood underwent several population changes. The pace
of these transformations was relatively swift, a fact that partially ex-
plains why the recently arrived populations were able to take over
the areas public space with such ease. Indeed, according to the par-
adigm of Elias and Scotson (1965), established residents strongly
resist the efforts of new residents, or outsiders, to penetrate the vari-
ous spheres of local power. In most cases, the transfer of power from
one group to the other occurs over a long period of time. However,
in the case of Belleville, the massive departure of part of the popula-
tion led to the disappearance of traditional forms of neighbourhood
organization; the loss of original structures made it easier for the
newcomers to take over. This situation occurs quite frequently in
run-down neighbourhoods, before they are renovated (Coing, 1966).
Due to the departure of a portion of the established population
and the ageing of another portion, many small businesses and arti-
san workshops closed and a large share of the quarters economic in-
frastructure was left vacant. Since, due to the neighbourhoods bad
reputation, real estate prices were extremely low, commercial leases
became available to people who in normal circumstances would not
have been able to afford them. At the same time, immigrants began
to purchase property in rundown apartment buildings. The fact that
the native population of Belleville lost interest in the neighbour-
hoods public social life is apparent today in the surprising visibility of
several ethnic groups. North African Muslims and Jews, Asians and
to a lesser extent Africans can be observed mainly in the local busi-
nesses and in the public space. Linked to territorialization strategies,
each group has created highly structured enclaves to serve its own
needs; they represent the organizational basis of ethnic cohabitation.
A fragmented area
Though Belleville as a whole ranks quite low in the hierarchy of
Parisian neighbourhoods, it is far from being socially and ethnically
homogeneous. At the local level, one can observe the same inequali-
ties in the distribution of social or ethnic groups as in the city overall
swift population
changes
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patrick simon
and as in its different parts. Thus, the middle and upper classes live
in the high-quality apartment buildings of Belleville heights, where-
as the working classes and lower level staff live in the nether part
of the neighbourhood, in rundown buildings awaiting demolition.
Between 1954 and 1982, the areas social geography changed as the
demolition programmes progressed. As a result of the demolitions,
the affordable housing space available to immigrants became scarc-
er, while the latters numbers increased. This led to the crowding
of many people into a small area, almost reminiscent of a ghetto,
unmarked by material boundaries but in fact strictly circumscribed,
owing to the pressure of the housing market.
Immigrants ended up all living in the same buildings because
they used family and community networks whose market was lim-
ited. Usually, upon their arrival, Algerian immigrants temporarily
settled in cheap hotels whose managers came from the same district
as they did (Sayad, 1977). Later on, when their families joined them,
they moved to neighbouring ats. A few years later, African immi-
grants followed the same itinerary, though the starting points were
hostels for migrant workers instead of cheap hotels. Community
networks also played an important role in helping immigrants from
former Yugoslavia or Portugal settle into vacant apartments with
their families. The Tunisian Jews were helped not only by family
and friends but also by community associations. The Unied Jewish
Social Fund
3
helped refugees who had had to ee Tunisia during the
political crises the country was going through after independence. A
strategy consisting of channelling the poorest fringe of immigrants
towards Belleville apparently led to the emergence of a Tunisian
Jewish ghetto (Simon and Tapia, 1998). Finally, the Asians moved
into the renovated stock. The latters strategy involved property in-
vestments thanks to collective funding. Furthermore, special aid pro-
grammes also entitled Asian refugees to public housing space.
Despite these channelized migration ows, as B. Thompson
(1983) calls them, buildings are never wholly occupied by a single eth-
nic group. The distribution of apartments among immigrant groups
reects their diversity, except in the case of hostels and cheap hotels.
Thus, at this level, the only really active type of segregation is social
segregation. Housing status is determined by income: there are no
upper-level professionals living in rundown buildings. Conversely,
very few members of the working class can afford to live in renovated
buildings with amenities, even if these buildings belong to the public
housing stock. From one building to the next, the difference in rent
can range from one to ten! Insalubrious buildings thus house immi-
grants of all origins, and their only native neighbours are working
social and ethnic
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class. The mixing of different immigrant groups is thus reinforced
by social segregation.
Although the different ethnic groups tend to mix inside the resi-
dential area, the more dynamic groups have divided up public space
through a strategy of occupation and control. This strategy is based
on the presence of numerous businesses managed by members
of the community and aimed mainly at meeting the communitys
needs. The shops are used as identity markers (Raulin, 1986): the
shop windows convey specic signals (through signs, displays, and
linguistic and colour codes) and sell specic products. When several
shops belonging to the same ethnic group are located side by side,
they constitute a continuous area through the repetition of these
community markers. Centres of activity thus develop around the
business areas with community services, leisure clubs, cafs, cultur-
al centres, doctors and places of religious worship. In Belleville, not
only are there many shops and businesses, but these are playing an
important role in establishing a communitys territory. For example,
out of 86 shops in the lower Belleville area, 46 can be considered
ethnic in the sense that they carry mainly imported products that
are sold in a specic decor or display according to specic, culturally
determined selling practices. (For a description of ethnic shops, see
de Rudder, 1987.) Of these 15 belong to the exotic type, meaning
that though their clientele is not restricted to a single ethnic group,
they still refer to a specic culture, visible in the shop windows and
on the signs. The three largest communities of the neighbourhood
Sephardic Jews (mainly from Tunisia), Southeast Asians and North
African Muslims manage two-thirds of the local stores.
The Sephardic Jewish neighbourhood is located in a small
area between the Ramponneau and Dnoyez streets and along the
Boulevard de Belleville. Originally, it was much larger, but renova-
tions and the departure of part of the Tunisian Jewish community
have reduced the little Goulette of Paris to its tiny dimensions.
Jewish commercial activity in this neighbourhood is linked mainly
to the food industry, with kosher butchers, oriental bakeries and gro-
cery shops. There are bazaars that sell kitchen utensils and vari-
ous plastic items, a religious bookshop and several services. Most
members of this community participate in its overall economy and
its social aid programmes take care of many of them. Several Jewish
community organizations are located in the neighbourhood, such as
the Paris Jewish social action centre and a Lubavich centre, which
has opened two schools in the area. Thanks to the community as-
sociations, Belleville is both a commercial and a cultural centre and
this enhances its attractiveness for the Tunisian Jewish community
identity markers
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patrick simon
in Paris and entrenches their presence in the area even if most have
moved. Thus, Jewish clients who live elsewhere come to shop in local
stores. Before religious feasts, as many as 55 per cent of the stores
clients come from other neighbourhoods or from the suburbs.
4
The
commercial infrastructure is an extremely important factor in a com-
munitys visibility: not only do ethnic stores mark the neighbour-
hood with their presence, but they also make the community seem
larger than it actually is.
On the other half of the Boulevard de Belleville is the Arab city; its
restaurants and grocery stores look very much like those of the Jewish
sector, except that the butcher shops are no longer kosher but halal.
Mosques have replaced the synagogues and Muslim skullcaps the
Jewish kippas. The cheap Kabyle hotels of the 1950s have gone; they
have been replaced by a profusion of stores mainly centred on food
distribution. This shopping area, which spreads from Mnilmontant
to the Pre Lachaise cemetery, includes bazaars, cafs, restaurants,
travel agencies, secondhand clothing stores, import-export ofces,
grocery stores, butcher shops and fruit and vegetable stores. In addi-
tion to these ordinary commercial activities, a centre of Muslim activ-
ity has developed near the Couronnes metro station. Two mosques
have been opened there, along with several religious bookshops. In
this area, meat sold as strictly halal is under very strict control. Kepel
(1984: 190ff.) calls this neighbourhood Pariss Islamic quarter. It
is controlled by the Tabligh, who are members of the international
movement jamaat al tabligh (faith and religious practice).
In the Muslim sector, except on market days, far fewer women
than men are seen on the streets. The men gather in small tight-knit
groups in the central square where Bellevilles market stands are set
up twice a week. These groups are often extremely dense, with very
little space left unoccupied. The presence of North African Muslims
is most noticeable during Ramadan, in which the whole neighbour-
hood becomes involved. Social control reaches its highest point dur-
ing this period when a Muslim, or a person considered as such, can-
not be seen drinking or smoking during the day; if he does, more or
less aggressively voiced reprobation will force him to stop. However,
Muslims are not the only people concerned with Ramadan: the entire
Belleville neighbourhood cannot help but participate in preparations
for the feast. Vendors set up shop along the boulevard pavement and
sell at bread, herbs, fruit and sour milk. Shops held by Muslims
add special Ramadan products to their usual display. Even Jewish
shopkeepers stock up on fruit and drink for the occasion.
North African Muslims and Jews have a lot in common, and this
is particularly evident when one looks at their economic activities.
the Arab city
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Many kosher restaurants employ Muslim waiters, who for a long
time made it possible for them to open on the Sabbath.
5
The majority
of the Jewish bakeries employ Muslims. After emigration, the rules
governing the cohabitation of the two communities in North Africa
(Lewis, 1986; Memmi, 1974) were reactivated. Tunisian Jews very
often speak Arabic, and the memories of Jews and Muslims comple-
ment each other within a single North African identity, recognized
as such by both groups. They agree to identify the neighbourhood as
Maghrebian, meaning neither Jewish nor Muslim.
The Asian area was at rst limited to the renovated sector of the rue
de Belleville; it subsequently rapidly spread to neighbouring streets.
6

Asian businesses are extremely varied in nature and meet most of
the Asian communitys needs: they include food shops, jewellers,
supermarkets, record and video shops, restaurants, bakeries, estate
agents, wholesale dealers in fabrics for clothing and leather goods
manufacturers. In addition to these businesses, there is a dense net-
work of community services, including doctors, letter writers, leisure
clubs, cultural associations, and formal and informal information
networks. Although the Asians rst settled in Belleville at the end of
the 1970s, their presence became signicant only in the mid-1980s.
One reason for their choice of this area was that the Asian quarter
of the thirteenth arrondissement was reaching saturation point. The
strategy of implantation in Belleville just about matched that applied
in the Choisy triangle: their arrival coincided with urban modern-
ization programmes (Raulin, 1988). This penetration phase, when
Asians began to move into the neighbourhood, mainly into recently
built housing, was followed by a consolidation phase with the de-
velopment of community-oriented businesses. These businesses at-
tracted other Asians to the neighbourhood, and many in turn ended
up moving there. Between 1982 and 1990, the Asian population in-
creased by 63 per cent, the highest increase after that of the Turkish
population (76 per cent).
The non-Asian shopkeepers feel threatened by the Asian commu-
nitys vitality and expansionist drive, but so far no collective solution
enabling them to ensure their own survival has been devised. There
has been little group reaction to the massive implantation of Asian
businesses, which is so extensive that Belleville is now considered to
be Pariss second Chinatown. Despite their commercial expansion-
ism, there are few Asians in Bellevilles other areas, and it is only at
the points of contact between areas that they mix with other groups.
This strategy of isolation, though not specically Asian, tends to sup-
port the stereotype of a secretive community that keeps to itself and
is unwilling to conform to the neighbourhoods social order (Live,
Asian area
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patrick simon
1993). The other groups, which consider themselves much poorer
than the Asians, are exasperated by their real or imagined nancial
power. They are envious of their sense of solidarity, thanks to which
Asians are much more successful in the interethnic competition
than their partners or rivals. However, the population increase in
Belleville has led Asian households to disperse, after an initial period
of concentration. Thanks to personal contacts made in their residen-
tial context, Asians are perceived as individuals instead of simply
members of an ethnic group. As grossly simplied ethnic divisions
break down and are replaced by daily exchanges - which involve ne-
gotiation - the Asian population is gradually adapting to the common
social order.
Within this overall commercial structure, various other ethnic
groups have opened businesses: there are several Spanish grocery
stores and restaurants, one or two African restaurants and an increas-
ing number of Turkish small businesses, mainly fast food outlets
(for example, pizza and doner kebab restaurants). Relics of the previ-
ous era, the few remaining French-owned shops, are located mainly
at the corner of the rue de Belleville and the Boulevard de Belleville.
They remain isolated amid the stars of David, Chinese ideograms
and Arabic characters and have no inuence at all on the atmosphere
generated by the dominant groups. The municipalitys renovation
plans have included attempts to establish new commercial activities
aimed at modifying the neighbourhoods image, which the authori-
ties perceive as too immigrant. All new apartment buildings include
commercial space, but so far Asians or North Africans lease them all.
This demonstrates that both communities are trying hard to main-
tain their presence in Belleville and that this strategy has won over
the municipalitys attempt to requalify the neighbourhood.
Public space is thus appropriated by means of easily identiable
markers: buildings, facilities and other public places are marked off
as belonging to a specic, almost private, territory. Those who share
its identity frequent this territory. These identity signs or mark-
ers can be read in shop windows, in the way housing space is oc-
cupied, in the playing out of social relationships, or even in peoples
personal attributes (such as their clothing and personal demean-
our). Schematically speaking, the spatial and social morphology of
Belleville is a juxtaposition of ethnic strata, alternately dominated
by one or another of the ethnic groups. The strata themselves are
rst the buildings, then the streets, then the shops, cafes and parks,
and nally the whole picture is crossed by a transversal stratum rep-
resented by community associations and political groups. The way
the various groups adjust to this stratied structure determines the
Belleville cohabitation model.
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Cohabitation models
Now that the framework for our analysis has been established, we can
revert to our initial question: how does integration work in Belleville?
The restriction of certain ethnic groups to a circumscribed territo-
ry, the public display and even the exacerbation of ones specicity,
whether religious (Islamic fundamentalism or Jewish orthodoxy) or
cultural, are in contradiction with the French model of integration.
According to this model, integration is an individual process enabling
immigrants to participate in the activities of mainstream society on
condition they accept its rules and that the society in turn is prepared
to integrate the immigrants.
7
This process is based on a strict dis-
tinction between private and public spheres. In the private sphere,
cultural specicities can be maintained if they do not contradict the
fundamental values of the Republic. In the public sphere, however,
one must remain neutral or, in other words, ones behaviour must
be in conformity with the norms of mainstream society.
What is the situation in Belleville? Here, cultural differences, in-
stead of being downplayed, are emphasized and play an important
role in the denition of relations between the various ethnic groups.
Far from being neutral, public space is the object of competition for
control over it; but instead of being a cause for social disorder, this
competition ensures social stability. Ever since the French working
class ceased to be the dominant group in the area, no other group has
been able to impose its norms of values on the others. The concept
of normative behaviour is no longer relevant, and has been replaced
by a much more general attitude based on tolerance and respect of
proprieties. Social order in Belleville
8
is based rst and foremost on
a charter of practices devoid of ethnic or cultural references. To use
a popular clich in studies on integration, Bellevilles social order is
universalist in both spirit and practice.
The coexistence of these groups within a circumscribed area has
led to a division of the neighbourhood into small plots. To describe
the spatial organization of the groups living in Belleville, the most ac-
curate image is that of a mosaic, separate and closed-in worlds which
exist side by side but do not mix, to quote R.E. Park (1925). Each ur-
ban segment has its own local colour and the atmosphere can differ
completely from one street to the next. Each area has its users who
feel at home in its atmosphere and contribute, by their presence, to
spreading it. These microenvironments, in which urban functions,
users and specic practices are combined, are undoubtedly quasi-
communities (Gans, 1962). The division of space must not be inter-
preted as a sign of hostility between the different groups. Indeed, it
integration
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patrick simon
is the only way these groups can use the city while maintaining their
own specicity. Without such borders, ethnic groups could not keep
the distance necessary for them to be able to live together. At the
same time, thanks to these borders, which are constantly shifting, a
group can dene itself in opposition to the others, as Fredrik Barth
(1969), whose book has become a work of reference, has pointed out.
As competition for space is high, conicts can only be regulated
if compensation is provided to those groups that are not present on
the public scene. If one considers the city according to three impor-
tant aspects urban, political and symbolic the sharing of space
requires that a considerable number of elements be taken into ac-
count. Thus, added to the issue of concrete urban space, there is the
neighbourhoods history and collective memory, and in parallel, the
political forces and the associations that control the terms of this divi-
sion: three distinct yet interlinked spheres of action, whose collective
actors may differ. If an actor ceases to participate at one level, his
participation may increase at another.
The myth and the multiculturals
To create this system, history had to be rewritten and the collective
memory condensed into a Belleville myth. The myth has made it
possible to create a common area, open to all, and to transcend deep-
ly ingrained cultural specicities. The myth has created the imag-
ined community B. Anderson (1983) described when speaking of
nations. Here it is, in a few words. The Belleville myth is based on
two assertions: Belleville is an old working-class neighbourhood
and a neighbourhood where immigrants rst settled long ago.
These two assertions are of course based on historical fact, but the
latter has been modied, in the spirit of what Roland Barthes (1957)
called the naturalization of history. The elements that constitute the
Belleville myth are no doubt historically true. But, and it is this sense
that a myth has been created, they had neither the impact nor the
importance they are believed today to have had. Thus, Belleville is
not an old immigrant neighbourhood. Quite the contrary, censuses
from the rst half of the twentieth century show that Belleville then
had the highest proportion of Parisian natives in the city. The im-
migrant presence in Belleville has never been as strong as it is today.
Similarly, although Belleville was a working-class neighbourhood
until the 1970s, this was no longer the case at the time the myth crys-
tallized. What is the function of this myth and who perpetrates it?
A myth is dened rst and foremost by its aim, which is usu-
imagined
community
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ally the desire to overcome contradictions. The aim of the Belleville
myth is to defuse ethnic conicts by making them seem outdated. As
Claude Levi-Strauss (1958: 231) said:
A myth is always based on events which occurred in the past: before
the creation of the universe, or at the beginning of time, in any
case, a long time ago. But the myths intrinsic value comes from
the fact that these events, which took place at a given time, create a
permanent structure; this structure determines the past, the present
and the future.
By associating the immigrants with the neighbourhoods collective
memory, the myth acts as a nativity factory; thus, ethnic conicts
cannot be based on the refusal of one group to accept the others
presence, since they both equally belong to the neighbourhood. In
other words, using Elias and Scotsons (1965) paradigm, thanks to
this myth, immigrants cease to be outsiders and can aspire to the
more legitimate status of the established. Thanks to the contraction
operated by the myth, attitudes of intolerance and rejection, which
are often observed in situations where local residents emphasize
their cultural specicity, become totally irrelevant.
The myth also concerns relations between social classes. By lay-
ing emphasis on the neighbourhoods identity as working class, it
aims to make up for the social inequalities reected in the housing
conditions. Acceptance of this myth represents, for members of the
middle and upper classes, a guarantee of their own integration into
the neighbourhood. Even more so, they play a signicant role in cre-
ating and spreading the myth, in particular through the action of
La Bellevilleuse, a local residents association devoted to ghting the
neighbourhood renovation programme.
Local residents wishing to weigh upon decisions about the lower
Belleville areas renovation programme created the association in
1988. Today, it has 500 members, mainly from the recently settled
middle and upper classes. Participation in this neighbourhood asso-
ciation enables them to express, through militant action, their faith
in a certain vision of society. Furthermore, they take an active part in
local politics and play a crucial role as intermediaries between society
as a whole (represented here by the public authorities and the techni-
cal services of the City of Paris) and the minority groups. Because of
their strong attachment to ethnic, cultural or social mixing or diver-
sity, these new residents may be called multicultural. Their commit-
ment to collective action, aimed at defending the right of immigrants
and the working class to remain in Belleville, can be interpreted on
two levels.
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By insisting on people being rehoused in the same neighbourhood,
the multiculturals anticipate changes in Bellevilles population: they
wish to prevent the too rapid gentrication of the neighbourhood
and preserve the atmosphere they came for in the rst place. Thus,
they have become the advocates of a working-class identity, which
is not theirs but for which they feel sympathy. They are themselves
often of working-class background, and participation in community
action is a manner of reparation. The aim is to promote, at the local
level, a social model that has not taken shape at the national level.
The commitment of the multiculturals has provided the working
class with a new edge in power relations. Indeed, when dealing with
the authorities, immigrants and French workers are usually deprived
of means of pressure; the multiculturals are thus able to serve as
mediators, which is what they did in relation to the neighbourhood
renovation programme. On a wider scale, their role as mediators has
enabled them to create a more positive image of a social world that
so far had been perceived as impoverished and pernicious. Through
their joint reaction of protest against the renewal programme and the
bureaucratic monster that supports it, the neighbourhoods different
groups were able to get together symbolically and, to a certain extent,
to come closer operationally. W. de Jong (1989) described a similar
process in an old neighbourhood of Rotterdam, Het Oude Westen,
which resembles Belleville in many respects. There, ethnic conicts
were overcome thanks to associations of local residents committed to
preventing the deterioration of their neighbourhood.
The Belleville model can thus be seen as a successful system of
regulation of differences; these differences are asserted within sepa-
rate and structured communities and expressed in community
areas, which are interlinked without competing one against another.
Urban space is identied as belonging to North African Jewish or
Muslim immigrants, to Asians and, to a lesser extent, to Africans.
Even though they do not have their specic turf, the native resi-
dents, that is to say the French workers, who represent the neighbour-
hoods living memory, are a signicant component of the Belleville
identity. Last, the recently-arrived middle and upper classes, which
have the nancial means and the extremely valuable ability to cir-
culate with ease in the world of social relationships and contacts,
have a specic role to play in the sphere of political and community
action. In Belleville, each person has a place, has his or her own place
within a dynamic system that is constantly changing. Only on this
condition can people overcome their objective differences and share
a strong local identity. To describe this model, we chose to compare
it with a mosaic, a composite image that refers to a surface made up
regulation of
differences
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of assembled pieces as well as to the political system of the ancient
Ottoman Empire. Belleville can be compared with both: on the one
hand, it is made up of juxtaposed, heterogeneous parts and, on the
other, the Ottoman Empire is part of the historical and political back-
ground of two of the neighbourhoods main groups. In this respect,
the Ottoman Empire, as an attempt to reconcile different cultures
within a unied political system, represents a historical precedent,
which has yet to be studied in all its implications (Courbage and
Fargues, 1992; Valensi, 1986).
The mosaic model owes its existence to historical circumstances
in which different population groups going different ways found
themselves at the same time in the same place. Many immigrants
who managed to improve their social status moved out of the in-
salubrious buildings, whereas rehabilitation programmes gradually
evicted others. The gentrication process has increased in scope and
is now reaching out for the last fragments of territory still accessible
to immigrants. Belleville is undergoing a gradual transformation,
from ethnic neighbourhood to urban immigrant centre (espace de
centralit immigre) (Toubon and Messamah, 1991). Even when the
members of a community move to another area, they maintain their
ties with Belleville, which continues to develop its community-orient-
ed economic, cultural and social activities: the area is thus becoming
a centre of attraction for both symbolic and practical reasons. This
phenomenon of territorial dissociation, which is characteristic of a
networked society, has been observed in several ethnic neighbour-
hoods in Paris, such as the Goutte dOr (Toubon and Messamah,
1991) and the Choisy triangle (Raulin, 1988). This new function
seems to be a new stage of transitional area, or rather, to use the
term Ernest Burgess (1928) coined, of rst entry ports, which en-
able immigrants gradually to adapt to their new society without expe-
riencing a total break with their past way of life. The future of these
neighbourhoods remains uncertain; the opinion most commonly
held is that they will disappear through acculturation. In our opinion,
this is not happening in Belleville. Thanks to new forms of distance
shopping practised by both the older and more recent diasporas -
immigrants from Southeast Asia, Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews,
Armenians, North Africans, Africans, Turks and others - ethnic ter-
ritories can remain a permanent aspect of the urban environment.
They can perhaps even serve as a basis for the elaboration of a com-
munity structure of national scope.
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Notes
1 Cf. Hemingways celebration of Paris in Paris est une fte, quoted in Ory
(1994).
2 This approach owes a great deal to the pioneer (in France) research work
carried out by V. de Rudder, M. Guillon and I. Taboada-Leonetti. They fo-
cused on multiethnic cohabitation in several neighbourhoods of Paris (the
Choisy neighbourhood in the thirteenth arrondissement, the Aligre and Lot
Chalon neighbourhoods, and the wealthy neighbourhoods of the sixteenth
arrondissement). Summing up the teams approach, Taboada-Leonetti (1989)
writes: Our aim was to carry out empirical studies to show how people man-
age their differences in an ad hoc manner, depending on the issues at stake
and the circumstances, and how they produce collective identities which can
vary from one situation to the next without necessarily generating social cri-
ses, social dysfunction or ethnic identity crises.
3 Unied Jewish Social Fund: this is the main source of funding supporting
the various Jewish cultural, social and community institutions in France.
4 Survey conducted in front of shops in Belleville for a study on economic
activity in the lower Belleville area (see Fayman and Simon, 1991).
5 The religious revival, which has affected the Jewish community in France,
was also felt in Belleville. Today, most kosher stores close on the Sabbath.
6 A detailed map of Asian businesses in Belleville can be found in Ma Mung
and Simon (1990: 99). However, this map dates back to 1985 and the neigh-
bourhoods business infrastructure has changed considerably since then.
More recent information is available in Live (1993).
7 This formulation is a condensed synthesis of the denitions of integration as
given by two ofcial sources; the Commission de la Nationalit (1988) and
the Haut conseil lintgration (1991).
8 The notion of local social order refers to the one G. Suttles formulated
about a slum in Chicago. Even though those who live there have been re-
jected by mainstream society as people with disreputable characteristics,
slums are not disorganized (Suttles, 1968). Social order is interpreted here
as a system of rules, norms and values making it possible for different social
groups, which are interdependent yet reject each other, to live together. In
Belleville, where residents belong to very different ethnic or social groups,
the neighbourhood stands for a reference. Since all these groups live in the
same area, to get along, they must develop a common code of behaviour for
the neighbourhood.
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Political dynamics in the city:
three case studies
Hassan Bousetta
The article by political scientist Hassan Bousetta rst appeared in 2000 in
an edited book entitled Minorities in European Cities. Bousettas doctoral the-
sis, from which this article is drawn, is one of the rst systematic qualitative
comparisons of the collective dynamics, the socio-political participation and
the ethnic mobilisation of immigrant minorities in three mid-size European
cities. It was followed in the 2000s by several other studies using a similar
theoretical framework and an analogous research methodology. Bousettas
work is considered pioneering in the eld of comparative studies of immi-
grant associations in Europe.
This chapter on the collective dynamics, sociopolitical participation
and ethnic mobilization of immigrant minorities is based on com-
parative case studies of Moroccan communities in three small and
medium-sized cities in Belgium (Lige), the Netherlands (Utrecht)
and France (Lige). Three main ideas inform the design and ratio-
nale of this research.
The rst is that immigrant incorporation is increasingly being
shaped by socioeconomic and political dynamics at work locally. In
this age of postindustrial transition, inter-ethnic relations are increas-
ingly entangled with broader social and economic phenomena affect-
ing cities. In countries like France, the Netherlands and Belgium,
this is reected in patterns of policy management of ethnic diversity.
The policy interventions of these countries public authorities have
gradually begun to address the socio-spatial dislocations confronting
urban areas. A signicant feature of European governments poli-
cy response to urban decline and immigrant integration has been
to decentralize power to local authorities. Whereas migratory ow
regulation remains a matter for governmental and European inter-
governmental approaches, the integration part of migration policies
is often tailored to t immigrant policy issues emerging in the big
cities.
ethnic mobilization
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Second, it is important to emphasize that migrant communities
are not necessarily at the forefront of the new relationship between
economy and society, for which the city has set the stage. From a po-
litical sociology point of view, the city has surfaced as a relevant and
privileged unit for empirical investigation. For political and social
scientists, issues such as the political incorporation of migrants, the
enfranchisement of foreigners and immigrant ethnic mobilization
provide the basis for a new appraisal of relations between civil and
political society. They raise the question of how best immigrant mi-
nority groups can organize and participate in local decision-making
to defend and preserve their collective interests.
The third idea at the heart of this research is its focus on the col-
lective response of one immigrant minority group in three settings
and to study the focus and patterns of its collective sociopolitical in-
sertion.
Ethnic mobilization and sociopolitical participation
Immigrant Sociopolitical Participation
Earlier research on postwar immigration showed that immigrants re-
cruited as a labour force of guestworkers quickly confronted the need
to organize their collective interests. Initially, they did it within the
framework of industrial relations, but their claims quickly moved be-
yond that arena. Mark Miller (1981) and Catherine Withol de Wenden
(1977, 1978, 1988) were among the rst to reect on these realities
and to challenge the then dominant Marxist assumptions about the
political quiescence of the immigrant labour force (Miller, 1981: 22-
9). Both authors suggested that migrants were becoming more than
a temporary labour force and were developing new kinds of political
mobilizations that did not rely on electoral politics. In the framework
of this theoretical and empirical reconsideration, immigrants came
to be regarded as political subjects, rather than the political objects
they had been seen as until then to sustain class divisions and the
conservative needs of the capitalist economy.
Earlier work on the political sociology of immigration reintro-
duced some basic reections on the boundaries of the nation-states
political community and on the sustained challenge migration posed
to classical conceptions of citizenship and nationality. In most cases,
rst-generation migrant workers in continental Europe acquired dif-
ferentiated and inferior citizenship statuses, to which Hammar later
attached the label denizenship (Hammar, 1990). As non-nationals,
immigrant workers in countries like France, the Netherlands and
immigrant
labour force
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Belgium were granted access to various social and civil rights, but
their political rights were restricted.
1
They were, in effect, excluded
from electoral participation. An important exception to this rule oc-
curred when the Dutch, Irish and Scandinavian governments gave
foreigners the franchise at the local level. Unlike their counterparts
in France, Germany and Belgium, immigrants in these countries
were allowed active electoral participation (the right to vote and be
elected) at the local level. In terms of political analysis, this was
and still is a signicant factor because immigrant communities in
Belgium, Germany and France have never represented a signicant
electoral force.
2

For a number of reasons, the sociopolitical participation of im-
migrant ethnic minorities is an important and worthwhile subject
of study for the political sociology of liberal democratic societies. In
recent years, it has become a bit more multicultural, multiethnic and
multi-religious. Withol de Wenden and Hargreaves (1993: 2-3) iden-
tify three reasons for the continuing signicance of immigrant so-
ciopolitical activism. First, are the memories of alternative means of
political participation open to disenfranchized immigrant communi-
ties, such as strikes, hunger strikes and marches? Second, consulta-
tive institutions have been established in many countries where, as
foreigners, immigrants are not entitled to full political rights. Third,
immigrants have, to varying degrees, been granted access to national-
ity in their receiving countries. This option, which opens the door to
full citizenship, has had particular relevance for the second and third
generation, particularly in countries that have traditionally based
their naturalization procedures on jus soli.
3
A fourth reason for study-
ing the sociopolitical involvement of immigrants is because the bind-
ing relationship between nationality and citizenship, at least in its
political dimension, has over the last 20 years been seriously thrown
into question. Citizenship of the European Union and foreigners
experiences of enfranchisement at the local level are instances of a
decoupling of citizenship and nationality, the main consequence of
which is to open the door towards granting some political rights to
non-nationals.
These elements indicate that, over the past 20 years, the situa-
tion in northwestern immigrant receiving European countries, such
as the Netherlands, Belgium and France, has changed qualitatively.
Immigrants and their supporters have gained some important victo-
ries. Whereas migrant workers and their families were left with prac-
tically no access to mainstream political institutions in the 1970s,
most immigrant receiving European countries have now established
a number of procedures and institutions to increase their political
signicance of
immigrant
socio-political
activism
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hassan bousetta
participation and representation. Though some convergence is ob-
servable, the nature and scope of these channels of participation dif-
fer from one country to another (Layton Henry, 1990). Nevertheless,
there are now a number of formal channels through which immi-
grants can articulate their political demands.
These institutional developments have inuenced methods of
theorizing immigrants political inclusion. Breaking away from cul-
turalist interpretations of immigrants sociopolitical behaviour, re-
cent literature has paid increasing attention to the role and inuence
of institutions and policies. It has been argued, for instance, that both
the nature and impact of immigrant political participation predomi-
nantly depend on the political context they confront (Ireland, 1994).
This approach leads to a crucial point for European comparative re-
search, for it holds that most of the variations that can be identied
across national boundaries are more dependent on the specicities of
the domestic political context than on the deliberate strategic choices
of minority groups.
Without going deeper into the complexities of the theoretical de-
bate, a cautious interpretation of the actual role of institutions and
policies is called for to avoid turning the proper role of immigrants
into that of a passive agent determined by structural political and in-
stitutional factors. Any attempt to inuence politics and to gain more
access to the political process necessarily implies the mobilization
of collective actors. The organizational basis of immigrant political
action should therefore be taken as a focal point in studying immi-
grant participatory patterns. Before discussing this in relation to the
Moroccan experiences in three cities, a clarication of two related
concepts of particular relevance to the problmatique is proposed in
the next section, namely the concepts of ethnic mobilization and of
ethnic minority associationism.
Ethnic mobilization and ethnic minority associationism
As suggested earlier, several channels to political participation are
open to ethnic minorities. In the three countries central to this analy-
sis, social scientists have pointed out the importance of the liberaliza-
tion of foreigners rights of association to the political participatory
opportunities available to immigrant communities (Layton Henry,
1990). The setting up of independent associations has been a major
development for immigrant communities denied all the attributes of
citizenship of the majority. It has opened a door for them to organize
their own sociopolitical interests in institutions independent both of
the country of origin and of the host countrys various solidarity or-
ganizations. Ethnic minority associational life has in many instances
institutions and
policies
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provided the organizational basis for new types of identity-driven
mobilizations, such as ethnic mobilization. However, and this is the
point to emphasize here, ethnic minority associations have a twofold
orientation, which allows them to distinguish between their role as
conveyors of ethnic solidarity and their role as ethnic political actors.
The point is that the study of immigrant minority associational life
does not provide the basis for a single conceptual approach in terms
of ethnic mobilization. Ethnic minority associations can provide an
organizational vessel to some forms of ethnic solidarity without nec-
essarily being the vector of ethnic political mobilizations.
By introducing this distinction, I wish to reinstate a point ex-
pressed earlier by ethnic competition scholars who established a
theoretical and empirical distinction between the concepts of ethnic
solidarity and ethnic mobilization (Olzak, 1983; Olzak and Nagel,
1986). There has been a tendency in the English-speaking litera-
ture to subsume all forms of immigrant collective action under the
category of ethnic mobilization. Positing an immigrant ethnic mo-
bilization needs a priori denition of what is ethnically dened in
their mobilization, as well as a conceptual framework that allows one
to account for forms of immigrant mobilization that are not orga-
nized solely along ethnic lines. As John Rexs Barthian perspective
on ethnic mobilization suggests, this should depend above all on a
situational denition of the projects in which ethnic groups engage
(Barth, 1969; Rex, 1991, 1994). In other words, the meaning of eth-
nic political mobilization does not rest on the cultural values and
norms of the groups membership, but on a process, which includes
boundary drawing, in which ethnicity serves as an instrumental re-
source for collective action. This conception of ethnic mobilization is
of interest because it provides one with a pivotal concept on which to
build a broader conception of multicultural society. For Rex, ethnic
mobilization in a multicultural society is a valuable strategy of col-
lective action, which immigrant ethnic minorities should pursue to
defend and preserve their collective interests (Rex, 1985, 1991, 1994).
He does not see ethnic mobilization as being at odds with the deni-
tion of the idea of equal citizenship of all individuals of the liberal
democratic tradition. As he put it (Rex, 1994: 15), In fact, one of
the goals of ethnic mobilization is precisely the achievement of this
kind of equal citizenship and it may well be that ethnically mobilized
groups will act together to achieve such an end both with other ethnic
groups in a similar position and with indigenous peers.
With this clarication, we can now turn to the role of immigrant
ethnic associations in relation to their communities and to the politi-
cal process. Ethnic associations have received unequal interest from
ethnic mobilization
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hassan bousetta
academics. In France, they have formed the subject of numerous
works; in other countries, such as the Netherlands, they have been
almost ignored in social science research.
4
A brief international over-
view of studies of immigrant ethnic associational life shows a great
variety of interests and approaches, which cannot be encompassed
within a single problmatique. Though social science researchers tend
to view their roles and functions quite positively, ethnic associations
have been analysed in different countries at different times for dif-
ferent analytical purposes. In an international comparative study, S.
Jenkins and her co-authors looked at ethnic associations from the
point of view of the satisfaction they provide to fellow co-ethnics.
They suggested that their role be reconsidered for inclusion as policy
actors in the delivery of social services (Jenkins et al., 1988). The role
and functions of ethnic associations have also received consideration
in Rexs classic community study of Sparkbrook (Rex, 1973). Another
study by Rex, Joly and Wilpert (1987) looked at the functions of eth-
nic associations from an international comparative perspective and
viewed them as a non-transitional phenomenon offering a range of
identity options to immigrant populations. Schoeneberg (1983) pro-
vided an interesting and comprehensive assessment of the role and
functions of ethnic associations in Germany. He sought to establish
the relationship between organizational participation in ethnic asso-
ciations, direct contact with majority group members and cultural as-
similation. From his research, he concluded that these relationships
are complex and depend largely on the nature of the organizations,
though they can be assumed to have a general positive effect.
Three local case studies
5
Lige
In 1996, the Moroccan community of Lige numbered 5270 indi-
viduals, most of who had come as immigrant workers or student
migrants. This community included numerous organizations dis-
playing diverse proles. Moroccan ethnic associations in Lige are
structured along a number of well-established cleavages, including
gender, age, ideological orientation towards the country of origin,
ideological orientation towards the country of residence, religion
or secularism and regional identities (Berbers versus non-Berbers).
Though the Moroccan communitys formal organizational structure
in Lige does not reveal much variation in comparison with the two
other cities, one can contend that this community is weakly mo-
bilized in the formal political eld. It has also failed to establish a
weak mobilization
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coherent political movement in the face of deteriorating socioeco-
nomic conditions. A good illustration of this is the absence of any
signicant involvement in electoral politics by Moroccans of Belgian
nationality.
6
The relationship between the Moroccan community in
Lige and local political parties is a chapter that still has to be written.
Another indication is that Moroccan ethnic associations are clearly
under-represented in local inter-organizational networks mobilized
around immigration/integration issues. A range of multiethnic and
Belgian solidarity organizations, such as human rights associations
and antiracist groups, dominate the mobilized actors. The ideo-
logical fragmentation of these organizations may partly explain the
Moroccans under-representation. Many solidarity organizations are
either afliated to a specic segment of Belgiums rather pillar-like
society, such as the Christian or socialist movement, or are close to
alternative political parties such as Ecolo, the green party in French-
speaking Belgium.
To explain this situation, it is necessary to go beyond normative
judgements about the capacity of leaders to articulate the demands
of their community. More interestingly, the point is to analyse the
interaction between the internal and institutional factors that shaped
the sociopolitical trajectory of the Moroccan community in Lige.
The most important obstacles that Moroccans, like other smaller eth-
nic and religious minorities, have repeatedly confronted in Lige is
a shared consensus among the political elite of the majority about
the normative meaning of integration. So far, the dominant assimi-
lationist ideological framework has impeded the emergence of alter-
native ways of representing ethnic minorities either in the formal
political process or in the implementation of public policies. To some
extent, one could contend that this has resulted in the reproduction
of immigrants powerlessness through a systematic non-politiciza-
tion and non-specic decision-making. In comparison with the three
other case studies, the absence of a specically local policy theorizing
on integration issues is evident.
In 1973, Lige had, however, experienced a pioneering initiative
with the establishment of a consultative institution. This consulta-
tive council, the CCILg (Conseil consultatif des Immigrs de la Ville
de Lige), was for a long time the only formal institution where im-
migrant minority communities could articulate their political de-
mands. Like many peer consultative bodies, the CCILg has steadily
confronted a number of difculties in its communication with the
local council and has never managed to increase its power within
local politics (see Martiniello, 1992). The CCILg stopped its work in
1991 and the new municipal authorities, elected in 1994, have ten-
CCILg
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hassan bousetta
tatively begun to develop a policy of interculturalism. This new policy
framework has for the rst time sought to stimulate a few associative
projects promoting intercultural encounters. However, the relation-
ship between local authorities on the one hand, and multiculturalist
and ethnic activists on the other, have suffered from the enduring
lack of communication between the local council and voluntary as-
sociations. An illustration of this was given recently by a confronta-
tional mobilization against the local authorities and Department of
Intercultural Relations on the issue of the voluntary sectors repre-
sentation in the newly established regional centres of integration, a
new institution promoted by the Walloon government.
The lack of consistent and coherent avenues of political participa-
tion did not, however, lead to political quiescence. The public politi-
cal spheres lack of investment is counterbalanced by vigorous activ-
ity within the communitys institutions and associations. In fact, the
context in which Moroccan sociopolitical action takes place in Lige
emerges from a historical outlook towards its institution building. In
the earlier phases of Moroccan settlement in Lige, collective struc-
turation took on two main orientations, in opposition to one another.
The two dominant organizational forms were initially developed by
Islamic groups under Moroccan government control
7
and by secular
leftist groups. The formers objective was to establish Islamic asso-
ciations committed to setting up and managing mosques. Political
issues in the homeland, though, largely informed the political ac-
tivities of the secularists of the left. However, these types of orga-
nizations, which included the Lige section of the National Union
of Moroccan Students (UNEM) and Solidarit Arabe, have gradually
focused their activities on local issues. Members of the Moroccan
secularist left wing have for instance been involved in consultative
politics at the city level in Lige within the CCILg and at the level of
the French-speaking community within the CCPOE (Conseil consul-
tatif pour les Populations dorigine trangre).
A number of Moroccan Islamic organizations have in the past
struggled for autonomy against Moroccan consular representatives
and have fed a number of conicts that have resulted in the creation
of new mosques.
8
These conicts involved mixed issues of identity,
ideology and theology. It is apparent from these internal debates,
however, that the sociopolitical interests and attitudes of Moroccan
Muslims are fragmented and not amenable to a single strategy of
ethnic mobilization. Empirical studies of Islamic institution build-
ing reveal considerable dissent among the membership of Islamic
associations over the issue of publicizing Islam. Whereas some
streams have pleaded for a more visible positioning of Islamic identi-
institution
building
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ties in the public sphere, others have opposed and mobilized to keep
their religious space immune from public concern. The El Itissam
mosque has undoubtedly gone furthest in the rst strategy, while
the El Mouahidin mosque has traditionally opted for the second one.
The El Iman mosque, a stronghold of Moroccan consular agents and
of the friendship societies of Moroccan merchants and workers (ami-
cales), has on the other hand relied on forms of ethnic lobbying based
on individual networks among the local political elite. These amicales
have also had two representatives elected after the CCILgs elections
of 1984.
Islamic associations in Lige enter the public political arena not
only over local matters, such as a request for Islamic cemeteries
9

and the organization of educational activities, but over national is-
sues such as the representation of Islam according to the Belgian
law of 1974 (see Panat, 1997). The Islamic association El Itissam is
at the forefront of this claim and has developed a strategy of vertical
integration (at both national and regional levels) with Brussels-based
Islamic groups. Unlike the secular left wing, Islamic groups have not
participated in regular political relays within the local political arena
and have only managed to nd occasional access to the policy process
on issues of direct concern to them.
Lille
The 6260 Moroccans in Lille represent the most important group
of non-nationals. Apart from a small minority who acquired French
citizenship, rst-generation Moroccan immigrants have had no ac-
cess whatsoever to the electoral process. Their status as non-nation-
als has denied them access to the most formal political arena. The
rst signicant developments in terms of electoral political partici-
pation appeared with the political emergence of the second gener-
ation. In Lille, the most recent municipal elections conrmed the
slow and uneasy emergence of second-generation individuals in the
political arena. In 1989, three candidates from North African youth
organizations were put forward by the socialist party. One of them, a
co-founder of Les Craignos, was elected and appointed the mayors
delegate for citizenship and human rights. In 1995, several North
African candidates ran again for a seat in the local council. Among
them, two well-known gures in second-generation North African
associational life and a social worker of Moroccan origin have been
successful.
10

Before the second generation started to organize politically and to
set up its associations in Lille, rst-generation Moroccans had been
less quiescent than Beur historiography has sometimes tended to
national issues
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suggest. In Lille, as in other European cities, the Moroccan govern-
ment became involved early on in setting up collective infrastruc-
tures for Moroccan migrants. Setting up a federation of amicales in
the north was here again the Moroccan regimes pivotal instrument
for strategy of control. The role of Moroccan diplomats in this pro-
cess of community organization and control was never clearer than
in the 1986 conict when Moroccan miners of the northern French
coaleld opposed the Charbonnages de France. After a long strike
led by a group of Moroccan miners from the French trade union
CGT (Confderation gnrale du Travail), 3600 Moroccan miners
were unfairly dismissed after an agreement was reached between
the Moroccan embassy and their employer, the Charbonnages de
France (for more details, see Sanguinetti 1991: 75-8). Although many
Moroccan miners were forced to return to Morocco, the struggle for
their social and economic benets is still going on today. In 1987, the
former Moroccan leaders of the CGT who remained in France found-
ed an independent association (Association des Mineurs Marocains
du Nord) and joined the national federation of the Association des
Travailleurs Marocains en France (ATMF).
Parallel with the rst-generation community organizations the
second generation, most often headed by young Algerians, has
emerged in the sociopolitical eld at both local and national levels.
As Bouamama recalls, the mobilization of the second generation and
the setting up of associations started to become a central issue in Lille
with the rst nationwide Marches des Beurs of 1983 (Bouamama,
1989). Texture and Les Craignos are two important associations that
were founded in this period. The setting up of a large number of
smaller associations, most often youth associations involved at a
neighbourhood level, has recently followed their pioneering work in
the city of Lille. While Les Craignos has set up a federation of neigh-
bourhoods youth associations, the Fdration des Associations des
Jeunes de Quartier (FAJQ), Texture has supported the foundation of
a multiethnic immigrant womens association called Femmes dici et
dailleurs.
In Lille, as in Lige and Utrecht, in recent years there has been a
strong development of Islamic associations. The Lille Sud mosque is
at the forefront of the mobilization of North African Muslims in the
north. Its activities are strikingly similar to those of the El Itissam
association in Lige. Vertical integration with regional Islamic as-
sociations and Paris-based federations, mobilization on educational
matters, and the provision of services and activities to the second
generation are some of the issues with which the Lille Sud mosque
is engaged.
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organizations
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There are two interesting points about the nature of North African
political incorporation.
First, there seems to be a strong generational divide between rst-
and second-generation collective action. Whereas the rst generation
relied mostly on ethnic mobilization within trade unions, indepen-
dent associations and mosques, the second generation tends more
towards universalistic political inclusion. This has given rise to some
interesting debates among members of North African associations
in Lille. Texture has promoted the idea of intergenerational solidar-
ity within the migrant population and has sought to distance itself
from narrow forms of ethnic mobilization. In 1989, for instance, it
sponsored an electoral list purportedly composed of an aggregate of
candidates from migrant communities and socially excluded popula-
tions. The mobilizations of France Plus and Espace Intgration are
further examples of ethnic mobilizations not necessarily tting the
nature and prole of the organizations in question. In Lille and in
the north of France more generally, these two organizations have
developed a discursive strategy of republican integration (namely
assimilation) into French society, while at the same time activating
ethnic boundaries as a basis for political bargaining. This apparent
contradiction has been widely discussed in the French literature; it is
what Vincent Geisser (1997) tentatively identied as the emergence
of a republican ethnicity. Unlike Texture, which has deliberately
avoided grounding sociopolitical activism in ethnic identications,
the latter are interesting examples of ethnic mobilization being em-
bedded in discursive strategic use of an assimilationist vocabulary.
Second, the so-called town policy (la politique de la ville), which
has been implemented as a partnership between national govern-
ment, regions and municipalities, has provided a number of profes-
sional opportunities to individuals formerly involved in immigrant
associational life. This policy has created and sustained a demand for
leadership within impoverished immigrant neighbourhoods. One
can speak here of the institutional production of an immigrant as-
sociational life of proximity. The seamy side of the story, however,
is that it has increased control over the practices and ideologies of
second-generation activists, while weakening the autonomous politi-
cal action of civil society (Bouamama, 1989).
Utrecht
The Moroccan population in Utrecht consists of 13,595 individuals.
Unlike their counterparts in Lille and Lige, Moroccans in Utrecht
have been enfranchized for local elections since 1986. The Moroccan
community has also been identied as a specic target group for the
universalistic
political inclusion
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national minority policy implemented since 1983. At the Utrecht city
level, integration has been under constant consideration for at least
two decades. In 1973, a consultative council was created in Utrecht
to advise local authorities on community relations issues (Feirabend
and Rath, 1996). The amicales responded very early on to the open-
ing up of this avenue of participation. In Utrecht, as in several other
Dutch cities, the amicales, with the support of Moroccan diplomats
and through their networks of personal contacts within the Moroccan
communities, have been acknowledged as legitimate representatives
of the political interests of this population,
11
though for a very short
period. After 1976, the amicales were vigorously challenged by the
creation of a nationwide independent organization of Moroccan
workers, the KMAN (van der Valk, 1996).
Most activists involved in establishing left-wing Moroccan associ-
ations in Utrecht have had some initial involvement with the KMAN.
This was so for the founders of two very inuential associations in
Utrecht AMMU and the KMANU, breakaways from the KMAN.
Once the amicales had lost their inuence in Utrecht (and in the
Netherlands in general), AMMU played an important role as policy
adviser to the local council and has come to be the most central actor
in Utrechts Moroccan community. AMMU has also stimulated the
creation of separate ethnic associations for Moroccan women and for
Moroccan youth (PMJU).
The activities of left-wing Moroccan activists in Utrecht raise im-
portant questions about the co-optation of elites. The minority policy
in Utrecht (and more generally in the Netherlands) has created and
sustained an impressive number of social work, multicultural and
antiracist institutions and agencies. This has created numerous op-
portunities for elites, both as professionals and as leaders of ethnic
communities.
Minority representation of these institutions by an elite clearly
creates a number of non-political opportunities to voice immigrant
claims within the mainstream. However, Moroccans have also pur-
sued strategies that challenge the integrationist approach of Utrechts
Moroccan leaders of the secularist left. Among these are forms of
ethnic mobilization around regional identities in the cultural eld.
Rifan Berbers are currently the most active in this area. Their strat-
egy of institution building has steadily confronted the opposition of
Moroccan left-wing associations. Ethnoreligious mobilization within
Islamic associations is another strategy pursued by Moroccans in
Utrecht.
12
As Feirabend and Rath (1996) point out, Utrecht is more
reluctant than other Dutch cities to create a space for Islamic institu-
tions within local sociopolitical life. This development is reected in
amicales
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the decision to stop funding the educational activities provided by the
El Dawa mosque,
13
the biggest mosque in Utrecht.
Over the last year or so, the city of Utrecht has completely recon-
sidered its policy options in relation to immigrant minority commu-
nities. Publication of research the local council commissioned from
the University of Utrecht was at the source of a new assessment of
the problmatique. The Burgers Report called for a shift from a mi-
nority policy towards corrective measures focused on socioeconomic
differences (Burgers et al., 1996). The ensuing debate between the
municipality and representatives of ethnic minorities led to the de-
nition of a new policy hinged on the operationalization of the concept
of interculturalization a far cry, however, from the intercultural
approach of the city of Lige.
One element of this policy, besides its attempt to combat a
dualization of urban life along ethnic lines, is a new partnership be-
tween ethnic minority self-organization and the municipality. The
framework for this relationship had already been dened in a policy
report of 1989. In the programme the municipality recently issued,
the role of self-organization is identied as a bridge between societal
and internal community dynamics. The concept of interculturaliza-
tion is a central idea in this policy framework seeking to develop
a proactive approach to the forming of a social coalition within so-
ciety (maatschappelijke coalitievorming). This reects an attempt to
avoid the separate development of ethnic communities, which was
allegedly produced by the earlier minority policy. Indeed, the city of
Utrechts new policy implicitly gives a positive answer to the follow-
ing questions: Has the minority policy led to the isolation of immi-
grant minority communities from the mainstream? And was the old
policy framework disruptive in terms of social cohesion?
Conclusion
This comparative overview of three case studies has taught us some
important lessons about patterns and forms of immigrant political
incorporation. We have observed sociopolitical participation in main-
stream political institutions, ethnic mobilization and less politically
signicant internal community dynamics. The minority response
the Moroccan communities exemplied revealed the importance of
ethnic mobilization within independent ethnic and religious asso-
ciations, the deployment of civic, youth, gender and neighbourhood
mobilization, as well as the involvement of minority candidates in
mainstream party politics.
the Burgers Report
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The Islamic groups and associations have shown us that their
form of ethnic mobilization may not be temporary. In all three cities,
Islamic organizations proved their capacity to attract massive audi-
ences within Moroccan communities and one could contend that the
impact of Islamic ethnic mobilization is, in political terms, still in its
infancy. Although some Islamic associations of the older generation
are resisting Islam being brought into the public sphere, the oppo-
site phenomenon has been growing in signicance within Moroccan
communities since the mid-1980s.
Though one can, of course, identify more secularized attitudes
among the second and third generations, the ethnic mobilization of
Islamic associations should not be seen as dependent on cultural and
religious values and norms. Islam provides an identity option, the
signicance of which will depend in the long run on the projects
pursued by this youth and by the place open to them within their
societies. On the other hand, the secularist left-wing movement of
Moroccan workers and students that dominated the stage during the
1970s and 1980s has in the three cities lost its capacity to engage in
mass contentious collective action. We have also seen appearing the
mobilization of youth, gender, generational and locational identities,
which proves that minority communities are internally segmented
along a number of consequential divides. These factors of internal
division should be seen as being a problem intrinsically, even though
they preclude the possibility of uniting resources and energies. Of
course, a common immigrant political agenda cross-cutting internal
and external ethnic boundaries is, under such circumstances, close
to utopia.
In the three case studies, we have seen external institutional forc-
es constrain integrationist forms of political incorporation. We have
also seen that local authorities have a number of policy options at
hand to deal with the sociopolitical demands of immigrant minority
communities. The local authorities of the three cities under review
adopted policies of sustained communication with ethnic and mul-
tiethnic minority associations (Utrecht, Lille), funding to ethnic and
multiethnic associations (Lille, Lige, Utrecht), consultative politics
(Lige, Utrecht), and enfranchisement for local elections (Utrecht).
14

The efciency of these policies partly depends on their cumulation
and coordination. However, as the Dutch case study reveals, a con-
sistent, coordinated, multicultural approach still manifests serious
difculties.
This latter indication points out that both the institutional politi-
cal strategy of incorporation and the minority response have not had
far-reaching effects on the collective position of minority communi-
capacity for
mobilization
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ties in the three societies. In other words, while the nature of im-
migrants inclusion has diversied, the impact of immigrants mo-
bilization on a wide number of issues of collective importance has
remained extremely weak. The collective position of Moroccans in
areas such as education, employment or housing in the three coun-
tries, remains an issue of serious concern and the same holds true
for the legal position of Moroccan women. Although Miller (1981)
was partly right in saying immigrants and their offspring are neither
voiceless nor powerless, the reality seems to fall short of his optimis-
tic view of foreign workers as an emerging political force. One must
conclude that the social, political and economic emancipation of eth-
nic minority groups is still heavily dependent on the implementation
of liberal political agendas from the majorities. The experience that
Moroccans share with other ethnic minorities in northwest Europe
leads to another more general conclusion. Although their demo-
graphic share is massively increasing within European urban popu-
lations, this has not yet been reected in the most formal political
institutions in which, collectively, they remain under-represented.
Notes
1 One should, however, call for cautious use of the classical Marshallian
distinction of citizenship rights in three spheres: civic, social and political
(Marshall, 1950). In many circumstances, political activities are not depen-
dent on the possession of formal political rights. The civil and social rights
open to immigrants play in many cases as a legal juridical protection to their
extra-parliamentary political activities (see also Miller, 1981: 15-20).
2 On this particular point, the situation for foreign communities in continen-
tal Europe is substantially different from that in Britain, where foreign resi-
dents who are citizens of Commonwealth countries are fully enfranchized.
3 Withol de Wenden and Hargreaves (1993: 2) rightly note that this option has
always been more than a theoretical possibility for foreign residents even in
countries implementing jus sanguinis-types of naturalization regulations.
4 There are some notable exceptions to the rule, including among others de
Graaf (1986); de Graaf, Penninx, Stoov (1988) and Van der Valk (1996).
5 Use is made in this research of a qualitative methodology based on the se-
lection of three urban sites of empirical work in three different countries.
The three urban contexts were chosen in the three countries with the larg-
est Moroccan emigrant communities. Among the 1.1 million Moroccan em-
igrants settled in Europe, almost half are permanent residents in France,
Belgium and the Netherlands. I have selected three cities that attracted sig-
nicant numbers of immigrant workers in the period of massive immigra-
tion from the Mediteranean (1959-74). It should also be mentioned that they
are university cities, which is a relevant consideration given that the migra-
tion of Moroccan students towards European universities has played an im-
portant role in the sociopolitical organization of these communities.
weak position
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6 In Begium, the most formal aspects of political participation (the right to
vote and to stand as a candidate) are dependent on the possession of Belgian
nationality.
7 Historically, the rst attempts to create collective infrastructures for
Moroccan workers came from the government of the country of origin.
These resulted in the establishment of a European-wide network of amicales
(friendship societies of Moroccan merchants and workers). Their role con-
sisted of organizing political control over the Moroccan communities. The
very undemocratic activities of the amicales supported by Moroccan embas-
sies and consulates have, in many middle sized European cities, triggered
the same sort of erce conicts that were being activated in the same period
in bigger cities like Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris (van der Valk, 1996).
8 The mosque of El Mouahidin early on refused to make any reference to the
the Commander of the Faithfuls, King Hassan II of Morocc, during the
traditional Friday speech (Sadi and Aghion, 1987).
9 Lige is one of the few Belgian cities with an Islamic cemetery within a
Belgian one. The high demand for burial in this cemetery can no longer be
handled, thus the request for a new Islamic cemetery in the region of Liege.
10 Farid Sellani, a young Algerian, running on the list of former and re-elected
Mayor Pierre Mauroy, has been appointed the delegate to support the asso-
ciations projects.
11 One of Utrechts rst amicale activists, and later co-founder of the controver-
sial Union of Moroccan Mosques in the Netherlands (UMMON), recently
reected on this period in a chapter of a book in which the leader of the
Dutch right-wing party VVD held conversations with minority leaders (see,
Bolkestein, 1997: 45-65).
12 There are six mosques in Utrecht, which can be classied in three groups: (1)
the mosques controlled by the coalition of Moroccan consular agents, the am-
icales and the Union of Moroccan Mosques of the Netherlands (UMMON),
(2) the El Dawa mosque of the Worldwide Islamic League and (3) a group of
smaller independent and neighbourhood mosques.
13 In the Municipal Department for Welfares 1997 programme, this decision is
justied as follows: The project has been funded for two years (...) Although
it answers a need, we are not ready to extend the subsidies. There is no more
funding for 1997. It is important that we do not provide structural fund-
ing to educational activities organized by people who are not independent of
religious organizations (rough translation of Ontwerp Welzijnsprogramma,
1997, City of Utrecht, Department of Welfare).
14 Although the enfranchisement of foreigners is a prerogative of national au-
thorities, local decision-makers can inuence political participation through,
for instance, policies of information in the languages of minorities.
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Integration and nations: the nation-state
and research on immigrants in Western Europe
1

Adrian Favell

The proliferation of integration studies in Europe is, according to the so-
ciologist and philosopher Adrian Favell, part and parcel of a wider nation-
state-society paradigm. Those who work within this paradigm see the nation
state as the principal organising unit of society. Moreover, they see society
as a bounded, functional whole. The state achieves this by creating policies
and institutions. Favell has doubts about whether this nation-state-society
paradigm is still sufciently appropriate for understanding the evolving rela-
tionship between immigrants and their host context. This article is a strong
plea for research that goes beyond such crude and fairly static entities such
as nation-states.
Despite its somewhat old-fashioned, functionalist air, integration
is still the most popular way of conceptualizing the developing re-
lationship between old European nation-states and their growing
non-European, ethnic immigrant populations. It is also widely used
to frame the advocacy of political means for dealing with the conse-
quences of immigration in the post-World War II period. Many simi-
lar, difcult-to-dene concepts can be used to describe the process of
social change that occurs when immigrants are integrated into their
new host society. But none occurs with the frequency or all-encom-
passing scope of the idea of integration across such a broad range of
West European countries. This fact continues to decisively structure
policy research and policy debate on these subjects in Europe.
The wide and varied ordinary language usages of the term are
linked to a deeper association of the concept with a longstanding
intellectual paradigm at the root of modern western societys con-
ception of itself. This paradigm roots applied social policy thinking
in the idea of the nation-state as the principal organizing unit of
society, with all the epistemological assumptions and political con-
straints that this term implies. By using the term, writers continue
integration
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to conceive of society as a bounded, functional whole, structured by
a state which is able to create policies and institutions to achieve this
goal. This nation-state-society paradigm may now no longer be the
appropriate one for charting the evolving relationship of new immi-
grants and their host contexts in Europe. In this paper, then, I seek
to explore the strengths and weaknesses of integration as the seem-
ingly inevitable framework for discussing issues in policy-directed
research on immigration and ethnic relations.
2
After discussing why
integration is still such a prevalent term in European thinking de-
spite emerging theoretical challenges associated with globalization
and transnationalism I explore some of the distinct national and
supra-national contributions to research in this eld. Our compara-
tive understanding is often distorted by the predominant focus in
much research on big and established country cases such as Britain,
Germany or France. I also make reference therefore to newer de-
bates surfacing in less central European nations such as Italy, the
Netherlands and Denmark, as well as the insights afforded by un-
usual cases such as Austria and Belgium.
Integration in ordinary language usages
What is typically spoken of when academics or policy makers use the
term integration to speak of a collective goal regarding the destiny
of new immigrants or ethnic minorities? We can, of course, think
of a long list of measures designed to deal with the longer term con-
sequences of migration and settlement. These can be distinguished
from immigration policies per se, such as policies on border control,
rights of entry and abode, or of asylum. Integration conceptualizes
what happens after, conceiving practical steps in a longer process
which invariably includes the projection of both deep social change
for the country concerned, and of fundamental continuity between
the past and some idealized social endpoint. Measures concerned
with integration include (the list is by no means exhaustive, but in-
dicative): basic legal and social protection; formal naturalization and
citizenship (or residency-based) rights; anti-discrimination laws;
equal opportunities positive action; the creation of corporatist and
associational structures for immigrant or ethnic organizations; the
redistribution of targeted socioeconomic funds for minorities in de-
prived areas; policy on public housing; policy on law and order; mul-
ticultural education policy; policies and laws on tolerating cultural
practices; cultural funding for ethnic associations or religious orga-
nizations; language and cultural courses in the host societys culture,
long-term
consequences
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and so on (for similar checklists of policies, see Kymlicka, 1995, pp.
37-8; Soysal, 1994, pp. 79-82; Vertovec, 1997, pp. 61-2).
What is interesting is when and why such measures are packaged
together and interlinked within the broader concept of integration.
The very difcult-to-dene process of social change with historical
continuity pictured here, is for sure spoken of using a plethora of
other terms: assimilation, absorption, acculturation, accommoda-
tion, incorporation, inclusion, participation, cohesion-building, en-
franchisement, toleration, anti-discrimination, and so on. Yet other
terms on this list are either vaguer (absorption, accommodation, tol-
eration); too technically precise, and hence absorbed within integra-
tion (such as incorporation, which species a legal process, or anti-
discrimination, which only describes one type of practical measure);
or are concepts which can be used descriptively without necessarily
invoking the active intervention of some political agency (assimila-
tion, or acculturation). In recent years, less loaded terms such as
inclusion and participation have had some popularity, but neither
can match the technical social engineering quality of the term inte-
gration; nor do they invoke a broader vision of an ideal endgoal for
society as a whole. Visionary academics and pragmatic policy makers
all need a descriptive and normative umbrella term, that can give
coherence and polish to a patchy list of policy measures aiming at
something which, on paper, looks extremely difcult and improb-
able: the (counterfactual) construction of a successful, well-function-
ing multicultural or multi-racial society. The identication of this
conceptual space in progressive-minded practical thinking about the
consequences of immigration has however euphemistic always
been a key part of the terms success.
The other key thing about the list of measures seen to be part of
integration policy, is that they are all things that a state can do.
Although for the time being it is rare to come across a specically
designated Ministry of Integration, the policy eld has emerged as a
differentiated area of government, often crossing the competences of
different departments. Integration is thus not only an ideal goal for
society; it is also something a government sets out to achieve. This
assumption is crucial to the nation-state centred conceptualization
of social processes that will be found at the core of practical ordinary
language usages of the term. Such a use precludes the idea that a
society might achieve an integrated state of affairs without the states
intervention.
Sociologically speaking, we can, of course, conceive of integra-
tion taking place without the structure-imposing involvement of the
state. Immigrants can be integrated into the local labour market as
conceptual space
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adrian favell
employees or service providers, or they can be integrated into com-
plex inter-community relations at, say, city or district level. Looked
at from a bottom-up perspective where the integration of society
as a whole is not assumed as the end goal of interaction between
ethnically diverse groups multicultural relations can be seen to take
all kinds of organized and semi-organized forms. These may not at
all be encompassed by the top-down, organized structures typical
of state thinking on the subject, such as policy frameworks, ofcial
channels of participation, or legally circumscribed rights, restrictions
and entitlements. Multiculturalism as a descriptive state-of-affairs,
in this sense, could be the product of something that never had any-
thing to do with the multicultural policies or institutions of the
state. However as historical theorists of the state would remind us
with their vivid terminology the state has always constituted itself
in the way it imposes formal structures and institutionalizes social
relations via a systematic embracing, caging and/or penetrating
of society (Torpey, 2000). This logic of incorporation has invariably
in recent history taken a dominant form of collective social power (to
borrow the terms of Mann, 1993) that seeks to encompass, contain
and bind together the states domination of society, and all the varied
market or community relations inside it. This form is the modern
nation state. And, as soon as we begin to think of integration as a col-
lective societal goal which can be achieved through the systematic in-
tervention of collective political agency, we inevitably begin to invoke
the nation-state in the production of a different, caged and bounded
version of multicultural social relations.
It is very difcult, then, to make much sense of the term integra-
tion in practical, applied terms, without bringing back in the nation-
state, at least in the European political context. This is not only be-
cause the term gets monopolized by nationally rooted policy makers
who, I will suggest, typically link their ideas about integration and
their measures for achieving it even when they are multicultural
in inspiration to historical concerns with nation-building. As I will
also go on to explain, it is equally because of a range of epistemo-
logical constraints imposed by the practical operationalization of in-
tegration as a framework for applied research, whether targeted at
questions of policy or at generating knowledge through survey-based
studies of immigrants and ethnic minorities.
Looking across Western Europe in the broadest possible way, it is
clear that integration has emerged as the most widely used general
concept for describing the target of post-immigration policies. This
is not to say that every political gure or intellectual in every coun-
try likes or uses the term. The synthetic, cross-national pronounce-
nation-building
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ments of international and intergovernmental organizations might
be taken as one good indicator of its pervasive acceptance by the end
of the 1990s. It is noticeable how, for example, the conclusions of
the presidency of the European Council of Ministers at Tampere in
October 1999, gestured specically towards integration as the key
term for encompassing the post-immigration processes EU insti-
tutions would like to get involved with in this area of rising politi-
cal signicance. Although rarely dened, it is also noticeably fore-
grounded in the formulations of some of the broadest cross-national
programmes instigated by organizations as varied as the Council of
Europe, the ILO or the OSCE. The formulations of NGOs in Brussels
likewise constantly use the term, as do inuential transatlantic policy
for a such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace or
Metropolis.
3

This success echoes the past and recent history of policy debate in
individual nation-states. The case of France here is typical. The emer-
gence of intgration as the central term of the new republican syn-
thesis of the 1980s, followed a period in which older assimilationist
ideas vied with the post-60s inheritance of ideas about cultural dif-
ference and the anti-racist struggle (Costa-Lascoux, 1989; Weil, 1991;
Haut Conseil lIntgration, 1993). Integration became the sensible
position for the centre trying to distinguish itself from xenophobic
nationalism on the one hand, and radical anti-system discourses on
the other. A similar centrist convergence occurred earlier in Britain
in the late 1960s, notably in a well remembered quotation from then
Home Ofce minister Roy Jenkins, one of the principal architects of
race relations legislation (Rose et al., 1969; Rex, 1991). Although the
anti-racist left has always rejected it, the concept has retained a high
degree of practical signicance for the liberal, cross-party centre.
Indeed, with the emergence of new migration questions surround-
ing the reception of asylum seekers, integration has re-emerged as
the most comprehensive term for conceiving resettlement policies,
and has been central to recent Home Ofce consultations on im-
migration policy (Castles et al., 2002). France and Britain are the
paradigmatic early integration nations in Europe: turning post-war,
post-colonial policies into a mildly nationalist reafrmation of the
tolerant, cosmopolitan, inclusive nature of their conceptions of na-
tionhood (on this, see Favell, 1998).
Across other European countries, we can nd numerous exam-
ples of countries converging similarly on integration as the widest
frame for discussing postimmigration policies (see Mahnig, 1998).
It is used frequently in research in Germany or Belgium, albeit with
ambiguity about what the immigrant is integrating into, given the
practical
signicance
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federal, city-centred and multi-levelled nature of the process here
(Esser, 1999; Blommaert and Verschueren, 1998). It has returned
to the fore in the Netherlands and Sweden, after periods of irta-
tion with more cultural differentialist thinking, as they seek to recon-
nect the provision of welfare benets and multicultural policy with
conditions about the learning of the national language and culture
(Fermin, 1999; Soininen, 1999). It has also been the most obvious
frame for new (or self-discovering) countries of immigration such
as Italy, Spain, Denmark or Austria nally formulating a cen-
trist, more progressive response to their current immigration cri-
sis.
4
Perhaps even more importantly, immigrant and ethnic groups
themselves speak of desiring integration, or phrase their criticisms
of racism and exclusion as barriers to full or fair integration (see, for
example, the frequent use of word in Alibhai-Brown, 2000, a well-
known ethnic minority spokesperson in Britain).
Some of these ordinary language usages shadow the well-estab-
lished American preference for assimilation as the core sociologi-
cal concept (Alba and Nee, 1997). In terms of recent immigrants,
integration is here often used interchangeably with assimilation in
the US, when it is gesturing to the functional involvement of new mi-
grant ethnic groups in the societys housing, educational, welfare or
employment systems (Edmonston and Passel, 1994). Here, indeed,
the term has been moved away from its discredited links with deseg-
regation issues over black/white public relations in the 1960s, to a
more European-looking concern with the cultural and social absorp-
tion of diverse new populations that have grown dramatically in the
US since the opening up of immigration laws in 1965.
Europeans, however, usually shy away from the term assimila-
tion, which in a European context would smack of biological over-
tones and the nasty cultural intolerance of the past. But the European
preference for integration ahead of assimilation is not really the
choice of a less loaded or more politically sensitive term over one
which implies greater conformist and exclusionary pressures, quite
the contrary. It signals, rather, a deeper concern with the fact that the
changes brought on by post-war immigration in Europe have raised
anew questions over historical continuity about the substance of
nation-building which echo once again the longer histories of na-
tion-building: the more-or-less coercive absorption of minority popu-
lations and regions through centralizing processes of modernization
(the classic formulation of this is Gellner, 1983). Integration, then,
is about imagining the national institutional forms and structures
that can unify a diverse population; hence imagining what the state
can actively do to nationalize newcomers and re-constitute the na-
assimilation
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tion-state under conditions of growing cultural diversity. The nation
building institutions of European nations are unlike the US and
other continents of immigration not historically built on immigra-
tion and geographical distance from Europe, but on bounded notions
of specic territory and the constant self-distinction of indigenous,
culturally unique populations constrained to live alongside very
close, and troublesomely similar neighbours. The essential problem-
atic worrying European policy makers is, then, the difcult and of-
ten only partial accommodation of culturally distinct outsiders and
foreigners into longstanding social and cultural institutions which
were essentially dened historically within Europe, and for highly lo-
cal reasons, in quite exclusive and belligerent terms. The fear which
thus denes the problematic of immigrant integration is that full
assimilation on these conditions is probably never likely to occur.
The everyday popularity of integration as a term may appear pe-
culiar at a time when so-called globalization and, in particular, new
forms of migration and mobility are said to have generated all kinds
of nation-state-transcending transnational actors and forms of orga-
nization (see Faist, 2000; Papastergiadis, 1999). Our unit of society
is now routinely said to be something we must look for beyond the
nation-state (Cohen and Kennedy, 2000). In the more speculative
fancies of social theorists we are invited to think of the trajectory of
(post-) modernity as going beyond society itself (for example, Giddens,
1990; Urry, 2000). Under these conditions, migrant groups might
be thought of as not following the same westernizing, modernizing
integration path into full citizenship, membership and belonging of
their new host societies. Pan-national and regional cooperation, as
well as the re-emergence of the city as the locus for integration, is
also said to have reduced the signicance of the nation-state as an
exclusive, bounded population container in Europe (Torpey, 2000).
Yet the endurance of integration as the goal of most practical
policy thought on this question in Europe including amongst the
leading independent academic authorities gives us a clue to the
vested interests and applied imperatives of the older, nation-state
building paradigm. As soon as their minds turn to applied policy for-
mulations, these people recognize no beyond-the-nation-state to im-
migration policy. Europeans continue to speak of the integration of
immigrants into bounded, nationally-distinct societal units focus-
ing attention on typical nation-building questions such as naturaliza-
tion, access to citizenship, access to the welfare state, participation in
political and social institutions, and so on precisely because any-
thing else threatens the basic political ordering of European cultural
and social diversity into state-centred, state-organized social forms.
nationally distinct
societal units
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To put it another way, the incentive structures of policy thinking and
comparative research on the integration of immigrants in Europe,
are still very much set by the imperatives of the singular nation-state-
society, which recognizes this and only this as the fundamental prob-
lematic at stake here.
Integration as a paradigm for policy research
Unlike in America, academic research on immigrants and integra-
tion in Europe is still dominantly structured by its explicit or implicit
links to the knowledge demands of specic policy agendas and po-
litical discussions in different national contexts (on these, see Favell,
2001). In Europe, the overlap and interpenetration of research and
policy making is pervasive at national and, increasingly, internation-
al level. Academics are co-opted into politicized roles either through
the direct shaping of the research agenda by public and institutional
funding opportunities to do applied work; by the invitation to take
on the role of public intellectual in media or government work; or
by their activist involvement as campaigners, in which their work
is used to articulate political positions. This involvement clearly is
linked to societys functional need for someone to express political
agency, with academics contributing through their research to the
construction of both social problems (as they are perceived) and their
solution. Insofar as their work also often serves to think for the
state, it also helps underwrite dominant nation-building ideologies.
Such a role has its costs. The involvement of researchers in activism
or the policy process can also diminish the intellectual autonomy and
viability of independent academic research outside of more instru-
mentalized uses.
European nations are obviously at different stages of development
in their internal debates, but in most cases academic thinking is now
moving beyond purely denunciatory work on the negative conse-
quences of immigration (such as studies of racism) into the concep-
tualization of practical integration solutions and trajectories of multi-
cultural social change. For example, in Britain, the popular sub-eld
of more critical anti-racist, Marxist and post-Marxist writers (such as
the cultural studies writers inspired by Stuart Hall) whose work
tended to focus on condemning the racism of state institutions and
celebrating the resistance of immigrant cultures have themselves
found there is a limit to what can be done with such arguments.
More recently, they have begun to more consciously contribute to
debates about multicultural citizenship, in relation to mainstream
practical
integration
solutions
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policy formulations (i.e., Gilroy, 2000; Alibhai-Brown, 2000).
5
The
desire to make a respectable intervention into the public debate, or
to get hired for research by the government or political think-tanks,
can thus be a disciplining experience. Such contributions can, as the
evolution of anti-racist and multicultural thinking in Britain shows,
play a major role in legitimizing in the mainstream a national sense
of ease with difference and diversity. In many other countries, a sim-
ilar evolution can be observed, with discussion about integration
playing the central mainstream role as a focus for constructive, prag-
matic, policy-related interventions.
National self-sufciency in policy debates has, however, been the
rule. The terms and categories that dominate discussion in different
places for example, multiculturalism and race relations in Britain,
or republicanism and citoyennet in France are the product of of-
ten exclusively internal national political dynamics. Notably, they are
discourses which reect and reproduce longer standing narratives of
nationhood and national destiny popular in these countries. When
references to other countries appear, comparison usually enters as a
further self-justicatory strategy for the national ideology. In France,
for example, a key move among many public intellectuals involved in
producing the new republican synthesis and idea of intgration of
the 1980s was the contrasting of the universalist French tradition
with the differentialism of its European and North American ri-
vals (most dramatically in Schnapper, 1991; Todd, 1994): Over time,
however, the prejudices of comparison have softened, especially as
policy actors and academics have themselves been increasingly ex-
posed to debates and consultation with other national counterparts.
Under these conditions, their national reection may begin to incor-
porate more explicit elements of structured comparative knowledge,
recognizing the specicities of the other national starting points and
the opportunities of cross-national policy learning. The emergence of
pan-European structures (both EU and Council of Europe) has added
to this imperative, tendering research which, in order to get funded,
must be explicitly cross-national in scope and personnel, and policy
oriented in its objectives.
The rst result of academic cross-national policy comparison was
the identication of ideal-type national models of citizenship and
integration (Hammar, 1985; Castles, 1995). This Weberian com-
parative impulse was strongly inuenced by North American writers
bringing a more autonomous set of interests to the study of immi-
gration in Europe (especially Brubaker 1989, 1992). The models ap-
proach was popular because it proved to be such an effective heuris-
tic strategy: reducing the problem of the vague and indenable object
ideal-type
national models
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of enquiry a national society in all its complexity to a model
which captures the key explanatory variables of social change. These
were invariably identied as path dependent historical sources of
national cultural difference. The most well-known argument linked
to the models approach has been the classic distinction between the
ethnic and civic nation in citizenship studies, distilled from a re-
ductive (and largely inaccurate) stylization of French and German
nationality law as ideal types of ius soli and ius sanguinis citizenship.
It was surely questionable to explain the differences between these
two similar cases by reference to national ideologies, themselves pro-
duced in the past by nationalist intellectuals and state actors to distin-
guish one nation from the other (on this see Weil, 1996). Yet even if
historically dubious, the power of the contrast here worked to gener-
ate effective normative arguments about a de facto national conver-
gence across Europe foreseeing mixed sources of nationality and a
limited recognition of ius soli for second and third generations thus
helping German policy makers to move towards reforms (Hansen
and Weil, 2000).
The deeper explanatory challenge here would be to produce a
more reexive understanding of the ideological modes by which sim-
ilar European nation-states have justied and reproduced their own
models, as culturally distinct projections of collective identity (see
Favell, 1998; Alund and Schierup, 1991; Joppke, 1999). More even
handed comparison has gone on to recognize that while national pol-
icy legacies matter, they cannot be reduced to positive and negative
national examples. One response was the move to introduce typolo-
gies of incorporation, factoring in modes of state-society relations
and multi-levelled constitutional structures, as a more sophisticated
reection of the different factors determining integration. Soysals
work in particular had the virtue of turning the ethnic/civic distinc-
tion on its head: highlighting in its arguments about the postnational
status of migrant groups such as Turks in Germany, the normative
dogma involved in always equating full national citizenship with
full integration (Soysal, 1994): Structured case-by-case comparisons
along these institutionalist lines have enabled a more fruitful type of
cross-national work, particularly those located at sub-national levels
such as the city (i.e., Ireland, 1994; Bousetta, 2000).
However, away from these predominantly North American led
comparative efforts, more explicitly policy-oriented studies with
a comparative range have tended to follow the least sophisticated
academic approaches. This has certainly been the case with work
produced through the sponsorship of European institutions. For
example, the big winner from an intense bidding struggle among
ideological modes
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academics in this eld for money from the Targeted Social and
Economic Research (TSER) programme on exclusion was a nation-
al models-based study led by well-known national gures Friedrich
Heckmann and Dominique Schnapper that explicitly structured its
investigations around the idea that immigration and ethnic relations
in each country are determined by classic policy models rooted in
political cultural differences between France, Germany, Britain and
so on (Heckmann and Schnapper, 2003). A models-based approach
of this kind will often itself reproduce the ideological ctions each
nation has of its own and others immigration politics. Schnapper
and associates duly found that minorities and majorities do indeed
talk about the issues in each country in ways that follow the distinct
national ideologies. But little or no self-reexive effort was made to ask
how these nation-sustaining ideas about distinct national models
have themselves been created and sustained by politicians, the media
and the policy academics themselves in each country, precisely in
order to foreclose the possibility that external international or trans-
national inuences might begin to affect domestic minority issues
and policy considerations.
Practical institutional imperatives also dictate that the policy study
packages and presents its ndings in a narrowly targeted way, which
naturally curtails many of the more interesting lines of enquiry. This
has been well-understood by one of the more inuential NGOs in this
eld in Brussels the Migration Policy Group who have been in-
volved in two of the most wide ranging funded surveys on integration
policies across European society (Vermeulen, 1997; MPG, 1996). In
the latter, the societal integration project, they set up roundtables
in around twenty countries, and listened to the expert opinions of
policy makers and policy intellectuals, generating a mass of mate-
rial about how policy makers talk about the same issues in different
places. However, in the end the slim report of highlights and recom-
mendations boiled all this down to a reafrmation that convergence
was the source of future norms on citizenship and integration across
Europe. Being limited to the typical state-centric talk and self-justi-
cation of policy makers, it was unable to offer any genuine compara-
tive evaluation. Moreover, the freedom of reection of such a project
is naturally cut down by the expectations of the sponsors who lay
down the lines of research. By denition, such comparative policy
studies produce ndings which reinforce the state-centred, top-down
formulations familiar at national level. The one difference here as
a product of a supra-national European initiative = is that the conclu-
sions about the inevitability of convergence underline a familiar EU
strategy to focus, not on national exceptionality or uniqueness (as do
Migration Policy
Group
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national level studies) but rather on the narrowing of national dif-
ferences. In other words, as we might expect given the sponsors in-
volved, these arguments work to narrow down the freedom of agency
of individual states, hence their sovereignty. Convergent citizenship
criteria become like convergent criteria for monetary union.
To really be able to answer the evaluatory question of which
nation-states are doing better on integration than others, we would
need some kind of integration index: a convertible scale which en-
abled us to read off across European societies degrees of social segre-
gation in housing, success in schooling or employment, differences
in resistance of cultural behaviour, persistence of racist attitudes,
relative social mobility, or whatever is argued to be the best set of
objective measures. These indicators would then have to be linked to
the existence, or the success and failure, of specic national policies
or institutions. The inevitable impulse to cross-national evaluation
of state policy is not only exceedingly difcult to do, given the cross-
national data constraints I will go on to discuss. It also imposes as an
assumption an untenable automatic correlation between success on
the index and the effectiveness of state policies having achieved their
goals by shaping or inuencing the behaviour of groups and indi-
viduals. This assumption itself is a state-reinforcing one, penalizing
any society which is less structured by state intervention, regardless
of how well integrated groups or individuals may in fact be.
The one way this kind of approach works is as a comparative
shaming strategy directed towards states with less extensive formal
rights and entitlements for migrants than others. The most exten-
sive survey of this kind was a six nation Austrian study which did
just this, in order to shame the Austrian government into better mi-
gration policy and anti-discrimination measures (inar et al., 1995;
Waldrauch and Honger, 1997; Waldrauch, 2001). The extensively
documented study broke down all formal rights and entitlements of
non-nationals across various European states, rating each one be-
tween 0 and 1 as an index to barriers to integration. By denition,
the approach foresees a state-centred, state-organized solution to in-
tegration, and cannot capture any forms of multiculturalism which
are the outcome of more laissez-faire style approaches. We end up
with the very common conclusion that highly state-organized societ-
ies, such as Sweden or the Netherlands, do it best. Yet these are also
highly unied national societies, who put high demands of linguistic
and cultural assimilation on their inhabitants (something to which
the index is blind). They are also societies racked with dilemmas of
informal economy, and high degrees of social segregation among
their immigrant population. Current discussions on immigration in
integration index
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Denmark provide a good example of the paradoxes here in some of
Europes most enlightened social democracies. Laws and policies en-
sure excellent access to rights and high rates of formal participation
among the so-called new Danes. Yet the many socioeconomic prob-
lems linked to disadvantaged immigrants are routinely interpreted
in political discussion as dysfunctional to the smooth running of the
Danish national welfare state, and stigmatized as ikke dansk; i.e.,
rule-breaking immigrants not behaving in a true Danish manner
(on Denmark, see Schierup, 1993).
Rights-based evaluations of integration contrast dramatically with
those which focus on different formal indicators. Britain, with its
weak constitutional structures and idiosyncratic race relations insti-
tutions, does rather badly in the Austrian study, yet this contrasts
sharply with how comparative British evaluations of European expe-
riences view the matter. Contrasting its longstanding and successful
multicultural practices with the troubled politics and social situations
of many continental European societies, the most extensive studies
made by British researchers have always found Britain to be far bet-
ter endowed with antidiscrimination legislation and multicultural
policies (Forbes and Mead, 1992; Wrench, 1996). The British state in
fact pursues a minimalist style of intervention into the many and di-
verse forms of multiculturalism that have developed in the country.
Yet homegrown studies routinely link these successes to the agency
of the British state and its policy legacy: what is perceived by them
as the existence of a strong state-centred multicultural race relations
framework. Multiculturalism is thus claimed as an achievement of
the British state, rather than a consequence of the weak penetration
of the state in everyday life in Britain. From this point of view which
is more plausible in a comparative perspective it could be argued
that it is laissez faire that has enabled London and a small handful
of other cities to develop as multicultural cities, in sharp distinction
from the white and intolerant provincial hinterlands.
As more positive visions of multicultural integration become
prevalent across Europe, other less advanced integration nations
than France or Britain are likely to follow their lead and see their
ruling national elites claim the multicultural success in the name
of their own tradition of nationhood. For sure, France and Britain
look like successful multicultural societies on this score. Yet, it is
precisely a country like France which imposes the biggest cultural
burdens on newcomers in terms of their adhesion to the particular
ways of the nation; or a country like Britain, which buys enlightened
race relations as a trade-off for some of the toughest border controls
in Europe. These paradoxical results follow from the fact that both
Britain
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countries practice multiculturalism-in-one-nation: a multicultural
nationalism, that sees no other source of multiculturalism than the
miraculously tolerant cosmopolitanism of the home culture. Such
countries may then be universalist, and yet apparently highly intol-
erant of specic cultural differences; or they might be highly multi-
cultural and multi-racial, and yet be at the same time extraordinarily
xenophobic. There are clear costs involved in the stubborn mainte-
nance of the ction of exclusive nation-state agency over the multi-
cultural aspects of these locations.
The strong sense of national self-preservation displayed here per-
haps explains why the European Union has only been able to gain
the weakest inuence over immigrant integration policies, jealously
guarded at the national level. The EU can get involved to identify
good practices, or the best convergent norms across societies; but
it cannot begin to constitute itself as a political agency here without
taking agency (i.e., sovereignty) away from nation-states, which have
used issues of immigrant integration precisely to actually underline
and reproduce their own existence as coherent, bounded, nation-
building societies. European integration is of course itself the search
for political agency at a supra-national level; but the fact that it seems
to fail to constitute itself as a state, suggests that this is largely be-
cause the actual boundaries of European society remain very much
xed at the national level.
Survey and census based work on integration
It is no surprise that policy-centred studies should inevitably repro-
duce the state-centred, nation-building optic in their framing and
prescription of ways to achieve integration. As the preceding discus-
sion has indicated, such studies by denition can say very little about
the kind of less structured social processes that are characteristic of
much multiculturalism to be found in Europes cities and metropoli-
tan regions. Rather, where they recognize multiculturalism, policy
and institutional-based studies tend to bolster nationalizing ideolo-
gies which afrm the nation-state as the sole relevant locus of politi-
cal agency able to shape a society. They are also, needless to say, the
contributions which best chime with the interests of agents of the
state, concerned with maximizing their realm of political inuence
by emphasizing the growing importance of top-down immigration
and integration policy.
But what of bottom-up studies: empirical work which focuses
on the experiences, attitudes or social mobility of the immigrants or
national
self-preservation
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ethnic minority members themselves? Policy and institutional-based
studies often have very little to say about actual migrant experiences
of integration. Here, more ambitious uses of survey and census-based
work, based on studying their values, discourses and behaviour, of-
fer a more advanced integration index for measuring and evaluating
what is going on. Clearly, this would be material close to the actual
process of social change going on inside multicultural nation-states;
and, it might be thought, material more likely to reveal evidence of
tendencies that are decomposing the conventional nation-state inte-
gration paradigm. For example, it might be expected to nd strong
evidence in those European cities that are signicant nodes in
the global economy of the growing transnationalism characteristic
of the social and cultural forms of migrant groups whose activities
are embedded in global economic networks (see Faist, 2000; Rath,
2000).
Ambitious studies along these lines are now beginning to emerge.
The possibility of doing such work has grown out of an increasing so-
cietal thirst for more systematic knowledge about immigration phe-
nomena as the political salience of the subject has risen. Governments,
policy think tanks, international institutions and the media, are all
beginning to show interest in funding much more large-scale sur-
vey data driven studies of integration issues. The positivistic style
of large-scale survey work offers an interesting counterpoint to the
normative leanings of policy studies and institutional-based works,
which have tended to frame their more journalistic-style methods
with the value-laden rhetoric of citizenship and rights. Survey-based
researchers, meanwhile, preserve their credibility, not by shadow-
ing the language and conceptualizations of policy actors, but by the
distinct scientic autonomy of their methodology and results. By
denition, the kind of work they are doing cannot be mounted by the
personnel of governments and newspapers, lacking in the specialist
quantitative and qualitative techniques required; such work has to be
commissioned, with freedom of research negotiated in advance. This
fact creates distinctive material conditions for the kind of work pro-
duced. One advantage is that the process of deriving policy directed
normative conclusions is (or should be) left to post-hoc interpreta-
tion, and not in-built in the normative state-centred conceptualiza-
tions which typically measure integration: such as those which rate
already institutionalized state policy structures linked to citizenship
rights or legal and political channels.
Numerous examples of impressive large-scale survey work do
now exist in various countries at the single-case national level (see
the discussion in Phalet and Swyngedouw, 1999; examples are
ambitious studies
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Modood et al., 1997; Tribalat et al., 1996; Swyngedouw, Phalet, and
Deschouwer, 1999; Phalet et al., 2000; Diehl et al., 1999; Veenman,
1998; Lesthaege, 2000). The new frontier for survey-based research
is the possibility of cross-national comparative survey work on the
integration of immigrants. However, as was clear from exploratory
discussions at a conference in September 1999 on the subject or-
ganized by Hartmut Esser which brought together the European
Consortium for Sociological Research, a grouping of the leading
quantitative social scientists in Europe very few of the epistemo-
logical problems of doing such work have yet been considered by
researchers more familiar with doing cross-national studies on
employment, educational mobility or inequality (e.g., Erikson and
Goldthorpe, 1992). Cross-national efforts have to be synthesized
from the best of the national level data provided on a nation-by-na-
tion basis by governments. The very best of current cross-national
efforts in the area of immigration mounted by an international or-
ganization, which monitors migration stocks and ows around the
developed world the annual OECD-SOPEMI report is notoriously
hampered by the fact that the expert respondents each report gures
for its own country based on different national means of data-gather-
ing (SOPEMI, 1998). Moreover, there is nothing like the systematic
quantitative effort on integration questions as there is in the report
for basic issues of entry, legality, residence and so on. The report
does have a growing section on integration, but it is by far the weak-
est part of it, reecting perhaps a lack of sociological expertise among
the geographers and economists who make up the immigration spe-
cialist panel. The report in fact falls back into a more policy-centred
style of analysis: reproducing the same old frameworks about nation-
al models and comparative rights indices.
We can imagine perhaps a more concerted attempt to concep-
tualize the integration questions in a way which escapes this nomi-
nalist nation-state centred approach. But the real problem here is
that all available data on immigrant or minority numbers basic to
the SOPEMI effort, follow the signicantly different conventions
in each country about collecting population data. There is, in other
words, an in-built dependency on nationally-specic research tech-
nologies; usually the state apparatus that has been built up around
census gathering. The specic methods used to identify populations
of immigrant origin in the post-war period vary from country to
country, as does the political sensitivity with which this information
is released or extrapolated. The technical methods and the politics
surrounding such sensitive state knowledge production inevitably
reect the national ideology each nation has fashioned for itself as a
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narrative of nation-building. No matter how insulated the methodol-
ogy, the broader national policy denition of integration as a social
process impacts upon the production of categories and numbers elic-
ited from survey results.
Counting only non-nationals as the immigrant population is still
the base-line norm across nearly all European countries except Britain,
which has a famously idiosyncratic form of ethnic self-identication
in its census. Most comparative tables offer gures for non-nationals
by nationality, which works up to point in countries where original
nationality remains a distinguishing factor (as, say, in Germany, Italy
or Spain; although it runs into problems in Germany, for example,
in counting the three million Aussiedler from Eastern Europe). This
method is clearly a criterion of declining usefulness, however, as in-
creasing numbers of second and third generation immigrant chil-
dren in fact accede to full national citizenship; it can indeed be sim-
ply a crude measure of administrative exclusion. Naturalization rates
over time are a second set of gures, which trace the absorption of
immigrants over shorter, given periods of time. Other countries may
also offer gures which count those people who identify older family
members born outside of the country. From this, a great deal can be
extrapolated into second and third generation, but a country such as
France still maintains barriers for ideological reasons to researchers
using this information, which means that some naturalized second
or third generation are lost to studies once they leave the immigrant
household.
A strong moral prohibition, meanwhile, exists on the classica-
tion of people by race or religion across Europe. There is little more
distasteful to continental Europeans than anything with a whiff of
former Nazi racial classications, or indeed the common practice
in multinational empires such as the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia to
brand people permanently on their interior passports with an ethnic
nationality (see Brubaker, 1995). However, a more racially heteroge-
neous population such as the Portuguese avoids these racial classi-
cations for rather different reasons, to do with the cosmopolitan
colonial conception of the nation. In Belgium, you are classied by
language according to political records after you vote, religion after
you choose university. Here, however, the census is banned by law
to answer such questions up front. In the Netherlands, meanwhile,
there is no national census at all, after a libertarian public revolt in
the 1970s. Ethnic statistics here have to be reconstructed from lo-
cal city and police records or special ministry surveys, something
that has contributed signicantly to the sense of unease about the
numbers of undocumented residents in the country. Other coun-
racial classication
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tries, however, such as Denmark and Britain which in other re-
spects have very different census methods are prepared under cer-
tain circumstances to make available census data to track specied
(anonymous) individuals over time between censuses, in order, for
example, to analyze spatial mobility or rates of political participation
(see Togeby, 1999; Fielding, 1995). Such a babel of census informa-
tion is a difcult starting point. In talking about integration, who are
we talking about: legally resident foreigners, immigrants, illegal/
undocumented residents, third-country nationals, ethnic groups,
racial minorities, new or naturalized citizens, or simply formally
undistinguishable nationals with a different de facto cultural history
or skin colour?
The narrow denition of immigrants as resident non-nationals
has the virtue of avoiding the integration issue entirely. It offers the
normative panacea of equating citizenship with full integration, an
idea which has long reassured French republicans on the virtues
of a cosmopolitan type of nationhood. A normative dogma such as
this makes no sociological sense, of course, once anyone is willing
to admit that host populations and migrants alike will continue to
informally discriminate themselves and each other regardless of
which passport they are holding. Once some outsiders become insid-
ers, however, their formal categorization (or recognition, in more
afrmative terms) itself becomes a part of the integration process.
Whether or not they are separated off for ofcial monitoring pur-
poses, and how and where they can be placed on some path towards
full integration, becomes a crucial part of the integrative process it-
self, not least because the separation from ones original nationality
may also be a coercive state enforced act (see Simon, 1997). There is
a profound moral truth in the French refusal to actually recognize
any French citizen of non-national ethnic origin as such in ofcial
statistics, because the recognition itself can indeed be a form of in-
equality or discrimination. The power of naming does indeed count
for something. The French refusal is also a dramatic statement of the
nation-states continued prerogative to nationalize a new citizen as
indivisibly French. Yet, on the other hand, no policy can be devised
for systematic integration of foreign-origin groups until the nation-
state begins to collectively recognize and classify minorities of ethnic
origin, with special claims targeted policies, resources, legal allow-
ances, etc that follow from this (this is the central problematic of
the inuential work of Kymlicka, 1995).
There is another side of the classicatory separation, however.
Integration cannot be conceived, identied, let alone measured as
degrees of inequality and so on, until a control group representa-
normative dogma
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tive of the national population has been specied. But this raises the
question: we are talking about integration into what? Here, the logic
of classication becomes even more slippery. Are they the indige-
nous population (de souche in French), but if so, what length of
time constitutes roots; are they dened culturally, by their family
origins, by their length of residence; are they, rather, simply to be
identied as the majority white or European population; or, are we
in fact speaking of some representative sample or statistical mean of
the citizenry as a whole, including all those new and culturally exotic
recent additions? Moreover, as Michael Banton points out (2001),
it makes little sense to measure the integration of an immigrant or
ethnic minority population, until we have some precise measure-
ment of how well the majority population is integrated as a nation.
Whatever method is chosen however the state chooses to classify,
count and control its population or dene those who are in and those
who are out will again amount to a pre-determined national sam-
pling frame, that is very closely linked to the ideological concept of
nationhood present. Behind this, of course, lies the normative com-
mitment to integration as societal end-goal, the underlying assump-
tion that holds the nation-state-society unit together. Researchers
who thus set out to objectively measure integration, without taking
into account how much the nation-state unit has already determined
the very quantitative tools they use, will fail to see how much the
bounds of what they can discover have already been pre-set for them.
If so, they are working no less to underwrite the predominance of the
nation-state optic, than policy studies researchers who accept without
challenge nation-state centred denitions of universal citizenship
or cosmopolitan multiculturalism.
On the whole, however, progressive minded commentators
across Europe do not challenge this conceptual recuperation of their
very tools of research by a nation-state centred vision of integration.
The majority, rather, has been content to push a different, concilia-
tory line, that squares the circle between the reality of ongoing na-
tion-building efforts and the contrasting idealism of cosmopolitan
multiculturalism. They argue that European nations have become,
or are becoming, countries of immigration. Such arguments have
been very much present in those countries whose right wing refuses
to recognize the reality of continued immigration and settlement at
all. Among those promoting this happier version of Europes im-
migrant future, the coercive weight of ever-present nation-building
processes is thus lightened by the claim that the integration of immi-
grants in Europe can be equated with what happens to immigrants
in Australia, Canada or the US. The normative inspiration is clear
ethnic
self-identication
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constitutional universalism, cosmopolitan idealism, the melting
pot, open immigration regimes, and so on but the idea of the old
nation-states of Europe metamorphosizing into brand new coun-
tries of immigration is a dubious rhetoric on any empirical level,
not least from a historical point of view. In Europe, we are talking
about tightly bounded and culturally specic nation-states dealing in
the post-war period with an unexpected but still not very large in-
ux of highly diverse immigrant settlers, at a time when, for other
international reasons, their sense of nationhood is insecure or in de-
cline. It is a problematic very different to those faced by the US or
Australia, whose histories and sense of nationhood have always been
built on immigration. Europe, rather, faces a problematic where the
continuity of nation-building is perhaps a much more signicant fact
than the multicultural hybridity that is sometimes sought for in these
other, newer model nations. A great deal of revisionist effort has
gone into reconstructing certain European nations as undiscovered
immigration nations (e.g., Noiriel, 1991). Although widely accepted,
it is an effort which in fact empties signicance out of other empiri-
cal attempts to problematize integration as a limited process of cul-
tural change, combining multicultural adaptation with national re-
invention. Instead, it rather lamely gestures European survey-based
researchers back towards the most culturally-neutral model available:
that of classic American assimilation research, which charts the prog-
ress of different immigrant ethnic groups towards some ideal-typical
absorption into the suburban middle class a process where the per-
vasively national orientation of American assimilation is never even
put into question, and where the nation-building effect here stays
invisible (see also Brubaker, 2001). The spectacular resurgence of
American patriotism in its crudest forms post 9/11 has at least clari-
ed how deeply nationalistic ideas of American unity and Americas
global role in fact are.
Operationalizing this particular normative frame for immigrant
integration which recasts European societies as immigration nations
in the idealized, immigrant American mould has been done in dis-
tinctive national ways. On the face of it, the French offer the purest
instance of a self-styled universalist country of immigration, not least
after the assiduous reconstruction of this idea by historians and so-
ciologists in the 1980s. Establishing this as the normative frame for
new progressive policies was relatively straightforward. But, in em-
pirical terms, the formal prohibition in ofcial survey data on intro-
ducing any sub-categorization of the population by ethnicity (i.e., in
the data produced by the national statistics ofce, INSEE), left gran-
diose declarations about the continued success of the French republi-
culturally neutral
model
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can model bereft of evidence for these claims. For how else could the
sociological integration of different cultural groups in France in fact
be measured? A study which reintroduced some sub-classication
of the population by ethnicity was, in other words, needed to show
that ethnicity in fact did not matter. The nation-sustaining argument
about integration was in a sense generating its own contradictions,
that would then need resolution by a new scientic approach. This,
then, was the background to the ambitious study by INED, headed by
Michle Tribalat, that still represents the state-of-the-art in integra-
tion research in France (Tribalat, 1995; Tribalat et al., 1996). Sample
ethnic groups of different national origin tracked down by ethno-
graphic investigation, using the census only indirectly were com-
pared to a control group of non-immigrant origin French on ques-
tions of cultural behaviour, language use, housing concentration,
political participation, and so on. The strongly French socialization
of most groups observed the Turkish and Chinese being the two
outliers in fact offered strong evidence for continued assimilation
in France, as Tribalat preferred to call it. The mere introduction of
ethnicity into the survey, however, brought desperately controversial
public reactions from other commentators, such as Herv Le Bras
(1998); and this despite the fact that it led to such conventionally
French results.
Systematic cross-ethnic comparative work is much more highly
developed in Germany, which has strong national surveys of data by
national-origin available, such as the socioeconomic panel commis-
sioned annually by the Deutsches Institut fr Wirtschaft, which pro-
vides data on ethnicity, language, identity questions and participa-
tion (an example of such work being Diehl et al., 1999). Progressive
researchers here are even more sensitive to the de-categorization of
foreigners and the positive idea of Germany as a country of immi-
gration. There have been advantages to such research in the fact it
has had to be diverted away from the ideologically dominated dis-
cussions on citizenship and naturalization, where progress has been
more difcult. German research is thus more likely to concentrate
on conceptualizing integration in technical socioeconomic terms:
in terms of participation in the welfare state, and in differences be-
tween federal or city level contexts. One consequence is the possibil-
ity of internal comparisons of integration geographically within the
nation, something of which there is no trace in France and Britain.
German research, however, does not escape the pervasively nation-
centred frame which dominates its political debates. Negative evi-
dence of non-integration such as ethnic concentration or the fail-
ure of second and third generations to speak German tends to get
Germany: strong
national-origin data
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constructed as evidence of segregation or marginalization, in con-
trast with more successful state-centred integration or assimilation.
These closed typologies of immigrant trajectories which reinforce
the idea of full national integration as the ideal can be found in
research going on in all kinds of countries (Nauck and Schnpug,
1997; see also the closed scheme of claims-making laid out as an
introduction by Koopmans and Statham, 2000).
In Britain, meanwhile, the ethnic self-identication question in
its census is clearly out of sync with its European neighbours. It in-
dicates a conceptual history that has always looked for its normative
inspiration to American race relations of the 1960s, and has always
dened Britain more narrowly as a country of postcolonial immigra-
tion only. For all the masses of data provided about the select group
of post-colonial racial and national groups recognized in the census,
the framework has come to have serious limitations over time. The
categories themselves have become highly politicized, putting into
practice a variable geometry that has sought to respond to the emerg-
ing demands of new and increasingly diverse migrant groups who
recognize that the census categories are a fundamental source of rec-
ognition, as well as legal coverage and public funding. Basic black
and white distinctions, for example, have now fallen away into a
broader recognition of Asian groups. Other new migrants in Britain,
however, nd themselves lost between the generic white and other
boxes. Indeed, with Jewish and Irish anti-discrimination campaign-
ers forcing open the pandoras box of whiteness (the all important
control group) in the census of 2001, it is quite likely that the sharp
minority ethnic groupings that have been the core and inspiration
of British race research may in future begin to crumble.
Obviously, the sources of minority data, and the qualitative evi-
dence it also provides about nuances in ethnic self-identication,
have created a boon for identities type work in Britain, much of it
now pursued under the banner of new ethnicities. There are nu-
merous studies in which individuals are ethnographically studied
playing with or resisting (unsurprisingly) their given ethnic minor-
ity category (Back, 1995; Anthias and Yuval-Davis, 1993; Modood et
al., 1994). Such work can often be an ideal vehicle for articulating
ethnic voices themselves. But structural work about the social mo-
bility of such groups is hampered by the crude comparison forced by
the data between racially designated ethnic groups and the generic
white block of the host population; this, inevitably it seems, leads
research to claim ethnic success as rooted in minority group solidar-
ity, but ethnic failure as rooted in majority group racial discrimina-
tion. In this frame, too, there is no way of assessing the continued
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impact of nation-building assimilation via evidence on cultural be-
haviour, etc on ethnic groups, despite the self-evident Britishness
of many of these well-established minority groups. Nor is it easy in
this frame to cross-check for class, gender or regional factors, par-
ticularly if these might lead to the declining salience of race-based
explanations. In some of the best recent work on social mobility and
ethnic identities, transnational behaviour and sources of social suc-
cess are still surprisingly downplayed against the interpretation that
ethnic minority success is further proof of vibrant British multicul-
turalism (Modood et al., 1997). Britain celebrates with some pride
its longstanding role in Europe as the leading country of post-war
immigration; yet has until very recently refused ofcially to see itself
as a country of new immigration. Within this paradoxical picture,
well-integrated and recognized ethnic minorities have a status and
advantage denied to the many other new migrant groups now found
in the country.
In the nation-state centred version of integration research in the
larger European countries, there is something odd about the fact
that the status and success of immigrants gets measured entirely in
terms of a social mobility relative to norms of integration into the
nation-society, or average national social mobility paths; yet it is in-
creasingly normal to think of elites in the same country becoming
increasingly transnational in their roles, networks and trajectories.
The exclusive destiny of full integration into host nation states may
however not be the norm for immigrants in the future. Already, in
other smaller European nations, a rather different picture is emerg-
ing. New migration countries such as Italy, Spain, and Portugal are
actually going through the process of formulating their own uncer-
tain national conceptions of integration at a very different histori-
cal moment compared to larger nations who continue to offer their
models. As well as being countries that are more geographically ex-
posed to migration, they are, moreover, countries with weaker state
penetration of society or the market. In these less structured situa-
tions, the normative imperative of full national integration begins
to lessen, if new non-nation-centred structures of social integration
begin to emerge. A similar consequence follows from research on in-
tegration into a non-unied or multi-levelled state such as Belgium.
In seeking to avoid the inevitability of nation-state centred visions of
integration apparently forced on research by the kind of data avail-
able and the kind of concepts we work with, studying these smaller
or newer integration scenarios may indeed offer a way forward out of
the current paradigm.
non-nation-centred
structures of social
integration
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Beyond the integration paradigm?
The clear message from the critical survey of current integration re-
search in Europe offered here is that better research would be re-
search that sets out to be more autonomous academically, and more
thoroughly comparative in its intent. Academics need to escape their
role of underwriting nation-building efforts directed towards small
immigrant populations that have provoked a renewed symbolic effort
to imagine (inclusive) western nation-state cultures. A much higher
degree of self-consciousness is needed about the way contextual fac-
tors determine the intellectual content of research itself.
How might this be done? I will conclude with a discussion of
some of the newer insights provided by the way scholars of transna-
tionalism have approached the problem (e.g., Portes, 1996; Basch et
al., 1994; Smith and Guarnizo, 1998). Scholars of transnationalism
have sought for exactly the kinds of reasons I spell out in this paper
to expunge integration from their terms of research. By denition,
they do not wish to be underwriting the nation-state in a world which
they see as increasingly transnational or global. Methodologically,
too, their bottom up, ethnographic drive suits a style of work which
draws large conclusions from the study of cases likely to be seen as
exceptional, or indeed deviant from the conventional integration-fo-
cused perspective. For sure, it is this too which may account for the
often excessively celebratory tone of transnational studies. Seeking a
new kind of liberation, some studies fall into the longstanding prob-
lem that has distorted much radical ethnic and racial studies: the
transfer of sympathy for the experiences, difculties, and sometimes
plight of migrants and ethnic minorities, into visions of these groups
as some sort of heroic new proletariat. Although the search for a
new world and the slogan globalization from below is the rather
romantic packaging chosen in the work of Portes, Castells et al., this
should not deect us from the key insights of their work. Its ma-
jor advance has been the empirical uncovering of trans-state, trans-
nation economic and cultural networks of transactions (and protean
forms of social organization) among new and developing migrant
groups. These networks are clearly generating sources of collective
social power outside of territorial state structures familiar from our
conventional understanding of the world of nations. Whereas Portes
principally recognizes the source of transnational power as the global
market, others might point to Islam or Hispanic culture, or indeed
informal (illegal) sources of these same powers (see Cohen, 1997;
Phizacklea, 1998).
The other crucial aspect of Portess work, however, is its insistence
informal sources
of power
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on linking emergent transnational forms with classic integration
questions. The exploration of the notion of segmented assimila-
tion in the US, has pointed towards the new structural relationship
between the transnational survival strategies resorted to by mi-
grant groups and the unappealing downward assimilation offered
to them by the host societies state and societal structures (Portes,
1995). European examples of this have been the similar emergence
of community resilience against the negative socioeconomic con-
ditions they found themselves in, or the strongly assimilatory host
reception. The results have been the paradoxical innovations of the
informal economy or inner city Islam in many European cities. The
integration path may indeed prove to be, in Kloosterman and Raths
terms, a long and winding road (Kloosterman et al., 1998). As the
Dutch state, for example, seems ever tighter in its heavily legislated
attempt to discover, encompass, regularize and normalize the spon-
taneous economic activities of new migrants, so there has seemed
to be an ever-growing over-ow of undisciplined, self-organized
informal activities in the country (Engbersen, 1996). The very best
continental European work has focused on precisely this issue of in-
formality or non-institutionalized forms of social organization; often
focusing, unsurprisingly, on those groups identied in conventional
integration research as the ethnic cases which t worst into the kinds
of automatically integrating schemes set up, for example, by French
and British research (Fennema and Tillie, 1999; Bousetta, 1997;
Phalet et al., 2000). It is not surprising that this work has invariably
focused on either Turkish or Moroccan groups in various countries:
two newer, non-colonial migrant groups that have displayed some of
the most pronounced transnational, non-integrating social trajecto-
ries in Europe.
Systematizing these deviant tendencies in research without sim-
ply reproducing the nation-state-society as the container unit has
proven a lot more difcult. One might point to the Polanyi-inspired
way forward in recent work by Faist (2000) or Kesteloot (2000).
In this they offer schemes of transnational or local integration in
economic and community structures which cross-cut with national,
citizenship-centred forms. Empirical anthropologists, too, have pro-
vided some of the best recent work about immigrant and ethnic self-
organization in urban contexts (Werbner, 1999; Baumann, 1996).
Whether it is the bustling migrant markets of old Antwerp or East
Amsterdam, or the mosque-centred inner city Islam of Turks and
Moroccans in Brussels, there is clearly a need to recognize these city-
embedded activities as emergent forms of social organization and
hence social power largely unstructured or not incorporated (in for-
downward
assimilation
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mal or informal terms) by the state. The somewhat anarchical multi-
culturalism of some European cities now points towards a new type
of multi-ethnic culture in Europe, rather different to the multicul-
tural citizenship shaped by integrating nation-states. It is not egali-
tarian, it is not anchored in rights, and it is certainly not conict free;
but it is, for better or for worse, much less disciplined by the nation-
building pressures hidden in top-down policies of integration.
Interestingly, however, even this kind of multicultural challenge
to dominant European nation-state-centred cultures tends to still be
anchored in deterritorialized nationalities: the persistence of impor-
tant political and social links with the homeland, as both a concrete
and symbolic reference. This fact which is certainly the case with
Turks and Moroccans in Europe indicates a limit to these forms
of transnationalism outside of their European context. Viewed from
here they are not really transnational at all, but rather examples of de-
territorialized nation-state building, familiar perhaps from the older
diasporic histories of countries like Ireland, Italy or Greece. What
there is precious little evidence of across Europe is the kind of radi-
cal diasporic multicultural forms, beloved of British cultural stud-
ies writers: the black Atlantic diaspora or black Asian pan-ethnic
groups (see Gilroy, 1987; Brah, 1993; Hall, 1988). Such diasporas
would indeed constitute a more radical challenge to the present day
international system, still xed upon relations between nation-states
in the western and developing world to the south and east. But their
absence betrays just how British these writers in fact are; reecting
in their archetypal radical responses to frustrations encountered in
the ethnic categories of the liberal multicultural race relations frame-
work the everyday activist struggles of British race politics.
As these overwhelmingly national sources for transnational ideas
suggest, we should be wary of seeing transnationalism as an end
to the integration paradigm. Rather, transnationalism in Europe has
to be seen as a growing empirical exception to the familiar nation-
centred pattern of integration across the continent. This remains
the dominant focus for policy actors and migrant activists alike.
Transnationalism points towards the new sources of power accessed
by migrant groups when they begin to organize themselves and their
activities in ways not already organized for them by an integrating
nation-state. By setting these forms against the continuity of nation-
state centred patterns of integration, we may be able to understand
how and why new spaces in the empire of the state are beginning
to develop. What transnationalists should not do is leap beyond this
into claims of an emerging international or global structure, in which
all these nation-state challenging phenomena add up to a new global
deterritorialized
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framework of governance, at which level a new kind of incorporation
will be achieved (Soysals supra-national human rights regime, for
example). To do so is to project the same old normative nation-state-
building impulses onto an emerging international situation charac-
terized rather by its market and culture led undermining of tradition-
al nation-state powers. It means, in other words, to reinvent the state
by the back door at global level. There are, of course, political actors
who dream of a postnational state at European, even global level; but
the factual capture of this ideal by the far more powerful realpolitik of
everyday international relations, simply turns these efforts back into
a paradoxical rescue of the nation-state, to borrow Alan Milwards
(1992) famous phrase.
In many ways, the continued focus on integration as the cen-
tral idea in postimmigration policy debates across Europe, is itself
a choice of rhetoric designed explicitly to rescue the nation-state.
European policy makers and commentators have begun to formu-
late more constructive visions of a multicultural future that will be
able to contain and structure within the nation-state the many new
forms of immigration and multiculturalism beginning to spring up
across the continent. As I have argued, these visions and the aca-
demic research which has provided the knowledge to substantiate
their claims have continued to work within a nation-state centred
paradigm, even when they claim to be transcending it. An awareness
of transnational phenomena, as well as a better consciousness of the
pervasive way work has been structured by a nation-state centred
epistemology, may enable migration and ethnic studies researchers
to escape in their analyses the normative constraints of the integra-
tion paradigm. But it is vital in looking for new concepts and tools to
describe the changing relations of state and society across the conti-
nent, that we also continue to recognize the extraordinary continuity
and resilience of the nation-state-society as the dominant principle of
social organization in Europe.

Notes

1 Published in The multicultural challenge, Comparative Social Research, 22,
2003, pp. 13-42, reprinted with permission from Elsevier Ltd.
2 A more extended discussion and survey can be found in Favell (2001).
Responding to this piece, Banton (2001) dismisses the use of integration
a treacherous mathematical metaphor in any sociological studies on the
subject. His vision is to purify sociological research on ethnic and race rela-
tions of these pervasive ordinary language concepts. Though a valid scientic
response to the dilemma of using such terms, it forecloses the possibility in
nation-state-society
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our research of reexively accounting for why such terms are so predomi-
nant in policy discussions and academic research alike. See also related dis-
cussions in Bommes (1998) and Wimmer and Glick Schiller (2002).
3 The number of quasi-academic policy studies on integration funded by such
organizations in recent years has been remarkable. The Council of Europes
Committee on Migration has produced a number of reports on gender and
religious issues, labour markets, and social and political participation, as well
as an outstanding conceptual framework for research by Baubck (1994).
The ILO has pursued work on integration in labour markets (Doomernik
1998), and the OSCE has been linking minority rights and integration.
Among NGOs in Brussels, there is the highly active Migration Policy Group,
who have produced major cross-national studies of policies and policy think-
ing on integration (MPG 1996; Vermeulen 1997). Finally, charitable transat-
lantic organizations have also joined the trend. The Carnegie Endowments
massively ambitious Comparative Citizenship Project identied political
and social integration as two key areas of concern (Aleinikoff and Klusmeyer,
2002), and the Canadian-led Metropolis project focused on migrants in cit-
ies has sponsored several major studies (i.e., Cross and Waldinger, 1997;
Vertovec, 1997). These various studies are some of the most ambitious com-
parative international projects to be found. Here, I mention but a sample.
4 For example, there was the creation by the left wing government of Italy in
1999 of a Commissione per lintegrazione under the leadership of political
sociologist Giovanna Zincone. This was explicitly intended to counter the in-
creasingly salient use of negative anti-immigration rhetoric by Berlusconis
right wing coalition. In Denmark, again under pressure from the right, the
government passed an Act on the Integration of Aliens in Denmark in July
1998, followed by much public discussion and further reports on continu-
ing integration problems. In Austria, the turn to integration (see Waldrauch
and Honger, 1997) has been formulated by the opposition as a response to
specically exclusionary government attitudes.
5 In the report of the Commission on Multi-Ethnic Britain (2000), which
involved some of these more radical commentators alongside more main-
stream gures, integration was the organizing concept that dared not speak
its name. However, the Commissions chair, Bhikhu Parekh, has frequently
written about the concept in his own work (Parekh, 2000).

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Part III
Conceptual issues
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Introduction to ethnic groups and boundaries:
the social organization of cultural difference
Fredrik Barth
In 1969, the anthropologist Fredrik Barth published a collection of ground-
breaking essays entitled Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization
of Cultural Difference. This collection criticised the orthodoxy of the time that
conceived of ethnic groups as tribes or people who are able to maintain their
individual cultural traits despite the ignorance of their neighbours. It is in
geographical and social isolation that one can nd ethnic groups in their pu-
rity. Barth argued convincingly against the suggestion that splendid isolation
is the critical factor in sustaining cultural diversity. He took the innovative po-
sition that ethnic identity is basically a social identity that emerges in interac-
tion with others. Ethnic groups are categories of ascription and identication
taken on by the actors themselves, having the capacity to organise interac-
tion between people. To observe these processes the focus of investigation
should be shifted from separate groups internal constitutions and histories
to ethnic boundaries and boundary maintenance.
This collection of essays addresses itself in the problems of ethnic
groups and their persistence. This is a theme of great, but neglected,
importance to social anthropology. Practically all anthropological rea-
soning rests on the premise that cultural variation is discontinuous:
that there are aggregates of people who essentially share a common
culture, and interconnected differences that distinguish each such
discrete culture from all others. Since culture is nothing but a way
to describe human behaviour, it would follow that there are discrete
groups of people, i.e. ethnic units, to correspond to each culture. The
differences between cultures, and their historic boundaries and con-
nections, have been given much attention; the constitution of eth-
nic groups, and the nature of the boundaries between them, have
not been correspondingly investigated. Social anthropologists have
largely avoided these problems by using a highly abstracted concept
of society to represent the encompassing social system within which
ethnic group
boundaries
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fredrik barth
smaller, concrete groups and units may be analysed. But this leaves
untouched the empirical characteristics and boundaries of ethnic
groups, and the important theoretical issues which an investigation
of them raises.
Though the nave assumption that each tribe and people has
maintained its culture through a bellicose ignorance of its neigh-
bours is no longer entertained, the simplistic view that geographical
and social isolation have been the critical factors in sustaining cul-
tural diversity persists. An empirical investigation of the character of
ethnic boundaries, as documented in the following essays, produces
two discoveries which are hardly unexpected, but which demonstrate
the inadequacy of this view. First, it is clear that boundaries persist
despite a ow of personnel across them. In other words, categorical
ethnic distinctions do not depend on an absence of mobility, con-
tact and information, but do entail social processes of exclusion and
incorporation whereby discrete categories are maintained despite
changing participation and membership in the course of individual
life histories. Secondly, one nds that stable, persisting, and often
vitality important social relations are maintained across such bound-
aries, and are frequently based precisely on the dichotomized ethnic
statuses. In other words, ethnic distinctions do not depend on an
absence of social interaction and acceptance, but are quite to the con-
trary often the very foundations on which embracing social systems
are built. Interaction in such a social system does not lead to its liq-
uidation through change and acculturation; cultural differences can
persist despite inter-ethnic contact and interdependence.
General approach
There is clearly an important eld here in need of rethinking. What
is required is a combined theoretical and empirical attack: we need to
investigate closely the empirical facts of a variety of cases, and t our
concepts to these empirical facts so that they elucidate them as sim-
ply and adequately as possible, and allow us to explore their implica-
tions. In the following essays, each author takes up a case with which
he is intimately familiar from his own eldwork, and tries to apply a
common set of concepts to its analysis. The main theoretical depar-
ture consists of several interconnected parts. First, we give primary
emphasis to the fact that ethnic groups are categories of ascription
and identication by the actors themselves, and thus have the char-
acteristic of organizing interaction between people. We attempt to
relate other characteristics of ethnic groups to this primary feature.
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part iii conceptual issues
Second, the essays all apply a generative viewpoint to the analysis:
rather than working through a typology of forms of ethnic groups
and relations, we attempt to explore the different processes that seem
to be involved in generating and maintaining ethnic groups. Third,
to observe these processes we shift the focus of investigation from
internal constitution and history of separate groups to ethnic bound-
aries and boundary maintenance. Each of these points needs some
elaboration.
Ethnic group dened
The term ethnic group is generally understood in anthropological
literature (cf. e.g. Narroll 1964) to designate a population which:
1. is largely biologically self-perpetuating
2. shares fundamental cultural values, realized in overt unity in cul-
tural forms
3. makes up a eld of communication and interaction
4. has a membership which identies itself, and is identied by oth-
ers, as constituting a category distinguishable from other catego-
ries of the same order.
This ideal type denition is not so far removed in content from the
traditional proposition that a race = a culture = a language and that a
society = a unit which rejects or discriminates against others. Yet, in
its modied form it is close enough to many empirical ethnographic
situations, at least as they appear and have been reported, so that this
meaning continues to serve the purposes of most anthropologists.
My quarrel is not so much with the substance of these characteris-
tics, though as I shall show we can prot from a certain change of
emphasis; my main objection is that such a formulation prevents
us from understanding the phenomenon of ethnic groups and their
place in human society and culture. This is because it begs all the
critical questions: while purporting to give an ideal type model of a
recurring empirical form, it implies a preconceived view of what are
the signicant factors in the genesis, structure, and fundion of such
groups.
Most critically, it allows us to assume that boundary maintenance
is unproblematical and follows from the isolation which the itemized
characteristics imply: racial difference, cultural difference, social sep-
aration and language barriers, spontaneous and organized enmity.
This also limits the range of factors that we use to explain cultural di-
versity: we are led to imagine each group developing its cultural and
social form in relative isolation, mainly in response to local ecologic
ideal type model
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fredrik barth
factors, through a history of adaptation by invention and selective
borrowing. This history has produced a world of separate peoples,
each with their culture and each organized in a society which can
legitimately be isolated for description as an island to itself.
Ethnic groups as culture-bearing units
Rather than discussing the adequacy of this version of culture history
for other than pelagic islands, let us look at some of the logical aws
in the viewpoint. Among the characteristics listed above, the sharing
of a common culture is generally given central importance. In my
view, much can be gained by regarding this very important feature
as an implication or result, rather than a primary and denitional
characteristic of ethnic group organization. If one chooses to regard
the culture-bearing aspect of ethnic groups as their primary charac-
teristic, this has far-reaching implications. One is led to identify and
distinguish ethnic groups by the morphological characteristics of the
cultures of which they are the bearers. This entails a prejudged view-
point both on (1) the nature of continuity in time of such units, and
(2) the locus of the factors which determine the form of the units.
1. Given the emphasis on the culture-bearing aspect, the classica-
tion of persons and local groups as members of an ethnic group
must depend on their exhibiting the particular traits of the cul-
ture. This is something that can be judged objectively by the eth-
nographic observer, in the culture-area tradition, regardless of
the categories and prejudices of the actors. Differences between
groups become differences in trait inventories; the attention is
drawn to the analysis of cultures, not of ethnic organization.
The dynamic relationship between groups will then be depicted
in acculturation studies of the kind that have been attracting de-
creasing interest in anthropology, though their theoretical inad-
equacies have never been seriously discussed. Since the histori-
cal provenance of any assemblage of culture traits is diverse, the
viewpoint also gives scope for an ethnohistory which chronicles
cultural accretion and change, and seeks to explain why certain
items were borrowed. However, what is the unit whose continuity
in time is depicted in such studies? Paradoxically, it must include
cultures in the past which would dearly be excluded in the pres-
ent because of differences in form differences of precisely the
kind that are diagnostic in synchronic differentiation of ethnic
units. The interconnection between ethnic group and culture is
certainly not claried through this confusion.
implications
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2. The overt cultural forms which can be itemized as traits exhibit
the effects of ecology. By this I do not mean to refer to the fact
that they reect a history of adaptation to environment; in a more
immediate way they also reect the external circumstances to
which actors must accommodate themselves. The same group of
people, with unchanged values and ideas, would surely pursue
different patterns of life and institutionalize different forms of
behaviour when faced with the different opportunities offered in
different environments? Likewise, we must expect to nd that one
ethnic group, spread over a territory with varying ecologic circum-
stances, will exhibit regional diversities of overt institutionalized
behaviour which do not reect differences in cultural orientation.
How should they then be classied if overt institutional forms
are diagnostic? A case in point is the distributions and diversity
of Pathan local social systems, discussed below (pp, 117 ff.). By
basic Pathan values, a Southern Pathan from the homogeneous,
lineage-organized mountain areas, can only nd the behaviour of
Pathans in Swat so different from, and reprehensible in terms of,
their own values that they declare their northern brothers no lon-
ger Pathan. Indeed, by objective criteria, their overt pattern of
organization seems much closer to that of Panjabis. But I found
it possible, by explaining the circumstances in the north, to make
Southern Pathans agree that these were indeed Pathans too, and
grudgingly to admit that under those circumstances they might
indeed themselves act in the same way. It is thus inadequate to
regard overt institutional forms as constituting the cultural fea-
tures which at any time distinguish an ethnic group these overt
forms are determined by ecology as well as by transmitted cul-
ture. Nor can it be claimed that every such diversication within
a group represents a rst step in the direction of subdivision and
multiplication of units. We have wellknown documented cases
of one ethnic group, also at a relatively simple level of economic
organization, occupying several different ecologic niches and yet
retaining basic cultural and ethnic unity over long periods [cf.,
e.g., inland and coastal Chuckchee (Bogoras 1904-9) or reindeer,
river, and coast Lapps (Gjessing, 1954].
In one of the following essays, Bjorn (pp. 74 ff.) argues cogently on
this point with reference to central Norwegian mountain farmers.
He shows how their participation and self-evaluation in terms of
general Norwegian values secures them continued membership in
the larger ethnic group, despite the highly characteristic and devi-
ant patterns of activity which the local ecology imposes on them.
To analyse such cases, we need a viewpoint that does not confuse
Pathan local
social systems
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fredrik barth
the effects of ecologic circumstances on behaviour with those of cul-
tural tradition, but which makes it possible to separate these factors
and investigate the non-ecological cultural and social components
creating diversity.
Ethnic groups as an organizational type
By concentrating on what is socially effective, ethnic groups are seen
as a form of social organization. The critical feature then becomes
item (4) in the list on p. 409 the characteristic of self-ascription and
ascription by others. A categorical ascription is an ethnic ascription
when it classies a person in terms of his basic, most general iden-
tity, presumptively determined by his origin and background. To the
extent that actors use ethnic identities to categorize themselves and
others for purposes of interaction, they form ethnic groups in this
organizational sense.
It is important to recognize that although ethnic categories take
cultural differences into account, we can assume no simple one-to-
one relationship between ethnic units and cultural similarities and
differences. The features that are taken into account are not the sum
of objective differences, but only those which the actors themselves
regard as signicant. Not only do ecologic variations mark and exag-
gerate differences; some cultural features are used by the actors as
signals and emblems of differences, others are ignored, and in some
relationships radical differences are played down and denied. The
cultural contents of ethnic dichotomies would seem analytically to
be of two orders: (i) overt signals or signs the diacritical features
that people look for and exhibit to show identity, often such features
as dress, language, house-form, or general style of life, and (ii) basic
value orientations: the standards of morality and excellence by which
performance is judged. Since belonging to an ethnic category im-
plies being a certain kind of person, having that basic identity, it also
implies a claim to be judged, and to judge oneself, by those standards
that are relevant to that identity. Neither of these kinds of cultural
contents follows from a descriptive list of cultural features or cul-
tural differences; one cannot predict from rst principles which fea-
tures will be emphasized and made organizationally relevant by the
actors. In other words, ethnic categories provide an organizational
vessel that may be given varying amounts and forms of content in
different socio-cultural systems. They may be of great relevance to
behaviour, but they need not be; they may pervade all social life, or
they may be relevant only in limited sectors of activity. There is thus
ethnic ascription
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an obvious scope for ethnographic and comparative descriptions of
different forms of ethnic organization.
The emphasis on ascription as the critical feature of ethnic groups
also solves the two conceptual difculties that were discussed above.
1. When dened as an ascriptive and exclusive group, the nature of
continuity of ethnic units is clear: it depends on the maintenance
of a boundary. The cultural features that signal the boundary
may change, and the cultural characteristics of the members may
likewise be transformed, indeed, even the organizational form of
the group may change yet the fact of continuing dichotomi-
zation between members and outsiders allows us to specify the
nature of continuity, and investigate the changing cultural form
and content.
2. Socially relevant factors alone become diagnostic for member-
ship, not the overt, objective differences which are generated
by other factors. It makes no difference how dissimilar members
may be in their overt behaviour if they say they are A, in contrast
to another cognate category B, they are willing to be treated and
let their own behaviour be interpreted and judged as As and not
as Bs; in other words, they declare their allegiance to the shared
culture of As, The effects of this, as compared to other factors
inuencing actual behaviour, can then be made the object of in-
vestigation.
The boundaries of ethnic groups
The critical focus of investigation from this point of view becomes
the ethnic boundary that denes the group, not the cultural stuff that
it encloses. The boundaries to which we must give our attention are
of course social boundaries, though they may have territorial coun-
terparts. If a group maintains its identity when members interact
with others, this entails criteria for determining membership and
ways of signalling membership and exclusion. Ethnic groups are not
merely or necessarily based on the occupation of exclusive territories;
and the different ways in which they are maintained, not only by a
once-and-for-all recruitment but by continual expression and valida-
tion, need to be analysed.
What is more, the ethnic boundary canalizes social life it entails
a frequently quite complex organization of behaviour and social rela-
tions. The identication of another person as a fellow member of an
ethnic group implies a sharing of criteria for evaluation and judge-
ment. It thus entails the assumption that the two are fundamentally
social boundaries
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fredrik barth
playing the same game, and this means that there is between them
a potential for diversication and expansion of their social relation-
ship to cover eventually all different sectors and domains of activity.
On the other hand, a dichotomization of others as strangers, as mem-
bers of another ethnic group, implies a recognition of limitations on
shared understandings, differences in criteria for judgement of value
and performance, and a restriction of interaction to sectors of as-
sumed common understanding and mutual interest.
This makes it possible to understand one nal form of boundary
maintenance whereby cultural units and boundaries persist. Entailed
in ethnic boundary maintenance are also situations of social contact
between persons of different cultures: ethnic groups only persist as
signicant units if they imply marked difference in behaviour, i.e.
persisting cultural differences. Yet where persons of different culture
interact, one would expect these differences to be reduced, since in-
teraction both requires and generates a congruence of codes and val-
ues in other words, a similarity or community of culture (cf. Barth
1966, for my argumentation on this point). Thus the persistence
of ethnic groups in contact implies not only criteria and signals for
identication, but also a structuring of interaction which allows the
persistence of cultural differences. The organizational feature which,
I would argue, must be general for all inter-ethnic relations is a sys-
tematic set of rules governing inter-ethnic social encounters. In an
organized social life, what can be made relevant to interaction in any
particular social situation is prescribed (Goffman 1959). If people
agree about these prescriptions, their agreement on codes and values
need not extend beyond that which is relevant to the social situa-
tions in which they interact. Stable inter-ethnic relations presuppose
such a structuring of interaction: a set of prescriptions governing
situations of contact, and allowing for articulation in some sectors
or domains of activity, and a set of proscriptions on social situations
preventing inter-ethnic interaction in other sectors, and thus insulat-
ing parts of the cultures from confrontation and modication.
Poly-ethnic social systems
This of course is what Furnivall (1944) so dearly depicted in his anal-
ysis of plural society: a poly-ethnic society integrated in the market
place, under the control of a state system dominated by one of the
groups, but leaving large areas of cultural diversity in the religious
and domestic sectors of activity.
What has not been adequately appreciated by later anthropolo-
persisting cultural
differences
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415
gists is the possible variety of sectors of articulation and separation,
and the variety of poly-ethnic systems which this entails. We know
of some of the Melanesian trade systems in objects belonging to the
highprestige sphere of the economy, and even some of the etiquette
and prescriptions governing the exchange situation and insulating
it from other activities. We have information on various traditional
polycentric systems from S.E. Asia (discussed below, Izikowitzs, pp.
135 ff.) integrated both in the prestige trade sphere and in quasi-feu-
dal political structures. Some regions of S.W. Asia show forms based
on a more fully monetized market economy, while political integra-
tion is polycentric in character. There is also the ritual and productive
cooperation and political integration of the Indian caste system to be
considered, where perhaps only kinship and domestic life remain as
a proscribed sector and a wellspring for cultural diversity. Nothing
can be gained by lumping these various systems under the increas-
ingly vague label of plural society, whereas an investigation of the
varieties of structure can shed a great deal of light on social and cul-
tural forms.
What can be referred to as articulation and separation on the
macro-level corresponds to systematic sets of role constraints on the
micro-level. Common to all these systems is the principle that ethnic
identity implies a series of constraints on the kinds of roles an indi-
vidual is allowed to play, and the partners he may choose for differ-
ent kinds of transactions.
1
In other words, regarded as a status, eth-
nic identity is superordinate to most other statuses, and denes the
permissible constellations of statuses, or social personalities, which
an individual with that identity may assume. In this respect ethnic
identity is similar to sex and rank, in that it constrains the incumbent
in all his activities, not only in some dened social situations.
2
One
might thus also say that it is imperative, in that it cannot be disre-
garded and temporarily set aside by other denitions of the situa-
tion. The constraints on a persons behaviour which spring from his
ethnic identity thus tend to be absolute and, in complex poly-ethnic
societies, quite comprehensive; and the component moral and social
conventions are made further resistant to change by being joined in
stereotyped clusters as characteristics of one single identity.
The associations of identities and value standards
The analysis of interactional and organizational features of inter-
ethnic relations has suffered from a lack of attention to problems
of boundary maintenance. This is perhaps because anthropologists
variety of
poly-ethnic systems
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fredrik barth
have reasoned from a misleading idea of the prototype inter-ethnic
situation. One has tended to think in terms of different peoples, with
different histories and cultures, coming together and accommodat-
ing themselves to each other, generally in a colonial setting. To visu-
alize the basic requirements for the coexistence of ethnic diversity, I
would suggest that we rather ask ourselves what is needed to make
ethnic distinctions emerge in an area. The organizational require-
ments are clearly, rst, a categorization of population sectors in ex-
clusive and imperative status categories, and second, an acceptance
of the principle that standards applied to one such category can be
different from that applied to another. Though this alone does not
explain why cultural differences emerge, it does allow us to see how
they persist. Each category can then be associated with a separate
range of value standards. The greater the differences between these
value orientations are, the more constraints on inter-ethnic interac-
tion do they entail: the statuses and situations in the total social sys-
tem involving behaviour which is discrepant with a persons value
orientations must be avoided, since such behaviour on his part will
be negatively sanctioned. Moreover, because identities are signalled
as well as embraced, new forms of behaviour will tend to be dichoto-
mized: one would expect the role constraints to operate in such a way
that persons would be reluctant to act in new ways from a fear that
such behaviour might be inappropriate for a person of their iden-
tity, and swift to classify forms of activity as associated with one or
another cluster of ethnic characteristics. Just as dichotomizations of
male versus female work seem to proliferate in some societies, so
also the existence of basic ethnic categories would seem to be a factor
encouraging the proliferation of cultural differentiae.
In such systems, the sanctions producing adherence to group-
specic values are not only exercised by those who share the identity.
Again, other imperative statuses afford a parallel: just as both sexes
ridicule the male who is feminine, and all classes punish the pro-
letarian who puts on airs, so also can members of an ethnic group
in a poly-ethnic society act to maintain dichotomies and differences.
Where social identities are organized and allocated by such princi-
ples, there will thus be a tendency towards canalization and stan-
dardization of interaction and the emergence of boundaries which
maintain and generate ethnic diversity within larger, encompassing
social systems.
basic requirements
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Interdependence of ethnic groups
The positive bond that connects several ethnic groups in an encom-
passing social system depends on the complementarity of the groups
with respect to some of their characteristic cultural features. Such
complementarity can give rise to interdependence or symbiosis, and
constitutes the areas of articulation referred to above; while in the
elds where there is no complementarity there can be no basis for
organization on ethnic lines there will either be no interaction, or
interaction without reference to ethnic identity.
Social systems differ greatly in the extent to which ethnic iden-
tity, as an imperative status, constrains the person in the variety of
statuses and roles he may assume. Where the distinguishing values
connected with ethnic identity are relevant only to a few kinds of
activities, the social organization based on it will be similarly lim-
ited. Complex polyethnic systems, on the other hand, clearly entail
the existence of extensively relevant value differences and multiple
constraints on status combinations and social participation. In such
systems, the boundary maintaining mechanisms must be highly
effective, for the following reasons: (i) the complexity is based on
the existence of important, complementary cultural differences; (ii)
these differences must be generally standardized within the ethnic
group i.e. the status cluster, or social person, of every member of
a group must be highly stereotyped so that inter-ethnic interaction
can be based on ethnic identities; and (iii) the cultural characteristics
of each ethnic group must be stable, so that the complementary dif-
ferences on which the systems rest can persist in the face of close
inter-ethnic contact. Where these conditions obtain, ethnic groups
can make stable and symbiotic adaptations to each other: other eth-
nic groups in the region become a part of the natural environment;
the sectors of articulation provide areas that can be exploited, while
the other sectors of activity of other groups are largely irrelevant from
the point of view of members of anyone group.
Ecologic perspective
Such interdependences can partly be analysed from the point of view
of cultural ecology, and the sectors of activity where other popula-
tions with other cultures articulate may be thought of as niches to
which the group is adapted. This ecologic interdependence may take
several different forms, for which one may construct a rough typol-
ogy. Where two or more ethnic groups are in contact, their adapta-
tions may entail the following forms:
complementarity
ecologic
interdependence
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fredrik barth
(1) They may occupy clearly distinct niches in the natural environ-
ment and be in minimal competition for resources. In this case
their interdependence will be limited despite co-residence in the
area, and the articulation will tend to be mainly through trade,
and perhaps in a ceremonial-ritual sector.
(2) They may monopolize separate territories, in which case they are
in competition for resources and their articulation will involve
politics along the border, and possibly other sectors.
(3) They may provide important goods and services for each other,
i.e. occupy reciprocal and therefore different niches but in close
interdependence. If they do not articulate very closely in the po-
litical sector, this entails a classical symbiotic situation and a va-
riety of possible elds of articulation. If they also compete and
accommodate through differential monopolization of the means
of production, this entails a close political and economic articula-
tion, with open possibilities for other forms of interdependence
as well.
These alternatives refer to stable situations. But very commonly, one
will also nd a fourth main form: where two or more interspersed
groups are in fact in at least partial competition within the same
niche. With time one would expect one such group to displace the
other, or an accommodation involving an increasing complementar-
ity and interdependence to develop.
From the anthropological literature one can doubtless think of
type cases for most of these situations. However, if one looks care-
fully at most empirical cases, one will nd fairly mixed situations
obtaining, and only quite gross simplications can reduce them to
simple types. I have tried elsewhere (Barth 1964b) to illustrate this
for an area of Baluchistan, and expect that it is generally true that an
ethnic group, on the different boundaries of its distribution and in
its different accommodations, exhibits several of these forms in its
relations to other groups.
Demographic perspective
These variables, however, only go part of the way in describing the
adaptation of a group. While showing the qualitative (and ideally
quantitative) structure of the niches occupied by a group, one can-
not ignore the problems of number and balance in its adaptation.
Whenever a population is dependent on its exploitation of a niche
in nature, this implies an upper limit on the size it may attain corre-
sponding to the carrying capacity of that niche; and any stable adapta-
mixed situations
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tion entails a control on population size. If, on the other hand, two
populations are ecologically interdependent, as two ethnic groups in
a symbiotic relationship, this means that any variation in the size of
one must have important effects on the other. In the analysis of any
poly-ethnic system for which we assert any degree of time depth, we
must therefore be able to explain the processes whereby the sizes
of the interdependent ethnic groups are balanced. The demographic
balances involved are thus quite complex, since a groups adaptation
to a niche in nature is affected by its absolute size, while a groups
adaptation to a niche constituted by another ethnic group is affected
by its relative size.
The demographic problems in an analysis of ethnic inter-relations
in a region thus centre on the forms of recruitment to ethnic groups
and the question of how, if at all, their rates are sensitive to pressures
on the different niches which each group exploits. These factors are
highly critical for the stability of any poly-ethnic system, and it might
look as if any population change would prove destructive. This does
not necessarily seem to follow, as documented e.g. in the essay by
Siverts (pp. 101 ff.), but in most situations the poly-ethnic systems we
observe do entail quite complex processes of population movement
and adjustment. It becomes clear that a number of factors other than
human fertility and mortality affect the balance of numbers. From
the point of view of any one territory, there are the factors of individ-
ual and group movements: emigration that relieves pressure, immi-
gration that maintains one or several co-resident groups as outpost
settlements of larger population reservoirs elsewhere. Migration and
conquest play an intermittent role in redistributing populations and
changing their relations. But the most interesting and often critical
role is played by another set of processes that effect changes of the
identity of individuals and groups. After all, the human material that
is organized in an ethnic group is not immutable, and though the
social mechanisms discussed so far tend to maintain dichotomies
and boundaries, they do not imply stasis for the human material
they organize: boundaries may persist despite what may guratively
be called the osmosis of personnel through them.
This perspective leads to an important clarication of the condi-
tions for complex poly-ethnic systems. Though the emergence and
persistence of such systems would seem to depend on a relatively
high stability in the cultural features associated with ethnic groups
i.e. a high degree or rigidity in the interactional boundaries they
do not imply a similar rigidity in the patterns of recruitment or as-
cription to ethnic groups: on the contrary, the ethnic inter-relations
that we observe frequently entail a variety of processes which effect
recruitment
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changes in individual and group identity and modify the other demo-
graphic factors that obtain in the situation. Examples of stable and
persisting ethnic boundaries that are crossed by a ow of personnel
are clearly far more common than the ethnographic literature would
lead us to believe. Different processes of such crossing are exempli-
ed in these essays, and the conditions which cause them are shown
to be various. We may look briey at some of them.
Factors in identity change
The Yao described by Kandre (1967b) are one of the many hill peoples
on the southern fringe of the Chinese area. The Yao are organized for
productive purposes in extended family households, aligned in clans
and in villages. Household leadership is very clear, while commu-
nity and region are autochthonously acephalous, and variously tied to
poly-ethnic political domains. Identity and distinctions are expressed
in complex ritual idioms, prominently involving ancestor worship.
Yet this group shows the drastic incorporation rate of 10% non-Yao
becoming Yao in each generation (Kandre 1967a: 594). Change of
membership takes place individually, mostly with children, where
it involves purchase of the person by a Yao houseleader, adoption to
kinship status, and full ritual assimilation. Occasionally, change of
ethnic membership is also achieved by men through uxorilocal mar-
riage; Chinese men are the acceptable parties to such arrangements.
The conditions for this form of assimilation are clearly twofold:
rst, the presence of cultural mechanisms to implement the incorpo-
ration, including ideas of obligations to ancestors, compensation by
payment, etc., and secondly, the incentive of obvious advantages to
the assimilating household and leader. These have to do with the role
of households as productive units and agro-managerial techniques
that imply an optimal size of 6-8 working persons, and the pattern of
intra-community competition between household leaders in the eld
of wealth and inuence.
Movements across the southern and northern boundaries of the
Pathan area (cf. pp. 123 ff.) illustrate quite other forms and condi-
tions. Southern Pathans become Baluch and not vice versa; this
transformation can take place with individuals but more readily with
whole households or small groups of households: it involves loss of
position in the rigid genealogical and territorial segmentary system
of Pathans and incorporation through clientage contract into the hi-
erarchical, centralized system of the Baluch. Acceptance in the re-
ceiving group is conditional on the ambition and opportunism of
Yao assimilation
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Baluch political leaders. On the other hand, Pathans in the north
have, after an analogous loss of position in their native system, set-
tled in and often conquered new territories in Kohistan. The effect
in due course has been a reclassication of the settling communities
among the congeries of locally diverse Kohistani tribes and groups.
Perhaps the most striking case is that from Darfur provided by
Haaland (pp, 58 ff.), which shows members of the hoe-agricultural
Fur of the Sudan changing their identity to that of nomadic cattle
Arabs. This process is conditional on a very specic economic cir-
cumstance: the absence of investment opportunities (or capital in the
village economy of the Fur in contrast to the possibilities among the
nomads. Accumulated capital, and the opportunities for its manage-
ment and increase, provide the incentive for Fur households to aban-
don their elds and villages and change to the life of the neighbour-
ing Baggara, incidentally also joining one of the loose but nominally
centralized Baggara political units if the change has been economi-
cally completely successful.
These processes that induce a ow of personnel across ethnic
boundaries will of necessity affect the demographic balance between
different ethnic groups. Whether they are such that they contribute
to stability in this balance is an entirely different question. To do so,
they would have to be sensitive to changes in the pressure on eco-
logic niches in a feed-back pattern. This does not regularly seem to
be the case. The assimilation of non-Yao seems further to increase
the rate of Yao growth and expansion at the expense of other groups,
and can be recognized as one, albeit minor, factor furthering the
progressive Sinization process whereby cultural and ethnic diversity
has steadily been reduced over vast areas. The rate of assimilation of
Pathans by Baluch tribes is no doubt sensitive to population pressure
in Pathan areas, but simultaneously sustains an imbalance whereby
Baluch tribes spread northward despite higher population pressures
in the northern areas. Kohistani assimilation relieves population
pressure in Pathan area while maintaining a geographically stable
boundary. Nomadization of the Fur replenishes the Baggara, who are
elsewhere becoming sedentarized. The rate, however, does not corre-
late with pressure on Fur lands since nomadization is conditional
on accumulated wealth, its rate probably decreases as Fur popula-
tion pressure increases. The Fur case also demonstrates the inherent
instability of some of these processes. and how limited changes can
have drastic results: with the agricultural innovation of orchards over
the last ten years, new investment opportunities are provided which
will probably greatly reduce, or perhaps for a while even reverse, the
nomadization process.
the Fur case
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Thus, though the processes that induce change of identity are
important to the understanding of most cases of ethnic interdepen-
dence, they need not be conducive to population stability. In general,
however, one can argue that whenever ethnic relations are stable
over long periods, and particularly where the interdependence is
close, one can expect to nd an approximate demographic balance.
The analysis of the different factors involved in this balance is an
important part of the analysis of the ethnic inter-relations in the area.
The persistence of cultural boundaries
In the preceding discussion of ethnic boundary maintenance and
interchange of personnel there is one very important problem that
I have left aside. We have seen various examples of how individuals
and small groups, because of specic economic and political circum-
stances in their former position and among the assimilating group,
may change their locality, their subsistence pattern, their political al-
legiance and form, or their household membership. This still does
not fully explain why such changes lead to categorical changes of
ethnic identity, leaving the dichotomized ethnic groups unaffected
(other than in numbers) by the interchange of personnel. In the case
of adoption and incorporation of mostly immature and in any case
isolated single individuals into pre-established households, as among
the Yao, such complete cultural assimilation is understandable: here
every new person becomes totally immersed in a Yao pattern of rela-
tionships and expectations. In the other examples, it is less clear why
this total change of identity takes place. One cannot argue that it fol-
lows from a universally imputable rule of cultural integration, so that
the practice of the politics of one group or the assumption of its pat-
tern of ecologic adaptation in subsistence and economy, entails the
adoption also of its other parts and forms. Indeed, the Pathan case
(Ferdinand 1967) directly falsies this argument, in that the bound-
aries of the Pathan ethnic group crosscuts ecologic and political
units. Using self-identication as the critical criterion of ethnic iden-
tity, it should thus be perfectly possible for a small group of Pathans
to assume the political obligations of membership in a Baluch tribe,
or the agricultural and husbandry practices of Kohistanis, and yet
continue to call themselves Pathans. By the same token one might
expect nomadization among the Fur to lead to the emergence of a
nomadic section of the Fur, similar in subsistence to the Baggara but
different from them in other cultural features, and in ethnic label.
Quite clearly, this is precisely what has happened in many his-
the Pathan case
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torical situations. In cases where it does not happen we see the or-
ganizing and canalizing effects of ethnic distinctions. To explore the
factors responsible for the difference, let us rst look at the specic
explanations for the changes of identity that have been advanced in
the examples discussed above.
In the case of Pathan borderlands, inuence and security in the
segmentary and anarchic societies of this region derive from a mans
previous actions, or rather from the respect that he obtains from these
acts as judged by accepted standards of evaluation. The main fora for
exhibiting Pathan virtues are the tribal council, and stages for the
display of hospitality. But the villager in Kohistan has a standard of
living where the hospitality he can provide can hardly compete with
that of the conquered serfs of neighbouring Pathans, while the client
of a Baluch leader cannot speak in any tribal council. To maintain
Pathan identity in these situations, to declare oneself in the running
as a competitor by Pathan value standards, is to condemn oneself
in advance to utter failure in performance. By assuming Kohistani
or Baluch identity, however, a man may, by the same performance,
score quite high on the scales that then become relevant. The incen-
tives to a change in identity are thus inherent in the change in cir-
cumstances.
Different circumstances obviously favour different performances.
Since ethnic identity is associated with a culturally specic set of val-
ue standards, it follows that there are circumstances where such an
identity can be moderately successfully realized, and limits beyond
which such success is precluded. I will argue that ethnic identities
will not be retained beyond these limits, because allegiance to basic
value standards will not be sustained where ones own comparative
performance is utterly inadequate.
3
The two components in this rela-
tive measure of success are, rst, the performance of others and, sec-
ondly, the alternatives open to oneself. I am not making an appeal
to ecologic adaptation. Ecologic feasibility, and tness in relation to
the natural environment, matter only in so far as they set a limit in
terms of sheer physical survival, which is very rarely approached by
ethnic groups. What matters is how well the others, with whom one
interacts and to whom one is compared, manage to perform, and
what alternative identities and sets of standards are available to the
individual.
performances
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Ethnic identity and tangible assets
The boundary-maintaining factors in the Fur are not immediately il-
luminated by this argument. Haaland (pp. 65 f.) discusses the evalu-
ation of the nomads life by Fur standards and nds the balance be-
tween advantages and disadvantages inconclusive. To ascertain the
comparability of this case, we need to look more generally at all the
factors that affect the behaviour in question. The materials derive
from grossly different ethnographic contexts and so a number of fac-
tors are varied simultaneously.
The individuals relation to productive resources stands out as the
signicant contrast between the two regions. In the Middle East, the
means of production are conventionally held as private or corporate,
dened and transferable property. A man can obtain them through a
specic and restricted transaction, such as purchase or lease; even in
conquest the rights that are obtained are standard, delimited rights.
In Darfur, on the other hand, as in much of the Sudanic belt, the pre-
vailing conventions are different. Land for cultivation is allocated, as
needed, to members of a local community. The distinction between
owner and cultivator, so important in the social structure of most
Middle Eastern communities, cannot be made because ownership
does not involve separable, absolute, and transferable rights. Access
to the means of production in a Fur village is therefore conditional
only on inclusion in the village community i.e. on Fur ethnic iden-
tity. Similarly, grazing rights are not allocated and monopolized, even
as between Baggara tribes. Though groups and tribes tend to use the
same routes and areas every year, and may at times try in an ad hoc
way to keep out others from an area they wish to use, they normally
intermix and have no dened and absolute prerogatives. Access to
grazing is thus an automatic aspect of practising husbandry, and en-
tails being a Baggara.
The gross mechanisms of boundary maintenance in Darfur are
thus quite simple: a man has access to the critical means of produc-
tion by virtue of practising a certain subsistence; this entails a whole
style of life, and all these characteristics are subsumed under the eth-
nic labels Fur and Baggara. In the Middle East, on the other hand,
men can obtain control over means of production through a transac-
tion that does not involve their other activities; ethnic identity is then
not necessarily affected and this opens the way for diversication.
Thus nomad, peasant, and city dweller can belong to the same eth-
nic group in the Middle East; where ethnic boundaries persist they
depend on more subtle and specic mechanisms, mainly connected
with the unfeasibility of certain status and role combinations.
productive resources
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Ethnic groups and stratication
Where one ethnic group has control of the means of production uti-
lized by another group, a relationship of inequality and stratication
obtains. Thus Fur and Baggara do not make up a stratied system,
since they utilize different niches and have access to them indepen-
dently of each other, whereas in some parts of the Pathan area one
nds stratication based on the control of land, Pathans being land-
owners, and other groups cultivating as serfs. In more general terms,
one may say that stratied poly-ethnic systems exist where groups
are characterized by differential control of assets that are valued by all
groups in the system. The cultures of the component ethnic groups
in such systems are thus integrated in a special way: they share cer-
tain general value orientations and scales, on the basis of which they
can arrive at judgements of hierarchy.
Obversely, a system of stratication does not entail the existence
of ethnic groups. Leach (1967) argues convincingly that social class-
es are distinguished by different sub-cultures, indeed, that this is a
more basic characteristic than their hierarchical ordering. However,
in many systems of stratication we are not dealing with bounded
strata at all: the stratication is based simply on the notion of scales
and the recognition of an ego-centered level of people who are just
like us versus those more select and those more vulgar. In such sys-
tems, cultural differences, whatever they are, grade into each other,
and nothing like a social organization of ethnic groups emerges.
Secondly, most systems of stratication allow, or indeed entail, mo-
bility based on evaluation by the scales that dene the hierarchy.
Thus a moderate failure in the R sector of the hierarchy makes you
a C, etc. Ethnic groups are not open to this kind of penetration: the
ascription of ethnic identity is based on other and more restrictive
criteria. This is most clearly illustrated by Knutssons analysis of the
Galla in the context of Ethiopian society (pp. 86 ff.) a social system
where Whole ethnic groups are stratied with respect to their posi-
tions of privilege and disability within the stale. Yet the attainment
of a governorship does not make an Amhara of a Galla, nor does
estrangement as an outlaw entail loss of Galla identity.
From this perspective, the Indian caste system would appear to
be a special case of a stratied poly-ethnic system. The boundaries of
castes are dened by ethnic criteria: thus individual failures in per-
formance lead to out-casting and not to down-casting. The process
whereby the hierarchical system incorporates new ethnic groups is
demonstrated in the sanscritization of tribals: their acceptance of the
critical value scales dening their position in the hierarchy of ritual
hierarchy
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fredrik barth
purity and pollution is the only change of values that is necessary
for a people to become an Indian caste. An analysis of the different
processes of boundary maintenance involved in different inter-caste
relations and in different regional variants of the caste system would,
I believe, illuminate many features of this system.
The preceding discussion has brought out a somewhat anoma-
lous general feature of ethnic identity as a status: ascription
4
is not
conditional on the control of any specic assets, but rests on criteria
of origin and commitment; whereas performance in the status, the ad-
equate acting out of the roles required to realize the identity, in many
systems does require such assets. By contrast, in a bureaucratic ofce
the incumbent is provided with those assets that are required for the
performance of the role; while kinship positions, which are ascribed
without reference to a persons assets, likewise are not conditional on
performance you remain a father even if you fail to feed your child.
Thus where ethnic groups are interrelated in a stratied system,
this requires the presence of special processes that maintain dif-
ferential control of assets. To schematize: a basic premise of ethnic
group organization is that every A can act roles 1, 2 and 3. If actors
agree on this, the premise is self-fullling, unless acting in these
roles requires assets that are distributed in a discrepant pattern. If
these assets are obtained or lost in ways independent of being an A,
and sought and avoided without reference to ones identity as an A,
the premise will be falsied: some As become unable to act in the
expected roles. Most systems of stratication are maintained by the
solution that in such cases, the person is no longer an A. In the case
of ethnic identity, the solution on the contrary is the recognition that
every A no longer can or will act in roles 1 and 2. The persistence
of stratied poly-ethnic systems thus entails the presence of factors
that generate and maintain a categorically different distribution of
assets: state controls, as in some modern plural and racist systems;
marked differences in evaluation that canalize the efforts of actors
in different directions, as in systems with polluting occupations; or
differences in culture that generate marked differences in political
organization, economic organization, or individual skills.
The problem of variation
Despite such processes, however, the ethnic label subsumes a num-
ber of simultaneous characteristics which no doubt cluster statisti-
cally, but which are not absolutely interdependent and connected.
Thus there will be variations between members, some showing
distribution of assets
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many and some showing few characteristics. Particularly where peo-
ple change their identity, this creates ambiguity since ethnic mem-
bership is at once a question of source of origin as well as of cur-
rent identity. Indeed, Haaland was taken out to see Fur who live in
nomad camps, and I have heard members of Baluch tribal sections
explain that they are really Pathan. What is then left of the bound-
ary maintenance and the categorical dichotomy, when the actual dis-
tinctions are blurred in this way? Rather than despair at the failure
of typological schematism, one can legitimately note that people do
employ ethnic labels and that there are in many parts of the world
most spectacular differences whereby forms of behaviour cluster so
that whole actors tend to fall into such categories in terms of their
objective: behaviour. What is surprising is not the existence of some
actors that fall between these categories, and of some regions in the
world where whole persons do not tend to sort themselves out in this
way, but the fact that variations tend to cluster at all. We can then be
concerned not to perfect a typology, but to discover the processes that
bring about such clustering.
An alternative mode of approach in anthropology has been to di-
chotomize the ethnographic material in terms of ideal versus actual
or conceptual versus empirical, and then concentrate on the con-
sistencies (the structure) of the ideal, conceptual part of the data,
employing some vague notion of norms and individual deviance to
account for the actual, statistical patterns. It is of course perfectly fea-
sible to distinguish between a peoples model of their social system
and their aggregate pattern of pragmatic behaviour, and indeed quite
necessary not to confuse the two. But the fertile problems in social
anthropology are concerned with how the two are interconnected,
and it does not follow that this is best elucidated by dichotomizing
and confronting them as total systems. In these essays we have tried
to build the analysis on a lower level of interconnection between
status and behaviour. I would argue that peoples categories are for
acting, and are signicantly affected by interaction rather than con-
templation. In showing the connection between ethnic labels and the
maintenance of cultural diversity, I am therefore concerned primar-
ily to show how, under varying circumstances, certain constellations
of categorization and value orientation have a self-fullling charac-
ter, how others will tend to be falsied by experience, while others
again are incapable of consummation in interaction. Ethnic bound-
aries can emerge and persist only in the former situation, whereas
they should dissolve or be absent in the latter situations. With such
a feedback from peoples experiences to the categories they employ,
simple ethnic dichotomies can be retained, and their stereotyped
anthropology
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fredrik barth
behavioural differential reinforced, despite a considerable objective
variation. This is so because actors struggle to maintain conventional
denitions of the situation in social encounters through selective
perception, tact, and sanctions, and because of difculties in nding
other, more adequate codications of experience. Revision only takes
place where the categorization is grossly inadequate not merely be-
cause it is untrue in any objective sense, but because it is consistently
unrewarding to act upon, within the domain where the actor makes
it relevant. So the dichotomy of Fur villagers and Baggara nomads is
maintained despite the patent presence of a nomadic camp of Fur
in the neighbourhood: the fad that those nomads speak Fur and
have kinship connections with villagers somewhere does not change
the social situation in which the villager interacts with them it
simply makes the standard transactions of buying milk, allocating
camp sites, or obtaining manure, which one would have with other
Baggara, ow a bit more smoothly. But a dichotomy between Pathan
landowners and non-Pathan labourers can no longer be maintained
where non-Pathans obtain land and embarrass Pathans by refusing
to respond with the respect which their imputed position as menials
would have sanctioned.
Minorities, pariahs, and organizational characteristics of
the periphery
In some social systems, ethnic groups co-reside though no major
aspect of structure is based on ethnic inter-relations. These are gen-
erally referred to as societies with minorities, and the analysis of the
minority situation involves a special variant of inter-ethnic relations.
I think in most cases, such situations have come about as a result of
external historical events; the cultural differentiae have not sprung
from the local organizational context rather, a pre-established cul-
tural contrast is brought into conjunction with a pre-established so-
cial system, and is made relevant to life there in a diversity of ways.
An extreme form of minority position, illustrating some but not
all features of minorities, is that of pariah groups. These are groups
actively rejected by the host population because of behaviour or char-
acteristics positively condemned, though often useful in some spe-
cic, practical way. European pariah groups of recent centuries (ex-
ecutioners, dealers in horseesh and -leather, collectors of nightsoil,
gypsies, etc.) exemplify most features: as breakers of basic taboos
they were rejected by the larger society. Their identity imposed a
denition on social situations which gave very little scope for interac-
minorities
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tion with persons in the majority population, and simultaneously as
an imperative status represented an inescapable disability that pre-
vented them from assuming the normal statuses involved in other
denitions of the situation of interaction. Despite these formidable
barriers, such groups do not seem to have developed the internal
complexity that would lead us to regard them as full-edged ethnic
groups; only the culturally foreign gypsies
5
clearly constitute such a
group.
The boundaries of pariah groups are most strongly maintained
by the excluding host population, and they are often forced to make
use of easily noticeable diacritica to advertise their identity (though
since this identity is often the basis for a highly insecure livelihood,
such over-communication may sometimes also serve the pariah in-
dividuals competitive interests). Where pariahs attempt to pass into
the larger society, the culture of the host population is generally well
known; thus the problem is reduced to a question of escaping the
stigmata of disability by dissociating with the pariah community and
faking another origin.
Many minority situations have a trace of this active rejection by
the host population. But the general feature of all minority situations
lies in the organization of activities and interaction: In the total social
system, all sectors of activity are organized by statuses open to mem-
bers of the majority group, while the status system of the minority
has only relevance to relations within the minority and only to some
sectors of activity, and does not provide a basis for action in other
sectors, equally valued in the minority culture. There is thus a dis-
parity between values and organizational facilities: prized goals are
outside the eld organized by the minoritys culture and categories.
Though such systems contain several ethnic groups, interaction be-
tween members of the different groups of this kind does not spring
from the complementarity of ethnic identities; it takes place entirely
within the framework of the dominant, majority groups statuses
and institutions, where identity as a minority member gives no basis
for action, though it may in varying degrees represent a disability in
assuming the operative statuses. Eidheims paper gives a very clear
analysis of this situation, as it obtains among Coast Lapps.
But in a different way, one may say that in such a poly-ethnic sys-
tem, the contrastive cultural characteristics of the component groups
are located in the non-articulating sectors of life. For the minority,
these sectors constitute a backstage where the characteristics that
are stigmatic in terms of the dominant majority culture can covertly
be made the objects of transaction.
the excluding host
population
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The present-day minority situation of Lapps has been brought
about by recent external circumstances. Formerly, the important con-
text of interaction was the local situation, where two ethnic groups
with sufcient knowledge of each others culture maintained a rela-
tively limited, partly symbiotic relationship based in their respective
identities. With the fuller integration of Norwegian society, bring-
ing the northern periphery into the nation-wide system, the rate of
cultural change increased drastically. The population of Northern
Norway became increasingly dependent on the institutional system
of the larger society, and social life among Norwegians in Northern
Norway was increasingly organized to pursue activities and obtain
benets within the wider system. This system has not, until very re-
cently, taken ethnic identity into account in its structure, and until a
decade ago there was practically no place in it where one could partic-
ipate as a Lapp. Lapps as Norwegian citizens, on the other hand, are
perfectly free to participate, though under the dual disability of pe-
ripheral location and inadequate command of Norwegian language
and culture. This situation has elsewhere, in the inland regions of
Finnmark, given scope for Lappish innovators with a political pro-
gram based on the ideal of ethnic pluralism (cf. Eidheim 1967), but
they have gained no following in the Coast Lapp area here discussed
by Eidheim. For these Lapps, rather, the relevance of Lappish sta-
tuses and conventions decreases in sector after sector (cf. Eidheim
1966), while the relative inadequacy of performance in the widest
system brings about frustrations and a crisis of identity.
Culture contact and change
This is a very widespread process under present conditions as depen-
dence on the products and institutions of industrial societies spreads
in all parts of the world. The important thing to recognize is that a
drastic reduction of cultural differences between ethnic groups does
not correlate in any simple way with a reduction in the organizational
relevance of ethnic identities, or a breakdown in boundary-maintain-
ing processes. This is demonstrated in much of the case material.
We can best analyse the interconnection by looking at the agents
of change: what strategies are open and attractive to them, and what
are the organizational implications of different choices on their part?
The agents in this case are the persons normally referred to some-
what ethno-centrically as the new elites: the persons in the less in-
dustrialized groups with greater contact and more dependence on
the goods and organizations of industrialized societies. In their pur-
new elites
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suit of participation in wider social systems to obtain new forms of
value they can choose between the following basic strategies: (i) they
may attempt to pass and become incorporated in the pre-established
industrial society and cultural group; (ii) they may accept a minority
status, accommodate to and seek to reduce their minority disabilities
by encapsulating all cultural differentiae in sectors of non-articula-
tion, while participating in the larger system of the industrialized
group in the other sectors of activity; (iii) they may choose to empha-
size ethnic identity, using it to develop new positions and patterns to
organize activities in those sectors formerly not found in their soci-
ety, or inadequately developed for the new purposes. If the cultural
innovators are successful in the rst strategy, their ethnic group will
be denuded of its source of internal diversication and will probably
remain as a culturally conservative, low-articulating ethnic group
with low rank in the larger social sytem. A general acceptance of the
second strategy will prevent the emergence of a clearly dichotomiz-
ing polyethnic organization, and in view of the diversity of indus-
trial society and consequent variation and multiplicity of elds of ar-
ticulation probably lead to an eventual assimilation of the minority.
The third strategy generates many of the interesting movements that
can be observed today, from nativism to new states.
I am unable to review the variables that affect which basic strategy
will be adopted, which concrete form it may take, and what its degree
of success and cumulative implications may be. Such factors range
from the number of ethnic groups in the system to features of the eco-
logic regime and details of the constituent cultures, and are illustrated
in most of the concrete analyses of the following essays. It may be of
interest to note some of the forms in which ethnic identity is made
organizationally relevant to new sectors in the current situation.
Firstly, the innovators may choose to emphasize one level of iden-
tity among the several provided by the traditional social organization.
Tribe, caste, language group, region or state all have features that
make them a potentially adequate primary ethnic identity for group
reference, and the outcome will depend on the readiness with which
others can be led to embrace these identities, and the cold tactical
facts. Thus, though tribalism may rally the broadest support in many
African areas, the resultant groups seem unable to stand up against
the sanctioning apparatus even of a relatively rudimentary state orga-
nization.
Secondly, the mode of organization of the ethnic group varies, as
does the inter-ethnic articulation that is sought. The fact that contem-
porary forms are prominently political does not make them any less
ethnic in character. Such political movements constitute new ways
basic strategies
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fredrik barth
of making cultural differences organizationally relevant (Kleivan
1967), and new ways of articulating the dichotomized ethnic groups.
The proliferation of ethnically based pressure groups, political par-
ties, and visions of independent statehood, as well as the multitude
of subpolitical advancement associations (Sommerfelt 1967) show
the importance of these new forms. In other areas, cult-movements
or mission-introduced sects are used to dichotomize and articulate
groups in new ways. It is striking that these new patterns are so rare-
ly concerned with the economic sector of activities, which is so major
a factor in the culture contact situation, apart from the forms of state
socialism adopted by some of the new nations. By contrast, the tradi-
tional complex poly-ethnic systems have been prominently based on
articulation in this sector, through occupational differentiation and
articulation at the market place in many regions of Asia and Middle
America, or most elaborately, through agrarian production in South
Asia. Today, contending ethnic groups not infrequently become dif-
ferentiated with respect to educational level and attempt to control
or monopolize educational facilities for this purpose (Sommerfelt
1967), but this is not so much with a view to occupational differen-
tiation as because of the obvious connection between bureaucratic
competence and opportunities for political advancement. One may
speculate that an articulation entailing complex differentiation of
skills, and sanctioned by the constant dependence on livelihood, will
have far greater strength and stability than one based on revocable
political afliation and sanctioned by the exercise of force and politi-
cal at, and that these new forms of poly-ethnic systems are probably
inherently more turbulent and unstable than the older forms.
When political groups articulate their opposition in terms of eth-
nic criteria, the direction of cultural change is also affected. A po-
litical confrontation can only be implemented by making the groups
similar and thereby comparable, and this will have effect on every
new sector of activity which is made politically relevant. Opposed par-
ties thus tend to become structurally similar, and differentiated only
by a few clear diacritica. Where ethnic groups are organized in politi-
cal confrontation in this way, the process of opposition will therefore
lead to a reduction of the cultural differences between them.
For this reason, much of the activity of political innovators is con-
cerned with the codication of idioms: the selection of signals for
identity and the assertion of value for these cultural diacritica, and
the suppression or denial of relevance for other differentiae. The is-
sue as to which new cultural forms are compatible with the native
ethnic identity is often hotly contended, but is generally settled in
favour of syncretism for the reasons noted above. But a great amount
political
confrontation
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of attention may be paid to the revival of select traditional culture
traits, and to the establishment of historical traditions to justify and
glorify the idioms and the identity.
The interconnection between the diacritica that are chosen for
emphasis, the boundaries that are dened, and the differentiating
values that are espoused, constitute a fascinating eld for study.
6

Clearly, a number of factors are relevant. Idioms vary in their appro-
priateness for different kinds of units. They are unequally adequate
for the innovators purposes, both as means to mobilize support
and as supports in the strategy of confrontation with other groups.
Their straticational implications both within and between groups
are important: they entail different sources and distributions of in-
uence within the group, and different claims to recognition from
other groups through suppression or glorication of different forms
of social stigmata. Clearly, there is no simple connection between
the ideological basis of a movement and the idioms chosen; yet both
have implications for subsequent boundary maintenance, and the
course of further change.
Variations in the setting for ethnic relations
These modern variants for poly-ethnic organization emerge in a
world of bureaucratic administration, developed communications,
and progressive urbanization. Clearly, under radically different cir-
cumstances, the critical factors in the denition and maintenance
of ethnic boundaries would be different. In basing ourselves on lim-
ited and contemporary data, we are faced with difculties in general-
izing about ethnic processes, since major variables may be ignored
because they are not exhibited in the cases at our disposal. There
can be little doubt that social anthropologists have tended to regard
the rather special situation of colonial peace and external administra-
tion, which has formed the backdrop of most of the inuential mono-
graphs, as if this were representative of conditions at most times and
places. This may have biased the interpretation both of pre-colonial
systems and of contemporary, emergent forms. The attempt in these
essays to cover regionally very diverse cases is not alone an adequate
defence against such bias, and the issue needs to be faced directly.
Colonial regimes are quite extreme in the extent to which the ad-
ministration and its rules are divorced from locally based social life.
Under such a regime, individuals hold certain rights to protection
uniformly through large population aggregates and regions, far be-
yond the reach of their own social relationships and institutions. This
colonial regimes
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fredrik barth
allows physical proximity and opportunities for contact between per-
sons of different ethnic groups regardless of the absence of shared
understandings between them, and thus clearly removes one of the
constraints that normally operate on inter-ethnic relations. In such
situations, interaction can develop and proliferate indeed, only
those forms of interaction that are directly inhibited by other factors
will be absent and remain as sectors of non-articulation. Thus ethnic
boundaries in such situations represent a positive organization of so-
cial relations around differentiated and complementary values, and
cultural differences will tend to be reduced with time and approach
the required minimum.
In most political regimes, however, where there is less security
and people live under a greater threat of arbitrariness and violence
outside their primary community, the insecurity itself acts as a con-
straint on inter-ethnic contacts. In this situation, many forms of
interaction between members of different ethnic groups may fail
to develop, even though a potential complementarity of interests
obtains. Forms of interaction may be blocked because of a lack of
trust or a lack of opportunities to consummate transactions. What is
more, there are also internal sanctions in such communities which
tend to enhance overt conformity within and cultural differences
between communities. If a person is dependent for his security on
the voluntary and spontaneous support of his own community, self-
identication as a member of this community needs to be explicitly
expessed and conrmed: and any behaviour which is deviant from
the standard may be interpreted as a weakening of the identity, and
thereby of the bases of security. In such situations, fortuitous histori-
cal differences in culture between different communities will tend
to perpetuate themselves without any positive organizational basis:
many of the observable cultural differentiae may thus be of very lim-
ited relevance to the ethnic organization.
The processes whereby ethnic units maintain themselves are thus
clearly affected, but not fundamentally changed, by the variable of
regional security. This can also be shown by an inspection of the
cases analysed in these essays, which represent a fair range from the
colonial to the poly-centric, up to relatively anarchic situations. It is
important, however, to recognize that this background variable may
change very rapidly with time, and in the projection of long-range
processes this is a serious difculty. Thus in the Fur case, we observe
a situation of externally maintained peace and very small-scale local
political activity, and can form a picture of inter-ethnic processes and
even rates in this setting. But we know that over the last few genera-
tions, the situation has varied from one of Baggara-Fur confrontation
political regimes
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under an expansive Fur sultanate to a nearly total anarchy in Turkish
and Mabdi times; and it is very difcult to estimate the efforts of
these variations on the processes of nomadization and assimilation,
and arrive at any long-range projection of rates and trends.
Ethnic groups and cultural evolution
The perspective and analysis presented here have relevance to the
theme of cultural evolution. No doubt human history is a story of
the development of emergent forms, both of cultures and societies.
The issue in anthropology has been how this history can best be de-
picted, and what kinds of analyses are adequate to discover general
principles in the courses of change. Evolutionary analysis in the rig-
orous sense of the biological elds has based its method on the con-
struction of phyletic lines. This method presumes the existence of
units where the boundaries and the boundary-maintaining processes
can be described, and thus where the continuity can be specied.
Concretely, phyletic lines are meaningful because specic boundar-
ies prevent the interchange of genetic material; and so one can insist
that the reproductive isolate is the unit, and that it has maintained an
identity undisturbed by the changes in the morphological character-
istics of the species.
I have argued that boundaries are also maintained between ethnic
units, and that consequently it is possible to specify the nature of
continuity and persistence of such units. These essays try to show
that ethnic boundaries are maintained in each case by a limited set
of cultural features. The persistence of the unit then depends on the
persistence of these cultural differentiae, while continuity can also be
specied through the changes of the unit brought about by changes
in the boundary-dening cultural differentiae.
However, most of the cultural matter that at any time is associ-
ated with a human population is not constrained by this boundary;
it can vary, be learnt, and change without any critical relation to the
boundary maintenance of the ethnic group. So when one traces the
history of a ethnic group through time, one is not simultaneously,
in the same sense, tracing the history of a culture: the elements of
the present culture of that ethnic group have not sprung from the
particular set that constituted the groups culture at a previous time,
whereas the group has a continual organizational existence with
boundaries (criteria of membership) that despite modications have
marked off a continuing unit.
Without being able to specify the boundaries of cultures, it is not
changes in cultural
differentiae
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fredrik barth
possible to construct phyletic lines in the more rigorous evolution-
ary sense. But from the analysis that has been argued here, it should
be possible to do so for ethnic groups, and thus in a sense for those
aspects of culture which have this organizational anchoring.
Notes
1 The emphatic ideological denial of the primacy of ethnic identity (and rank)
which characterises the universal religions that have arisen in the Middle
East is understandable in this perspective, since practically any movement
for social or ethical reform in the poly-ethnic societies of that region would
clash with conventions and standards of ethnic character.
2 The difference between ethnic groups and social strata, which seems prob-
lematical at this stage of the argument, will be taken up below.
3 I am here concerned only with individual failure to maintain identity, where
most members do so successfully, and not with the broader questions of
cultural vitality and anomie.
4 As opposed to presumptive classication in passing social encounters I am
thinking of the person in his normal social context where others have a con-
siderable amount of previous information about him, not of the possibilities
afforded occasionally for mispresenting ones identity towards strangers.
5 The condemned behaviour which gives pariah position to the gypsies is com-
pound, but rests prominently on their wandering life, originally in contrast
to the serf bondage of Europe, later in their agrant violation of puritan eth-
ics of responsibility, toil and morality.
6 To my knowledge, Mitchells essay on the Kalda dance (Mitchell 1956) is the
rst and still the most penetrating study on this topic.
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The theory of race relation:
a Weberian approach
John Rex
The contribution of John Rex to the sociology of ethnic and race relations in
Britain, as well as throughout the Continent, is immense. Nowadays, we often
hear how ethnic and migration studies in Europe presents a lacuna: its lack
of connection with the development of general social and political theories.
In this article, rst published under UNESCOs auspices in 1980 in a book
entitled Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism, Rex claries the specic-
ity of the Weberian approach to sociology. He does this with intelligence and
sophistication, also identifying its particular contribution to the sociology of
race relations. By doing so, Rex links the sociology of race relations to general
sociological theory in a very rigorous way. This article illustrates the necessity
of such theoretically oriented work for the further development of ethnic and
migration studies.
It would be foolish to suggest that any one school of sociology held
a monopoly of wisdom in the eld of race relations theory. Equally
it would be misleading to suggest that any of the great founders of
sociological theory in the nineteenth and early twentieth century had
dealt directly with the problem of race relations. Nonetheless Max
Weber is at least one of the founders of the discipline of sociology;
there is what one might call a specically Weberian style of sociologi-
cal thinking; and there can be little doubt that the scope of Webers
comparative studies, in terms of both time and place, make it in-
evitable that his work should throw at least an indirect light on the
structure of the relationships between racial and ethnic groups.
The following distinctions between schools of sociological think-
ing might perhaps be briey made in order to clarify the specicity
of the Weberian approach to sociology. They distinguish it from the
tradition of French Positivism running from Comte to Durkheim
and from that of Marxism, which, although it is far more than a so-
ciology, is an approach to the study of nature, culture and society
Weber
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john rex
which has considerable implications for sociology. They also distin-
guish the approach of Weber from that of a number of contempo-
rary schools of sociology, some of which represent out-growths of
the Weberian approach, which emphasize certain implicit aspects
of Webers thought. Thus one has in modern sociology Positivist
Empiricism as represented in American sociology by such authors
as Lazarsfeld and Blalock, the highly systematic general theory of
Talcott Parsons commonly called Structural-Functionalism, and
the various reactions to these schools which may loosely be called
phenomenological, including the seminal work of Schutz, the trend
known as Symbolic Interactionism deriving from the work of Mead,
and the growing trend of Ethnomethodology. And while these are
schools from which Weberian sociology has to be distinguished in
America there are also distinctions to be made within European social
thought. There, a variety of approaches to human affairs have arisen
from the Phenomenology of Husserl, through the intermingling of
phenomenological themes with those of existentialism, through the
critique of the Logical Positivism of the Vienna Circle which culmi-
nates in the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School and later in the
more complex theories of Habermas, through the new development
of Structuralism in the social sciences deriving from the work of Levi-
Strauss, through the development of Orthodox Marxism within the
Communist movement and through the differing critiques of this
orthodoxy represented by the work of Lukacs, Gramsci, Althusser
and related writers.
I cannot hope to list systematically the differences of concept,
style and method which distinguish the work of Weber from these
trends taken one by one. But I may point to certain salient features of
Weberianism which in part indicate its concern with a core of prob-
lems common to all sociological endeavour and in part indicate the
specic restrictions which this approach places on the sociological
enterprise.
The common core of all sociology is to be found in its concern
with social relations and, underlying this, with social action. Talcott
Parsons in fact emphasized this in entitling his greatest book The
structure of social action and underlined the point when he published
The social system by saying that he would again have used the earlier
title if it had not been pre-empted by the earlier work.
1
What this de-
nition of sociologys core concern excludes is any kind of reduction-
ism which reduces social facts to epiphenomena consequential upon
biological or psychological causes as well as any kind of reication
of social facts which suggests that they are things or that they are
to be seen as consequent upon the working of social systems. Such
the structure
of social action
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a concern is common to the early Marx, especially in the Theses on
Feuerbach, to Simmel and to Weber, and is also evident in the prac-
tice of Emile Durkheim, if not in his systematic statements of his
methodological position. It is also to be found in the concept of social
structure, employed by the English anthropologist Radcliffe Brown
and specically rejected by Levi-Strauss.
2

It is also common to all the founders of sociology that they em-
ployed their concept of structure of social relations to distinguish the
specicity of the modern capitalist industrial order and to contrast
that order with pre-capitalist and putative post-capitalist formations.
Quite obviously, Marx and Weber equally recognize that the modern
capitalist order is a distinctive one not paralleled in the ancient world,
even though they differ in their precise concepts of the distinction,
and both attempt some sort of morphology and theory of the succes-
sion of social types. Again, both Durkheim and Simmel as well as
Tonnies are concerned with the distinctiveness of the new industrial
society brought into being by the industrial revolution even if they do
not discuss this society as being essentially capitalist. All these writ-
ers have something to say about the nature of pre-historic society,
about ancient civilizations, about the medieval or feudal world, and
about the possibilities of a socialist form of industrialism.
Webers distinctiveness lies in his peculiar sensitivity to the tension
between the notion of the facticity of the social world on the one
hand and its availability to human control on the other. He always
insists that group concepts must be used only as a shorthand capable
of being explicated in terms of more fundamental units, namely,
the theoretical actors, whose taking account of one anothers actions
serves to constitute the groups structure. Yet he by no means sug-
gests that social structure can be reduced to the motivations of indi-
vidual empirical human beings. Structures are seen as arising from
the continuity in time of interlocking patterns of interaction and,
though these may be changed by intervention at strategic points,
it would be utopian in the extreme to suggest that these structures
were always and everywhere open to change by redenition. This is
what distinguishes Weber from all rigid forms of determinism on
the one hand, and from any kind of subjectivism and utopianism
on the other. He would be equally opposed to any orthodox or neo-
Marxist concept of a deterministic science of social formations, and
to the kind of subjectivism common in the more vulgarized forms
of phenomenological sociology which suggest that social reality is
a matter of labels which can readily be replaced by alternative ones.
More profoundly than this, it must also be said that Webers
modern capitalist
order
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john rex
thinking about the nature of sociology and the vocation of the so-
ciologist is deeply impregnated with the philosophy of Kant. What
this means is that he recognizes the value of social science, but also
sees its limitations. Social science does not yield ultimate truth. It in-
volves looking at the world of social structure in a quasi-phenomenal
way as organized in terms of humanly-imposed categories of action
and social relations, and in using our knowledge of structure as a
guide to practical action. But our ndings about such structures have
no ontological signicance as they are frequently thought to have by
writers in the Hegelian and Marxist traditions. It is also possible for
men appreciating, as the result of their sociological investigations,
the intractability of the social world to evaluate that world, to make
their own judgements about it and, indeed, guided by freely-formed
value judgements, to select certain limited ranges of determinate so-
cial reality for investigation in order that they might be better con-
trolled. It is his awareness both of the intractability of an increasingly
organized and bureaucratized world as well as his belief in the ines-
capable moral responsibility of men for their actions that produces in
Weber a stance of intellectual heroism quite unlike that to be found
in any other sociology. In particular, it is opposed to any post-Kan-
tian tendency which asserts either the union of science and ethics
in ontology, or the irrelevance or impropriety of value judgements
about the ndings of social science. Weber would not be at home,
therefore, either with those Hegelian Marxists who insist upon the
unity of the observed world and the observing subject, or with mod-
ern Positivist Empiricism which accords reality only to statements
capable of being veried or disproved.
All this may seem a far cry from the study of race relations. Yet
it is precisely Webers stands on these issues which makes his so-
ciology so relevant to the problems of understanding race relations
today. For while Weber did make some empirical contribution to the
analysis of structures closely connected with race relations problems,
the most important point to notice about the relevance of his work to
the study of race relations is that he shows us that while it is possible
to follow through long chains of causality in our study of ethnic and
racial structures, it is also possible to evaluate those structures and
to suggest points at which the institutionalized actions which un-
derly structures may most effectively be altered so as to bring about
a different social outcome. This is a point which was grasped lucidly
and simply by Gunnar Myrdal in his study of North American race
relations. Myrdal saw that, as a sociologist, he would be saying not
merely that such-and-such was the case, but that is was necessarily
the case, and that this kind of assertion imperiously posed the ques-
tion Necessary from what (or whose) point of view?
3
race relations
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So far as Webers direct empirical contribution to the study of race
and ethnic relations is concerned, it is necessary, in the rst place, to
make some distinction between his overt political interventions and
his more academic work in economic history. In neither case does he
give any support to racist interpretations of events, but the former are
more likely to be tinged with a political stance of nationalism which
is missing in the more detached comparative historical work. Much
of Webers earliest work was concerned with ancient and medieval
history but, when he turned to modern problems, he did so asking
what light this history threw on problems confronting the German
nation of his day. Thus, some of his earliest work for the Verein fur
Sozialpolitik was concerned with locating factors which might under-
mine the solidarity of the German nation. He studied the conditions
of agricultural workers in East Germany, inuenced by his belief that
feudal and seignorial social relations represented some amelioration
of the conditions of labour when these were contrasted with those of
slaves in the latifundia of the late Roman empire. But these essen-
tially paternalistic relations were being undermined in East Germany
through the penetration of the system by the forces of unrestrained
capitalism. Webers response to this situation was to deplore the es-
tablishment of master-servant relations based purely on what Marx
called the callous cash nexus, but then to embark upon a prolonged
series of studies which sought to show that a modernizing capitalist
system could be based upon ethical values, albeit values of a pecu-
liarly introverted and individualistic kind
4
.
Supercially this study of immigrant labour would suggest that
Weber was merely a crude nationalist who was opposed to the im-
migration of Polish workers simply because such workers did not t
in with the social structures or cultures of Germany. This conclusion
would be wrong, however, as Webers more systematic writings on
the question of race and ethnicity show. These are to be found in
the early chapters of his Economy and society which occur in the nal
published version of that work as Part Two of Volume One, being
preceded by four chapters of a systematic kind written later which
make no reference to the question of race or ethnicity
5
.
In this, Webers most explicit discussion of race and ethnicity, it
is clear that Weber does not regard bonds based on ethnicity alone
as signicant bases for the structuration of society, at least so far as
its economic operations are concerned. There is a renewed reference
to the Poles in East Germany in the last part, but the discussion is
discursive and, if anything, Weber underplays the degree to which
they are or feel themselves to be segregated from German society.
The main theoretical point made in this chapter taken as a whole is
Economy and
society
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simply that, while race or ethnicity taken by itself is a weak structur-
ing bond within the economy, when there is need for a group to close
a social relationship and, thereby, also access to economic opportuni-
ties, race in the sense of difference of perceived physical appearance
is one, but only one, possible basis for the exclusion of individuals
from the closed relationship.
The closure of relationships is the crucial factor for Weber.
Human beings normally close relationships in order to ensure eco-
nomic opportunities for an in-group at the expense of an out-group.
Closure of relationships in this way is the most fundamental catego-
ry of economic sociology and is prior to appropriation, which is the
basis of property rights. Thus it is clear that race relations or ethnic
group relations may have a crucial function for economic life and
the making available of a group for exploitation. But race and ethnic-
ity need not necessarily be salient in this way, the only functional
necessity of the economic system being the division of a society into
closed property-owning groups and those who do not have access to
the same opportunities as the property-owners for the acquisition
of utilities. Here, Weber is obviously very close to Marx, and clearly
transcends the simple nationalism which might be read into his writ-
ings on East Germany.
A good illustration of Webers economic or, in a loose sense,
Marxist interpretation of ethnic difference and segregation is to be
found in his remarks on intermarriage between black and white in
the United States. Thus he tells us:
Serious research on the sexual attraction and repulsion between dif-
ferent ethnic groups is only incipient, but there is not the slightest
doubt that racial factors, that means common descent, inuence the
incidence of sexual relations and of marriage, sometimes decisively.
However the existence of several million mulattoes in the United
States speaks clearly against the assumption of a natural antipa-
thy, even among quite different races. Apart from the laws against
biracial marriage in the Southern States, sexual relations are now
abhorred by both sides, but this development began only with eman-
cipation and resulted from the Negroes demand for equal civil right.
Hence this abhorrence on the part of Whites is socially determined
by the previously sketched tendency toward the monopolization of
social power and honour, a tendency which happens in this case to
be linked to race.
6
Earlier, in his more general chapter on The economic relationships
of organized groups, he writes:
closure of
relationships
Marx
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When the number of competitors increases in relation to the prot
span the participants become interested in curbing competition.
Usually one group of competitors takes some externally identiable
characteristic of another group of (actual or potential) competitors
race, language, religion, local or social origin, descent, residence
etc. as a pretext for attempting their exclusion. It does not mat-
ter which characteristic is chosen in the individual case: whatever
suggests itself most easily is seized upon. Such group action may
provoke a corresponding reaction on the part of those against whom
it is directed.
7
These passages make it clear that Weber shares with liberals on the
race question, as he does with Marxists, the belief that racial or ethnic
exclusiveness is not effective as an intractable force in itself in creat-
ing racial separation and conict. And with Marxists he would be
predisposed to look for its origin in the attempt to close off economic
opportunities by one group as against another.
It by no means follows from this that even the most intense forms
of closure and exploitation of the excluded, as in the case of slavery,
necessarily and always lead to racial exclusiveness and conict. This
is clear from Webers extended discussion of slavery in the ancient
world
8
which he sees as an important and distinctive institution so
far as the working of the economy is concerned but not, as in the
North American case, leading to the closure of relationships on racial
grounds.
The question of slavery is so closely related to that of race rela-
tions in contemporary sociology, however, that it is necessary to see
what Weber has to say about this institution and its relationship to
the mode of production. The most important question here is that
of the relationship between slavery and capitalism. Marx, it will be
remembered, had characterized the ancient mode of production as
being based upon slavery, just as the feudal mode was based upon
serfdom, and the capitalist mode upon free wage-labour. What then
was Webers attitude to the question of the existence of capitalism in
the ancient world, to the compatibility of slavery with such capitalism
as existed and the relationship between both slavery and capitalism
and the closure of social relationships?
The basis of Webers position on capitalism in the ancient world
is that it existed as a possible mode of want provision but that it was
not the typical mode. Capitalism did exist, but there was no capitalist
system.
Perhaps the most crucial distinction of all in Webers systematic
sociology is the distinction between oikos and capitalist enterprise.
slavery
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The term oikos is taken over by Weber from Rodbertus and Karl
Bucher. It refers for Weber to an ideal type of provisioning and of
production within a closed group where all production, or nearly all
of it, is for consumption within the group and in which the provision
of needs is normally arranged within the group. The enterprise on
the other hand is directed towards some kind of commercial trans-
action and involves the counting of funds before and after a project
with a view to prot.
In the ancient world capitalism as a system resting upon capital-
ist enterprises never nally gained the upper hand over the oikos
economy. As Weber says in his Agrarverhltnisse im Altertum such a
system excludes:
All manorial charges levied in rural areas on subject groups like the
various tributes rents, dues and services extracted from peasants
in the early Middle Ages... neither the land owned nor the people
subjected can be regarded as capital; title to both depended not on
purchase in the open market but on traditional ties.
and although There also existed in antiquity the commercial practice
of dividing estates and leasing them out in this case the land is used
as a source of rent and capitalist enterprise is absent.
9
On the other hand capitalist investment with a view to prot does
take place. It nds an outlet in the following limited range of func-
tions:
(1) government contracts for partial or total collection of taxes and
public works; (2) mines; (3) sea trade... (4) plantations; (5) banking
and related activities; (6) mortgages; (7) overland trade; (8) leasing
out slaves... (9) capitalist exploitation of slaves skilled in a craft.
10
In one way or another all of these forms of capitalist investment in-
volve high risk and the possible use of force. They are non-peaceful
forms which Weber sometimes describes as adventurer capitalism
or booty capitalism. They never involve the systematic and continu-
ous use of labour in a rationally-planned enterprise with a view to
making prot through market opportunities.
11

Thus there is an important difference between the typology of
modes of production suggested by Weber and that suggested by Marx.
For Marx the economy of the ancient world rests upon slavery and
hence represents a non-capitalist mode of production. For Weber, on
the other hand, it is possible to suggest that there are certain areas of
activity which take a capitalist form, and that this form of capitalism
adventurer
capitalism
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differs from the prevailing in the modern Western capitalist system.
Thus in some ways Weber established a more direct linkage between
capitalism and slavery than Marx. But he is still eager to point out the
differences between capitalism as it operates in a number of settings,
including that of the slave plantation, and the way in which it oper-
ates within a fully-edged capitalist system. In order to elaborate this,
it is necessary to consider further Webers view both of the institu-
tion of slavery and that of the plantation.
It should be noted that Weber does not say that slavery is itself a
capitalist institution, only that in the three forms mentioned it may
provide a eld for capitalist investment. Clearly, in its most elemen-
tary form, it is an institution of the oikos, and probably the most fre-
quently-found type of slavery is the domestic institution. The house
slave is a part of his masters household and participates in the larger
economy only indirectly through his master. It is also possible for a
large domain to attach to itself manufacturing and processing estab-
lishments, independent of any relationship to the market, and em-
ploying slave labour.
When slave labour is used to make a prot through the provisions
of goods and services for sale in the market, slavery comes to be part
of a larger capitalist system, whether the unit which prots from slave
labour and its product is a household or a deliberately created enter-
prise. Weber makes the point, however, in his study of ancient agri-
cultural systems, that slave labour is not essential to these purposes,
and that from the point of view of the attainment of the full purposes
of capitalism, it is not particularly efcient. He disagrees with L.M.
Hartmann in his discussion of the Roman Republic as follows:
L.M. Hartmann observed that in antiquity slavery was necessary be-
cause of the burden of army service which was borne by citizens.
That is in part correct... However it is also true that such a generaliza-
tion cannot explain that which is characteristic of Roman society, the
development of large plantations worked by slaves, nor indeed can
one deduce from it the necessity of slavery. The situation demanded
that yeoman citizens be able to leave their lands to serve the State in
politics and war and this need could have been met by other forms of
unfree labour: serfdom, share-cropping, helotry and so on.
12

And argues that the actual emergence of slave plantations was the
consequence of a particular social and class situation which emerged
after the defeat of the Gracchi. As to the inefciency of slavery Weber
tells us that:
capitalism and
slavery linked
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when low sales cause suspension of production not only does capital
invested in slaves bring no interest as is true of capital invested in
machines but also slaves literally eat up additional amounts. The
result is to slow down capital turnover and capital formation.
13
There is, moreover,
a large risk in investing capital in slave labour. This was due rst of
all to the fact that slave mortality was very high and entirely unpre-
dictable causing capital loss to the owner.
Slavery provides no basis for reliable cost accounting, the necessary
condition for large industrial enterprises based on the division of la-
bour, and:
Another limitation on the truly capitalist exploitation of slaves as a
means of production was the fact that the slave market depended for
supply on succesful wars. For full capitalist exploitation of the work
force was possible only if the slaves had no families, in fact as well
as in law; in other words they were kept in barracks which, however,
made reproduction of slaves impossible. For the cost of maintaining
women and rearing children would have been a dead ballast on work-
ing capital.
14
For Weber, therefore, even though the slave plantation was a char-
acteristic form of ancient capitalist enterprise, it was not compatible
with the logic of the more advanced and systematic form of capital-
ism which emerged in Europe. Precisely in so far as the modern capi-
talist mode of production gained the ascendancy, slavery was likely to
be superseded by free labour.
So far as plantations are concerned, Weber did in his last lectures
see them as essentially a capitalist phenomenon.
15
The characteris-
tic agricultural unit in most societies is the manor in which serfs
hold their land subject to their paying dues to a lord. When such
a unit begins to respond to market forces and production switches
primarily to the market, the manor is likely to undergo two forms of
development. Either the land is divided up between individual farm-
ers who keep stock or raise crops for sale while the landlord farms
rent (this is what Weber calls an estate system), or the workforce is
deprived of all freedom and put to work in labour-intensive forms of
horticultural production. Mining, which may originally be organized
to provide precious metals for the lords treasury, or to be yielded
up to the lords monopoly of external trade, may undergo a parallel
free labour
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development, miners being engaged in labour-intensive extractive
operations paralleling the horticultural occupations of the plantation
slave.
It seems that, by the time Weber came to give his lectures on
General economic history, he was beginning to see the plantation
not simply as a backward form of capitalism, but as a capitalist form
which transcended feudal forms, particularly in agriculture. This is
a question of some importance, as we shall see when we turn our
attention to problems of slavery and race relations in the modern
period.
Apart from the question of the nature of slavery and of the plan-
tation as social and economic forms, there is one other theme in
Weber which is of importance for contemporary debates about slav-
ery and race relations. This is the question of the role of religious and
other ideological factors in shaping socio-economic systems. There is
no need here to rehearse the well-known debate which Weber initi-
ated about the relationship between the Protestant ethic and the capi-
talist spirit. What one should notice, however, is that according to
Weber there was both a congruence between Calvinist teaching and
capitalist social institutions, and an incompatibility between slave la-
bour and capitalism. It would seem natural to deduce from this that
Webers theories would imply that slavery would be most prevalent
in those Christian countries which had not undergone anything like
a Calvinist reformation, and that it would be displaced where there
was Protestantism. This is certainly one of Webers theoretical be-
liefs which is at odds with much opinion about North and South
American slavery.
Weber wrote comparative economic history and also attempted, at
the end of his life, to develop a set of type-concepts in terms of which
any socio-economic formation could be analyzed. Thus, although he
wrote about the institutions of the ancient and medieval world in
Europe, about Chinese, Indian and Jewish civilizations, and about
advanced forms of industrial and commercial capitalism, the nature
of his concepts is such that they can very fruitfully be applied to mod-
ern empires and to the colonial social systems which they generate.
It might be said that Weber believed that history repeats itself in bits.
In so far as this is so, one might be able to understand the problems
of colonialism, of colonial labour exploitation and of race relations in
terms of the welding together of bits already well-developed for the
purposes of the analysis of ancient empires to form new patterns.
It is sometimes said that the use of type concepts is defective be-
cause it suggests a bitty, mosaic view of historical societies, whereas
the nature of these societies is not one which exhibits the mechani-
Calvinist teaching
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cal unity of a mosaic, but rather the unity of a developing organism.
There may be truth in this, and certainly Webers special skill lay
in his ability to take out the bits of social systems, to look at them,
and to see that they were not new. But it is also true that, however
much Weber may have refused to consider any organic approach, his
studies of the ancient world especially do not suggest simply a con-
geries of bits. There is a great deal of inter-connectedness between
one institution and another, and any careful reading of these writ-
ings leaves an impression of an over-all pattern in which the various
ancient social types are well distinguished in spirit from modern in-
dustrial capitalism.
I may now turn to the application of concepts which, after all,
were not primarily directed to the study of race relations and see
whether they may not be fruitfully applied in those areas of academic
interest which centre on modern problems of race relations. The core
of this debate concerns the question of slavery and race relations in
the Americas, and with this I shall deal rst, but over and above this
it will be necessary to look for the over-all pattern or developing sys-
tem within which modern race relations problems occur.
The crude lines of the debate about slavery turned, in the rst
place, on an argument amongst North American writers as to wheth-
er slavery was in fact the moral scandal which post-bellum politi-
cians made it out to be and, secondly, on whether the Latin-American
countries had produced a more humane form of slavery and, if so,
why?
16

First, I should deal with the question of the effect of ideology on
differing systems. Here the suggestion has sometimes been made
that, far from Calvinism, capitalism and free labour being systemati-
cally linked with one another, there is a strong relationship between
the presence of Protestant religion and the harsher forms of slavery
and racism. Racism, some would argue, is a Protestant phenomenon
while Catholicism encourages relations between master and man
and between dominant and subordinate peoples of a humane if pa-
ternalistic kind.
In fact it is easy to show that this simple theory generalizes too
much. Regardless of religious confession, legal systems or national
ideology, there are economic circumstances which will facilitiate the
development of a particular rationalized system of plantation pro-
duction what has sometimes been called a factory of the eld
and other circumstances which will hinder it. But any simple theory
of economic determinism of this kind also generalizes too much. It
would be far better to say that particular economic circumstances of
demand in the market do favour particular kinds of development,
the Americas
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but that such developments are also affected by ideological traditions
and also by historical lag.
Perhaps the really interesting thing about the plantation as a so-
cial institution is precisely its relationship to other related agrarian
forms. Weber was almost certainly wrong about the association of
Protestantism and free labour, but he did see that the plantation was
a social form which was continuous with various other forms such
as the manor, the estate and independent peasant production. It may
well be, indeed, that Webers approach is more useful in the study of
plantation societies than any other, precisely because it uses typology
and, by so doing, relates the plantation to other agrarian forms.
Once one understands that the plantation may be thought of as an
evolutionary development which arises out of the manor, it comes as
no surprise that particular plantation systems lie somewhere along
a continuum between a pure factory of the eld, using disciplined
unfree labour, and a quasi-manorial system in which at least a very
large part of the workers product is used either to feed himself or
to contribute to his lords table. Nor should one be surprised if, in
times when the plantation nds that demand for its product slack-
ens, it survives as a kind of a manor with other than purely economic
and market-oriented functions or, on the other hand, when what was
once a manor becomes more and more like a plantation in times of
economic boom.
It is interesting to note here that both the manorial polar type of
plantation, and the factory of the eld type, use slave labour. This
would suggest that, whether or not the settler conquerors set out to
be seigneurs or lords, the mere fact that slaves were available meant
that they were likely to be employed in preference to other forms of
labour. In fact, it would seem that workers captured or purchased
and transported from their native soil could be exploited more ef-
fectively and efciently than either wage workers moving from the
metropolis to the colonies, or the true natives whose ties to their own
native soil made them less exploitable. One should not jump to the
conclusion, however, that where there is conquest there will always
be the same economic forms, for a slaves subsequent destiny would
depend both upon the social and legal structure in which he found
himself (e.g. in a manor or a factory of the eld), upon the way in
which pressures were placed upon that particular productive institu-
tion by changing market forces.
The debate about slave plantation systems should, however, be
made more comprehensive by being extended in a number of dif-
ferent directions. In the rst place it should be noted that the planta-
tion, whether in its more manorial or more capitalist factory form, is
social institution
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only one of a number of related types of productive and exploitative
systems. Others include the Spanish ecomienda, under which native
people were assigned to conquerors for their use as workers, without
necessarily being tied to a place; latifundia, or large estates which
engulfed some peasants and made then subject to labour service or
to rent payments; minifundia, or small peasant holdings whose econ-
omy was such that peasants were forced into debt and into migration
to towns or to plantations; reductions in which native people were
in part separated, protected and educated, and in part made available
for exploitation; and also all possible intermediate forms.
If one regards the Americas as a kind of historical laboratory for
the analysis of labour and productive systems, it is interesting to no-
tice that the plantation system throve with imported African labour,
whereas the estate system was widespread in areas where Spanish
conquerors subdued an Amerindian population. Miscegenation was
more frequent in the latter areas and in some of them the domi-
nant group was subject over a few generations to considerable mes-
tization. But one cannot conclude that harsh conditions, restriction
of intermarriage, and a descent rule which made the offspring of
miscegenation part of the subordinate group always occurred where
African slave labour was employed in plantations. There was in fact a
considerable difference between plantation systems, and the kinds of
contact and intermarriage between the races which they allowed. It is
this which led to the all-too-crude statement of the differences which
existed between North and South American slavery. The real prob-
lem, however, is to discover the conditions under which different
patterns of slavery and different patterns of race relations emerged.
Even if one connes oneself to the question of different types of
slavery, however, the problem is not an easy one. A type of slav-
ery includes all kinds of economic relationship, legal and customary
forms, as well as ideological factors, and it may well be that varia-
tion in one respect does not necessarily imply variation in another.
Moreover, if one tries to pursue a causal analysis in terms of depen-
dent and independent variables, one quickly nds that it is very dif-
cult indeed to be sure whether a particular factor, say a particular
law or custom, should be counted as an independent or a dependent
variable. In a causal analysis of this kind one often nds that par-
ticular features tend to crop up in both columns. It may well be that,
at this point, Webers resolve in his methodological introduction to
Economy and society to pursue both causal analysis and analysis in
terms of meaning breaks down, and that the best that one could hope
for is a hermeneutic analysis of the form of life exhibited in each
particular variant of plantation society.
different plantation
systems
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Thus it would seem that a comparative analysis of plantation
slavery itself involves grave difculty, and any more far-reaching at-
tempt to compare modern forms with those which prevailed in the
ancient world is even more difcult. Nevertheless, the bitty nature
of Webers analysis here has its merits. It is clear from his consid-
eration of slavery in the ancient world that he would not be content
with comparisons between units loosely dened as slave plantation
systems. Such units can be broken down into a number of separate
institutions and, when they are, much more fruitful comparisons
become possible. It is interesting here to compare what would be
involved in a Weberian theoretical and comparative analysis of slave
systems with the best work currently being carried out by Genovese
and others. Penetrating though these studies are, one can usefully
ask whether the Marxian concepts which Genovese derives from
Hobsbawn are not too general and imprecise.
17
Webers analysis of
the agrarian systems of antiquity appears far more precise and de-
tailed in the concepts which it uses than does the Genovese analy-
sis of modern slave systems. In the last analysis, Genoveses merits
are those of a historian and Webers those of a theoretical sociolo-
gist. These empirical problems could be even better illuminated by a
scholar who combined the merits of both of them.
The debate to which I have been referring connes itself to
the economic relations between European settlers, Amerindians
and African slaves in largely agriculturally-based societies in the
Americas. One should now also note that the basic patterns of the
plantation system of the factory of the eld type are reproduced with
other forms of unfree labour, that the labour is imported from other
countries and cultures, and that it may be applied, not only in ag-
riculture, but in mining and to some extent in the manufacturing
industry.
It has already been seen that, Webers reservations about the ulti-
mate incompatibility of capitalism and slave labour notwithstanding,
slave plantations did for long periods exist as highly efcient capital-
ist undertakings. One can say this even if one does not accept the
full thesis of Fogel and Engermann in their recent work Time on the
Cross.
18
Indeed, one can nd in the literature examples not merely
of capitalist efciency in plantations, but of detailed cost account-
ing coupled with a good dash of the Protestant ethic. One particular
example of this is to be found in Pares account of a plantation-own-
ing family, the Pinneys on the Island of Nevis.
19
When this plan-
tation passes into the hands of the generation most possessed by
the Protestant spirit one nds that detailed accounting is applied not
merely to the plantation as a capitalist enterprise but to the disposi-
efciency
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tion of human resources within the family household. Nevertheless,
there are difculties in making slave labour fully efcient in chang-
ing conditions and some of these difculties are circumvented in the
labour forms which follow the emancipation movement.
The emancipation of slaves did not of course occur solely for ide-
alistic reasons. Its idealism was able to gain a hearing only because
there were more efcient ways of carrying on production. In the case
of the sugar plantations of Guyana, as well as in large areas in which
the plantation system ourished in the East, slavery was superseded
by the indentured labour system. This was not designed as a moral
improvement on slave labour, but as a system which would in fact
enable the employer to enjoy the advantages of slavery with none of
its disadvantages. Thus, the labourers were formally more free than
slaves and the term of their employment was limited, but this meant
a much greater calculability of costs was possible for the employer.
At the end of the contract he had no incalculable obligation to the
worker, and the worker indeed often found that his right to return
to freedom at home was theoretical rather than real. He would thus
be available at rst in semi-slave conditions, and then as a depen-
dent and impoverished tenant or share-cropper. Such was the fate
of Indian coolie workers in Fiji, Malaya, Assam, Ceylon, Mauritius
and Natal, as well as in Guyana, where they literally took the place of
slaves.
20

Even more important though for the sociology of colonial society
has been the use of shorter-term contract labour in Africa. Its ideal
form is to be found in South Africa and in the mines, where impov-
erished workers from the overcrowded rural reserves are separated
from their families in barracks called compounds, are paid wages
appropriate only to such barrack conditions, and are returned at the
end of a nine-month contract period to the reserves which employers
cynically describe as a kind of social security system. As I have said
elsewhere, the South African labour system is probably the most ef-
cient system for the capitalist exploitation of labour yet devised, rest-
ing as it does on the three institutions of the rural reserve, the mining
compound and the controlled urban location.
21
And if such a system
exists empirically in an almost ideal typical form in mining, it is ap-
plied also in its essentials in manufacturing industry and in settler
agriculture. As one famous settler in East Africa put the matter: We
have stolen his land. Now we must steal his limbs... Compulsory la-
bour is the corollary of our occupation of the country.
22
In the same
territory, a Government commission nicely grasped the problem of
African labour conditions when it discussed the housing of urban
workers not in terms of housing units but in terms of bedspaces.
23
shorter-term
contract labour
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It is clear from these examples that one cannot discuss the colo-
nial societies established by the European powers in terms of a slave
and a post-slave period. And one is compelled to ask, as Weber did,
whether the most signicant aspect of the problem is the existence of
slavery, since slavery is one means of achieving ends which may also
be achieved through a variety of alternative forms of unfree labour.
Nevertheless, there is a problem of very great importance to the his-
tory of race relations which arises from slave emancipation.
It should be noticed that, thus far, I have not discussed racism as
an element in economic situations. Weber himself nds it possible
to discuss similar problems in the ancient world by referring only to
the distinction between closed and open social relationships. Thus,
a group which monopolizes any type of economic opportunity by ex-
cluding outsiders tends to nd some rationalization and justication
of its actions by drawing attention to certain observable characteris-
tics of the excluded group. But since Weber is so much concerned
with the central problem for him of the rationalization of capitalist
individualism in Calvinism, he has little to say about the kind of ide-
ologies which might justify the exploitation of one group by another.
The striking thing indeed about his account of Roman plantation
slavery is that he does not see the system as justied in terms of any
elaborate ideology about racial or any other group difference.
Was it then the case that slavery and other harsh forms of political
oppression and economic exploitation existed in the Roman Empire
without the phenomenon of racism making an appearance, but that
slavery in the modern period was associated from the rst with rac-
ism? This is by no means an easy question to answer and the lines of
the debate are often very confused indeed. Much depends upon what
is meant by racism.
It should be clear that nearly every group in modern times which
was engaged in colonial conquest and exploitation found justication
for its practice in abusive accounts of the exploited group. Charles
Boxer, for example, has demonstrated
24
that, however much the
Portuguese might be Latin and Catholic, their settlers are on record,
in Church as well as secular contexts, as abusing the native people of
the Portuguese Empire. From such evidence many liberal scholars
over-react by saying that one colonialist is much the same as another
and that, whatever their culture and religion, they are all in the end
not merely exploiters and oppressors but racists. Against this, one has
to set the long record of inuential clerics, particularly in the Spanish
territories, arguing against the exploitation through enslavement of
the native peoples of America.
There can be little doubt that in the period of slavery and other
racism
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john rex
early forms of violent colonial conquest and oppression many racist
ideas were canvassed. What is perhaps more important, however, is
that the structure of society depended upon the relations which men
had to property. Whether they freely owned or were tied to their land
with an obligation to labour services, whether they owned other work-
ers, or whether they were themselves property, so long as there was
a law which upheld such forms of inequality and sanctions to back
it, the inequalities in the social structure did not depend upon the
system of racist beliefs which were canvassed. The interesting thing
from our point of view is that when the social order could no longer be
buttressed by legal sanctions it had to depend upon the inculcation in
the minds of both exploiters and exploited of a belief in the superior-
ity of the exploiters and the inferiority of the exploited. Thus it can be
argued that the doctrine of equality of economic opportunity and that
of racial superiority and inferiority are complements of one another.
Racism serves to bridge the gap between theory and practice.
This is not, of course, to say that the use of force ceases with slave
emancipation. In some countries like South Africa it is systematically
mobilized on a political level to ensure continued white supremacy.
But it is to say that when inequality, exploitation and oppression are
challenged by economic liberalism, they have to be opposed by doc-
trines which explain the exceptions to the rule. While it is admitted
that all men are equal, some men are deemed to be more equal than
others.
Doctrines of racial equality and inequality, and practices asso-
ciated with them, are already worked out in slave societies before
emancipation, for in all there are some free men or men whose af-
liation to either the plantation-owners or the slaves is ambiguous.
These include freed slaves, the offspring of miscegenation, and poor
whites whose standard of life approximates to that of coloureds even
though they share the skin colour and other characteristics of the rul-
ing group. The way in which these groups are related, in terms of
status and life-changes to the plantation-owners and slaves, prepares
the way for social stratication after emancipation. One possibility is
that, from the point of view of status ideology, the crucial line will be
that between whites and poor whites. Another is that there may be a
status ordering of the society which overlaps with a racial or colour
ordering, so that there is a continuous status gradation in which,
roughly speaking, white or lightly-coloured people are at the top and
completely black people at the bottom. Finally, there is the possibility
that there will be three estates of White, Coloured and Black.
Any incipient ordering of groups and individuals in terms of a
status order of this kind has to bear a greater strain when the legal
relation to property
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basis of inequality provided by slavery, as well as by legal estate sys-
tems, breaks down. In this situation everyone is theoretically equal,
but a new status structure emerges in which race or colour is a cru-
cial indicator of a mans position. Even if it is at odds with the actual
social relations of production prevailing in the new social order such
a system will have some inuence. But frequently, the status system
and the economic order move into line when the society as a whole
is deeply dependent upon production for the market, because high-
status, lightly-coloured people tend to close off economic opportuni-
ties to those lower down the scale and because money, education,
and economic position are all said to whiten the individual who
possesses them. Moreover, since post-emancipation society is often
economically stagnant, the status order may be the main structuring
fact in the social order. In Barbados shortly before independence, for
example, over-all stagnation and poverty were coupled, particularly
among whiter, higher-status people, with a continuous preoccupa-
tion with matters of coulour and status.
Weber would certainly have had much to say about the structure
of colonial societies had he turned his attention to them because,
although he shared with Marx an interest in social class (which he
saw as a matter of groups with common or differentiated interests
in a market situation), he supplemented this with a theory of sta-
tus groups, differentiated in terms of styles of life and a consequent
differential apportionment of honour.
25
He also envisaged the pos-
sibility that a status group distinguished by its specic life-style
might come to exercise hegemony over the society as a whole. Thus
the Mandarins had imposed their way of life on ancient China, the
Brahmins on India and the bourgeoisie (considered here as a status
group rather than a class) on Western European society. He would
therefore have had no difculty in understanding a situation in which
an ethnic group achieved hegemony. He might only have added to
this a Marxian type of scepticism, suggesting that the claim made in
terms of style of life was, in part at least, a cover for the closure of
economic opportunities.
Weber might, it is true, have had more difculty in understanding
a social order in which there was not so much status domination by
a particular group as a status grading of individuals. Oliver Cromwell
Cox makes a useful contribution here in distinguishing what using
the term in a peculiar sense he calls social class as distinct from
caste, estate and political class.
26
For Cox, this social class is a con-
ceptual system in terms of which individuals rate themselves against
others rather than a closed form of social grouping.
So far, however, the focus in dealing with colonial societies in
status group
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john rex
which race relations problems emerge has been a narrow one. I have
dealt basically with the relationship between exploiting owners, com-
ing to the colony from the metropolis, and the exploited workers or
peasants, who are either colonial natives or imported slaves, together
with those who have some relationship of descent with either of these
two groups. This much can be comprehended in terms of a fairly
simple model of an economic order, coupled with a status system
which, in essence, has two poles. One of these is represented by the
group of owners coming from the metropolis. The other is that of the
major group of workers, slaves or peasants of colonial or imported
origin. But few societies are as simple as this, because pluralism can
be found among the exploited as well as among the colonialists, and
there are other groups who have no ethnic and economic afliation
with either colonizers or colonized.
First, one should notice the pluralism which comes from the di-
vision between workers in plantations, mines and factories on the
one hand, and peasants on the other. Some societies are dominantly
plantation societies and some are predominantly peasant societies,
but in the former there are likely to be a minority of peasants, and in
the latter a minority of workers in plantations, mines and factories.
Very often the minority and the majority will be ethnically distinct. In
a society which offers little scope for independent subsistence farm-
ing, peasants will either be forced into being migrant labourers in
plantations or towns, or they will be pushed to the margins of the
society to carry on their segregated way of life in conditions which are
ultimately insupportable. On the other hand, in societies in which
there is a predominantly peasant population, urban industrial work
and mining, as well as work on occasional plantations, may be car-
ried on by specially imported workers or by ethnic minorities. In
both of these cases we have ethnic and occupational differentiation
combined with differences in status.
The second extremely important alternative is that in which slaves
of one race or ethnicity are replaced by indentured workers from an-
other. In this case, cultural pluralism amongst the working people of
the colony coexists with an ambiguity as to the relative status of the
two groups. Guyana, for example, is what some think to be the classic
case of a plural society, in which there are both Indians descended
from indentured workers, and the descendants of African slaves. It
is true, of course, that because of their differing history, these groups
have their own distinct sets of domestic institutions and that they do
not therefore amalgamate culturally, and it is also true that it is hard
to place the two groups in terms of status in a horizontal sense, since
one enjoys the advantage of having been recruited on theoretically
pluralism
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less arduous terms, but the other group has now very largely left the
plantation for the town and is culturally closer to the ruling group.
This is an important type of intergroup situation in many colonial
territories, and it is sometimes complicated by the fact that one of the
two colonial groups is in a permanent majority (this is not the case in
Guyana).
M.G. Smith has used the model of this particular intergroup re-
lationship as a general model for colonial societies in the Caribbean
and in Africa.
27
He argues that it is usually better to conceive colonial
societies as plural rather than as horizontally stratied, that the dif-
ferent plural segments have no institution in common save the po-
litical one, and that the society as a whole is held together by the con-
trol of the political institution by one segment. This theory is by no
means accepted here, since we have made it clear that there are both
status orders and economic systems which bind groups and individuals
in colonial societies together, and that what we are dealing with here is
pluralism amongst the exploited workers and their descendants only.
Nevertheless there are circumstances in which such groups contend
for political power, when the political domination of the colonialists
is withdrawn, and the struggle may not merely be two-sided, as in
Guyana. It may have three sides, as in Malaya, or conceivably even
more. In these circumstances, it may well be that a struggle for pow-
er becomes the central structuring theme in the post-colonial world.
But it would be misleading, even in these cases where such an ethnic
political struggle is evident, and still more so in others where it is not,
to underestimate the binding force of economic institutions which
are by no means necessarily displaced with the coming of political
independence. What Smith seems to have done, at least in his earlier
writing, is to over-emphasize the importance of one structuring fea-
ture of one kind of society and suggest that it is the basis for a general
theory.
Divisions among the exploited workers, such as those we have
been discussing, are by no means the only other structuring features
of ethnically-plural colonial societies, for such societies quite com-
monly also include a number of other elements. The most important
of these are the pariah traders and the settlers, though we should also
give some consideration to two other groups from the metropolis,
namely, the missionaries and the governmental administrators who
remain, to some extent, culturally and socially as well as functionally
separate from other colonialists. Such distinctions would t naturally
into a Weberian sociology of the colonies, since Weber recognized
that functional differentiation, not necessarily of a simple economic
kind, did in fact generate what he loosely called class struggles in the
Roman Republic and the Roman Empire.
political power
struggle
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john rex
It seems to be almost universally the case that colonial societies
provide subsidiary economic opportunities which major colonial
owner-producers are unable, or unwilling, to exploit. Theoretically,
there could be a pure plantation or manorial economy which sat-
ised all its own needs internally a complete oikos economy.
Normally, however, trade in food, household equipment and other
commercial items falls to groups of outsiders, who have no aspira-
tion to political control, or to direct exploitation of the colonial work-
ers through production, and are prepared to live solely through trade.
Such groups tend to be despised by the major colonial proprietors
and to be regarded with suspicion by the workers themselves. Very
easily, in times of difculty, they can become a scapegoat group. In
those cases where the scale of their economic activities is large the
community which grows up around such trade may become a not
insignicant structural element of the society. This is true, for in-
stance, of the Indian traders in East Africa as it is of the Chinese in
Malaysia. Weber would have recognized the similarities here with
the role of the Jews in medieval Europe and of the metics in Ancient
Greece.
Quite commonly these groups of traders have an ethnic afliation
with groups of immigrant peasants and workers in the colonial terri-
tory. This is the case of Indian traders in Guyana or Natal, and also of
the Chinese traders in Malaysia. The existence of such a community
increases the power of the traders in political terms, and they often
have political skills to offer to workers of their own ethnicity. One
consequence of all this is that the potentiality for class politics even
amongst an ethnically separate group of workers is undermined by
the formation of strong ties of cultural unity and of clientage across
class boundaries. This adds to the appearance of pluralism in the
society, but also affects the group image which a particular group
may have. Thus, attitudes towards all Indians in East Africa may be
inuenced by the image of the Indian trader or moneylender. It is
perhaps not too much to say that, next to the tension between the
main owning and exploiting groups, this is the major source of racial
tension in colonial societies.
So far, however, I have not spoken of the group who give the char-
acteristic shape to one major type of colonial society, namely, the
white settlers. This category should not be taken to include the own-
ers of the major means of production, who appear to the settlers as
a kind of plantocracy which often operates on an absentee basis. Nor
should it be taken to include administrators and missionaries. It does
include farmers, who are either able to occupy land on cheap terms
following military conquest or participate directly in that conquest. It
cultural unity
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is characteristic of these settlers that they see the colonial situation
as providing them with opportunities for economic acquisition and
for status not available to them in the metropolitan country. This is
obviously true of the farmer settler who very quickly behaves like a
European lord on his manor. But it is also true of the worker, who
recognizes that he might do easier manual work aided by a native
assistant, and that he will be paid more for his skills because of his
ethnic afliation to the plantocracy and the administrators. If there
are sufcient of these settlers a separate settler economy is likely to
develop, separate both from that of the plantocracy and from that of
the metropolitan country. There may be some divisions of interest
among these settlers but, in general, alliances of a political kind will
be possible among farmers, capitalists and urban workers. Again,
class afliations are transcended by ethnic ones although, in this
case, the interlocking of interests of the separate groups of workers
makes it possible for them to be seen simply as the settler interest for
most purposes.
In some cases the settlers eventually won political power for
themselves, and were able to develop wholly new nations capable
of standing up, and more, to the European nation States. This was
most clearly the case in the United States of America where two
crucial wars were fought, one against the mother country, and the
other against the colonial plantocracy. Something similar also hap-
pened in South Africa and in the settler territories of Latin America.
Where numbers were smaller, however, as in Algeria, and in East
and Central Africa, the settlers fought unavailingly to succeed to po-
litical power in the post-colonial period and were forced, in the long
run, to emigrate or to form such alliances as were necessary for their
survival.
If the American settlers defeated the plantocracy and the South
African settlers the Uitlanders who opened up the Rand, they, how-
ever, by no means put an end to racist theory and racialist practice.
Indeed, they had more reason in some ways than the planters pro-
tected by law and custom, for adopting racialist and exclusivist prac-
tice; Van den Berghe is perhaps correct here when he speaks of such
situations as competitive rather than paternalist.
28
Certainly the New
Jerusalem which the settlers were seeking could be most obviously
obtained only by nding ways of excluding competitors. Thus, the
very essence of white settlerdom lay in its capacity to monopolize
jobs, land, commercial, industrial and domestic property. In some
ways, settler society therefore produced the extreme example of racial
domination.
The presence of missionaries in colonial territories is a recur-
monopolization
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john rex
rent phenomenon, but it is ultimately a mistake to seek in any of the
religions produced by the Christian Reformation, or by traditional
Catholicism in Europe, the ideological source of inspiration for colo-
nial practice relating to the equality or inequality which should pre-
vail between individuals or groups. In fact, these new societies had
to work out their own ideologies, and what the missionaries were
often doing was to provide a setting in which new and appropriate
ultimate value concepts could be worked out. Differential theologi-
cal and ethical starting points did no doubt make some difference
to what occurred, but what gave them their life was their capacity to
accommodate wholly new patterns of social relations.
Finally, one should notice that the cadre of colonial administra-
tors had their peculiar role to play. They did not represent the interest
of particular owners or particular groups. Rather they were there to
ensure that the normal range of colonial operations could be carried
on without the metropolitan government being dragged into unnec-
essary conict. Thus, even though they, like the missionaries, did
often side with the interests of the plantocracy or the settlers, they
were to some extent bound to continue to hold the ring so that the
colonial game might be played. As a consequence they sometimes
seemed to be a kind of estate or caste or class apart, separated from
their kinsmen who had more direct economic interests than they did.
How then shall we view the new colonial societies brought into
being by the expansion of Europe overseas from the fteenth century
onwards. Are they caste societies? Are they estate systems? Can they
be understood in Marxian terms, as based either directly on a class
struggle, or as resulting from a changing series of relationships con-
sequential upon European need for the accumulation of capital, for
raw materials, for markets or for the export of capital? In fact they
are none of these purely and simply. Nor do they represent some
new form of colonial stratication system distinct from Indian caste,
medieval European estates or modern European class struggle. The
truth is that they were not simple determinate economical systems
capable of being understood through the use of some simple theoret-
ical key. They were composite entities, very like the Roman Empire
in their structural complexity and diversity. They have, of course, in
various ways, been affected by the changes and developments at the
centre of European capitalism, but whether they are needed or not
by that capitalism, these societies have come into being and stay in
being. It is within them, moreover, that the main problems of race
relations in the modern world have their origin. These problems de-
rive, as Weber saw, in the rst place from the closure of relationships
to protect and enhance economic opportunities. But long after the
composite entities
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original closures and their accompanying privileges had ceased to be
signicant such problems and conicts continued. The black descen-
dant of a slave in a settler or a metropolitan society nds themself
still marked with the stigma of slavery; the African peasant in South
Africa nds himself kept in reserves for the purposes of ultra-exploi-
tation, and excluded from social and economic and political partici-
pation on grounds of race; middlemen minorities of traders now nd
themselves the scapegoats for the ills of colonialism, and are threat-
ened with expulsion and exclusion; and, in the wake of political colo-
nialism, ethnic communities vie with each other in the struggle for
political power. The diverse problems of race relations are now at the
head of the worlds political agenda. They are all better understood in
terms of the sort of sociological theory of colonialism which has been
sketched here, and which applies some of the concepts and the style
of sociological analysis to the modern colonial situation that Weber
applied in his comparative and historical studies.
29

So far, however, I have dealt only with problems of race relations
between groups who constitute colonial societies. But the full under-
standing of race relations problems in the contemporary world must
also include, over and beyond this, the study of the relations between
these complex colonial structures, on the one hand, and the metro-
politan economy on the other. This should include the study of the
relationship between metropolitan societies and colonies, and the
neo-colonialist period which often follows political independence, on
the one hand, and the migration of workers from the colonies to the
metropolis on the other.
In considering the relations of metropolitan capitalism with co-
lonial territories, there is a difference of emphasis between Webers
approach and that of Marxists and neo-Marxists. The latter would see
colonial societies as, successively, the source of primitive accumula-
tion, the source of raw materials, an area for the expansion of markets
and, nally, a means for the export of capital. More recently, under
the inuence of A.G. Frank
30
, Marxism has seen the so-called process
of economic and social development in the Third World as a pro-
cess of the development of under-development. A number of other
scholars have suggested that, in the study of the modern world, there
is only one unit within which studies can be adequately organized,
and that this is a single world capitalist system
31
. The emphasis of all
these studies moves the traditional locus of sociological interest from
the study of structures of social relations and groups to the study of
political economy. It is, of course, a part of the Marxist theory to sug-
gest that the dynamics of economic change and revolution are to be
found in a process of class struggle, but it is well known that, after
metropolitan
economy
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he turned his attention to the theory of capitalist crisis, Marx did not
adequately return to the problem of the structuration of classes. It is
certainly true of neo-Marxist sociology of development that it fails to
deal adequately with this theory. If any consideration is given to the
question of the social formations which will lead to the overthrow of
capitalism, the assumption appears to be that the process of capital-
ist exploitation in the Third World will go on until the world system
of capitalism is ended by the action of the urban industrial working
class in the most advanced countries.
Now, there are some respects in which Weberian sociology is
lacking when it comes to the study of the economics of imperial-
ism. Weber writes as an economic historian and sociologist rather
than as a political economist, with the result that his ideas on the
accumulation of capital, the search for raw materials, the process of
capital export, and so on, can only be gleaned from remarks which
he makes en passant about particular historical episodes. In these he
seems to adopt a quite cynical practical Marxism, taking as the main
assumption that men seek prot and booty where they can. On the
other hand, what is striking about Webers work on the ancient world
is that he describes these processes of conquest and capitalism as be-
ing far more inhuman than those which occur in circumstances of
advanced capitalism. The key to his thinking here lies in the notions
of non-peaceful adventurer and booty capitalism.
On the level of the study of social structure rather than that of
political economy, these ideas are of some importance. The economic
institutions which arose in the course of European imperialism in-
volved not simply logical and necessary developments arising out of
the capitalist system but a regression to the economic forms of boo-
ty capitalism which Weber had studied in the Roman Empire. The
Marxian tendency to see these institutions as mercantilist, feudal, or
in some other way at odds with capitalism, misses the point here. The
crude processes of conquest and exploitation in Latin America, Africa
and Asia are capitalist processes, but they belong as structures un-
der the heading of booty capitalism. Characteristically, the major eco-
nomic institution for colonial development is the chartered company
which permits it to gather the revenue within a territory, to govern it,
and to pursue monopolistic trading activities within it. This involves
a licence to use force against the population, and to nd labour for
economic enterprises, not through the labour market, but by some
non-peaceful means. This is a high-risk capitalism, as Weber pointed
out, but it is also a capitalism which is capable of unrestrained ex-
ploitation. Thus Elkins is essentially right when he speaks of North-
American slave plantations as working according to the dynamics of
Marxism
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unopposed capitalism
32
. But it is precisely this absence of restraints
on the use of force which distinguishes booty capitalism from the
routine capitalism of advanced industrial societies.
Use of some such term as booty capitalism to describe a set of
institutions of economic exploitation gives us an ideal type, in terms
of which typical patterns of colonial social structure can be under-
stood. We should expect that where capitalism of this kind prevails
we shall have chartered companies with a licence to gather revenue,
to govern, and to engage in monopolistic trade; we shall have large-
scale estates, with servile labour provided by squatters; we shall have
plantation systems; and we shall have the complex of institutions
which characterize migrant labour in Southern Africa. On the other
hand, we should expect a dualism in socio-economic structures as
such societies develop. New economic institutions will arise in the
towns, or among new metropolitan entrants to the colonial economy,
and these will have more of the characteristics of routine capitalism
based upon the calculation of market opportunity.
It is true that Weber, committed as he was in economics to mod-
ern marginal utility theories, did not see the routine forms of capital-
ism as problematic, and that he probably over-emphasized the differ-
ence between the ancient imperial forms of capitalism and those of
modern Europe. Nevertheless, there are differences here, most nota-
bly in the kinds of political structures and movements which are the
consequence of booty capitalism. Moreover, it cannot be assumed
that all the main features of this earlier socio-economic form have
now been eliminated. They constitute the very centre of some of the
most advanced capitalist economies in formerly colonial territories
such as South Africa, with the result that the political sociology of
these territories cannot be comprehended in terms of a simple politi-
cal sociology of modern capitalism. Some Marxists have indeed rec-
ognized a similar point when they notice that the concept of primi-
tive accumulation has to be extended to take account of permanent
primitive accumulation.
The simple political sociology to which I refer assumes that the
major line of political development in a capitalist society is towards
a polarization of classes and to the emergence of a united working
class which, according to the Marxist alternative, carries through the
revolution against capitalism and, according to the liberal and so-
cial democratic alternative, establishes a new social contract for the
working class within a welfare State. These alternatives may be avail-
able for the workers within the metropolitan economy and within
the modernized sectors of the colonial economy, but they are not
available to the workers within the booty economy which still pre-
booty capitalism
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john rex
vails in many areas. In these circumstances, it is not to be expected
that all exploited workers will unite to defend themselves within an
urban and trade-union based movement. Rather the workers who
have experienced the political reality of booty capitalism will grapple
with the problem of power, and may even nd it necessary to oppose
the Marxist or social-democratic movement in the more advanced
sectors of capitalism, just as that movement may well act against it as
it becomes compromised in the imperialist development of the me-
tropolis. These reections are borne out by the emergence in recent
years of a theory of the Third World revolution which sets itself up
against Marxism. It is expressed particularly sharply in the writings
of such writers as Fanon
33
,

Debray
34
and Segal
35
. It cannot be said that
this theory itself has Weberian origins. But once the sharp distinc-
tion between the institutions of booty capitalism and those of normal
capitalism is understood, the possibility of two parallel revolutions
can very well be envisaged. And the greater violence of the colonial
revolution is likely to produce a need for simple denitions of in-
group and out-group which are readily provided by racist theories.
Thus, soldiers from the metropolitan countries, sent to repress the
colonial revolution, dene their enemies racially, and Segal, at least,
goes beyond Fanon in seeing the revolution of the Third World as a
whole, not as simply a struggle of the wretched of the earth, but as
race war.
Similar considerations arise in connexion with the study of co-
lonial migrant workers and their families in the metropolitan coun-
tries and, again, if Weber did not write about these problems directly,
certain of his positions on the structure of the advanced capitalist
societies suggest what his approach would have been. On the one
hand he was very conscious as one engaged in German politics in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth century of the importance
of the German Social Democratic movement and of the emergence
of a Welfare State. On the other, his general notion of the closure of
social relationship to protect economic opportunities would have led
him to understand that that movement, and its related organizations,
would not readily be sympathetic to immigration by less privileged
and potentially more docile workers.
In fact all of the advanced industrial societies have found it neces-
sary to look for supplementary sources of labour, particularly to ll
vacancies in arduous, inconvenient, or dirty work. This is in part due
to the fact that employers consciously look for docile and cheap la-
bour, and that the most obvious place to look for this labour is in the
colonial world and in the more backward European countries. But
it may also be the case that rising standards among workers in the
theory of the Third
World revolution
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advanced countries simply make them unwilling to take on such jobs
at any price, and that any advanced economy would need immigrant
labour, at least until jobs of this kind could be eliminated by techno-
logical advances.
From the point of view of the immigrant worker, the ideal situ-
ation is one in which he gains entry to the closed relationship that
trade unions and Social Democratic parties have established. From
the point of view of the metropolitan worker, however, there is some
ambiguity: if the workers are admitted he would prefer them to be
inside his organizations rather than as unfair competitors outside;
conversely, even if the workers join unions there is a danger of over-
supply. Everywhere where workers face this competition, one might
expect racial grounds to be offered, among others, for exclusion but,
in the case of those countries with a direct experience of the colonial
situation of the kind we have been discussing, the attraction of racist
denitions may be overwhelming. Thus, although such a develop-
ment is not inevitable and can be prevented by democratic political
planning and by education, it must be expected that every advanced
capitalist country employing immigrant labour from formerly colo-
nial territories is likely to see the emergence of racist movements.
Even though there may be some passage of immigrant workers and
their children into full participation in working-class organizations,
it is likely that the obstacles to entry to such organizations, and to the
acquisition of trade union and welfare privileges, may well lead the
immigrants themselves to dene their conict with society in racial
terms. Naturally enough, too, some of them will see their struggle
as immigrant workers as part of the revolution of the Third World.
Political ideas of this kind are already widespread in the United
States and in Britain, and they represent for the immigrant worker
36

an historical equivalent to the ideas of Marxist and other forms of
socialism among workers in the metropolises of earlier periods.
In setting out these ideas I am of course going beyond the con-
cepts, theories, and areas of concern which Max Weber actually
had in his own work. But we are bound to do this in describing a
Weberian approach to problems of race and ethnic relations which
have become more acute since his day. What may certainly be said,
however, is this: Weber, like Marx, would not have ascribed racism,
and its practical correlate of racialism, to some simple factor of in-
compatibility of cultures or of natural antipathy to the unknown. Nor
would he have attributed them to some unexplained factor of psycho-
logical prejudice. He was fully aware and, as we have seen, actually
said that racial denitions of social groups were related to the pur-
suit of economic interest in closed social relations. Here again, there
racist movements
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john rex
is much in common between Marxian and Weberian approaches.
Where Weber differed from Marx was in his more detailed analy-
sis of the kinds of social structure, organization, and process which
were to be found in different historical periods. In his analysis of the
economic institutions of the ancient world especially, we see the way
in which he showed, in some detail, the kinds of capitalism which
might operate. It is the reproduction of such structures in European
empires of the last ve centuries which have been productive of the
specic kind of problems which we call race relations problems, and
it is in the systematic analysis of these structures that we will nd a
characteristically Weberian approach to the study of race relations.
Notes
1 Parsons, T. The social system, London, Tavistock, 1952, p. ix.
2 See e.g.: Levi-Strauss, C. The scope of anthropology. London, Jonathan Cape,
1967.
3 Myrdal, G. Value in social theory. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958.
Chapter VII.
4 See: Bendix, R. Max Weber: an intellectual portrait. London, Heinemann,
1962; Weber, M. Economy and society. Vol. I. New York, Bedminster Press,
1968 (Introduction by G. Roth); Gerth, H.; Mills, C.W. From Max Weber.
London, Oxford University Press, 1946. p. 363-95.
5 Weber, M. op. cit. p. 339-97.
6 Ibid. p. 375-86.
7 Ibid., p. 341-2.
8 See especially: Weber, M. The agrarian sociology of ancient civilizations.
London, New Left Book, 1976. p. 53-60.
9 Ibid., p. 49.
10 Ibid., p. 51.
11 Weber, M. Economy and society. op. cit. p. 164-5. See also: Weber, M. General
economic history. New York, Collier Books, Macmillan.
12 Weber, M. The agrarian sociology... op. cit. p. 319.
13 Ibid., p. 53.
14 Ibid., p. 54.
15 Weber, M. General economic history. op. cit.
16 A good introduction to this debate with a select bibliography is to be found
in: Foner, Laura; Genovese, E.D. Slavery in the New World. Englewood
Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1969.
17 Genovese, E.D. The world the slaveholders made. London, Allen Lane, 1969
(especially Chapters 1-2). Surprisingly Genovese sees Webers particular
contribution as lying in his study of ideological factors, ignoring the direct
contribution which he made to the analysis of the institution of plantation
slavery.
18 Fogel, R.W.; Engermann, S.L. Time on the Cross. Boston, Little, 1974. (2
vols.).
19 Pares, R. A West Indian fortune. London, Longmans, 1950.
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20 Tinker, H. A new system of slavery. London, Oxford University Press, 1974.
(Institute of Race Relations.)
21 Rex, J. The plural society: the South African case. Race (London), vol. XII,
no. 3, 1971, p. 401-13; Rex, J. The compound, the reserve and the location
the essential institutions of South African labour exploitation. South African
labour bulletin, vol. 1, no. 4, April 1971, p. 4-17; Van Onselen, C. Chibaro,
African mine labour in Rhodesia 1900-1913. London, Pluto Press, 1976.
22 Woddis, J. Africa the roots of revolt. London, Laurence & Wishart, 1960. p.
64.
23 Ibid., p. 143.
24 Boxer, C.R. Race relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire, 1415-1825. Oxford,
Clarendon Press, 1963.
25 Weber, M. Economy and society. Vol. 2, op. cit. p. 926-39.
26 Cox, O. Caste, class and race. New York, Monthly Review Press, 1959. p. 143-
52.
27 Smith, M.G. The plural society in the British West Indies. Berkeley, University
of California Press, 1965; Smith, M.G.; Kuper, L. Pluralism in Africa.
Berkeley, University of California Press, 1969 (Chapters 2, 4 and 5).
28 Van den Berghe, P. Race and racism: a comparative perspective. New York,
Wiley, 1967. p. 29 ff.
29 For a more extended discussion of these problems in the context of Latin
America and the Caribbean, see: Rex, J. New nations and ethnic minorities:
comparative and theoretical questions. To be published by Unesco in a sym-
posium on inter-ethnic relations in the Caribbean and Latin America, 1977;
Rex. J. Race relations in sociological theory. London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson,
1970.
30 Frank, A.G. The sociology of underdevelopment and the underdevelopment of
sociology. London, Pluto Press, 1971. See also: Oxaal, I.; Barnett, T.; Booth,
D. Beyond the sociology of development. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1975.
31 Wallerstein, I. The modern world system. New York, Academic Press, 1974.
32 Elkins, S. Slavery. New York, Grossap & Dunlop, 1959.
33 Fanon, F. The wretched of the earth. London, Penguin Books, 1965.
34 Debray, R. The revolution in the revolution. New York, Grove Press, 1967.
35 Segal, R. The race war. London, Jonathan Cape, 1966.
36 The situation of the American black is seen here as equivalent to that of a
colonial migrant.
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Contextualizing feminism:
gender, ethnic and class divisions

Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis
The rise of ethnic studies in Europe coincided with a particular interest in
exploring the interrelationship of race and class. This scholarship was pro-
foundly theoretical, albeit embedded in a wider political struggle for equality.
According to sociologists Floya Anthias and Nira Yuvall-Davis, the plight of
black women was largely ignored within the literature of womens and femi-
nist studies as well as the wider feminist movement. Black feminism, which
developed in response to this alleged ignorance, dened black women as
suffering from the triple oppression of race, gender and class. Anthias and
Yuval-Davis dismissed this attitude for both theoretical and political reasons.
They suggested that such features could not be enmeshed in each other.
Moreover, they felt that the position of black women could not be reduced
so simplistically in opposition to white women. In an inuential article pub-
lished by the journal Feminist Review in 1983, the authors set out to systemati-
cally address the issue of ethnic and gender divisions without reducing them
to some form of class division.
Introduction
Sisterhood is powerful. Sisterhood can also be misleading unless
contextualized. Black, minority and migrant women have been on
the whole invisible within the feminist movement in Britain and
within the literature on womens or feminist studies.
This paper attempts to explore the issue of the interrelationship
of ethnic and gender divisions.
1
Not only is such an attempt long
overdue theoretically but it also raises political issues which must be
central to feminist struggle.
Our analysis serves to problematize the notion of sisterhood and
the implicit feminist assumption that there exists a commonality of
interests and/or goals amongst all women. Rather we argue that ev-
Sisterhood
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floya anthias and nira yuval-davis
ery feminist struggle has a specic ethnic (as well as class) context.
Although the notion of the ethnic will be considered later in the
paper we note here that for us it primarily relates to the exclusionary/
inclusionary boundaries of collectivities formed round the notion of
a common origin.
2
The ethnic context of feminist struggles has
been systematically ignored (except in relation to various minorities,
especially black) and we suggest this has helped to perpetuate both
political and theoretical inadequacies within feminist and socialist
analyses.
The black feminist movement has grown partly as a response to
the invisibility of black women and to the racism of the white feminist
movement. Recently several books have appeared, mostly American
which discuss black women and feminism. Bell Hooks puts her case
against white feminism clearly when she states:
In much of the literature written by white women on the woman
question from the nineteenth century to the present day, authors
will refer to white men but use the word woman when they really
mean white woman. Concurrently, the term blacks is often made
synonymous with black men (1981: 140).
In addition she points out that there has been a constant comparison
of the plight of women and blacks working with these racist/sexist
assumptions and which has diverted attention from the specicity
of the oppression of black women. We share this critique of white
feminism which is found within the black feminist movement in
Britain also. However we want to broaden out the frame of reference
of the existing debate. Within black feminism the most dominant ap-
proach denes black women as suffering from the triple oppression
of race, gender and class. This approach is inadequate, however, both
theoretically and politically. Race, gender and class cannot be tagged
on to each other mechanically for, as concrete social relations, they
are enmeshed in each other and the particular intersections involved
produce specic effects. The need for the study of the intersection
of these divisions has been recognized recently by black feminists.
3

We also suggest, however, that the issue of the interrelationship
of the different social divisions cannot focus only on black versus
white womens position. This has the theoretical effect of singling
out racism as applicable only to black women and focusses then on
the colour rather than on the structural location of ethnic groups as
determinants of their social relations. In addition an exclusive focus
on racism fails to address the diversity of ethnic experiences which
derive from other factors like economic or political position. The no-
the black
feminist movement
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tion of black women as delineating the boundaries of the alternative
feminist movement to white feminism leaves non-British non-black
women (like us a Greek-Cypriot and an Israeli-Jew) unaccounted
for politically. Although we recognize the impetus behind the black
womens movement and the need for its autonomous organization,
black feminism can be too wide or too narrow a category for specic
feminist struggles. On the one hand, there are struggles which con-
cern all migrant women, like those against immigration laws, and on
the other hand there are struggles which might concern only Sikh
Indian women for instance.
For these reasons, our paper will use the notion of ethnic divi-
sions rather than the black/white division as a more comprehensive
conceptual category for struggling against racism. One of our tasks
will be to consider the links between the concepts of racism and eth-
nicity as well as attempting to relate ethnic divisions to those of gen-
der and class.
The marxist tradition of analysis which has informed much of
socialist-feminist analysis has been partly responsible for the invisi-
bility of ethnic divisions (as well as the feminist tradition itself which
assumes unitary and biological roots to women). Contemporary
marxist analysis has indeed recognized the importance of relating
ethnic to class divisions and gender to class divisions but there has
been little attempt to link ethnic and gender divisions to each other.
In addition Marxism has had difculty in analysing ethnic or gen-
der divisions without reducing them to some form of class division.
Because of the signicance of this tradition of analysis for us we shall
present a critique of Marxism as a necessary preliminary to develop-
ing our own position.
We shall then present an exploratory framework for analysing the
interrelationship of ethnic and gender divisions. We shall briey ex-
amine these divisions within two central areas of feminist analysis,
employment and reproduction. The paper will conclude by consider-
ing some of the implications of the analysis presented for the west-
ern/Third World feminist debate.
Ethnic and gender divisions and marxism
As already noted Marxism has particular difculties in analysing non-
class social divisions. The marxist concept of the mode of production
is based on an abstract model of relations that does not signal the
concrete groups of people within it. It does however establish a rm
grounding for class divisions in as much as the concept of class is
ethnic divisions
Marxism
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hierarchically incorporated within a systematic theory whose central
concept is that of mode of production. But ethnic divisions and gen-
der divisions cannot be situated within this theory for they are not es-
sential constituents of it the theoretical basis for them is missing.
4

The abstract level of analysis in Marxs Capital presents problems for
the analysis of concrete social relations including those of class. In
some versions of Marxism found in economistic approaches, classes
as concrete groups of people are reduced to the workings of the econ-
omy or the needs of capital. We do not accept the depiction of class
in concrete analysis as reducible to its own dynamics as found within
the sphere of the economy. Indeed much recent analysis has treated
classes as concrete historical groupings whose actual practices are
not reducible to mode of production effects. We would take issue
with a reductionist position that sees a necessary relationship be-
tween, for example, class determination and political/class position.
Particularly we reject this not only because of the usual reasons given
by Marxists, i.e. the separate effectivity of the ideological and political
realms, but also because we consider the intersection between class,
ethnic and gender divisions as important in the development of par-
ticular forms of political consciousness and action.
Unlike the analysis of class which nds a theoretical basis in
Marxism despite the difculties encountered in concrete analysis,
different problems are presented in the analysis of gender and eth-
nic divisions. When these categories are used by Marxists they often
involve very common-sense usages since Marxism has not system-
atically concerned itself with them as theoretical constructs. This
has led to very unclear and unspecic usages and shifts in meaning
from, for example, identifying gender with a biological constituent
and at other times seeing it as a social construct or race as histori-
cally produced and yet as basically organized around the ascriptive
characteristic of blackness.
Because of Marxisms failure to specically deal with gender and
ethnic divisions, marxist-feminists and marxist anti-racists have at-
tempted to ground them within economic relations, although marx-
ist-feminists particularly have sought to do so in a non-class reduc-
tionist way.
Ethnic and gender groups have been seen as structured by the
needs of capital for migrant labour or cheap labour. The reserve
army of labour debate is an example of this.
5
In addition there has
been a tendency to reduce these groups to fundamentally class group-
ings. For example we have seen attempts to theorize black people in
Britain as a class fraction, or an underclass and migrants in Europe
as a class stratum of the working class. This approach empirically
class
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fails to note the differentiation within the ethnic or migrant catego-
ry, both in terms of ethnicity and gender and in terms of economic,
political and ideological location. In addition this reduction to class
can only present gender and ethnic identities as some form of false-
consciousness as illusionary. For example some attempts to theo-
rize ethnicity have seen it as a form of incipient class consciousness
whose essential project develops into that of class.
6
(Interestingly
the notion of women as a class is mostly systematically presented by
Delphy (1977) from a radical-feminist position.)
The marxist theorization of the state, ranging from the classical
marxist tradition of Engels, Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg to more re-
cent developments (instrumental, coordinator functional and state
derivation approaches) presents a different problem for the analysis
of ethnic divisions.
7

Marxist theories of the state have tended to identify the boundar-
ies of the national collectivity with that of the relations of production.
This is found in Marxs own assumption concerning the overlapping
of the boundary between civil and political society. In Marxs words
In the state the whole civil society of an epoch is epitomized. For
Marxists, on the whole, the rise of the nation-state is actively bound-
ed by the relations of production and conditions of class conict. For
example the classical analysis of Engels of the emergence of the state
depicts it as a result of societys entanglement in insoluble class an-
tagonisms (Engels, 1972). Thus marxist analyses have been sensitive
to differential access to power of different classes but not to other
forms of differential access based on gender or ethnic, national or
racial divisions.
8
These assumptions are not seriously challenged by
the various recent marxist theorizations of the state.
Our view is that it is not sufcient to assert as Schermerhorn
(1970) does that each nation-state in the modern world contains sub-
sections or sub-systems. It is also the case that in almost all social
formations there are sections of the population that are to varying de-
grees excluded from political participation and representation. This
exclusion operates at least partially in a different manner from the
exclusion of classes of the dominant national or ethnic group. For
example, the new Nationality Bill in Britain presents exclusion not
on the basis of class (as does legislation concerning private property
for example) but on the basis of ethnicity and gender.
A further problem within some marxist literature is the sugges-
tion that internal ethnic divisions are ideological in the sense of false
or non-real. The attempt to theorize a distinction between historical
(i.e. real) and non-historical (i.e. non-real) nations assumed that if an
ethnic minority was able to obtain a separate and independent state,
exclusion
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then it was based on a real and historical origin and other minorities
were non-historical and only ideological.
9

All three divisions have an organizational, experiential and repre-
sentational form, are historically produced and therefore changeable,
are affected by and affect each other and the economic, political and
ideological relations in which they are inserted. Relations of power
are usually found within each division and thus often the existence of
dominant and subordinate partners. They are all therefore framed in
relation to each other within relations of domination. They may thus
involve political mobilization, exclusion from particular resources
and struggles over them, claims to political representation and the
formation of concrete interests and goals which may shift over time.
It is not a question therefore of one being more real than the others
or a question of which is the most important. However it is clear that
the three divisions prioritize different spheres of social relations and
will have different effects which it may be possible to specify in con-
crete analysis. However we suggest that each division exists within
the context of the others and that any concrete analysis has to take
this into account.
Firstly, we shall briey comment on these divisions, clarifying the
sense in which we use them and noting some of the main differences
amongst them. Secondly, we shall begin to situate them in relation
to each other in the spheres of employment and reproduction, two
central areas of feminist analyses. We shall particularly note the links
between gender and ethnic divisions since this has rarely been con-
sidered.
Class, gender and ethnic divisions
As socialists working within a broadly marxist-informed analysis we
see class divisions as grounded in the different relations of groups
to the means of production which provides what has been called a
groups class determination. However class mobilization cannot be
read from class determination for class goals are constructed through
a variety of different mechanisms with ideological practices having
a central role in this. Concrete class groupings may be composed
of both men and women, of black and white and different cultures
and ethnic identities. These concrete groupings are constructed his-
torically. At times there may be a coincidence of class and gender
or ethnic position (and at other times there maybe cross cuttings).
For example, some fractions of the working class may be primarily
composed of women or black people. This may reect economic, po-
three divisions
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litical and ideological processes but may also be structured through
struggle and negotiation between the groups themselves and in rela-
tion to the state. Classes are not homogeneous ethnically, culturally
or in terms of gender in most cases but class fractions may constitute
some kind of homogeneity.
Gender divisions relate to the organization of sexual difference
and biological reproduction and establish forms of representation
around these, although their concrete contents will include notions of
the appropriateness of wage-labour, education and so on to men and
to women. Usually sexual difference and biological reproduction (the
ontological basis of gender) are represented as having necessary so-
cial effects (from say sexual intercourse to class position). Gender
divisions thus usually work with a notion of a natural relationship
between social effects and sexual differences/biological reproduc-
tion. We do not accept such a depiction nor that biological reproduc-
tion is an equivalent material basis for gender to that of production for
class. Indeed the attempt to discover a feminist materialism in the
social relations of reproduction fails precisely in the attempt to super-
impose a materialist project onto a different object and reproduce its
terms of reference.
10
Finally the end result is indeed to reduce these
social relations to their material base (biology) just as within marxist
materialism the reduction is to mode of production.
Rather we reject both biological reductionism and class reduction-
ism. We are suggesting that there is an object of discursive reference
in the sphere of gender divisions which relates to groups of subjects
dened by their sexual/biological difference as opposed to groups of
subjects dened by their economic production difference as in class.
Gender divisions are ideological to the extent that they do not have a
basis in reproduction, but reproduction is represented as their basis.
However, the ideological nature of gender divisions does not mean
they do not exist nor that they do not have social origins and social
effects or involve material practices.
Unlike class and gender divisions, ethnic divisions are difcult to
ground in some separate sphere of relations. This makes the various
marxist and sociological attempts to try to nd systematic concep-
tual differences between national/ethnic and racial groupings even
more problematic. This attempt is never successful because it is im-
possible to systematically ascribe particular and different realms to
them. Migration, conquest and colonization have developed a vast
heterogeneous body of historical cases.
The only general basis on which we can theorize what can broadly
be conceived as ethnic phenomena in all their diversity are as vari-
ous forms of ideological construct which divide people into different
gender divisions
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collectivities or communities. This will involve exclusionary/inclu-
sionary boundaries which form the collectivity. In other words al-
though the constructs are ideological, they involve real material prac-
tices and therefore origins and effects. Whether the boundaries are
those of a tribe, a nation or a linguistic or cultural minority, they will
tend to focus themselves around the myth of common origin (wheth-
er biological, cultural or historical). Although sometimes there will
be other means of joining the collectivity than being born into it (like
religious conversion or naturalization), group membership is con-
sidered as the natural right of being born into it. The salience of the
collectivity and the social relations involved can vary greatly.
Ethnicity is not only a question of ethnic identity. This latter does
not exhaust the category of the ethnic nor does it necessarily oc-
cur. Ethnicity may be constructed outside the group by the material
conditions of the group and its social representation by other groups.
However in practice ethnic identity and often solidarity may occur
either as a pre-requisite for the group or as an effect of its mate-
rial, political or ideological placement. In addition ethnicity involves
struggle, negotiation and the use of ethnic resources for the counter-
ing of disadvantages or perpetuation of advantages. Conditions of
reproduction of the ethnic group as well as its transformation are
related to the divisions of gender and class. For example, class homo-
geneity within the ethnic group will produce a greater cohesion of
interests and goals.
The concept of ethnicity has too often been identied in Britain
with the Ethnic School tradition which tends to concentrate on issues
of culture or identity and has come under a great deal of justied at-
tack for ignoring racism and the structural disadvantages of minority
ethnic groups.
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However our use of the term ethnicity has as a central
element exclusion/inclusion practices and the relations of power of
dominance/subordination that are aspects of these. Majority groups
possess an ethnicity as well as minority groups. Ethnicity and racism
share both the categories of exclusion and power but racism is a spe-
cic form of exclusion. Racist discourse posits an essential biologi-
cal determination to culture but its referent may be any group that
has been socially constructed as having a different origin, whether
cultural, biological or historical. It can be Jewish, black, foreign,
migrant, minority. In other words any group that has been located
in ethnic terms can be subjected to racism as a form of exclusion.
The Racist category is more deterministic than the mere ethnic
category.
Concerning the difference between ethnic and national groups, it
is often a question of the different goals and achievements of the col-
ethnicity
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lectivity. The nationalist project is more strictly political for its claims
will necessarily include rights to separate political representation
or to territory (as in the case of Palestinians and Jews in Israel and
Turkish-Cypriots and Greek-Cypriots in Cyprus).
We consider that gender and ethnic divisions particularly are un-
derpinned by a notion of a natural relation. In gender divisions it is
found in the positing of necessary social effects to sexual difference
and biological reproduction and in ethnic divisions by assumptions
concerning the natural boundaries of collectivities or the natural-
ness of culture. In capitalist societies like Britain very often the nat-
ural ideological elements of gender and ethnic divisions are used to
naturalize unequal class divisions. Gender and ethnic divisions are
used as legitimizors in two major ways.
In patriarchal white societies it is perceived as natural that men
will occupy a higher economic position in the labour market than
women and white people than black people. For example notions
of womens sexual difference (more submissive, feminine, intui-
tive, expressive, dextrous) and their essential mothering role are
used and are often manipulated for economically justifying (explain-
ing) womens position (at times by women themselves). Racism and
ethnicity also have a role in justifying the economic/class subordi-
nation of black people. For example arguments about the cultural
choices of ethnic groups and racial stereotypes about Asian men
(money-seeking) and Afro-Caribbean men (work idle) are used to
account for their economic position. The second way in which the
natural elements of gender and ethnic divisions are used is as ral-
lying points for political struggle against class inequality as well as
gender and ethnic inequalities. This is the case in most anti-imperi-
alist struggles where notions of national identity are used. The black
power movement has often used racial/ethnic identication partly
as a counter to existing racial stereotypes and oppressions (for ex-
ample in black nationalism the identication with Africa and in black
power the black is beautiful rhetoric and more recently, culturalist
and religious revivals such as Rastafarianism). As regards gender,
feminists have used womens nature as a rallying point, particularly
with reference to the positive values of womens culture and nature.
However, using ethnic and gender categories in this way as rallying
points for political mobilization in class-related struggles can present
a problem for class unity.
As well as ethnic and gender divisions being used for class goals,
class divisions can provide the material conditions for ethnic and
gender groups, for these will give unequal access to economic re-
sources. State practices may exclude class, ethnic and gender group-
a natural relation
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ings in different ways, structure their relationship to each other and
give differential political power to different groups. Therefore when
we analyse specic historical cases these divisions often cannot be
separated.
We have suggested that the natural ideological aspects of ethnic
and gender groupings inform class relations. In addition we would
suggest that ethnic and gender divisions are more socially immu-
table. Whereas it is possible theoretically for subjects to change class
position (although empirically it may be difcult), it is not so for gen-
der or ethnic position (especially for the racial category). Gender
position is xed (apart from transexuals) and generally one is born
into ones ethnic position. In particular cases, women can become
honorary men (when men are not available for example to do male
work as in war) or religious conversion can occur. But the major
mechanism is ascriptive for both ethnic and gender divisions.
The relations between gender and ethnic divisions
We suggested above all that three divisions are intermeshed in such
a way that we cannot see them as additive or prioritize abstractly any-
one of them. Each division presents ideological and organizational
principles within which the others operate, although in different his-
torical contexts and different social arenas their role will differ. The
fusion of gender and class and ethnicity and class will also operate in
the relationship between gender and ethnic divisions.
For example if we consider the household we will nd gender
divisions will differ according to ethnicity. Ethnically specic de-
nitions of womens and mens roles underlie the sexual division of
labour in the family. Such aspects as mothering, housework, sexual
obligations, obedience and submissiveness to male commands (and
indeed to other members of the family) will differ according to eth-
nicity (as well as class of course). We would suggest that ethnic di-
visions are particularly important in the internal gender divisions
within the household and family therefore, although state practices
will affect them.
If we consider the sphere of employment the more public or
external sexual division of labour this will be affected particularly
by the gender divisions of the majority ethnic group. Values and in-
stitutionalized practices about womens nature and role present
constraints to men and women from minority/subordinate ethnic
groups despite their own gender ideologies.
Another link between ethnic and gender divisions is found in the
intermeshed
divisions
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way in which the boundary of ethnicity depends on gender. The de-
nition of membership within the ethnic group often depends on per-
forming gender attributes correctly. Both identity and institutional
arrangements of ethnic groups incorporate gender roles and specify
appropriate relations between sexes such as, for example, who can
marry them. A Greek-Cypriot girl of the second generation is re-
garded as Kypraia usually when she conforms to rules about sexu-
ally appropriate behaviour otherwise she becomes excluded. The
denition of boundaries is far from being an internal practice alone.
If we consider racial stereotypes we can see the centrality of gender
roles; for example stereotypes about the dominant Asian father and
the dominant black mother, or stereotypes about black men and
women as sexual studs. These all indicate the reliance on gender
attributes for specifying ethnic difference. We want to briey suggest
some more specic links between ethnic and gender divisions in em-
ployment and reproduction.
Employment
The internal gender divisions of an ethnic group will also affect the
participation of men and women of the group in the labour mar-
ket. Men and women of a specic ethnic group will tend to hold
particular but different positions in the labour market; for example
Afro-Caribbean men in the construction industry and on the buses,
Afro-Caribbean women as service workers in manufacturing and as
nurses, Asian men in textile rms and Asian women as outwork-
ers in small-scale dress-making factories. A sexually differentiated
labour market will structure the placement of subjects according to
sex but ethnic divisions will determine their subordination within
them so, for example, black and white women may both be subordi-
nate within a sexually differentiated labour market but black women
will be subordinated to white women within this.
We would suggest that within western societies, gender divisions
are more important for women than ethnic divisions in terms of la-
bour market subordination. In employment terms, migrant or ethnic
women are usually closer to the female population as a whole than to
ethnic men in the type of wage-labour performed. Black and migrant
women are already so disadvantaged by their gender in employment
that it is difcult to show the effects of ethnic discrimination for
them. When examining the position of ethnic minority men in the
labour market, the effect of their ethnic position is much more vis-
ible. This may lead to a situation where for example Afro-Caribbean
a sexually and
ethnically
differentiated
labour market
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or Asian women have at times had greater ease in nding employ-
ment as cheap labour in womens work, whether it be nursing,
assembly-line or clerical work than the men.
But the interrelationship between ethnic and gender divisions in
employment goes beyond the mere differentiation in employment
of ethnic subjects according to their gender. This additional dimen-
sion however is even less stressed in the literature on ethnic and
race relations. The economic and social advancement of a migrant
group may depend partly on the possibility of using the household
and in particular the women within it as a labour resource. The ex-
tent to which migrant ethnic men have become incorporated into
wider social production and the form this takes may also depend on
the use of migrant womens labour overall. Men from different mi-
grant/ethnic groups have been incorporated differently economical-
ly. Afro-Caribbean men for example are in the vanguard of British
industry in large-scale production (Hall et al, 1978:349). Asian and
Cypriot men on the other hand have had a greater tendency to go
into small-scale entrepreneurial concerns and into the service sector
of the economy. In particular, entrepreneurial concerns both within
the formal and hidden economy depend on the exploitation of female
wage-labour and in particular on kinship and migrant labour. Ethnic
and familial bonds serve to allow the even greater exploitation of fe-
male labour (Anthias, 1983). The different form of the family and
gender ideologies may partly explain the differences between Afro-
Caribbean employment patterns and those of Asians and Cypriots.
Reproduction
We want now to turn to the area of reproduction and briey consider
it as a focus for the interrelation of gender, ethnic and class divisions.
The concept of reproduction itself is a problematic one. This part-
ly derives from the inconsistent and heterogeneous treatment it has
received in the literature.
12
Edholm et al (1977:103) suggest that the
notion of reproduction might be read as assuming that social sys-
tems exist to maintain themselves through time (to reproduce them-
selves) and secondly, that all levels of the system must be maintained
through time in the same way. This assumption indeed, would have
all the pitfalls of the functionalist approach to social analysis. The
reproduction of people and collectivities is directly shaped by the his-
torical and social context in which it takes place. Nor is it an homoge-
neous process, and contradictions and conicts are found not only in
the reproduction of various entities that partially overlap each other
but also in the form of the reproduction process itself.
gender, ethnic and
class divisions
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Women not only reproduce the future human and labour power
and the future citizens of the state but also ethnic and national col-
lectivities. As in other aspects of the gender division of labour, the
ethnic and class position of women will affect their role in the repro-
duction process. Questions concerning who can actually reproduce
the collectivity and under what conditions are often important here.
Such things as the legitimacy of marriage, the appropriate religious
conviction and so on are often preconditions for the legitimate repro-
duction of the nation or collectivity. The actual degree and form of
control exercised by men of ethnic collectivities over their women can
vary. In the Muslim world for example and in Britain under the old
nationality law, the ethnic, religious or national position of women
was immaterial. In other cases, like in the Jewish case, the mothers
origin is the most important one in delineating the boundaries of the
collectivity, and this determined the reproduction of the Jewish na-
tion (Yuval-Davis, 1980). This clearly does not mean such women
have greater freedom but only that they are subject to a different set
of controls.
As in other areas, the links between gender divisions and ethnic
divisions can be and often are subject to the intervention of the state.
For example, in Israel even secular people have to marry with a reli-
gious ceremony and according to traditional religious rules, in order
for their marriage to be recognized by law. In the most extreme cas-
es, the way the collectivity is constituted by state legislation virtually
prevents inter-marriage between collectivities. In Egypt, for instance,
while a Christian man can convert to Islam, Muslim women are pre-
vent from marrying Christian Copts if they do, they are no longer
part of the Muslim community nor are they recognized as part of the
Christian community and they virtually lose their legal status. The
state may treat women from dominant and subordinate ethnic col-
lectivities differently. For example, the new nationality law in Britain
has given autonomous national reproduction rights to white British
women, while totally witholding them from many others, mostly
black women.
This differential treatment does not relate only to ideological or
legal control of reproduction. The infamous contraceptive injection
Depo-Provera has been given in Britain and elsewhere virtually exclu-
sively to black and very poor women, and a study found more birth
control leaets in family planning clinics in Asian languages than
in English (see Brent Community Council, 1981). In Israel, Jewish
families (under the label of being relatives of Israeli soldiers) re-
ceive higher child allowances than Arab ones, as part of an elaborate
policy of encouraging Jewish population growth and discouraging
control
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that of Arabs. Indeed the Beveridge Report in Britain justied the
establishment of child allowances in order to combat the danger of
the disappearance of the British race (1942: 154).
On the other hand, reproduction can become a political tool at
the hand of oppressed ethnic minorities. A common Palestinian say-
ing is that The Israelis beat us at the borders and we beat them at
the bedrooms Palestinian women, like Jewish ones (and with a
higher rate of success due to various material and ideological factors)
are under pressure by their collectivity, although not by the state, to
reproduce and enlarge it. It is a fact, for example, that no Palestinian
children in Lebanon were allowed (unlike Vietnamese children un-
der similar circumstances) to be adopted by non-Palestinians all
the children are looked on as future Palestinian liberation ghters. In
other words, the control of reproduction can be used both as a subor-
dinating strategy by dominant groups against minority groups as
well as a management strategy by ethnic collectivities themselves.
We started the section by pointing out that the process of repro-
duction of human subjects, as well as of collectivities is never uni-
tary. We want to emphasize that this is the case also concerning the
participation of women themselves in the control of reproduction.
We can point out that virtually everywhere, the interests of the na-
tion or the ethnic group are seen as those of its male subjects, and
the interests of the state are endowed with those of a male ethnic
class and not just a class which is neutral in terms of ethnicity and
gender. However, very often women participate directly in the power
struggle between their ethnic collectivity and other collectivities and
the state, including by voluntarily engaging in an intensive repro-
ductive demographic race. At the same time women of dominant
ethnic groups are often in a position to control the reproductive role
of women of other ethnic groups by state welfare and legal policies,
as well as to use them as servants and child minders in order to ease
part of their own reproductive burden.
This last point leads us to consider the political implications of
the above discussion concerning feminist politics and the common-
ality of feminist goals.
Political Implications
As mentioned in the introduction to this paper, our interest in the
subject is far from being merely academic. It originates from our
own frustration in trying to nd a political milieu in which ethnic
divisions will be seen as an essential consideration, rather than as
political tool
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non-existent or as an immovable bloc to feminist politics.
The theoretical part of this paper pointed out how misleading it
is to consider gender relations without contextualizing them within
ethnic and class divisions. Once we take the full implications of this
into account, the mystication of the popular notion of sisterhood
becomes apparent. As we pointed out there can be no unitary cat-
egory of women. The subordination of women to men, collectivities
and the state operates in many different ways in different historical
contexts. Moreover, very often women themselves participate in the
process of subordinating and exploiting other women.
One major form of womens oppression in history has been
their invisibility, their being hidden from history. The invisibility
of women other than those who belong to the dominant ethnic col-
lectivity in Britain within feminist analysis has been as oppressive.
Except for black feminists who fought their own case in isolation,
minority women have been virtually absent in all feminist analysis.
Anthropological and historical differences in the situation of women
have been explored, but only in order to highlight the social basis of
gender relations in contemporary Britain. The heterogeneous ethnic
character of the latter has never been fully considered.
Recently there have been some signs of a developing awareness
of the need to take into account ethnic diversity. Earlier writing by
socialist-feminists like Michle Barrett (1980) and Elizabeth Wilson
(1977) on women in Britain had completely ignored minority, mi-
grant, ethnic or black women. In the introduction to their latest
books however (Barrett and McIntosh, 1982; Wilson, 1983) they ac-
knowledge that they do not deal with ethnic women or families.
This recognition is clearly no substitute for an attempt to situate eth-
nic divisions when analysing the family in Britain.
On the political level some concessions have been made within
the last few months to the black feminist movement. For example,
the inclusion of black women in the Spare Rib Collective and on the
Womens Committee of the Greater London Council are unprece-
dented and very important political achievements. However, these
concessions to black feminists are not a substitute for a coherent
self-critique and analysis of the white feminist movement in contex-
tualizing its own ethnic interests.
When we talk about the need of white feminists in Britain to rec-
ognize their own ethnicity, we are relating to questions as basic as
what we actually mean when we talk about feminist issues. Can we
automatically assume, as has been done by western feminist move-
ments, that issues like abortion, the depiction of the family as the
site of female oppression, the ght for legal equality with men and
black feminism
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against sex discrimination and so on are the feminist issues? Maxine
Molyneux (1983) has recently argued that what separates Third World
and western women is not so much the specic cultural or historical
contexts in which they are engaged but differences of a theoretical
and political nature.
Different theoretical and political positions exist, of course, as
Maxine claims, both in the West and in the Third World. But femi-
nist goals cannot be the same in different historical contexts. For
instance, the family may not be the major site for womens oppres-
sion when families are kept apart by occupying or colonizing forces
(as in Lebanon or South Africa), abortion may not be the major is-
sue when forced sterilizations are carried out, nor is legal equality
for women the rst priority in polygamic societies where there is
no independent autonomous mode of existence open to women
whose husbands marry other younger and more fertile women. In
their paper on the South African womens movement, Judy Kimble
and Elaine Unterhalter (1982) suggest that the analysis and objec-
tive of western feminism cannot be applied abstractly and univer-
sally. Western feminist struggles cannot be seen as dealing with the
feminist issues but with culturally and historically specic issues
relevant mainly to middle class white women who have their own (in-
visible to them?) ethnicity. Judy and Elaine stress an essential point.
However, it seems that in their search for an alternative perspective,
they go to the other extreme and end up in fact with a circular argu-
ment that feminist struggles in the context of national liberation
movements are to be found in what the women in these movements
do. In other words, once we stop perceiving western white feminism
as providing the ultimate criteria for dening the contents of femi-
nism, we are faced with the problem of how to politically evaluate
various womens struggles.
The beginning of a possible approach might be found in an article
by Gail Omvedt (1978) in which she suggests that there is a differ-
entiation between women struggles and feminist struggles, in as
much as the latter are those that challenge rather than use traditional
gender divisions within the context of national or ethnic struggles.
We would add, however, that the challenge has to be, in our opin-
ion, directed to both womens and mens work. All too often, in na-
tional liberation struggles, as in other periods of social crisis, women
are called upon to fulll mens jobs, as men are otherwise engaged
at the front (as in war). This expansion in womens roles is seen too
often as an act of womens liberation rather than as another facet of
womens work. When the crisis is over, women are often assigned
again to the more exclusively feminine spheres of women, to the
feminist struggles
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surprise, as well as disappointment, of all those who have seen in
the mere participation of women in the struggle (whether in the
Israeli Kibbutz, Algiers or Vietnam), a feminist achievement. We
claim therefore that the challenge has to be to the actual notion of the
sexual division of labour rather than only to its specic boundaries.
This is far from being simple, because so many, if not all ethnic
cultures, as we have noted before, have as central the construction of
a specic form of gender division. It is too easy to pose the question,
as many anti-imperialist and anti-racist feminists do, as if the origin
and site of their oppression is only constructed from above, by white
male sexism.
Ethnic and gender liberation struggles and solidarities can cut
across each other and be divisive. We do not believe that there is one
right line to be taken in all circumstances. The focus or project of
each struggle ought to decide which of the divisions we prioritize and
the extent to which separate, as opposed to unied, struggle is neces-
sary. Political struggles, however, which are formulated on an ethnic
or sexual essence, we see as reactionary. Nor do we see it as a viable
political option for women of subordinate collectivities to focus all
their struggle against the sexism of dominant majority men.
The direct conclusion from our analysis in this paper is that any
political struggle in relation to any of the divisions considered in this
paper, i.e. class, ethnic and gender, has to be waged in the context
of the others. Feminist struggle in Britain today cannot be perceived
as an homogeneous struggle, for the participation and oppression
of women, both in the family and at the work site, are not homoge-
neous. White middle class feminists have to recognize the particular-
ity of their own experiences, not only in relation to the Third World
but also in relation to different ethnic and class grouping in Britain
and integrate this recognition into their daily politics and struggles.
Only on this basis can a valid sisterhood be constructed among wom-
en in Britain.
Notes
Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis lecture in Sociology at Thames
Polytechnic, London. They are currently engaged on a research proj-
ect on ethnic and gender divisions in Greenwich and Woolwich,
Southeast London.

context
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1 Our analysis in this paper has benetted much from discussions with
and feedback from our colleagues in the Sociology Division at Thames
Polytechnic who are working with us on the Ethnic and Gender Division
Project and we would like to thank them all. We should also like to thank
all those who participated in the Gender and Ethnic Divisions seminars ar-
ranged by the Sociology Division. Additionally we would like to thank the Sex
and Class Group of the CSE, and the Feminist Review Collective, especially
Annie Whitehead and Lesley Caldwell, for their insightful comments after
reading the rst draft of our paper.
2 The term ethnic and ethnicity have come under a great deal of attack re-
cently for mystifying racist social relations. However, as we argue later, we
do not use these concepts within a mainstream sociological tradition. For a
critique of these terms see for example E. Lawrence (1982).
3 In a series of seminars organized by the Thames Polytechnic Sociology
Division on Gender and Ethnic Divisions, Valerie Amos, Pratibha Parmar
and Amina Mama all presented analyses that stressed the importance of
studying the way in which the fusion of ethnic, gender and class divisions
for black women gave a specicity to their oppression.
4 For the problems of theorizing gender divisions using a marxist framework
see H. Hartmann (1979). For problems of theorizing race in Marxism see
particularly J. Gabriel and G. Ben-Tovim (1978).
5 See V. Beechey (1977) for an attempt to apply the concept to women. See S.
Castles and G. Kosack (1972) for an analysis of migrants as a reserve army.
For a critique of such attempts see F. Anthias (1980).
6 For critical reviews of this position see J. Kahn (1981) and J.S. Saul (1979).
7 For a review of marxist theories of the State see Bob Jessop (1982).
8 Socialist-feminist analysis of course is an exception to this. For example see
the work of E. Wilson (1977).
9 For example H.B. Davis (1973:31) states Engels was using the theory of his-
toryless peoples according to which peoples that have never formed a state
in the past cannot be expected to form a viable state in the future.
10 This approach is found for example in Z. Eisenstein (1979).
11 For a critique see J. Bourne and A. Sivanandan (1980).
12 See M. Mackintosh (1981), F. Edholm et al. (1977) and N. Yuval-Davis (1982).
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Varieties of Marxist conceptions of race, class
and the state: a critical analysis
John Solomos
For a number of years, Marxist analysis of international migration and the
interrelationship of race, class and the state were commonplace. Many clas-
sic analyses, however, were dogged by economic determinism and theoreti-
cal abstraction. They failed to appreciate such complex non-class forms of
division and oppression, including ethnic and religious loyalty, gender, rac-
ism and sexism. But Marxism was not composed of a unied set of dogmas.
A growing number of authors responded to the theoretical imperfections by
exploring these phenomena from a more critical position. Sociologist John
Solomos article is a concise overview of the state of the art in the British
neo-Marxist debate. All neo-Marxist theoretical approaches agree that there
is no race relations problem as such or, at least, that there is no problem
of racism that can be thought of as separate from the structural features of
capitalist society. The approaches differ with regard to the role of the state.
This article also questions to what extent racial and ethnic categorisations
are autonomous from economic and class determinations.
1. Introduction
It is a commonplace that the reliance of Marxist theory on the pivotal
concepts of mode of production and class, along with the preoccupa-
tion with general models of historical development, has precluded
Marxists from making a signicant contribution to the study of racial
and ethnic divisions within capitalist society.
1
The relative absence of
a substantive discussion of these questions within the texts of clas-
sical Marxism seems to add weight to the assertion made by Frank
Parkin that, as a form of social analysis, Marxism is incapable of deal-
ing with such divisions short of subsuming them under more gen-
eral social relations (production- or class-based) or treating them as a
kind of superstructural phenomenon (Parkin 1979a and b).
Parkin
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john solomos
This commonplace assertion seems to be contradicted, however,
by the increased interest among a number of Marxist theorists in clar-
ifying the complex forms of non-class (even if class-related) forms of
division and oppression that are characteristic of late capitalist societ-
ies, including racial and ethnic divisions, but also gender, national,
regional, religious and locality-based divisions.
2
Indeed, over the last
decade in particular, a wide variety of Marxist conceptualisations of
race, class and the state have emerged, including a substantial body
of theoretical studies which attempt to develop a more precise and
systematic understanding of racism in capitalist society as rooted in
the dominant social relations and power structures (Genovese 1971,
Nikolinakos 1973, Hall 1977, 1980b, Gabriel and Ben-Tovim 1978,
Sivanandan 1982, Miles 1982, Centre for Contemporary Cultural
Studies 1982, Brittan and Maynard 1984). In addition a number of
Marxist-inspired historical and empirical studies of specic forms of
racist structures in different societies have been published over the
years, including the USA (Reich 1981, Fox-Genovese and Genovese
1983, Marable 1984) and South Africa (Wolpe 1980, Burawoy 1981).
The existence of these theoretical and empirical studies does not,
of course, mean that the criticisms of writers such as Frank Parkin
can be dismissed. Many of the problems which they highlight within
Marxist discourse, especially economic determinism and theoreti-
cal abstraction, are still to be found in much of the mainstream of
Marxism, which continues to treat racism as little more than an ir-
ritant to the smoother structures of historical materialism (see Ben-
Tovim et al. in this volume for more discussion of this point). Racism
remains an inadequately theorised concept within the terms of both
sociological and Marxist theory. The remainder of this paper will,
rst, discuss some of the most important attempts to develop a criti-
cal understanding of the interrelationship between race, class and
the state in contemporary capitalism. Second, I shall attempt to de-
velop an alternative framework for analysing racism which builds
upon the strengths of recent contributions, particularly in relation to
the need to ground a theory of racism in the broader framework of
political economy. The paper concludes with a few remarks about the
implications of Marxist analyses of racism and the state for political
practice, particularly in relation to anti-racist struggles.

2. Origins and foundations
It will be helpful to clear away some preliminary points before pro-
ceeding. Although this paper addresses the question of a Marxist
an inadequately
theorised concept
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analysis of race and racism in capitalist society, it would be quite
mistaken to think of contemporary Marxism either as unied or as
composed of a unied set of dogmas. This is an assumption that is
too often made in the race relations literature, on the grounds that
the substantial difference between a Marxist approach to race and
other approaches lies in the reliance by Marxists on an economic
determinist explanation for the emergence and reproduction of rac-
ism. Consider the following remarks from Frank Parkins critique of
Marxism and its analysis of class:
On current evidence one could be forgiven for concluding that the
preferred Marxist response to the fact of racial or communal strife
is to ignore it. Not one of the various reformulations of class the-
ory... makes any serious attempt to consider how the division be-
tween blacks and whites, Catholics and Protestants, Flemings and
Walloons, Francophones and Anglophones, or between indigenous
and immigrant workers affects their general analysis. It is especially
difcult to see what kind of explanation could in any case be expect-
ed from those formulations which draw heavily upon the concep-
tual storehouse of political economy. Notions such as the mode of
production make their claims to explanatory power precisely on the
grounds of their indifference to the nature of the human material
whose activities they determine. To introduce questions such as the
ethnic composition of the workplace is to clutter up the analysis by
laying stress upon the quality of social actors, a conception diametri-
cally opposed to the notion of human agents as trger or embodi-
ments of systemic forces. (Parkin 1979b, p. XXX)
As a statement in support of the thesis that it is impossible to com-
bine a Marxist analytic framework with a serious analysis of racial
and/or ethnic divisions this passage suffers from several problems.
First, it takes only a limited degree of knowledge about recent Marxist
debates to see that Parkins main assertion, that the explanatory pow-
er of the concept of mode of production depends on an indifference
to the role of social actors, is contradicted by the vast body of litera-
ture (on class, the state, the labour process and political economy)
which has attempted to argue the centrality of human agency to any
rounded Marxist explanatory model.
3
More than this, the thrust of re-
cent Marxist writings on class and the state has been informed by the
need to take on board the insights derived from feminism, and this
has further broadened the parameters of what Parkin calls the con-
ceptual storehouse of political economy (Sargent 1981, Gilroy 1982).
More fundamentally, perhaps, there is little to support Parkins
unied set of
dogmas
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john solomos
assertion that the preferred Marxist response to the fact of racial or
communal strife is to ignore it. On the contrary, a sizeable and grow-
ing body of theory and research in the area of race and ethnic rela-
tions is based on or draws some inspiration from Marxism. While it
may be true that much of the recent debate about class and the state
does not say much that is of direct relevance to the question of race,
it is strictly speaking not the case that recent Marxist writings ignore
divisions within classes or the role of non-class political organisa-
tion. The substance of the work of authors such as Nicos Poulantzas,
Manuel Castells, Guglielmo Carchedi and Erik Olin Wright recognis-
es the reality of such divisions and the role that they play in processes
of class formation and in political struggles.
4
What is even more clear
from these debates is that it is quite mistaken to see Marxism as a
monolithic set of assertions or to assimilate it wholesale into some
notion of economic determinism or class reductionism. Rather, it is
best viewed today as consisting of a spectrum of competing schools
of thought ranging from economic determinism to more sophisticat-
ed explanatory models which fully recognise the centrality of human
agency and collective action (Wright 1980).
This view of Marxism as heterogeneous contradicts the oft-stated
assertion (which Parkin repeats) that the Marxist approach to racial
and ethnic divisions can be identied according to the basic prin-
ciples of reducing race to class, and the explanation of the origins of
racism as co-terminous with the rise of capitalism. Such a view of the
Marxist contribution to the study of racism is seemingly supported
by the close association between the class/race model developed by
Oliver C. Cox in his study of Caste, Class and Race (rst published in
1948) and some more contemporary contributions to the analysis of
racism (Sivanandan 1982). Although this is not the place to develop
a critical discussion of Coxs analysis of class and race, it is impor-
tant to point out that his work is by no means seen by contemporary
Marxists as an adequate analysis of the complex historical determi-
nants of racism or of the relationship between racism and capitalist
social relations (see e.g. Gabriel and Ben-Tovim 1978, Miles 1980).
Moreover, as Eugene Genovese (1971) has pointed out, Coxs work
was very much the product of his time, in that he was familiar with
a Marxism that had not yet been inuenced by the work of Gramsci
and other Western Marxists or by the experience of racial conict
that took place during the 1960s.
If Parkins dismissive attitude towards Marxism does not hold on
the grounds which he suggests, this is not to say that a coherent and
fully edged analysis of racism has been produced from a Marxist
perspective. Far from it. Coxs study, though not self-consciously
the class/race model
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written as a Marxist analysis, is still widely considered as the Marxist
analysis of this question (see Banton, this volume), largely because
it is the most substantive study which attempts to utilise concepts
such as class and exploitation in order to explain the role of race and
racism in capitalist societies. Other studies written from a Marxist
perspective have tended to limit their analysis to abstract theoretical
exegesis, or to analyse the experience of one particular society in iso-
lation. Coxs attempt to combine theory with a comparative analysis
of racism thus stands out as a unique contribution, whose status as a
classic sociological analysis is acknowledged by even his most severe
critics.
There can be no question here of attempting critically to analyse
the contribution of Cox to a Marxist analysis of racial and ethnic divi-
sions, which is a theme in any case of other papers in this volume
and of a growing debate within Marxist circles (Gabriel and Ben-
Tovim 1978, Miles 1980, 1982). It needs to be pointed out, however,
that the model of Marxism with which Cox was familiar was based
on the conceptual baggage of base and superstructure and an in-
strumental view of the state as the agent of the capitalist class (Cox
1948, p. 321). This adherence to such views runs counter to the main
tendency of contemporary Marxist analysis, which in fact has evolved
a number of competing schools of thought, and whose central con-
cern is to question the tenability of the classical base-superstructure
model as a conceptual framework (P. Anderson 1983). In relation to
the question of class, for example, Adam Przeworski has pointed out
that the traditional separation between the economic denition of
classes and the political and ideological determinants of class-forma-
tion is in fact quite misleading when it comes to the concrete analy-
sis of the contradictions that arise either within or between social
classes. Przeworski argues, and here he expresses a view shared by
most neo-Marxist writers, that it is not possible to separate the objec-
tive analysis of class from the totality of economic, ideological and
political relations which organise, disorganise and reorganise social
classes as a result of class struggles and historical transformations
(Przeworski 1977; but see also Wright 1980).
It would be quite mistaken, therefore, to see recent Marxist writ-
ings on the question of race and class as deriving from Cox as such.
In some cases Coxs work does form one starting point, but only one
among many. It can be argued that equally important inuences on
recent Marxist writings on race are the works of neo-Marxist writ-
ers such as Louis Althusser and Nicos Poulantzas, the criticisms lev-
elled at economistic Marxism by such writers as John Rex and Edna
Bonacich, and the works of feminist writers. All of these inuences
Cox
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are evident in the approaches discussed below, although this does
not mean that they do not also rely on the conceptual apparatus of
classical Marxism and to some extent on the pioneering work of Cox
and others (Gabriel and Ben-Tovim 1978). The argument developed
in this paper, therefore, will be that there is not one approach to the
question of race and class from within the Marxist tradition but rath-
er several approaches. The equation of a Marxist approach with the
work of Cox, or with a simple form of economic and class reduction-
ism, is both mistaken and woefully out of date in the context of re-
cent debates about the nature of the state, class and racism. In order
to substantiate this point I would like to move on to a critical analysis
of three of the most important Marxist approaches to race, class and
the state.
3. Neo-Marxist approaches to race, class and the state
Within the broad spectrum of recent Marxist or Marxisant approach-
es to race, class and the state it is possible to detect a wide variety
of theoretical models, historical analyses and political arguments.
Even though using similar theoretical reference points, either to
classic texts by Marx and Engels or to the works of more contempo-
rary Marxist thinkers such as Nicos Poulantzas, a number of fairly
distinct schools of thought have emerged over the last decade. Each
of these schools lays a claim to the work of Marx, either as a source
of inspiration or more directly as a general theoretical framework
within which any analysis of racism in capitalist society must be lo-
cated. The complexity of recent debates cannot be adequately anal-
ysed within the limits of this paper, but for heuristic purposes I shall
discuss three important models that constitute various dimensions
of recent Marxist debates on race, class and the state: the relative au-
tonomy model, the autonomy model and the migrant labour model.
5

There can be no question here of attempting a general survey of all
the literature that could be classied as falling into these models.
Rather the limited objective of this paper is to raise some theoretical
problems concerning all three approaches and to make some sugges-
tions for an alternative formulation.
(a) Relative autonomy model
Within the last decade, one of the most important and inuential
redenitions of the Marxist analysis of race and racism has been
developed by a number of studies originating from the Birmingham
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS).
6
The works
three models
CCCS
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which have emanated from CCCS over this period are heterogeneous
in approach, substantive issues and political inclination but are uni-
ed through a common concern with developing an analysis of rac-
ism which fully accepts its relative autonomy from class-based social
relations and its historical specicity in relation to the laws of mo-
tion of capitalist development. Although it would be unwise to label
this body of work as a school of thought with a coherent and fully
worked out framework of analysis, there does seem to be some justi-
cation in Brittan and Maynards view (1984) that there is a distinct
CCCS approach to such issues as racism, sexism and more generally
intra-class divisions. Moreover, the theoretical and political contro-
versy which surrounded the publication of The Empire Strikes Back in
1982 has resulted in a number of critical articles which question both
the theoretical and the political linkages between recent CCCS texts
and Marxism (Young 1983, Miles 1984a).
The origins of the Centres concern with racism can be dated
back to the early 1970s, when a number of research students and
its then Director, Stuart Hall, became involved in a project which
was concerned with explaining the development of moral panics
about the involvement of young blacks in a specic form of street
crime, namely mugging.
7
The context of this study was the environ-
ment of cities such as Birmingham, where sizeable black communi-
ties had grown up and established their own specic community,
cultural and political practices. This in turn led to the development
of ideological and political responses from within local communities,
from the local state and its agencies and from the institutions of the
central state. The research carried out by the CCCS team, which was
eventually published in 1978 as Policing the Crisis (Hall et al. 1978),
took as its central concerns the processes by which race came to be
dened as a social problem and the construction of race as a politi-
cal issue which required state intervention from both the central and
the local state. There is no space here to discuss the rich and complex
analysis which Hall and his associates developed of this period or the
subsequent discussion of these issues by other authors.
8
Sufce it to
say that the concrete historical analysis on which Policing the Crisis is
based provided a materialist basis for what has subsequently become
known as the CCCS approach to race and class and has continued
to exert a deep inuence on the work of younger researchers at the
Centre. This is best exemplied by the jointly produced volume of
the CCCS Race and Politics Group, The Empire Strikes Back: Race and
Racism in 70s Britain (1982).
Before moving on to discuss the more recent work of the Centre,
however, it is important to understand the core concepts developed
The Empire
Strikes Back
Policing the Crisis
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by Stuart Hall and his colleagues in the earlier phase. A purchase
on the distinctiveness of this approach can be gained through Halls
programmatic statement of his position in a paper signicantly titled
Race, Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance (1980b),
which had been widely read and discussed even before it was pub-
lished. Halls starting point is clear enough, in that he attempts to
develop an analytic framework which locates racism in historically
specic social relations while allowing for a degree of autonomy of
the racial aspects of society. He makes this clear when he argues
that:
There is as yet no adequate theory of racism which is capable of deal-
ing with both the economic and the structural features of such societ-
ies, while at the same time giving a historically concrete and socio-
logically specic account of distinctive racial aspects. (Hall, 1980b,
p. 336)
From this starting point he engages in a dialogue with a number
of sociological analyses of race, particularly the work of John Rex,
and with the analyses of class ideology and the state which devel-
oped under the inuence of Althusserian Marxism. At the core of
this dialogue are two fundamentally important questions. The most
important of these focuses on the relationship between racism and
the structural features of capitalist society and asks How does rac-
ism function within capitalist social relations and how is it produced/
reproduced? The second question points to a related but more con-
crete set of concerns about how racism is actually constituted in spe-
cic societies or institutions, asking How does racism inuence the
ways in which class, political, gender and other social relationships
are actually experienced? While the concerns of Hall and his associ-
ates in Policing the Crisis are somewhat different from those of the
authors of The Empire Strikes Back, for example in relation to the
analysis of black youth cultures and the role of the state, they gen-
erally agree on the importance of locating the relative autonomy of
racism at a macro-level and on the centrality of racism in relations of
power and domination in post-war Britain (Hall 1980a, CCCS 1982,
chapters 1 and 8).
Halls reconceptualisation of racism hinges upon a reappraisal
both of Marxist concepts and of some aspects of the work of sociolo-
gists of race. In relation to the rst he is particularly concerned to
draw out the implications of the reconceptualisation of ideology and
the state in contemporary Marxism for the analysis of racism. The
bulk of his main theoretical paper on the subject begins by support-
Rex
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ing John Rexs critique of reductionist Marxist analyses of racism,
particularly in relation to South Africa, but then goes on to argue
that the emergence of a critical theoretical paradigm within Marxism
allows for a more adequate analysis of racism within the context of
Marxist theoretical and historical research. Drawing upon studies of
imperialism, dependency theory, the state and ideology, he argues:
A new theoretical paradigm [has emerged], which takes its funda-
mental orientation from the problematic of Marxs, but which seeks,
by various theoretical means, to overcome certain of the limitations
economism, reductionism, a priorism, a lack of historical speci-
city which beset certain traditional appropriations of Marxism,
which still disgure the contributions to this eld by otherwise dis-
tinguished writers, and which have left Marxism vulnerable and ex-
posed to effective criticism by many different variants of economic
monism and sociological pluralism. (Hall 1980b, p. 336)
While conceding the criticisms made by Rex (1973, 1983c) and others
of a simplistic Marxist analysis of racism, Hall wants also to argue
that a more critical and multi-dimensional materialist analysis of the
phenomenon is possible.
In establishing this possibility he himself suggests three prin-
ciples as the starting point for a critical Marxist analysis of racism.
First, he rejects the idea that racism is a general feature of all human
societies, arguing that what actually exist are historically specic rac-
isms. Though there may be features common to all racially structured
societies, it is necessary to understand what produces these features
in each specic historical situation before one can develop a compar-
ative analysis of racism. The second principle is that, although rac-
ism cannot be reduced to other social relations, one cannot explain
racism in abstraction from them. Racism has a relative autonomy
from other relations, whether they be economic, political or ideologi-
cal. This relative autonomy means that there is no one-way correspon-
dence between racism and specic economic or other forms of so-
cial relations. Third, Hall criticises a dichotomous view of race and
class, arguing that in a racially structured society it is impossible
to understand them through discrete modes of analysis. Race has
a concrete impact on the class consciousness and organisation of all
classes and class factions. But class in turn has a reciprocal relation-
ship with race, and it is the articulation between the two which is
crucial, not their separateness (Hall 1980b, pp. 336-42).
Halls own writings on this subject have been fairly limited and
programmatic so far, and have moved little beyond the three prin-
critical multi-
dimensional
materialist analysis
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ciples suggested above. They have been inuential, however, in the
development of subsequent Marxist studies of racism, partly through
the popularised and revised form of his ideas which can be found in
The Empire Strikes Back, produced collectively by the Race and Politics
Group of CCCS in 1982. Although written at a distance from some
of the concerns to be found in the Centres earlier work on race and
from Halls theoretical sources, this volume took as its starting point
a theme already made familiar by Hall and his colleagues, namely
that the political construction of race as a problem in contemporary
Britain represents an integral aspect of how the British state is at-
tempting to manage the current organic crisis of British capitalism
(CCCS 1982, chapters 1 and 8). Drawing particularly upon the work
of a number of authors who have attempted to reconceptualise the
role of the state in relation to racism (e.g. Carchedi, Sivanandan, and
Castells), the authors of this work attempt to rework Halls earlier
studies and to provide a more concrete analysis of the relation of
race to British decline during the 1970s.
The Empire Strikes Back can be said to mark a change from the
previous works of the Centre on race in at least three senses. First,
it argues that previous sociological and Marxist accounts of race rela-
tions represent a body of work which has done little to further our
knowledge of racism and which can even be seen as reproducing
ethnocentric or common-sense views of race (CCCS 1982, chapters
2 and 8). This mode of critique is in fact quite different from Halls
critical, but by no means unsympathetic, treatment of the works of
sociologists of race and their relationship to Marxism. In addition
it links up with a more fundamental line of critique emanating from
authors such as Cedric Robinson (1983), who sees the central con-
cepts of Marxism as Eurocentric and fairly limited in their applica-
bility to racially structured societies.
The second divergence relates to the greater emphasis placed on
the role of state racism, or the role of state activity in reproducing
racism. While elements of this analysis can be traced back to the work
of Hall and his associates (Hall et al. 1978), there is a sharper focus
in The Empire Strikes Back on the concrete ways in which the state in-
tervened to manage race throughout the 1970s, in ways which were
detrimental to the interests of black communities. This is achieved
at a general level through an analysis of the growth of authoritarian
statism and popular racism within the context of deep-seated crisis:
The parallel growth of repressive state structures and new racisms
has to be located in a non-reductionist manner, within the dynam-
ics of both the international crisis of the capitalist world economy,
three divergencies
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and the deep-seated structural crisis of the British social formation.
(CCCS 1982, p. 9)
It is also achieved through an emphasis on the ways in which racism
structures different areas of social life, notably education, policing,
youth policy and also the position of black women in the labour mar-
ket (Solomos et al. 1982).
This in turn links up to a third area, namely the attempt to recon-
ceptualise the complex relationship between class and race. In the
concluding chapter of the book, Paul Gilroy mounts a sustained cri-
tique of both Marxist and sociological analysis of race for failing to
deal adequately with the autonomy of race from class. In so doing
he questions the view of the working class as a continuous historical
subject, particularly since such a view cannot deal adequately with
the ways in which blacks can constitute themselves as an autono-
mous social force in politics or with the existence of racially demar-
cated class factions (Gilroy 1982, p. 284). The theoretical basis of
this critique can be traced back to the work of Hall, although it also
draws some of its inspiration from previous studies at the Centre of
working-class culture (Hall et al. 1980) and from the more recent de-
bates about class theory within Marxism (see e.g. Przeworski 1977).
This is exemplied by the combination in Gilroys work of a model of
determination which gives class struggle as opposed to class structure a
degree of determinacy, and a view of black workers as racially struc-
tured. The difculties which this position entails are made explicit
when Gilroy argues:
The class character of black struggles is not a result of the fact that
blacks are predominantly proletarian, though this is true. It is estab-
lished in the fact that their struggles for civil rights, freedom from
state harassment, or as waged workers, are instances of the process
by which the working class is constituted politically, organised in
politics. (Gilroy 1982, p. 302)
Referring specically to those excluded from employment, par-
ticularly the young black unemployed, he posits that there may be
various types of struggles which mobilise them politically, not all of
which bear a direct relationship to objective conditions. It follows
that the privileged place of economic classes in the Marxist theory of
history is not to be equated with an a priori assertion of their political
primacy in every historical moment (Gilroy 1982, p. 303).
It is also of some relevance to note, in relation to the above point,
that The Empire Strikes Back includes some of the most sustained
class struggle
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john solomos
treatments of the place of gender in the dialectic of race and class
(see the chapters by Hazel Carby and Pratibha Parmar). Along with
the work of Annie Phizacklea on migrant women (Phizacklea 1983),
it constitutes an isolated attempt in this eld seriously to analyse the
role of gender in the articulation of racist ideologies.
Perhaps the most notable absence from the Centres work on rac-
ism is a serious analysis of the political economy of racism. Apart
from a rudimentary and limited study by Green (1979), and some
minor references in both Policing the Crisis and The Empire Strikes
Back, this remains a serious gap in the Centres work. It becomes
particularly critical in the context of the oft-repeated criticisms made
of mainstream sociological studies of race for not taking account of
the broad economic and social determinants of racism. The empha-
sis on the relative autonomy of racism seems to have led to a neglect
of the economic context of racial structuration, or at the least to a de-
emphasis on the role played by the economic in the narrow sense.
This is a point that will be discussed later, particularly in relation to
the migrant labour model.
There are a number of other aspects of the Centres work on rac-
ism which can be fruitfully discussed (see Freedman 1983-4). Here I
have tried to highlight the broad contours of the contribution it has
made to a Marxist analysis of racism and to mention some of the
ambiguities and tensions that arise. Before taking up the problems
to which this model gives rise, it is necessary to outline the other two
models.
(b) Autonomy model
Recently some Marxist theorists have argued that there is a need to
go beyond the notion that racism is a relatively autonomous social
phenomenon and to break more denitely from the economic and
class-reductionist elements in Marxist theory. Thus a major theme
in the inuential writings of John Gabriel and Gideon Ben-Tovim,
9

who have developed a theoretical perspective which specically em-
phasises this point, is that the bulk of neo-Marxist theory on racism is
still based on implicit, if not explicit, economic and class-reductionist
assumptions. They are particularly critical of the relative autonomy
model, which they see as defective from both a theoretical and a po-
litical perspective. From a theoretical angle they see the dichotomy
between capitalist social relations and race as merely another way of
reproducing a more sophisticated form of class-reductionism, under
the guise of the nebulous concept of relative autonomy. This in turn
is seen as supporting a deterministic analysis of political struggles
against racism and thus allowing little room for anti-racist politi-
absence of
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cal strategies to be effective rather than symbolic (Gabriel and Ben-
Tovim 1979, Ben-Tovim et al. 1981a).
Contrary to the bulk of recent Marxist writings on racism, which
take capitalist social relations and class relations as a starting point,
Gabriel and Ben-Tovim argue that racism can best be understood
as the product of contemporary and historical struggles which are
by no means reducible to wider sets of economic or social relations.
This leads them to take as their starting point the various struggles,
local and national, political and ideological, which go into the social
construction of race in specic situations (Gabriel and Ben-Tovim
1978). Yet it would be too simplistic to see their position as one which
holds that racism is not in some way related to wider social relations.
A number of their papers on anti-racist struggles do in fact show how
wider structural constraints do play a role in limiting the effective-
ness of such struggles (e.g. Ben-Tovim et al. 1981a). What they do
argue, however, is that there is no way of determining what these
limits are, outside of specic struggles and historical situations.
The consequences of this position are that there is no a priori rea-
son to see racism as the product of class or economic relations, and
that the only way to overcome the traditional dilemma in relation to
the base/superstructure model is to eschew any attempt to analyse
racism outside of its own ideological conditions of existence (Gabriel
and Ben-Tovim 1978). In opposition to the preoccupation of the
CCCS studies with the linkages between race and class, and more
concretely with the articulation between capitalist crisis and the de-
velopment of racism, Gabriel and Ben-Tovim suggest that the start-
ing point of a Marxist analysis should be the ideological and political
practices which work autonomously to produce racism. Rejecting all
forms of reductionism they argue that:
Racism has its own autonomous formation, its own contradictory
determinations, its own complex mode of theoretical and ideological
production, as well as its repercussions for the class struggle at the
levels of the economy and the state. (Gabriel and Ben-Tovim 1978,
p. 146)
In this view, the ideological level is primary, since it is only after the
ideological production of racist ideologies that they intervene at the
level of the economy and of political practice. In effect, Gabriel and
Ben-Tovim attempt to push beyond the constraints of the relative au-
tonomy model by questioning the viability of any attempt to situate
race in terms of class. The autonomy of racism lies precisely in its
irreducibility to any other set of social relations, since any attempt to
ideological and
political practices
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john solomos
account for racism in terms of external relations entails a reduction-
ist argument (Ben-Tovim et al., this volume).
Moving a step beyond this formal critique of reductionist
Marxism, supporters of the autonomy model would also argue that
their analysis provides a more relevant guide to the complex political
realities of racist politics and anti-racist struggles (Ben-Tovim et al.
1981a). Starting from the position that the state as an institution is
not monolithic but the site of constant struggles, compromises and
administrative decisions, they argue that the most important task of
research on race is to highlight the political and ideological context
in which anti-racist struggles occur. Referring to the need for strug-
gles to change institutionalised racism as a long march through the
institutions, with the overall objective of bringing about positive
and democratically based political and policy changes to secure the
elimination of racial discrimination and disadvantage (p. 178), they
question the usefulness of the notion of relative autonomy when con-
fronted with the complexity of political struggles against racism.
This last point is important in understanding the coherence of
the analysis developed by Gabriel and Ben-Tovim, since they self-
consciously see their theoretical work as linking up with political
practice. There is no space here to discuss the detailed and rich anal-
ysis they have made of the political context of anti-racist struggles
in Liverpool and Wolverhampton. Sufce it to say that the develop-
ment of their approach, from the early formal critique of traditional
Marxist views of race and class to their more recent preoccupation
with the local politics and racism, reects their actual political in-
volvement in anti-racist politics.
Another way of making this point is that although they would
agree with Hall that race and class form part of a complex dialec-
tical relation in contemporary capitalism, they would question the
usefulness of interpreting this relationship in terms of the relative
autonomy of racism. Ultimately they see a contradiction in arguing
that racist ideologies have a certain autonomy from material rela-
tions, while also holding on to the principle that it is these relations
which determine in the last instance the degree of autonomy. More
fundamentally, they seem to be arguing that even the work of Hall
and his associates, with its explicit disavowal of determinism, sup-
ports an implicit base/superstructure model.
Given their insistence on the irreducibility of race to class, and
the political conclusions they draw from this position, it may not
be surprising that Gabriel and Ben-Tovim do not spend much time
discussing the degree of determinancy which state power and class
relations have in relation to racial structuration. Their version of the
racist politics
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extended as opposed to the monolithic state does have a rather
pluralistic ring about it, at least as regards their discussion of the
role of race relations legislation and the role of the local state. Their
dual strategy of attrition against racism, both within and outside the
state apparatuses, is predicated upon the premise of the primacy of
struggle over all other levels of determinancy (Ben-Tovim et al. 1981a,
and Ben-Tovim et al., this volume). But this seems to push the agen-
cy versus structure argument in the direction of a voluntarist theory
of political change, and one which ignores the centrality of the dis-
tinction between the appearance and the reality of political struggles
(Connolly 1981). Moreover, there seems to be a heavy emphasis in
their approach on the importance of policy-oriented research as a
tool for anti-racist struggles. The lack of policy-relevance is one of the
weaknesses they highlight in other Marxist approaches in this eld.
The ambiguities of the autonomy model relate as much to po-
litical issues as to straightforward theoretical questions. The work
of Gabriel and Ben-Tovim can also be read, however, as a theoreti-
cal innovation in the sense that it breaks quite fundamentally with
the main concern of other Marxists working in this eld, namely
the search for a non-reductionist and historically specic analysis of
racism. For Gabriel and Ben-Tovim the search for a more plausible
model of determination leads into a cul-de-sac, and they have re-
sponded by rejecting all forms of determination outside of struggle.

(c) Migrant labour model
The third explanatory model which has been used by recent Marxist
writers, especially by Robert Miles and Annie Phizacklea,
10
takes a
radically different starting point from the other two approaches out-
lined above. Arguing on the basis of a critical reinterpretation of
classical and neo-Marxist theories of class, the state and ideology,
Miles and Phizacklea construct a theoretical model of racism which
prioritises the political economy of migrant labour as opposed to
what they call the race relations problematic (Miles 1980, 1982,
Phizacklea and Miles 1980, Phizacklea 1984). The substance of
the difference between this approach and the previous two is that
throughout their work Miles and Phizacklea seek to prioritise the
role that class and production relations play in the reproduction of
racism. This position has recently been clearly stated by Phizacklea,
who argues:
If social scientists continue to use the term race... because people
act as though race exists, then they are guilty of conferring analytical
the political
economy of
migrant labour
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status on what is nothing more than an ideological construction. Our
object of analysis cannot be race in itself, but the development of
racism as an ideology within specic historical and material contexts.
(Phizacklea 1984, p. 200)
This quotation is from an article which bears the title A Sociology
of Migration or Race Relations?. In a similar vein Miles argues
that the work of some Marxists (notably that of Sivanandan and the
authors of The Empire Strikes Back) shares a common terrain with the
race relations problematic of John Rex, because they both attribute
the ideological notion of race with a descriptive and explanatory
importance (Miles, 1984a, p. 218).
Central to this position is the notion that racism can only be un-
derstood by analysing it in relation to the basic structural features of
capitalism. This is linked to a related point, which has been repeat-
edly made by Miles and Phizacklea, in relation both to the sociology
of race relations and to other Marxist studies of racism. Their work
carefully eschews any reference to race except in inverted commas,
because they see race as itself an ideological category which requires
explanation and which therefore cannot be used for either analytical
or explanatory purposes (Miles 1982, 1984a, Phizacklea 1984). The
reason for their insistence on the distinction between race and rac-
ism becomes clear through their reliance on what they call the pro-
cess of racialisation or racial categorisation (Miles 1982, pp. 153-67,
Phizacklea 1984). Broadly speaking, this concept posits that race is
a social construction which attributes meanings to certain patterns of
phenotypical variation. This process of attributing meaning to race
results in a reication of real social relations into ideological catego-
ries and leads to the commonsense acceptance that race is an objec-
tive determinant of the behaviour of black workers or other racially
dened social categories. As evidence of this confusion Miles and
Phizacklea cite the example of how black workers are not analysed
in terms of the social relations of production but as a race apart
(Phizacklea and Miles 1980, Miles 1982), the ways in which politi-
cians and governments have utilised the category of race in order to
obfuscate the reality of racism (Miles and Phizacklea 1984), and at a
more concrete level the way in which the use of the idea of race to
interpret the 1958 riots deected attention away from the actions of
racists against blacks and from the role of the state (Miles 1984b).
Precisely because they conceptualise race as an ideological reica-
tion, and one which can do little to challenge common-sense images
of race, they suggest two main programmatic conclusions: (a) that
race cannot be the object of analysis in itself, since it is a social
racial categorisation
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construction which requires explanation; (b) that the object of analy-
sis should be the process of racialisation or racial categorisation,
which takes place within the context of specic economic, political
and ideological relations.
In rejecting the descriptive or analytical value of race as a con-
cept Miles and Phizacklea insist on the importance of racism, and
the discriminatory practices which it produces, as the crucial factor
in the formation of what they call a racialised fraction of the work-
ing class, and of other classes (Phizacklea and Miles 1980, Miles
1984a, pp. 229-30). This has been interpreted as a way of reiterating
the role of class determination as opposed to race, or the use of
an economistic version of Marxism to analyse the position of black
workers in Britain (Gilroy 1982). In addition, it has been argued that
the emphasis that Miles and Phizacklea put on class as opposed to
race serves to underplay the role that black struggles play in unify-
ing people who ostensibly occupy different class positions (Parmar
1982).
In rejecting these criticisms Miles has recently attempted to clar-
ify the starting point of his work, and its relationship to the work of
CCCS and Gabriel and Ben-Tovim (Miles 1984a). Rejecting the view
that his work, along with that of Annie Phizacklea, asserts the prima-
cy of class over race, he goes on to argue that his model is grounded
in the notion that internal and external class relations are shaped by
a complex totality of economic, political and ideological processes.
As regards the role of racism in this complex totality he develops a
denition of racialisation which differentiates between the economic
and the political/ideological determinants. Miles explains:
The race/class dichotomy is a false construction. Alternatively, I
suggest that the reproduction of class relations involves the determi-
nation of internal and external class boundaries by economic, politi-
cal and ideological processes. One of the central political and ideo-
logical processes in contemporary capitalist societies is the process
of racialisation... but this cannot, in itself, over-ride the effects of the
relations of production. Hence, the totality of black people in Britain
cannot be adequately analysed as a race outside or in opposition to
class relations. Rather, the process by which they are racialised, and
react to that racialisation (both of which are political and ideological
processes), always occurs in a particular historical and structural con-
text, one in which the social relations of production provide the nec-
essary and initial framework within which racism has its effects. The
outcome may be the formation of racialised class fractions. (Miles
1984a, p. 233)
redenition of
racialisation
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john solomos
What is important about this redenition is that it (1) locates racism
as a process of ideological construction, and (2) prioritises the ef-
fects of the relations of production. The substantial difference be-
tween the migrant labour model and the two previous models lies
precisely in the emphasis it places on the ways in which migrant la-
bour is included or excluded in terms of the relations of production.
In the later works associated with this approach the model of
racialisation gains an added dimension through comparative refer-
ences to the experience of migrant labour in other advanced capitalist
societies. This is seen as providing added proof as to the limited na-
ture of the race relations approach (Phizacklea 1984). Another area
in which Miles and Phizacklea have shown a growing interest is the
role of political discourse and ideologies, particularly in relation to
the construction of immigration and race relations as a political
problem (Miles and Phizacklea 1984).
Miless critique of the approach encapsulated in The Empire
Strikes Back is a succinct statement of this difference of approach.
Distinguishing between the liberal and the radical sociology of race
relations, he identies the work of John Rex as representing the for-
mer and the work of CCCS (1982) as representing the latter. He does
so on the ground that both liberal and radical sociologists of race
share the same terrain, i.e. they both hold that race is a real political
phenomenon with its own effects and determinate relationships, but
they are distinguished by the latters attachment to Marxism (Miles
1984a, p. 218). As a starting point, therefore, Miles argues that while
all variants of the sociology of race accept the equivalence of class
and race as analytic concepts, the Marxist position should be that
production relations provide the historical and structural context
within which racialisation occurs. Although he accepts that in some
respects the CCCS authors question the validity of race as an ana-
lytic concept, he makes the point that this critique is undermined by
their emphasis on the importance of cultural as opposed to produc-
tion relations. It is this silence on production relations that leads
the CCCS authors, according to Miles, to ignore the material and
political basis of racism within the working class (Miles 1984a, pp.
228-30).
Both of these issues are of some signicance, since they highlight
a point often repeated by Miles and Phizacklea in their empirical
research, namely that blacks are not a race apart which has to be
related to class but persons whose forms of political struggle can be
understood in terms of racialisation within a particular set of produc-
tion (class) relations (Miles 1984a, p. 230). At any particular time
racism can have an autonomous impact, but its effects will be limited
by the wider sets of capitalist social relations.
silence on
production
relations
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The migrant labour model diverges drastically from the work of
Gabriel and Ben-Tovim, although perhaps less so from the work of
Hall or the authors of The Empire Strikes Back. Although it is clearly
arguing against a simple reductionism, to the economic or other lev-
els, it also consciously avoids the silence on production relations
which it sees as characteristic of the CCCS school. What is at issue
in the migrant labour model is not race as such but the racialisation
of a specic migrant population in the historical context of post-1945
Britain.
4. A critique and an alternative framework
As argued above, the basic problem confronting any Marxist (and per-
haps non-Marxist) account of the complex relations between race,
class and the state is to be found in the very nature of racism in
contemporary capitalist societies. From the brief survey of the com-
peting approaches to this question in neo-Marxist discourse it should
be clear that there are at least two problems which seem to defy reso-
lution. First, the question of the relative autonomy or autonomy of
racial and ethnic categorisations from economic and class determi-
nation. Second, the role of the state and the political institutions of
capital societies in the reproduction of racism, including the complex
role of state intervention in many countries to control immigration,
to manage race relations and, more broadly, to integrate racial and
ethnic groupings into the wider society. Finally, it must be remem-
bered that few Marxist writers have ventured beyond theoretical and
macro-level analysis, resulting in a mode of analysis that points to
contradictions and struggle but says little about the concrete histori-
cal and contemporary experience of racism at the level of everyday
life and human agency.
11
This has meant a notable failure to push
Marxist analysis beyond the theoretical understanding of racism
towards the practical understanding of how to overcome it, a point
noted elsewhere in this volume of Ben-Tovim and his co-authors.
Before venturing into a discussion of these implications, how-
ever, I want to reiterate that it is far too simplistic to see Marxism as
essentially a determinist theory of social development, whether from
an economic or a class perspective. Given the wide currency which
is still given to such a view of Marxism within the race relations lit-
erature (see e.g. Jeffcoate 1984), and the tendency to search for an
essentialist theory of racism in some Marxist writings, it may be as
well to note that numerous schools of thought within Marxism have
been established precisely in opposition to a determinist interpreta-
implications
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john solomos
tion of Marxist theory. Many of the most challenging Marxist studies
of the state, ideology, social class and specic historical events over
the last two decades have attempted to develop an analytic framework
and empirical analyses which question deterministic models of poli-
tics and society (Wright 1980, Anderson 1983, Jessop 1982, 1983).
Moreover, there is by now a sizeable body of empirical and historical
studies which have relied on Marxist analytic concepts in order to
analyse specic aspects of advanced industrial societies (Anderson
1983, Burawoy and Skocpol 1983). Taken together these two bodies
of literature bear ample witness to the vitality and complexity of neo-
Marxist theory and to the futility of trying to construct an analytic
framework of racism which is acceptable to all Marxists. What fol-
lows therefore are some suggestions which are meant to draw to-
gether strands of argument which were developed in the previous
sections and to open up questions for debate.
Now, if the arguments developed above are accepted, one must
ask what kind of theory of racism is possible within a Marxist frame-
work if each kind of racism has to be analysed in relation to its his-
torical and socio-political context. Bearing in mind the critical obser-
vations about the three analytic models discussed above, I want to
draw briey on a point rst made by Stuart Hall and his colleagues
and recently taken up by a number of other authors, namely that in
post-1945 Britain:
Race is intrinsic to the manner in which the black labouring classes
are complexly constituted... Race enters into the way black labour,
male and female, is distributed as economic agents on the level of
economic practice and the class struggles which result from it into
the way the fractions of the black labouring class are constituted as
a set of political forces in the theatre of politics and the political
struggle which results; and in the manner in which the class is ar-
ticulated as the collective and individual subjects of emergent ide-
ologies and forms of consciousness and the struggle over ideology,
culture and consciousness which results. This gives the matter of
race and racism a theoretical as well as a practical centrality to all
the relations and practices which affect black labour. The constitution
of this class fraction as a class, and the class relations which inscribe it,
function as race relations. The two are inseparable. Race is the modality
in which class is lived. It is also the medium in which class relations are
experienced. (Hall et al. 1978, p. 394, emphasis added)
This reconceptualisation of the class-race dialectic is certainly awk-
ward, and represents a programmatic statement rather than a fully
Marxist theory
of racism
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worked-out framework of analysis. But it has the merit of focusing on
racism as a specic social relation and on the need to analyse the his-
torical conditions which make distinctions based on race and ethnic
origins an important issue in a specic society. In addition it serves
to highlight the weakness of the accusation that Marxist accounts of
the race-class dialectic are necessarily deterministic. There is, how-
ever, a degree of obfuscation in the argument that race and class
relations are inseparable, since this tells us little about the specicity
of either, or of the historical processes which produce this complex
structure in dominance.
12
In the end the approach suggested by Hall,
and by subsequent CCCS work, does little to show the specicity of
racism, or to analyse the work which racism accomplishes (Hall et
al. 1978, p. 338). It merely suggests ways of reworking the categories
of Marxist analysis in such a way as to account for the complex real-
ity of racial categorisation in contemporary capitalism, and it does
not tackle thorny problems in the denition of relative autonomy.
It has thus been criticised for being too abstract and ahistorical in its
analysis of the role of black labour in Britain and of migrant labour
more generally.
In considering this problem the work of Gabriel and Ben-Tovim
suggests the most straightforward resolution. Arguing that the choice
between determinism and relative autonomy is a false one, they go
on to reject the whole idea of a society structured in dominance be-
cause they see it as introducing a base/superstructure model by the
back door. By implication they argue that the central question is not
the relationship between racism and the wider social totality but the
conceptualisation of racism as the object of struggle in historically
dened conditions (Ben-Tovim et al., this volume). Another resolu-
tion is suggested by the work of Miles and Phizacklea. They reject
the problematic of race in itself and concentrate their analysis on
the development and reproduction of racism as an ideology based
on specic political, economic and ideological relations (Miles and
Phizacklea 1984, Phizacklea 1984). In essence this second approach
sees attempts to analyse the interrelationship between race and
class as based on the false premise that these two categories have
the same analytical signicance, while in fact racism is but one of the
means which transform the positions occupied by class fractions in
capitalist societies (Miles 1984a, pp. 228-9).
The work of the autonomy and migrant labour schools, like that
of CCCS and Sivanandan, does indeed raise the questions which re-
main unclear in much of the Marxist discussion of race and class.
But they all do so within fairly limited parameters, and they have by
no means exhausted the potential for a more rigorous formulation
historically dened
conditions
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john solomos
of the theoretical problems confronting a Marxist analysis of rac-
ism. What follows are some tentative suggestions about how to build
upon and move beyond the parameters of recent debates.
It is not my intention to develop a fully edged alternative frame-
work for dealing with the issues raised in the previous discussion.
Rather, the limited objective here is to draw out some of the im-
plications of the criticisms made above for a critical analysis of the
dialectic of race, class and state. I want to concentrate, particularly,
on the problems which arise in trying to utilise a Marxist analytic
framework for explaining racism, by outlining a conceptual model
which holds that: (a) there is no problem of race relations which can
be thought of separately from the structural (economic, political and
ideological) features of capitalist society; (b) there can be no general
Marxist theory of racism, since each historical situation needs to be
analysed in its own specicity; and (c) racial and ethnic divisions
cannot be reduced to or seen as completely determined by the struc-
tural contradictions of capitalist societies.
In broad outline these three propositions are meant to establish
the interconnectedness of racism with wider social relations, while
allowing for a degree of autonomy and discontinuity. This in itself
does not take us very far in establishing the actual nature of disconti-
nuities in an empirical sense, and indeed this is perhaps impossible
without comparative and national studies of different kinds of rac-
ism. But it seems to me to be important that the three propositions
remain interlinked, because short of this it is only possible to achieve
a one-dimensional analysis of racism and not the dialectical and dy-
namic approach which Bonacich (1980) rightly identies as the basic
feature of Marxist approaches to race.
Nevertheless, it should be clear from the above discussion that all
three propositions are essentially contested among Marxists. While
propositions (b) and (c) can be said to have a wide currency in one
form or another, there is much dispute about (a), whether at a macro-
level or through specic debates about the relationship of race and
class. Gabriel and Ben-Tovim would dispute the relevance of point
(a) in relation to a concrete analysis of racist ideologies. The problem
remains, however, that economic and social conditions do play a role
in structuring racism as an ideology and as a set of practices in spe-
cic institutions. If this is accepted, and to some extent even Gabriel
and Ben-Tovim accept that there are limits on the effectiveness of
struggles against racism, then the question arises of how one con-
ceptualises the relationship between ideologies and social structures.
Is it simply a question of an eclectic combination of autonomous lev-
els in a specic situation? Or do economic, political and ideological
three propositions
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511
relations exercise some determining inuence on the expression of
racist ideologies?
The fundamental problem with abandoning the relative autonomy
model is that of avoiding the trap of a simple pluralism, which sees
race and class relationships as completely separate. This is why it
seems to me that it is important to insist on the complexity of deter-
mination in the last instance, while accepting that there is some form
of determination of racism by other social relations. For example,
within the context of economic decline and political crisis-manage-
ment during the post-war period, can one really talk of the complete
autonomy of racism? Or can one separate out the political meanings
which are attached to race today from the actions of successive gov-
ernments in dening and redening the immigration/race issue
during the last four decades? Or can one understand the long-term
patterns of inclusion and exclusion of black workers in the labour
market without an analysis of the restructuring of British industry
during this period?
For these reasons alone there are grounds for questioning wheth-
er a pluralistic version of Marxism is any more adequate in analys-
ing the contradictions of racial structuration than pluralistic theories
have been in their analysis of capitalist societies (Meiksins Wood
1983, Connolly 1981). Additionally, however, there seems to be little
possibility that the autonomy model can capture the complexity of
power relations or adequately analyse the historical context in which
racism has become entrenched, in different societies and at different
times, at all levels of the social formation. In this sense I am less wor-
ried about the distance Gabriel and Ben-Tovim have travelled from
classical Marxism than about the fact that their model does not seem
to be able to analyse the development of racism except through the
ever-present concept of struggle, which is not located in any social
context.
Perhaps one way of dealing with the issue of determinism may be
through a strict application of proposition (b), namely that there can
be no general theory of racism. It is precisely on this point that there
hinges the possibility of further advance in Marxist theory, since it
focuses attention on the contexts in which racist ideologies develop
and are transformed, or on what Gilroy has called the construction,
mobilisation, and pertinence of different forms of racist ideology and
structuration in specic historical circumstances (Gilroy 1982, p.
281). But the application of this position has led to the emergence of
more problems, since few Marxists have actually analysed processes
of racial structuration at the level of actual societies. The example of
South Africa is one which has attracted most attention (Wolpe 1980,
the complexity of
determinism
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john solomos
Burawoy 1981), along with some aspects of racism in contemporary
Britain. This had led to a tendency to produce more rened concepts
without approaching the more thorny questions relating to their ap-
plicability to actual concrete situations (Rex 1981).
The unsettling nature of the encounter between contemporary
Marxism and race is far from reaching a conclusion. This is reect-
ed in the numerous either/or kind of formulations which have been
summarised and criticised above; for example do we talk of race
or class, race or racism, autonomy or relative autonomy, race or
migrant labour? This type of debate is prominent in the early stages
of theoretical discussion, when there is uncertainty about the exact
nature of differences and agreements across the main contestants.
The further development of debate, however, would require greater
specication of the social relations of racism in specic societies, and
its interconnections with class and non-class aspects of social real-
ity (Resnick and Wolff, 1982). Once the question is dened in this
way it also becomes clear that, although it is important in a speci-
cally Marxist framework to establish some degree of determination,
Marxian theory is also radically anti-determinist.
It needs to be said that there are numerous aspects of recent de-
bates which have not been fully covered in the above discussion. All
three theoretical models, for example, are closely linked to differing
assessments of the role of the state, of politics and of the possibil-
ity of anti-racist struggles. The role of autonomous black political
struggles in relation to class-based political action remains a central
area of dispute, as does the issue of the role of state intervention in
the area of race relations. Many of these issues are also the object of
lively discussion outside of Marxism (Rex 1981). These are questions,
however, which need to be addressed separately, since they relate to
more specic assessments of the political economy of contemporary
Britain.
5. Conclusion
This paper has tried to locate the position of race in Marxist discourse
and to assess the adequacy of the various theoretical approaches to
its study in capitalist societies. While much of the recent literature
written from the various perspectives analysed above hardly merits
the designation of a Marxist theory of race and ethnic relations, it
clearly represents a large and growing body of work. I have tried to
argue that Marxist theories of race are heterogeneous in approach,
though it can be argued that they are unied through a common
Marxism and class
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concern with (a) the material and ideological basis of racism and
racial oppression, however it may be dened, and (b) the role that
racism plays in structuring the entire social, political and economic
structures of societies. In other words, the basic level of agreement
between the various Marxist approaches is that they accept that there
is no race relations problem as such, that there is no problem of rac-
ism which can be thought of as separate from the structural features
of capitalist society.
Equally important, however, are the differences in approach
which have become evident over the last decade within the broad
spectrum of Marxist writings on racism. It is in this context that
we can best appreciate the studies discussed above. Whatever their
theoretical deciencies and analytic weaknesses, the overall effect of
Marxist contributions in this area has been to redene the problem of
race in capitalist society in a way that makes theoretical and political
debate more open and challenging. They have focused attention on
the history and contemporary reality of racism in capitalist society,
and its complex economic, political and ideological preconditions.
By questioning the adequacy of both traditional Marxist and non-
Marxist treatments of racism, and by emphasising the need for link-
ing theoretical analysis to anti-racist politics, these studies have in
their different ways helped reinstate the idea that racism is no mere
epiphenomenon but a social construct resulting from the complex
social relationships and economic and political structures of capital-
ist societies (Hall et al. 1980, Freedman 1983-4, Miles 1984a).
But the interest of these studies is not restricted to the eld of
Marxist theory and politics. For the problems with which they have
been grappling occur in similar forms in non-Marxist social and
political theory. For although the basic starting point of Marxist ap-
proaches to this question may be said to differ markedly from the
various non-Marxist approaches, there can be little doubt that many
of the substantive analytical problems are actually quite similar. This
is not to say that the specic theoretical and analytical divergences
between the two sets of approaches are not important, for they clearly
are. What is at issue, however, is the adequacy of the explanations
they offer about the role of racism in contemporary capitalist societ-
ies, the role of the state in reproducing or countering racist practices,
and the adequacy of the political conclusions they draw about how
to overcome racism. Because the Marxist approaches have focused
on the social relations that produce and reproduce racism, they have
touched upon issues which are of concern to non-Marxist theorists,
namely the origins of racist ideologies and institutions and the role
of political power relations. In so doing, recent Marxist analyses may
redene problem
of racism
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well open up possibilities for broadening out the debates about race,
class and the state in potentially fruitful directions.
Perhaps in the long run this will be seen as one of the main
achievements of recent Marxist debates on racism. The kinds of
question which they raise about theory and anti-racist politics open
up the possibility for reective discussions of the role of racism in
contemporary societies and the strategies for overcoming it. The
theoretical and political selfconsciousness which the approaches dis-
cussed above show are a fundamental challenge to both traditional
Marxism and rival problematics within the social sciences, and one
which deserves to be taken up across a variety of disciplines. In ad-
dition, however, they have provided an extra impetus to attempts to
link academic research to questions of practice, particularly in rela-
tion to political struggles against racism. In so doing they have posed
questions beyond the limits of traditional Marxist class analysis and
have pointed to the need for a deeper analysis of non-class forms of
domination.
If this brief sketch of the content of recent Marxist debates on
race, class and the state is accurate, there are many questions about
the specicity of racism which have been inadequately theorised.
But recent debates have at least opened up the possibility of a more
dynamic and accessible Marxist contribution to the analysis of rac-
ism. Whether this possibility is realised depends on the success of
attempts to broaden the horizons of current Marxian conceptions of
the dynamics of advanced capitalism. Along with gender, racism re-
mains one of the key axes on which this reconceptualisation has to
take place, both at the level of theory and at that of practice.
Notes
1 Apart from the work of Parkin, which is discussed below, see Forsythe 1979,
Stone 1977, Bonacich 1980, Brotz 1983, Banton 1983.
2 It is not possible to discuss these issues specically in the context of this
paper, but valuable and provocative overviews of all of them can be found in
Wright 1980, Sargent 1981, Resnick and Wolff 1982 and Cottrell 1984.
3 The dialectic of agency and structure in Marxist thinking is usefully dis-
cussed in Gintis and Bowles (1981), where it is argued that there are usually
two opposing tendencies in Marxist writing, one based on a commitment
to structural determination and another committed to a notion of practice.
They themselves suggest a resolution in terms of a unied conception of
structure and practice.
4 A useful and challenging discussion of the political context of their analysis
can be found in Jessop 1982. But see also Meiksins Wood 1983.
5 This threefold classication is imposed and reects an assessment of the
main tendency in each body of work. There are no doubt other models which
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can be usefully discussed, or other points on which these three approaches
could be sub-divided. Nevertheless for the purposes of this presentation this
classication seemed most appropriate. See also Bonacich 1980, G. Morgan
1981 and Omi and Winant 1983.
6 A somewhat broader overview of the Centres work on this can be found in
Freedman 1983-4. On the work of the Centre more generally see the edited
volume, Culture, Media and Language, by Hall et al. 1980, and Johnson 1983.
7 The concern with racism can be traced back further in terms of Halls own
work, but the impact of race on the Centres project dates from this period
and therefore predates Halls more theoretical studies of racism and social
relations.
8 A fuller discussion of this point can be found in Solomos et al. 1982.
9 Throughout this paper I refer to the work of Gabriel and Ben-Tovim, though
in fact much of their work has been carried out with a number of other re-
searchers associated with their work in Wolverhampton and Liverpool. On
the theoretical origins of the criticisms which this model develops in relation
to relative autonomy see Cutler et al. 1977-8, Hindess 1984, and more gener-
ally the work associated with Barry Hindess and Paul Hirst.
10 In a recent paper Phizacklea argues that there are links between this position
and the broader tradition of the sociology of migration which has developed
in both Europe and the USA (Phizacklea 1984).
11 The relative absence of historical awareness and specicity from much of
the Marxist debate on racism has been noted, from rather different angles,
by Rex 1981, Bonacich 1981a and 1981b, Miles 1982, Robinson 1983, and
Brittan and Maynard 1984. What is surprising, however, is that despite this
awareness few attempts have been made to redress the balance and develop
historically based analyses of racist ideologies and practices.
12 This is a problem discussed from a different perspective by G. Morgan 1981
and Green 1979. For an interesting American perspective see Omi and
Winant 1983.
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Racism, migration and the state in Western
Europe: a case for comparative analysis
*
Frank Bovenkerk, Robert Miles and Gilles Verbunt
In the 1980s, the criminologist Frank Bovenkerk and the sociologists Robert
Miles and Gilles Verbunt embarked on an ambitious project. They sought to
compare post-war migration to Western Europe and the political and ideo-
logical responses that this migration elicited. The project was undertaken by
developing a theoretical framework that was broad enough to encompass the
historical specicity of and between particular cases, while still permit-
ting a general explanation that was sensitive to the specicity and variation.
Bovenkerk, Miles and Verbunts framework revolves around the formation of
the nation state and highlights the states role in the reproduction of the na-
tion as imagined community. These processes, they suggest, are embedded
in a more universal process of the regulation of scarcity. Critical here are the
inclusion and exclusion of people from the hierarchy of political, economic
and ideological positions in the nationstate.
Introduction
Given the still vivid memory of the holocaust, and following a long
period of afuence and relative social order after the Second World
War, it was widely believed within Western Europe during the 1960s
and 1970s that racism, and related ideologies, had been permanently
eliminated. But to the surprise of many, the race myth (in old or
new forms) has gained renewed support. It is being suggested once
more that the origin of long-standing and emergent economic and
cultural problems lies in the presence of groups who do not belong
to the nation-state by virtue of biological, social and/or cultural char-
acteristics that they are thought to possess inherently. Although the
complex of ideas is spread more widely, they have found formal po-
litical expression in all countries of Western Europe in different ways
and at different times.
the race myth
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frank bovenkerk, robert miles and gilles verbunt
Taking the example of the far-right political agitation and the re-
surgence of neo-fascist groups, these were rst evident in Britain and
Switzerland (National Front, the Schwarzenbach referendum) in the
1960s, other countries such as Holland and France (Centrumpartij,
Front National) followed in the 1970s, and last have been Belgium
and the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1980s (Vlaams Blok,
Republikaner). Immigrants, or more accurately, certain categories
of immigrants, have become the main targets of the hostility either
generated or fostered by this agitation and these political organisa-
tions. Our primary interest in this paper is with the interrelation-
ship between the common appearance of this hostility and agitation
throughout Western Europe and the differentiation in the mode and
timing of expression in the constituent countries. Further, it pro-
vides an outline agenda for research.
Common themes, dissimilar expressions
There are remarkable similarities in the manifestation of hostility to
certain migrant groups in the various countries of Western Europe.
There are demands to stop or control immigration; a movement to
send migrants back (to assist in their repatriation); a demand for
the withdrawal of political and social rights; a quest for repressive
measures to curb ethnic and racial crime, and so on. At the same
time, there are considerable differences between these countries
with respect to the content, timing and progress of various forms of
anti-immigrant sentiment.
For example, in Britain, its surface content seems to be domi-
nated by a discourse on race as a biological entity, by conceptions
of unassimilability on the grounds of cultural or national origin as in
Switzerland, France, Belgium and the Federal Republic of Germany,
and on perceptions of social undesirability as in the Netherlands.
However, a more detailed analysis of the ideological content of this
agitation is necessary, and may reveal a more deep-seated arrange-
ment of similar themes and content, even if the specic interrela-
tionship varies from country to country.
Concerning timing, political opposition to certain categories of
migrant began earlier in Britain where serious political consideration
was given (although in secret) to stopping coloured immigration
(but not immigration from, for example, the Republic of Ireland) as
soon as it began in the late 1940s. Controls were eventually intro-
duced in 1962. Politicians justied their decisions on the grounds
that they would improve race relations (e.g. Joshi and Carter 1984;
a variety of
anti-immigrant
sentiments
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MacDonald 1987). The rst political concerns in France were ex-
pressed publicly in the late 1960s, but the debate on immigration
control and, more generally, the politicisation of the migrant pres-
ence, did not begin until the early 1970s (Freeman 1979; Verbunt
1985). In the Netherlands, following the expression of public and
political concern over political terrorism during the mid-1970s by a
small Moluccan group, the introduction of an extensive social policy
programme for minorities was legitimated by an accompanying
decision to seriously curtail further immigration in the early 1980s
(Groenendijk 1988).
There are also differences in the progress of increasing elec-
toral support for right-wing and neo-fascist political parties. Racist
voting recently increased signicantly in the Federal Republic of
Germany and in Belgium, but seems to have declined or stabilised
so far in England and France following its growth in the 1970s and
early 1980s respectively (e.g. Fielding 1981; Ogden 1987). It has re-
emerged in the late 1980s, after apparent dormancy, in Switzerland
and the Netherlands (e.g. Donselaar and Praag 1983). Also marked
is the difference in the penetration of political racism into the formal
political system and, especially signicant is the variety of ways in
which the major established and governing political parties have re-
acted, ranging from rejection to the incorporation of anti-immigrant
themes in their agitation and propaganda.
The generality of the phenomenon suggests common causes and
we believe that, in so far as there are, they are to be found in impor-
tant changes within the capitalist mode of production and in political
strategies to respond to and reverse the economic crises of the early
1970s. But the extent of diversity is equally impressive: the specic
relationship between economic, political and ideological dynamics
clearly varies from one country to another. It follows that arguments
which advance a simple, linear determination in which racism or
other forms of anti-immigrant sentiment are explained as a func-
tional product of a particular economic development such as the eco-
nomic crisis (Castles and Kosack 1973) have, at best, only a limited
utility. Because there is considerable variation in the nature, extent
and pace of the politicisation of the migrant presence, an explana-
tion must also be historically specic if one wishes to grasp both the
complex whole and the nature of the reaction in each country.
This paper constitutes a rst, preliminary step in effecting this
task. We begin to construct a theoretical framework on the founda-
tion of a set of assumptions which are transhistorical, but in order
to offer explanations which take account of historical specicity. The
Marxist tradition, characterised by historical materialism, has been
historical
explanations
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an important source of inspiration for this perspective. For example,
Marx argued concerning production:
However, all epochs of production have certain common traits, com-
mon characteristics. Production in general is an abstraction, but a ra-
tional abstraction in so far as it really brings out and xes the com-
mon element and thus saves us repetition. Still this general category,
this common element sifted out by comparison, is itself segmented
many times over and splits into different determinations. Some de-
terminations belong to all epochs, others only to a few. (Marx 1973:
85)
Thus, a central analytical assumption is that certain relations are
found in all social formations, but they always exist only in specic,
historically constituted forms, and within that specicity lies differ-
entiation and variability which also requires explanation.
More recently, Sayer has sought to retrieve and highlight the his-
torical dimension of Marxs theory in the context of the inuence of
structuralism during the 1960s and 1970s (Sayer 1983, 1987). In the
light of this, we consider it to be necessary to formulate a theoreti-
cal framework which identies the relevant historical dynamics and
processes both generally and in each specic instance. Hence, the
guiding principle is the dialectic between historical generality and
specicity.
Thus, it is only by recognising the generality of certain processes
which characterise the historical development of the capitalist mode
of production (e.g. capital accumulation, nation-state formation and
reproduction, labour shortage, migration etc.) alongside the equally
important search for the historically specic forms that these take
that a full explanation can be found. For example, the expression of
anti-immigrant feeling is a generality, but it takes a particular form
in each country. For instance, the degree to which these expressions
are racialised, i.e. dened in terms of a discourse of race, may
vary. By following this dialectical method, we seek to avoid not only
the rather futile debate about whether there is more racism in one
country compared with another, but also the conclusion that because
there is racism and economic crisis in each country there is little or
nothing more that requires explanation.
For reasons given in the following section, we shall concentrate
our analysis on what we believe to be the all-important, or even deci-
sive, inuence of the state. It is our aim to explain the general char-
acter of these phenomena, and their specic manifestations and de-
velopment. The methodological instrument is comparative analysis
specicity
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and, because our subject is considerably complex, we wish to hold
constant as many potential explanada as possible (compare with
Przeworski and Teunes most similar systems approach, 1970) in
order to maximise the theoretical scope of the analysis. However, it
would be presumptuous to announce that we are the rst to use com-
parative analysis. Elsewhere (Bovenkerk, Miles and Verbunt 1990)
we have reviewed critically the major comparative works on migra-
tion and racism in Europe that focus on the role of the state.
The specic, empirical object of analysis is state responses to mi-
gration, and to the ideological and political reaction to migration, in
three countries in Western Europe since 1945: Britain, France and
the Netherlands. These three countries have been chosen because
they were all prominent participants in the historical emergence of
capitalism in Europe, a process that included the creation of nation-
states as political units and of colonial empires. They all remain
amongst the group of most advanced capitalist societies, sharing
a mode of production which is now characterised by an interdepen-
dence of capital accumulation and rapid technological change, a wel-
fare state and a form of representative government based upon uni-
versal suffrage. These three countries are to be distinguished from
other West European countries, most notably in this context by their
colonial histories which are evident in the contemporary period in
the form of the settlement of colonial migrants (although they share
the experience of other migration movements). In the light of histori-
cal and cultural explanations for racism, which place particular ex-
planatory signicance upon the colonial enterprise and experience,
the relevance of this factor is self-evident.
Furthermore, since 1945, all three countries have witnessed four
analytically distinct (though, logically not mutually exclusive) migra-
tion movements that have been the object of different forms of state
regulation: (1) of owners of wealth, along with managerial and tech-
nical staff of international companies; (2) of (industrial) workers; (3)
of colonial subjects; and (4) of refugees. In all three countries, the
combined numbers of resulting settlers are very small, being around
5 to 7 per cent of the total population.
The signicance of the state
Against the background of (a) changes in production relations and
in the political power structure on a world scale that has led inter alia
to decolonisation and (b) the crisis of accumulation that developed
from the end of the 1960s and that fundamentally restructured both
state responses
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migration and capital ows, our interest lies in analysing the interre-
lationship between two political and ideological processes. These are,
rst, the manner in which processes of migration and consequent
settlement of a signicant proportion of migrants within Western
Europe have been structured by direct and active state intervention.
Second, we examine the extent to which the nature and content of
the political and ideological reaction to migration and settlement has
also been shaped by state involvement.
It should be emphasised that neither the process of migration,
nor theories of migration, are the object of our study here. We focus
on state reactions to migration and, in terms of methodology, the
stimulus to state intervention is considered to be sufciently similar
to be conceived of as constant. This procedure is warranted on the
level of abstraction that we have identied. Thus, although owners
of capital and company management may originate from quite dif-
ferent countries (United States of America, Canada, Japan etc.), they
belong to the same class of migration by virtue of their function in
the spatial restructuring of production relations.
For example, colonial migrants to Britain originate mainly from
the British Caribbean, the Indian sub-continent and East African
countries; those who came to the Netherlands left Indonesia and the
Dutch Caribbean; French colonial immigrants originated from North
Africa and the French Caribbean. Although their migration histo-
ries may differ, all these groups took part in a migration movement
that has been closely linked to the decolonisation process and that
has depended upon special political links with the mother country.
Those who have come as migrant labourers proper have responded
to labour shortages that have been produced by a certain state in
the post-war accumulation process. They may come from Turkey,
Eastern Europe or Italy etc., but they also belong to a same migration
class of workers. Finally, political refugees who have gained access
in small numbers in the three countries under study tend to origi-
nate from the same background. All three countries have migrants
from, for example, Hungary, Vietnam, Chile and Sri Lanka. It should
be clear that these four categories need not be mutually exclusive
(for instance, both Britain and France have imported migrant labour
from their colonies) but they can be analytically separated in so far as
they constitute distinct categories to which the state has reacted in all
three instances.
We use the concept of state to refer to an institutional complex
which comprises minimally government, bureaucratic administra-
tion, judiciary, police and military forces. These collectively claim and
use power to structure a particular ensemble of economic, social and
state intervention
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political relations within a specied spatial unit and to mediate the
impact of exterior forces upon that unit. Historically, within capitalist
societies, the state bureaucracy has expanded to include additional
apparatuses concerned with the provision of education and medi-
cal care, with the redistribution of material resources in the form of
welfare and unemployment cash payments, and with the provision
of a collective material infrastructure for commodity production and
exchange.
This denition could be understood as representing the state as a
monolithic unity. In fact, state activity and intervention consist of a
specic action or a complex of actions on the part of a person or per-
sons within one or more of these institutions. The possibility of con-
testation both within and between different institutions is assumed
rather than a purposive, consistent strategy followed by a complex
but cohesive unit. Furthermore, if the state is conceived as, in part, a
reection of the contradictions within the social formation, it follows
that state activity can be the outcome of internal struggle and com-
promise.
If we take the function of the state to be to guarantee and safe-
guard the reproduction of the dominant mode of production, then
this role entails the organisation of not only economic but also po-
litical and ideological practices, and the regulation of structural and
conjunctural contradictions. Moreover, economic relations can never
be divorced absolutely from political and ideological relations. For
example, the operation of the market has certain political conditions
of existence: in so far as the functioning of the market is dependent
upon exchange regulated by contracts enforceable by law, and in so
far as resistance must be suppressed, then the state (as a political
institution) is an essential relation of production, a condition of exis-
tence of the market (Corrigan et al. 1980; Rueschemeyer and Evans
1985). Thus, within the capitalist mode of production, the role of the
state should not be conceived in a narrow economistic manner but
also in terms of the reproduction of certain essential political and
ideological conditions and relations.
There is an empirical and a theoretical reason for our emphasis
on state intervention. The development of capitalism is paralleled
historically by an expansion in the size and complexity of the state
apparatus, and by an increase in its power to regulate the range and
scope of actions of individuals and classes. A large part of our empiri-
cal motivation to study state intervention is our contention that its
inuence on the social, economic and political position of migrants
is far greater than has been recognised by scholars who have studied
the migration process so far. The same holds true for the develop-
state power
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ment of anti-immigrant ideologies and related practices: rather than
studying the extent of prejudice among (segments of) the indige-
nous populations or measuring the incidence of discriminatory prac-
tices, we seek to show that the way in which the state regulates migra-
tion processes, and consequent political and ideological processes, is
in the end decisive.
Part of the explanation for this belated recognition may be the
fact that much research on migration and prejudice has been fund-
ed by state institutions themselves. Governments that have socially
constructed problems of ethnic minority formation or racial intol-
erance and that spend money on scientic research to document
such phenomena, can hardly be expected to invite scholars to analyse
their own preconceptions. This may be more true in some countries
(the Netherlands, Sweden, Federal Republic of Germany) than oth-
ers (France, Britain). This shows that the organisation of scientic
research on these matters is an integral part of state activity and it
should therefore be part of our comparative research project.
Additionally, the welfare state constitutes the apex of state power
thus far within Western-type democracies. This has given rise to re-
newed theoretical interest in the role and activities of the state on the
part of Marxist and Weberian scholars (e.g. Anderson 1979; Evans
et al. 1985) and has led to heated political discussion between social
democrats, socialists and neoconservatives about the nature and rel-
evance of state intervention (e.g. Keane 1984, 1988: 1-30).
The escalation of intervention to regulate international migra-
tion (Plender 1988: 61-93) provides an excellent illustration of in-
creasing state power. Immigration controls are, in historical terms,
a very recent phenomenon. Broadly speaking, the era of politically
unrestricted migration and entry in Western Europe ends only at the
beginning of the twentieth century. For example, although signi-
cant state controls were rst introduced in Britain in an Aliens Act of
1793 in an attempt to restrict the entry of refugees from the French
Revolution, the provisions in the Act were weakened by legislation in
1824 and 1826. Consequently, the nineteenth century is now gener-
ally regarded as lacking effective state controls over migration, and
restrictive state controls begin with the Aliens Act of 1905 (Plender
1972: 39-50; MacDonald 1987: 7).
Concerning the Netherlands, foreigners were freely admitted
until the rst half of the nineteenth century and a law of 1798 ex-
plicitly granted a number of freedoms. The rst Aliens Act was en-
acted in 1849. However, as it was rarely used in practice, it was not
until two bills were passed in 1918 and 1920 that an effective sys-
tem of immigration control was established. It should be noted that
immigration
controls
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this legislation was not so much motivated by worries about unre-
stricted immigration as it was by concern about the revolutionary
events throughout Europe in 1848 and the failure of revolutionary
movements in Germany and the Netherlands in 1918 (Swart 1978;
Lucassen and Penninx 1985).
The rst measures in France date from 1893 (Withol de Wenden
1988: 24-28). They were intended to register the number of foreign-
ers resident in France, and their places of work and residence, in
order to provide protection for native French workers. Controls over
entry into France were institutionalised in 1906. It should be noted
that, during this period, private companies, especially those involved
in mining and metal production, determined and organised immi-
gration rather than the government. Direct state intervention began
in 1914, and thereafter immigration was promoted in order to com-
pensate for the loss of the male work force in the First World War.
These brief remarks on the history of immigration controls pro-
vide a preliminary illustration of the reasons why we have chosen to
place so much emphasis upon state intervention. Given that, since
the seventeenth century, the world has been increasingly divided spa-
tially into nation-states where, since the nineteenth century, these
separate populations have been constructed legally and ideologically
by the legal categories of nationality and citizenship (Plender 1988:
4-6, 9), states constitute the institutions which regulate international
spatial movements of people. Citizens of other nation-states are pre-
vented, permitted or encouraged to cross national boundaries as a
result of decisions by governments exercising political sovereignty
within specied territories. Moreover, it is within the jurisdiction of
the states that conditions of continued residence (or return) of those
who are not citizens are determined.
All this highlights the gatekeeper role of the state. This role has
become increasingly signicant as capitalist expansion has taken as
one of its forms the export of industrial capital which has, in turn,
intensied the longer-term development of an international labour
market. This has been facilitated by technical development, which
has helped to create the possibility of fast and efcient long-distance
transport, and by the increasing awareness of enormous differences
in wealth and compliance with human rights which has motivated
people to seek refuge in other lands and continents. Both processes
have been overdetermined by the development of worldwide com-
munication systems.
Second, the economic and social circumstances of the population
living within the boundary of the nation are no less determined by
state decisions. Education, housing, welfare and other aspects of re-
the gatekeeper role
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production have become, to varying degrees, state responsibilities,
and the government has become one of the largest single employers.
Here we refer to the welfare or collective consumption role of the state.
Just as people are divided into citizens, noncitizens and other legal
categories by decisions of the state functioning as gatekeeper, the col-
lective consumption function also implies the distribution of scarce
resources and services, which can also only be effected by establish-
ing criteria of eligibility. These criteria may or may not include some
or all of the population of immigrant origin. In this respect, a critical
issue arises in circumstances where migrants settle in one nation-
state, but retain a legal status as a national or citizen of another.
Because migrants are legally aliens in their country of residence, their
access to rights and resources is usually restricted in comparison to
those allocated to nationals.
A third role of the state apparatus is to maintain social order and
sustain a democratic legitimation. This constitutes the law and order
role of the state. The exercise of this function impinges upon popula-
tions of migrant origin in different ways. When immigration is fol-
lowed by resistance and conict, either by sections of the indigenous
population opposing the migrant presence or by migrants resisting
racism and discrimination, state intervention will be required to reg-
ulate the ensuing disorder. The nature of this regulation may have
enormous consequences for the quality of life of the immigrants (for
example, Commission for Racial Equality 1986). To take another
striking example of the importance of state intervention, the state
has considerable powers to signify certain activities as illegal or to
persecute specic criminal offences, that is to criminalise designated
activities and groups, in the process of maintaining social order. If
such groups happen to be of migrant origin (and they often are),
criminalisation may have far-reaching effects on the wider social rep-
resentation of that group at large (Hall et al. 1978; CCCS 1982).
A theoretical background
Against this background, we proceed to sketch a transhistorical
theoretical framework which will lead us to a preliminary agenda
of comparative research. The general processes will be deducted on
the basis of political economy theory and a related conception of the
nation-state.
The reproduction of all forms of social organisation depends
upon, rst, production of the means of human existence and, sec-
ond, the maintenance of mechanisms to regulate (relative and ab-
the collective
consumption role
the law and order
role
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solute) scarcity in relation to socially dened human needs, that is,
processes of distribution. Relations of production and distribution are
therefore essential relations in all modes of production and in all
social formations. Whilst we acknowledge that (because there can be
no distribution without prior production) production is the superor-
dinate element, the point of departure as Marx (1973: 89, also 94)
put it, and that production predominates not only over itself ... but
over the other moments as well (Marx 1973: 99), our problematic
here leads us to focus upon the regulation of scarcity and therefore
upon processes of distribution by which scarce goods are allocated.
This follows from our focus not on the determinants of migration
per se, but on state responses to migration, a process that we conceive
broadly to encompass various dimensions of inclusion and exclusion
relating to the mobility of human beings across national boundaries
and their temporary or permanent settlement within nation-states
other than that of their birth.
The regulation of scarcity implies decisions about who are to re-
ceive or share and who are not. This is expressed in the twin concepts
of inclusion and exclusion. Hence, effective regulation requires the
creation of a hierarchy by which people are organised into distinct
collectivities in order to effect the uneven distribution of scarce re-
sources. This requires the interrelated processes of signication and
categorisation, whereby certain characteristics are chosen to effect and
legitimate a process of differentiation. These characteristics are then
utilised to typify individuals and sort them in groups (Miles 1989).
This process of allocation includes people in so far as they are placed
in privileged positions and in so far as they receive scarce resources;
and it excludes them in so far as they are placed in a disadvantaged
position and as they are denied resources.
The regulation of scarcity is an economic issue in so far as hu-
man material needs must be met in order to guarantee social re-
production. But it is not only an economic process. It is a political
question in so far as human choices are made as to whom and to
what available resources are to be allocated. And it is an ideological
question in so far as cultural and biological characteristics (real and
imagined), in combination with economic position, are signied and
reied as criteria of differentiation in the process of the allocation of
resources. Hence, when analysing the capitalist mode of production
(or any other), we do not conceive of scarcity exclusively in terms of
the distribution of forces of production or concrete commodities: it
is a condition that is also evidenced, for example, in the processes by
which individuals are distributed to different economic positions, in
relation to the acquisition of juridical status and citizenship, and in
inclusion and
exclusion
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the determination of eligibility for access to state-allocated resources.
The concepts of inclusion and exclusion are central to under-
standing the processes of class formation and reproduction. For ex-
ample, within the capitalist mode of production, a large proportion of
the population are excluded from access to the means of production.
Historically, these have been made scarce by the social processes of
dispossession and the concentration of ownership in few hands (that
is, by historically concrete acts of exclusion). While, abstractly, this is
understood to result in the formation of two classes (the bourgeoisie
and the proletariat), in reality this dichotomy is better understood
as a more complex hierarchy. Thus, there are important gradations
within the ranks of those who own and control the means of produc-
tion (e.g. big capital and small capital, nance and manufactur-
ing capital), while those who have only their labour power to sell are
able to do so with different (socially produced) abilities and skills
(e.g. manual as compared with non-manual labour, the possession of
trade skills as compared with no formal skills, etc.). There are, in ad-
dition, those who are excluded from access to wage labour, and those
who utilise their own labour power to exploit the means of produc-
tion on a small scale (i.e. the petite bourgeoisie).
The processes of class formation and reproduction have two main
dimensions which are analytically distinct (although in reality closely
interrelated), the formation and reproduction of the positions in the
structure and the distribution of people to occupy those positions.
The distinction is embodied in Marxs claim that:
The individual comes into the world possessing neither capital nor
land. Social distribution assigns him at birth to wage labour. But this
situation of being assigned is itself a consequence of the existence
of capital and land property as independent agents of production.
(1973: 96)
The positions in the structure are established by the mode of produc-
tion (although the mode of production is not a natural given but the
result of previous class struggles). The process of social distribution
is characterised by inclusionary and exclusionary dimensions.
For example, with respect to the hierarchy of positions within the
proletariat, the outcome of the distribution process depends not only
upon which positions are available in what quantity (e.g. determined
by the circumstances of the labour market) but also upon individu-
al capacities such as physical strength, linguistic skills and the way
in which individuals have been prepared for these positions by, for
example, the institutions of the family and the educational system.
class formation
and reproduction
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There are, in other words, many dimensions of human differentia-
tion (both real and imagined) which serve as pre-selectors or criteria
of pre-emption, or which mediate between human potentials and ac-
cess to positions and resources.
The complex processes of class formation and reproduction with-
in the capitalist mode of production are based on these processes
of inclusion and exclusion. And while they do not encompass the
totality of inclusionary and exclusionary processes, they do constitute
the foundation upon which all others rest. This is because social life
is only possible if human material needs are met, and this requires
some process of production (of food, shelter etc.): the social relations
which are organised in the process of establishing and reproducing a
system of production are therefore prior to and so constitutive of (but
do not necessarily determine) all other social relations. Furthermore,
the additional dimensions and consequences of inclusion and exclu-
sion cannot be detached absolutely from the collectivities of class be-
cause those who are their object are not thereby displaced from the
occupation of any position relative to the means of production.
Nevertheless, there are other dimensions of human differentia-
tion that have been signied in the allocation of people to structural
positions relative to production in the context of scarcity. Sexual dif-
ference is one and a gendered division of labour (understood in rela-
tion to waged labour but also in relation to unpaid domestic labour) is
one of its results. Phenotypical characteristics (often signied by the
idea of race which is a central element in discourse within Europe,
North America, Australia and South Africa) are also widely signied
to both exclude certain groups of people from access to wage labour
positions when these have been scarce, and to include other groups
of people when recruiting in situations of labour shortage. This ra-
cialisation of the process of class formation gives rise to a racialised
labour market (Miles 1989). Other aspects of human differentiation
include age, physical capacity, subculture or way of life, religion, and
language, all of which are associated with segregation on the labour
market. Some of these properties are valued positively, others nega-
tively.
What is true for the labour market holds for access to all other
scarce resources, including those of a political and ideological charac-
ter (e.g. citizenship, access to the media, protection against physical
attack, the issue of residence permits). The allocation or distribution
process comprises the totality of human decisions on access to scarce
resources that are based on varying combinations of evaluated prop-
erties within a given social context. Within these combinations, in
which not all dimensions of evaluation need to be present, some of
dimensions
of human
differentiation
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them override others. A particular distribution process can be char-
acterised by the hierarchy of properties that have been weighted.
Class formation (in association with processes of gendering, ra-
cialisation and other forms of differentiation and exclusion) within
the capitalist mode of production has occurred historically within
distinctive spatial and political units that are called nation-states.
Within these, certain cultural characteristics (e.g. a specic language,
legal system, religion) have been constructed and signied by the
dominant class as universal attributes of the nation. This ideologi-
cal process implies the establishment of criteria which serve as a fur-
ther measure of inclusion and exclusion, that is, as a measure of
belonging to the nation.
From the late eighteenth century, these cultural characteristics
have been interpreted as given and natural. Moreover, certain bio-
logical characteristics have been typied as indicators of the exis-
tence of the nation. Both serve to constitute an imagined community
(Anderson 1983), whereby a specic collection of people that nor-
mally would not know each other personally nevertheless believe that
they share a common identity, and therefore a common heritage and
future. Hence, members of all social classes, including the proletari-
at, within a territorial boundary tend to consider themselves as shar-
ing something essential with each other. This sense of identication
has been reinforced by the foundation of forms of political represen-
tation, the creation of citizenship and a complex of state institutions,
such as schools, that educate all those dened as belonging to the
nation. We refer to this as a process of nationalisation in the sense
explicated by Nairn (1988: 281).
The creation of national identity around specic characteristics
serves not only as an inclusionary process within the nation-state.
It denes by implication Others inside and outside the nation-state.
Thus, the boundaries of the nation-state have been marked not only
by the specic form given to state institutions, but also by the signi-
cation by the dominant class of cultural symbols which exclude those
with a different cultural prole. It follows that competition between
each national bourgeoisie was not only economic but also cultural in
form for each believed that it was the agent of a distinct and supe-
rior civilisation. The formation of nation-states is therefore the con-
sequence of a combination of ideological signication and struggles
by culturally specic dominant classes to gain and retain access to
scarce resources within a dened space by representing certain char-
acteristics as signifying a collective interest.
It follows that the nation-state has a political and ideological real-
ity which is dependent upon an international process of inclusion
nationalisation
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and exclusion. As a result, nationality generally has become a highly
signicant juridical status and each specic instance has a peculiar
quality of scarcity. In a world divided into nation-states, nationality
has become a juridical status that most people acquire at birth and
that is based on descent (jus sanguinis) and that is linked to residence
in that nation-state. Moreover, it is a juridical status which, in as-
sociation with the notion of citizenship, usually carries with it rights
to specic forms of economic and political participation within the
nation-state.
Its signicance, and its scarcity, only become apparent when peo-
ple cross the boundary of the nation-state and take up residence in
another. Such mobility is not automatically followed by the acquisi-
tion of a new juridical status. Access to this status is state-regulated
(qua gatekeeper) which imposes certain conditions which, in turn,
ensure that the quality of scarcity is retained.
A preliminary research agenda
So far we have identied four categories of migrants that are present
in the three countries studied and we have distinguished three forms
of state regulation that impinge upon the management of migration
ows. Further, we have argued that mechanisms of inclusion and ex-
clusion should be the central focus in seeking a comparative under-
standing of state responses to both migration and the political and
ideological responses to migration. We are not only or not primarily
concerned with actual policy measures and practices, but rather with
the ideological constructions that lie behind, or are embedded in,
these policies and practices. Our comparative research effort would
concentrate on identifying the real or assumed properties of catego-
ries of people that are subject to inclusion and exclusion.
Through deductive reasoning, we have left the space to study his-
torical specicity. In seeking to study exclusionary and inclusionary
processes in three different nation-states, we therefore do not as-
sume a priori that this is effected by the signication of one factor
(for example, skin colour) in all three cases. In other words, it may
not be racism per se that is the main mechanism to keep people out
of, or in an inferior position within, the nation-state. For example,
in Britain much of the ofcial and public discourse dealing with and
responding to post-1945 migration has been dominated by the no-
tions of race and colour. But French discourse on the same matter
seems much less concerned with race as such, and tends to refer to
culture and religion. The discourse in the Netherlands is about eth-
deductive reasoning
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nic minorities and reects concerns about social undesirability and
therefore we wish to investigate empirically the value of the concept
of minorisation (Rath 1988). The degree of exclusion and the mecha-
nisms by which exclusion is effected may not differ a great deal from
one country to another, but the discourse does. This reects sepa-
rate national traditions and sensitivities and this needs to be clearly
grasped conceptually and analytically.
Concerning the access of migrants to the three countries, a rst
question would be: on what conditions have the four categories been
admitted by the state? But it is equally important to ascertain who has
been denied access. Thereafter, one should investigate the grounds
upon which people have been accepted or refused entry? This re-
quires a detailed study of government sources (both public and pri-
vate) in order to analyse the ideological content and discourse em-
ployed in effecting and legitimating differential migration controls.
This research is now in progress within our research group.
As for the management of the migrants presence, a rst priority
would be to study the meaning and the history of the various words
that have been employed to identify these people, following their
permanent settlement in the three countries. A general term for
larger categories of migrants is omnipresent in Europe. Instead of
differentiating by referring to Pakistani British, Dutch Surinamers
or French people of Algerian origin, there is always a generic term:
travailleurs immigrs, ethnic minorities, foreign workers, (coloured)
immigrants etc. Explaining the origin and meaning of these different
terms constitutes a signicant task within our problematic.
Furthermore, it seems strategic to select a single dimension of
legal status which may be considered as an act of inclusion within
the nation-state. Hence, that issue would be closely connected to
conceptions of citizenship and national belonging. For example, two
case studies would be particularly appropriate, one on the debate on
citizenship and the other on the debate of voting rights for foreign
citizens. Again, the specic measures themselves would be of less
interest to us (and not only because they have been listed already,
see Brubaker 1989 and Layton-Henry 1989), because we are more
interested in the ideological construction of the pluriform reality that
is hidden in the discourse.
A further central dimension of the states role in managing the
presence of migrants concerns its reaction to their own political ac-
tivity. Specically, it would be strategic to study forms of political
action around issues that are signied as potentially challenging or
subverting the unity implied of the nation-state as an imagined com-
munity. For example, within all three countries, there is now a sig-
research questions
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nicant Muslim presence as a result of post-1945 migration ows,
and their faith is considered to be alien to European nation-states
wherein the Christian religion continues to be signied as a central
dimension of the ofcial national identity. All Muslims demand spe-
cic rights (to open mosques, ritual slaughter, segregation in schools
etc.) and meet resistance. We might then compare the ways in which
the state of our three countries has dealt with Muslim demands.
The migrant presence has also become the object of hostile politi-
cal activity from within the indigenous population. Certain forms
of such action constitute a challenge to law and order, to which the
state must necessarily respond. For example, in all three countries
extreme right-wing and neofascist parties have organised racist cam-
paigns against the migrant presence and have sought to gain elec-
toral support for a range of racist demands, including repatriation.
We might therefore ask how the state has responded to these exclu-
sionary political actions in each of the three countries? Second, and
not unrelated to the rst instance, certain migrant populations have
become the object of violence, which might be considered to be one
of the ultimate acts of exclusion. Again, we might consider to what
extent the state has formally acknowledged such exclusionary acts
by dening it as a law and order problem, along with the measures
taken to prevent such violence.
Conclusion
Within each of the Western European nation-states, it has been pub-
licly recognised to varying degrees that the post-1945 experience of
migration has been paralleled by the expression of hostility and re-
sistance which has commonly taken a racist form. Furthermore, so-
cial scientists of various disciplinary backgrounds have recognised
the importance and value of a comparative analysis of these migra-
tions and their political and ideological consequences, and there is
now an escalating literature devoted to such research. Elsewhere, we
have critically evaluated an important part of this body of literature,
concluding that the comparative method employed in most cases
has been signicantly awed (Bovenkerk, Miles and Verbunt 1990).
Adequate comparative analysis presumes a conceptual framework
which is formulated at a level of generality which encompasses the
historical specicity of, and variation between, particular instances,
yet which permits a general explanation which is sensitive to that
specicity and variation. The general theoretical approach outlined
above, and the illustrative research agenda, are offered in the light of
this critique and objective.
exclusionary acts
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This paper is the momentary outcome of a discussion that has continued for
a period of more than three years and that has involved the present authors,
a group of young researchers and established scholars in three countries. Its
aim is to formulate a design for an ambitious comparative research project
based on insights grounded in political economy theory. Whilst bearing sole
responsibility for the content of this paper, the authors wish to acknowledge
the assistance of Paula Cleary, Moustapha Diop, Han Entzinger, Marjan
van Hunnik, Francien Keers, Jan Rath, Marel Rietman, John Schuster and
Jeanne Singer-Kerel who have at various stages participated in a series of
seminars in Utrecht and Paris at which the arguments set out here were
discussed.
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Migration, racism and postmodern capitalism
1
Robert Miles and Victor Satzewich
This article was part of an ongoing debate on the nature of racism. The soci-
ologists Robert Miles and Vic Satzewich positioned themselves against the
more vulgar Marxist, functionalist explanations of racism. According to their
explanations, racism is not an independent phenomenon, but the product of
the divide-and-rule policy of the bourgeoisie and its agent the state. Miles
and Satzewich argued, however, that racism did not originate as a conspiracy
by capitalists. The ruling class gained no benet from conicts within the
working class. Neither the capitalists nor the state had an interest in stir-
ring up working-class racism. According to Miles and Satzewich, the work-
ing class was fragmented long before there was any immigration. They also
opposed the assumption that the development of racism had been linear, as
racism is a far from homogeneous phenomenon.
Introduction
In these new times, it has become de riguer to undertake a re-ex-
amination of the theories that Marxists have been using to analyse
contemporary capitalism, its laws of motion and its future develop-
ment. Certainly, there has been a major reorganization of the capital-
ist accumulation process over the past decade or more and that this
has had signicant implications for, inter alia, international migra-
tion ows. The general assumption is that, with the ending of the
expansionary boom in the early 1970s, the era of large-scale labour
migration from the periphery to the centre of the world economic
system also terminated (e.g. Salt 1987: 241). If this assumption were
to be correct, it might be concluded that there is no longer any object
for a theory of the interplay between capitalism and migration.
But is the assumption correct? There are commonsense and anec-
dotal reasons to question not only the assumption that labour migra-
capitalism and
migration
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robert miles and victor satzewich
tion has ceased but also the assumption that the only migration ows
that occur are composed of persons seeking to sell their labour power
for a wage. For example, during the 1980s, the British government
has had to respond to the attempt on the part of refugees from Sri
Lanka to seek asylum in Britain and with a continuing movement of
refugees from Vietnam to Hong Kong, one of Britains last remain-
ing colonies. And political events in China in 1989 raised again the
question of why it is that UK passport holders in Hong Kong do not
have the right to migrate and settle in Britain.
To take another recent example, during the 1980s, there have
been large-scale movements of population from East Germany,
Poland and the Soviet Union into West Germany, movements sup-
ported and encouraged by the West German state which simultane-
ously sought to deny entry to political refugees from Sri Lanka on the
grounds that the boat is already too full. This evidence points not
only to the continuing reality of international migration ows as an
empirical phenomenon but also to a qualitative theoretical problem.
Because these refugee migrations do not have their origin, at least
not in any direct form, in the capital accumulation process, then they
cannot be conceptualized within theories of migration which priori-
tize that process as the determinant force.
There is also academic evidence to consider. The postmodern
world capitalist system is characterized by the domination of multi-
national companies and a new international division of labour. And,
as theorists of the latter have emphasized (e.g. Frbel et al. 1980),
mass commodity production has not ceased, but rather has to a sig-
nicant degree been relocated in Export Processing Zones in the pe-
ripheries of the world economic system. And, as Sassen (1988) has
shown, this process of capital export has stimulated a new phase of
migration and proletarianization within those peripheries as well as
to the United States.
This leads us to suggest that the European experience of the
nineteenth century has not so much been overtaken by a new ep-
och but is being extended to spatial locations which previously es-
caped the interplay of migration and proletarianization (cf. Warren
1980). Indeed, the partial transfer of mass commodity production to
these new spatial locations is a crucial precondition for the processes
that the postmodernists constantly refer to. For example, new infor-
mation technologies and the computer age could not exist without
the nimble ngers of migrant and recently proletarianized Third
World women assembling micro-processors (Lim 1978, Safa 1981).
The brave new world of Western Europe is therefore dependent
upon the continuation elsewhere of the separation of the direct pro-
transfer of mass
commodity
production
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ducer from the means of production and their spatial mobility to nd
a capitalist wishing to purchase and exploit labour power for a wage.
There is also a hidden side to these processes. Discussion of the
export of capital often takes on a reied character if it focuses only
upon the movement of sums of money. As Marx constantly reiter-
ated, the concept of capital refers not so much to a thing but to a so-
cial relation (e.g. 1976: 932) between two classes which is mediated
by things. Consequently, the export of capital involves not only the
movement of money but also the agents of capital, understood to re-
fer to both those who own and control capital directly and those who
manage in various ways the use of capital. There has been an undue
silence about the migration of such people within Marxist and non-
Marxist theories of migration, a silence which becomes even more
inappropriate in the context of the increasing mobility of capital with-
in the world capitalist system.
Hence, the intention of this paper is to offer some critical reec-
tions on the development of a Marxist theory of migration. However,
our objective is not to formulate a new postmodern theory of mi-
gration. Rather, we argue that the apparent difculties facing po-
litical economy explanations of migration when interpreting recent
evidence of migration ows arise largely from their inadequacies in
explaining migration in pre-postmodern capitalism.
Marxism and migration theory
The Marxist tradition has made a signicant contribution to the de-
bate about the interrelationship between the development of capi-
talism and migration ows, both within and between nation states,
and has provided a foundation for the development of an alternative
approach to the dominant position of the sociology of race/ethnic re-
lations in Britain (Miles 1982). Central to work within this tradition
has been the contribution of Stephen Castles and his various collabo-
rators. Castles and Kosacks Immigrant Workers and Class Structure
in Western Europe (1973) is widely regarded as the classic statement
of the Marxist analysis of the interrelationship between migration
and capitalism (see also History Task Force 1979). Similarly, while
part of the more recent work of Castles, especially Here for Good:
Western Europes New Ethnic Minorities (1984), arguably departs from
the Marxist approach, this book has already taken its place as an im-
portant work within the tradition of political economy.
Indeed, there is much that is of continuing value in this work, as
we reiterate below. It rejects those theoretical traditions which anal-
Marxist theory
of migration
Castles and Kosack
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yse migration in terms of individual decision making in the context
of a variety of discrete push and pull factors (Jackson 1986: 13-16)
in favour of an examination of the signicance and dynamics of mi-
gration in the material and structural processes of capital accumula-
tion and uneven development. This analysis has therefore become
an important corrective to orthodox studies of migration which focus
primarily upon individuals who migrate and their problems of ad-
aptation, assimilation and integration (Bolaria 1984: 219).
Nevertheless, aspects of the work of Castles and Kosack have been
criticized, although many of these writers remain sympathetic to its
broader underlying assumptions. For example, Lever-Tracy (1983)
and Miles (1986) have questioned their use of the concept of reserve
army of labour to describe the structural position of foreign-born
workers within Western Europe; Burawoy (1976) has queried their
assumption that migrant labour is cheap labour and their instru-
mentalist view of the state; Bhning (1984) has criticized their ten-
dency to over-generalize and blur important differences in patterns
of migration both within and between nation states; and Miles (1982,
1986) and Phizacklea and Miles (1980: 11-12) have questioned their
functionalist analysis of the relationship between racism and migra-
tion and their conception of the impact of migration on the class
structure of Western Europe since 1945 and 1973. In this paper, we
draw upon and extend certain of these themes.
In order to do so, we summarize briey the main arguments of
Castles and his collaborators. The initial stimulus to migration into
post-1945 Western Europe is located in the interrelated processes of
capital accumulation and uneven development which create reserve
armies of labour within the periphery of the world system. Pressure
to emigrate is regarded as an expression of inequality among nation
states and between the centre and the periphery of the world capital-
ist system. The tendency to import labour is regarded as a cyclical
expression of the uneven expansion of capital accumulation among
economic sectors, among nation states and within the world econo-
my (e.g. Petras 1980).
During the early post-war years, the process of capital accumula-
tion resulted in an increase in the demand for unskilled and semi-
skilled labour. Unskilled and semi-skilled positions were vacated by
the indigenous male working class, a proportion of whom found
better paying work in more skilled sectors of production. Western
European capital responded to this trend by mobilizing internal
reserves of labour. These included, amongst others, women who
had previously worked solely within the domestic unit and the la-
tent reserves of rural agricultural commodity producers. In most
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cases, however, these internal reserves were exhausted during the
early 1950s or soon after, and were insufcient to ll all of the emer-
gent vacancies (Castles et al. 1984: 25; see also Castles 1985: 519).
The respective states, and employers within various social forma-
tions, responded to the continued demand for unskilled labour, in
some cases by implementing new labour saving technologies and
in others through the recruitment of foreign-born labour (see also
Kindelberger 1967; Sassen-Koob 1978).
Two main sources of labour were identied: the colonial and exco-
lonial formations in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, and the spatially
proximate social formations of the Mediterranean periphery. They
suggest that those who migrated to Western Europe were primarily
young single males and females who were displaced by the penetra-
tion of capitalist relations of production in agricultural sectors of pe-
ripheral formations. As such, the majority of post-war migration to
Western Europe was made up, according to Castles et al. (1984: 25)
of a movement of a latent reserve army of labour which was spatially
located in the periphery of the world capitalist system.
During the initial phase of mass labour migration, which lasted
from around 1950 to 1973, the state is accorded a peripheral, instru-
mental role in the process of migration. State intervention, in the
form of the formulation, articulation and administration of an im-
migration policy was only developed several years after the migra-
tory process began: Government immigration policies have come
after the event, to control and direct existing movements rather than
to determine them from the outset (Castles and Kosack 1973: 26; see
also Castles et al. 1984: 6). Thus, before 1973, migration is dened
as a relatively spontaneous reaction to labour demand (Castles et al.
1984: 2; Castles and Kosack 1973: 25). But the minimal nature of
state intervention which did occur was structured solely by the inter-
ests of employers. According to Castles, When recruitment started
in the late 1950s state migration policies were concerned only with
short-term fulllment of capitals labour requirements (1985: 522).
The years 1973/74 were a turning point in the history of labour
migration to post-war Western Europe. Each Western European
state, with the exception of Britain where legislation had been passed
in 1962, placed restrictions on the entry of migrants who were seek-
ing work. According to Castles et al (1984: 28-9), this decision was
the outcome of a number of conjunctural economic, political and
ideological factors. The immediate economic reason for the partial
ban on primary labour migration was the oil crisis and the accom-
panying economic recession.
However, they suggest (1984: 29; cf. Cohen 1987: 140-3) that the
labour migration
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restrictions were also motivated by political and ideological consider-
ations. The repeated renewal of labour contracts and the accompany-
ing process of family reunication, without corresponding increases
in state expenditure on services in demand by foreign-born workers
and their families, meant increasing immigrant competition for
education, housing, health and social services with the indigenous
population. The competition for scarce resources resulted in increas-
ing conicts between the foreign-born and indigenous populations,
and constituted a threat to the social order of the labour importing
nation states. Furthermore, foreign workers were becoming increas-
ingly militant both politically and on the shop-oor. Their presence
became dened as a threat to the long term stability of the social or-
der, and limits were placed on the scope for their use as a docile and
manipulable labour force (Castles et al. 1984: 30).
The restrictions imposed on migration, then, signalled the emer-
gence of a set of qualitatively new political priorities and concerns on
the part of the respective states. Whereas prior to 1973, the state and
capital both dened foreign-born labour in strictly economic terms,
its value lying in its relative cheapness and in its contribution to
industrial production, after 1973 political and ideological consid-
erations about the future stability of the nation state pushed these
strictly economic factors into the background (Castles et al 1984: 29-
32). The central assertion therefore is that state intervention and the
expression of political and ideological concern were evident only af-
ter the migration was underway.
In the remainder of the paper, we shall argue that this theoreti-
cal approach, because of its economism, has been blind to the sig-
nicance of the political and ideological determinants of migration
ows and of the signicance of the migration of not only skilled non-
manual labour but also of the owners of capital and their agents.
Moreover, it ignores the considerable evidence of the states concern
about the political and ideological implications of migration long
before the economic crisis of 1973/74. It is ironic that this error in
Castles work mirrors a feature of a great deal of non-Marxist writ-
ing on the history of migration to Britain in so far as it asserts that
the period before 1962 was an age of innocence, a period of lais-
sez-faire, wherein the state played no role in relation to migration
ows (Deakin 1970: 47; Carter, Harris and Joshi 1987: 335; Miles and
Solomos 1987: 88-9).
Consequently, when viewed from the perspective of the late 1980s,
what has changed in the period since the late 1940s has been relative
rather than absolute in character. That is to say, there is nothing new
about refugee migrations or about the migration of the bourgeoisie
political and
ideological
determinants
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and skilled non-manual labour into European social formations but
rather that these migrations have become relatively more signicant
than in the past. Moreover, there is nothing new about state interven-
tion to control migration ows, only a change in the visibility and/or
extent of the states intervention.
Post-1945 migration ows
During the 1980s, political and public attention has increasingly fo-
cused on refugee migrations (for example, the ight of people from
Vietnam, Chile, Iran and Sri Lanka) into Western Europe, and in-
creasing academic attention is being devoted to such migrations
(e.g. Kay 1987). The state in most Western European countries have
been anxious to, at the very least, reduce these migration ows, usu-
ally claiming that many of the refugees are bogus because their mi-
gration has been motivated by the desire to nd paid employment
(i.e. that they are economic migrants rather than political refugees)
(Cleary 1989). When interpreted in the light of Castles theoretical
analysis of post-1945 migration, these migrations seem to constitute
novel events which cannot be explained easily within the tradition
of the political economy of migration because such theories reduce
migration (Zolberg 1983a: 4):
to a unidimensional process of uneven economic exchange between
states of origin and destination. As such, all appears to have been
said when migration has been identied as another variety of exploi-
tation, a process into which every policy variation is made to t.
But as a more comprehensive overview of both pre- and post-1945
European migration history reveals (e.g. Zolberg 1983b; Marrus
1985), there is little novelty, certainly not in any absolute sense, in
recent refugee migrations. While there are signicant problems in
dening refugees and refugee migrations (e.g. Zolberg 1983a: 19-22;
1983b 25-7), there is no doubt that they constitute a large proportion
of international migration in the twentieth century (Beijer 1969).
For example, and considering the British case, refugee migrations
have been of considerable numerical and political signicance over
the past one hundred years, the most prominent being those of Jews
from Eastern Europe and, later, from Germany (Miles and Solomos
1987; Holmes 1988). Since 1945, although the 1962 Commonwealth
Immigrants Act and the 1965 White Paper on Commonwealth
Immigration effectively brought to an end what was largely an ec-
refugee migrations
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onomically induced migration from the Caribbean and the Indian
subcontinent, this legislation did not prohibit migration ows per
se. The most notable, subsequent migrations were those from East
Africa in the late 1960s and again in the early 1970s (Bachu 1985),
migrations of people who held UK passports but whose right to enter
Britain was withdrawn in 1968 in response to the migration from
Kenya which began to increase in the second half of 1967.
The origin of these migrations lay in colonial history and in post-
independence political developments in Kenya and Uganda, devel-
opments which led to a large proportion of the population of South
Asian origin in both of these countries concluding that they faced an
uncertain economic and political future in East Africa in the context
of policies of Africanization. In the case of Uganda, there was a for-
mal expulsion of this population. The migration to Britain therefore
resulted from a political process in the course of which they were
dened, and dened themselves, as not belonging to the post-colo-
nial and newly emergent nation-states of Kenya and Uganda. In a
loose sense, therefore, they might all be considered to be politically
induced migrants, although the Ugandan Asians were certainly, in
a formal sense, political refugees. Without doubt, it is impossible to
explain these migrations from East Africa in terms of a response to
labour shortages in the British economy (Bachu 1985: 2-3).
The apparent novelty of the refugee migrations of the 1980s is
further reduced when one considers the immediate post-1945 period
of European, and especially West German (Herbert 1986: 179-86),
history. In the decade beginning in 1945, approximately 20 million
people either ed or were expelled, transferred or exchanged within
Europe. Of this massive migration of population, the largest compo-
nent consisted of around 13 million people of German origin (usu-
ally known as volkdeutsche) who were ofcially returned, or who were
expelled or ed to Germany (Schechtman 1962: 363; Marrus 1985:
330). The ofcial transfers of population arose from a decision of
the Tripartite Conference in Potsdam in 1945 concerning the pop-
ulation of German origin in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary
(Schechtman 1962: 36).
In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, there was
considerable concern about the economic and political consequenc-
es of such a large transfer of population into West Germany in the
context of the widespread destruction of the economy and the social
infrastructure. However, this proved to be misplaced in the light of
the subsequent development of the post-war economy, sustained in
part by the import of capital from the United States. In 1946, the
index of industrial production in West Germany stood at 34 (1936 =
Tripartite
Conference in
Potsdam
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100) but it had regained its pre-war level by 1950, and by 1956, it was
twice the 1936 level. Gross National Product increased from $23.1
billion in 1950 to $52.6 billion in 1958 and industrial production
tripled between 1949 and 1959. Integral to this successful expansion
of capitalism was an increase in the labour force from 13.6 million
persons in 1949 to 19.6 million in 1959 while unemployment fell
from 8.8 per cent of manpower in 1949 to 1 per cent in 1959. A
key component of this increased labour force consisted of the mi-
grant population of German origin which was transferred or expelled
from Eastern and south-eastern Europe in the course of redrawing
the boundaries of nation states and negotiating respective spheres of
inuence between Western and Eastern political blocs (Schechtman
1962: 315-7; Marrus 1985:330-1).
But it was not only the migration of expellees and refugees from
Eastern Europe that added to the population and the labour force
of West Germany. In addition, in the post-war Cold War period,
there was a continuing migration of refugees from Eastern Europe,
and especially East Germany, into West Germany. This movement of
population was composed largely of people who emigrated illegally
or in violation of government policy rather than of people formally
expelled from the territory in which they were living. After 1948, this
refugee migration to the West became increasingly difcult with the
formation of Communist governments in Eastern Europe and with
the subsequent sealing of the borders, although the peculiar situa-
tion of Berlin continued to permit relatively easy access to the West
for those who lived in the Eastern sector of the city or who could
enter that sector.
In 1949, formal procedures for granting political asylum were es-
tablished in West Germany, permitting a more precise enumeration
of the ow of refugees into the country. In 1950, 197,000 people
entered West Germany as refugees, the gures for the following
three years being 165,000, 182,000 and 331,000 respectively. By
1952, there were nearly 200,000 anti-Communist refugees living
in various camps and centres in Berlin and West Germany. This
exodus continued for a decade more from 1951, during which time
approximately 3.5 million people entered West Germany from East
Germany. This migration was nally terminated in 1961 with the
building of the Berlin Wall (Marrus 1985: 354-5; Esser and Korte
1985: 169; Bade 1987: 151).
A similar relationship between refugee migration and the expan-
sion of the national labour force can be found in the work of the
International Refugee Organization (IRO). The IRO was established
by the United Nations in December 1946 to organize the repatria-
political asylum
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tion of the remaining refugees, about a third of whom remained in
Displaced Persons camps in Italy, Germany and Austria. About half
of those in the camps were of Polish origin, and there were also sig-
nicant numbers of Balts, Ukranians and Yugoslavs. When the IRO
began work in mid-1947, it became responsible for approximately
1.5 million refugees in total, and in the period up to the end of 1951,
it resettled 1,039,150 people. More than 75 per cent were resettled
in the United States, Australia, Canada and Israel, while European
nation states accepted around 170,000 people. Of the latter, 86,000
entered Britain, 38,000 went to France and 22,000 were resettled in
Belgium (Marrus 1985: 344-5).
A major IRO objective was to link resettlement with post-war eco-
nomic reconstruction in Europe, and even where resettlement oc-
curred outside Europe, an attempt was made to marry the economic
skills and experience of the refugees with the stated economic de-
mands of the receiving countries. Thus, a policy of refugee resettle-
ment became intertwined with a labour migration policy, with the
IRO thereby functioning as a form of international labour exchange.
This role was further illustrated by the fact that, by mid-1949, the
majority of the 175,000 people remaining under the supervision of
the IRO were people whose age, health or physical condition made
an economically conditioned resettlement elsewhere in the world dif-
cult (Marrus 1985: 345).
This same interrelationship was evident in the initiative in 1946
of the British post-war Labour Government to resolve specic labour
shortages in key sectors of the economy by the recruitment of refu-
gees from the Displaced Persons camps in Germany and Austria.
Between 1947 and 1949, some 91,000 men and women arrived in
Britain as European Volunteer Workers and were placed in agricul-
ture, in the mining and textile industries, and in hospital and domes-
tic service, under a set of restrictive conditions which expressed the
contradiction between what was in one sense a labour recruitment
scheme and, in another, a refugee resettlement programme (Kay and
Miles 1988, 1990).
Castles and his various collaborators have noted the occurrence
of these refugee migrations (e.g. 1984: 25), but have not sought to
explain them. Indeed, within the context of their theoretical frame-
work, they are difcult to explain because they were not immediately
determined by the capital accumulation process. Yet, at least in the
case of the immediate post-war refugee migrations, an articulation
of political and economic relations determines their occurrence, as
Castles acknowledges implicitly when he notes that the German state
only initiated a formal guestworker recruitment system when the
ow of political refugees began to decline.
refugee resettlement
programme
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But the silence about the migration of refugees within and into
Europe is not the only silence within the political economy of migra-
tion. It also fails to acknowledge the migration of skilled non-man-
ual labour and of capitalists. Assessing the scale and signicance of
these migrations within Western Europe since 1945 is difcult be-
cause of the limited academic attention devoted to the phenomenon
and of the absence of adequate ofcial statistics. Both factors reect
a broader determinant. These migration ows are accepted as part
of the normal and necessary working of the capitalist economy and
are therefore not considered worthy of identication within the po-
litical system as being the source of alleged political and ideological
problems for the indigenous population. Because such migrations
have not been identied by leading politicians and by sections of the
working class as problematic, there is no problem to document and,
therefore, no need to investigate the occurrence, scale and determi-
nants of such migrations.
Throughout Western Europe since 1945, there has been a close
relationship between the migration of semi- and unskilled labour-
ers seeking to enter manual wage labour and the movement of in-
digenous labour into a variety of semi- and highly skilled non-man-
ual jobs, especially in the tertiary or service sector of the economy
(Bhning 1984). Thus, this specic migration has served to ll posi-
tions in the hierarchy of wage labour vacated by indigenous workers
as a result of the availability of better paid jobs, or jobs involving
more attractive work and/or conditions. But this form of internal oc-
cupational mobility has not been sufcient to ensure that all salaried,
non-manual positions in tile economy have been lled by indigenous
labour.
First, in the age of the transnational company, staff are trans-
ferred from one branch to another in a different part of the world
as an alternative to the recruitment and employment of indigenous
labour, partly in order to create a career structure for non-manual,
salaried staff and partly to obviate local labour shortages of highly
skilled non-manual labour. Second, there is an international labour
market for various forms of highly specialized, skilled non-manual
labour. In situations of scarcity, such labour can be highly mobile
in response to high salaries offered in different parts of the world,
especially where the training of such labour is very expensive and/
or where it is only required for relatively short periods of time (as
for example in the case of oil exploration). In these latter circum-
stances, the recruitment of non-manual workers from outside the
nation-state as a form of migrant labour might be chosen as the most
suitable solution to the need to recruit skilled non-manual labour.
internal
occupational
mobility
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Here, when referring to skilled non-manual, we are concerned
with various categories of managerial, technical and professional
staff. The signicance of the international migration of such staff
employed in transnational companies has been discussed by Salt
(1983, 1984, 1988) who has shown that companies with branches
and subsidiaries in several countries constitute a form of closed la-
bour market within which managerial and technical staff are able to
circulate. Thus, while remaining in employment in the same com-
pany, they migrate from one country to another for limited periods
of time while moving up the career hierarchy. Hence, this interna-
tional migration of labour is synonymous with the pursuit of self-
advancement within the transnational company. The implication of
his argument is that as the number and scale of transnational com-
panies have increased since 1945, then so has the signicance of this
form of international migration. More specically, on the basis of the
limited date available, Salt has concluded that company managers
and various professionals are a major component of the migration
between advanced capitalist nation states (1984: 638, 645-6).
The migration of managerial. technical and professional staff
occurs not only within the advanced capitalist sector of the world
economic system, but also between that sector and other sectors un-
dergoing capitalist development (Findlay 1987). Included here are
employees of multinational rms operating in regions such as the
Middle East as well as individuals with specialist, non-manual skills
engaged on short-term contracts by recruitment agencies instructed
by both local and international companies operating in the region
(Salt 1988: 390).
In contrast with the international migration of semi- and un-
skilled manual labourers, considerably greater formal assistance
to facilitate migration and temporary settlement is provided by the
companies involved, including the direct and indirect provision of
the reproduction costs of the managerial or professional migrant
worker. International companies employ staff to negotiate and ob-
tain work and residence permits where necessary, and either em-
ploy agencies to obtain accommodation or purchase property to let,
often at subsidised rents, to the migrant manager or professional
(Salt 1984: 648-9). One of the consequences is a high degree of resi-
dential segregation on the part of highly skilled non-manual labour.
Where those persons providing this labour power possess a distinct
cultural heritage (as, for example, in the case of Japanese managers
employed in transnational rms in Europe), the result is what might
be considered to be a form of ethnic segregation (Findlay 1987:
8,16) similar yet distinct from that which has usually preoccupied
academic investigators.
multinational rms
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Sassens recent attempt to capture analytically and empirically
the articulation of the process of labour migration with fundamental
processes in the contemporary phase of the world economy (1988:
186), in which she argues that the internationalization of production
is a key dimension, makes no mention of the migration of manage-
rial, technical and professional staff of transnational companies. Yet,
she highlights the importance of the growth of Export Processing
Zones and describes in some detail the increasing scale of foreign
investment by companies based in the advanced capitalist sector of
the world economic system, a trend encouraged by the adoption of
export-led industrialization by the states in the peripheries of that
system (1988: 98-105). But her interest in analysing this globaliza-
tion of production is exclusively with the interrelated processes of
proletarianization, feminization and the international emigration of
semi- and unskilled manual labour that it stimulates, and so she ig-
nores the migration of managerial, technical and professional staff
that accompanies the migration of capital and who organize and pro-
mote these processes.
In addition to the relative silence about the fact and extent of such
migrations, there is also the issue of the nature of the explanation to
be offered for them. Salt initially questioned the applicability to post-
industrial societies of theories which were generated in the context
of a transition from rural, subsistence production to urban, indus-
trial production, and he offered an alternative analytical framework
which focused on the nature of modern labour markets in which
specialist skills and training mean that the workforce is segmented
into self-contained noncompeting groups (1984: 634).
As Salts more recent writing indicates (1988, also Salt and
Findlay 1989), this is a rather narrow basis on which to explain the
phenomenon because it disembodies the labour market for manage-
rial, technical and professional staff from the wider operations and
development of national and transnational capital. It is only on the
basis of the successful operation of the transnational company with-
in the capital accumulation process on a world scale that a career
structure can be available to company managerial and technical staff.
Understood simplistically, the migration of these mental labourers
is a concomitant of the migration of capital, and so the factors deter-
mining the migration of capital structure the international mobility
of highly skilled managerial and technical staff.
Amongst the highest ranks of managerial and professional staff
employed by international companies, one nds a stratum of the
capitalist class proper, those managers who also own and control
capital in some combination. But this concept also refers to people
Export Processing
Zones
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whose ownership and control of capital means that they personally
run companies of various sizes. In the context of a world economic
system, especially where regional economies are of increasing sig-
nicance, such capitalists also migrate in the search for the best spa-
tial location for investment, to develop markets, to obtain supplies of
raw materials etc. Again, it is difcult to assess the nature and extent
of this migration because the statistical measurement of migration
is oriented primarily to assessing and controlling the migration of
actual or potential wage labourers.
A very partial assessment of the signicance of the migration of
the capitalist class and of the managerial and technical staff of multi-
national capital is possible in relation to Britain using the immigra-
tion statistics collected by the Home Ofce. In Table 1, we document
the number of foreign people of non-EEC origin allowed to enter
Britain annually between 1974 and 1986 because they were in pos-
session of a work permit or because they sought to pursue business
activity.
Concerning the rst category, during the 1970s, the work permit
system allowed the entry of semi- and unskilled manual labour for,
for example, hotel and catering work, but this option was removed
in 1979 and, since 1980, work permits have been issued primarily to
professional, administrative and technical staff under very restrictive
procedures (Macdonald 1987: 194-203; Salt 1988: 391). Thus, Table I
shows that, through the 1980s, the number of managerial and tech-
nical staff (a large proportion of whom were probably in the employ
of non-EEC based multinational companies operating in Britain) al-
lowed to enter Britain remained at a fairly constant level of around
12,000 people. One can reasonably assume that the number of such
skilled, non-manual staff allowed entry into Britain from other coun-
tries is considerably higher than this because employees of compa-
nies based in other EEC countries are excluded from these statistics.
1 Source: Control of Immigration Statistics, United Kingdom, 1974-
1986, London: HMSO, 1975-87.
2 Statistics exclude EEC nationals but include Commonwealth citi-
zens and non-EEC foreign nationals.
3 Business passengers include all those given leave to enter for less
than 12 months for business purposes.
4 Work permit holders given leave to enter includes those holding
permits for 12 months and less than 12 months.
The other category, those given leave to enter Britain for business
purposes, includes two groups of people who unfortunately (but sig-
Britain
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nicantly) are not separately aggregated. The rst are those who en-
ter Britain to undertake self-employment or to establish a business,
or to join or take over an existing business. As with the work permit
system, there is a long history to the development of the regulations
governing the entry of people seeking to establish themselves as capi-
talists. The most recent, important changes occurred in 1980, as a re-
sult of which those currently seeking to enter Britain for the purpose
of self-employment or to establish, to join or to take over a business
must have a minimum investment of 150,000 and must demon-
strate that this investment will create new, full-time employment for
persons already settled in Britain. The intention of these conditions
is to prevent the entry of petit bourgeois capitalists (especially from
the Indian subcontinent and Cyprus) intending to establish small
shops, restaurants and manufacturing activities dependent on family
labour (Macdonald 1987: 204).
The second group includes those people who are engaged on a
temporary business visit. The criteria employed by immigration of-
cials to permit entry for such purposes are probably detailed in the
Immigration Rules which are not published. One assumes that a
large proportion of those permitted entry are capitalists or company
managers and technical staff (including sales staff) who are engaged
on ofcial company business and who may stay for a few days or
weeks (but perhaps months) at the most. How many become perma-
nent settlers is impossible to determine from these statistics alone.
Again, when assessing the signicance of the scale of this migration
into Britain, it should be noted that the statistics exclude nationals of
EEC countries.
Table 1 shows that the number of aliens (including Commonwealth
citizens) granted entry to Britain for business purposes has almost
doubled between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s, and that, dur-
ing the 1980s, the British state has permitted around or in excess of
three-quarters of a million of aliens to enter Britain annually for such
purposes. If numbers really are a crucial indicator of the problematic
consequences of a migrant presence, this is a gure that we might
have expected to generate considerable political alarm and contro-
versy within Britain. The fact that it has not done so, along with the
fact that academic interest in migration on such a scale has been very
limited, is therefore highly signicant.
The silence about these migrations within the writing of Castles
and other Marxist theorists is puzzling because, in principle, an
explanation for them can be found with reference to the capital ac-
cumulation process. The increasing concentration and centraliza-
tion of capital within the world economic system is associated with
political alarm
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capital export, and hence with the increased mobility of the owners
and agents of capital. Perhaps the explanation for the silence is to
be found in the fact that a research focus on such migrations seems
more likely to reveal privilege rather than exploitation, although this
is not an especially good reason to ignore processes which are inte-
gral to our understanding of the expansion of the capitalist mode of
production on a world scale. Yet, even if we were to explore such a
theoretical explanation, it would leave unanalysed the mediating role
of the state in all international migration ows.
Migration and the role of the state
In the previous section of the paper, we have identied certain mi-
grations which have been ignored and/or which cannot be easily ex-
plained by a capital accumulation theory of migration. We now turn
to an evaluation of Castles claim that, in post-1945 Europe, the state
was an absent force in relation to the pre-1973 development of migra-
tion ows. We criticize this interpretation and highlight the central
and partially autonomous role of the state in the regulation of post-
1945 migration ows by considering migration to Britain between
1945 and the early 1950s (Isaac 1954). These migration ows were
composed largely of people from the Irish Republic, from Poland,
from the Baltic states, and from the Ukraine, although there were
also small movements of people from north west Europe. Hereafter,
we ignore the migration of people from the Republic of Ireland
because, by virtue of dening citizens of the Republic as in effect
British citizens, the state was not able to control this migration. But
these other populations, by virtue of being dened in law as aliens,
were subject to state regulation on entry and after taking up resi-
dence in Britain (Miles 1989b).
The British state intervened in several ways to structure these mi-
grations. First, because the migrants were aliens, the state necessar-
ily provided the political/legal framework for members of the Polish
armed forces and their dependents to remain and settle in Britain,
and for Displaced Persons to enter Britain (Miles and Solomos 1987:
85-6). Second, the state actively recruited and screened the Displaced
Persons, not only to identify war criminals and fascist sympathis-
ers, but also to ensure that they would be productive workers.
Representatives of the Ministry of Labour handpicked those grant-
ed permission to enter Britain from amongst those who volunteered
with preference going to men of labouring type who are hardy and
of good physical standard... and those prepared to leave behind their
autonomous state
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dependents until further arrangements could be made (Harris 1987:
60). Identical concerns were evident in the recruitment of women
(Kay and Miles 1988: 219-21).
Third, the state intervened in the process of migration by initially
imposing conditions on the rights of Displaced Persons selected to
enter Britain. In the rst instance, they were granted entry for a pe-
riod of one year and their chance of remaining in the country was
conditional in part on their behaving as a worthy member of the
British community (Tannahill 1958: 123-8; Kay and Miles 1988: 221-
3). However, their status as refugees placed limits on the power of
the state to require them to leave Britain because there was nowhere
for them to go to, other than the Displaced Persons camps that they
had been recruited from. In effect, therefore, these migrants were
eventually to become permanent settlers (Layton-Henry 1984: 19;
Kay and Miles 1988). Fourth, in the case of the Poles, the state inter-
vened to encourage the retention of a distinct cultural identity and
community structure by providing money and other resources for
the running of three Polish hospitals, educational facilities and hos-
tel accommodation (Miles and Solomos 1987: 86).
Fifth, the British state intervened to structure the migrants entry
into, and place within, the labour market. The entry of Displaced
Persons was dependent upon their signing a contract of employment
which stipulated that they accept work selected by the Minister of
Labour and that they could change employment only with the per-
mission of the Minister (Miles and Solomos 1987: 87; Kay and Miles
1988: 222-3). They were therefore unable to freely dispose of their la-
bour power as a commodity and so constituted a form of unfree wage
labour (Miles 1987b: 32-4). Thus, they occupied a qualitatively dif-
ferent position in production relations when compared with British
workers (as well as migrants from British colonial societies) who
were not subject to such restrictions.
Indeed, it was just this characteristic that made them especially
desirable from the point of view of British employers and the British
state. According to a government inter-departmental working party,
the recruitment of EVWs (cited in Harris 1987: 61),
enables the Department [of Labour] both to put these foreign work-
ers into specic jobs and to keep them in those jobs. The sanction
that lies at hand to guard against noncompliance with these landing
conditions is deportation of the workers concerned to the Displaced
Persons camps in Europe, and this sanction has from the very begin-
ning proved to be an extremely effective one. Besides being kept out
of inessential industries, European Volunteer Workers who have
displaced persons
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been brought into this country could not for any length of time re-
main unemployed at public expense.
These restrictions were not however permanent: in 1951, the govern-
ment lifted all conditions of the sale of their labour power once the
individual had been resident in Britain for three years (Kay and Miles
1988: 229-30).
The decision to impose these conditions reveals a dialectic of eco-
nomic, political and ideological rationality. In part, the British state
sought to ensure that specic industries which were short of labour
had a guaranteed workforce for at least three years. But it was also
the case that their formal legal status as aliens facilitated the states
decision to constitute these migrants as a form of unfree wage labour
(Freeman and Spencer 1980: 63-4). In other words, it was politically
possible to deny certain basic rights to non-citizens, a denial that was
very difcult to legitimate in the case of migrants who were British
citizens.
European refugees had been exhausted as a source of labour be-
fore the end of the 1940s but the demand for labour remained high.
British employers continued to rely on Irish labour, along with a
limited recruitment under contract from elsewhere in Europe, es-
pecially Italy (Miles and Phizacklea 1984: 24; Dufeld 1988: 11-14)
but they were unable to ll all the emergent vacancies from these
sources. This was the key domestic economic determinant of the
increased migration from British colonial and ex-colonial societies
which began in the late 1940s and which expanded during the 1950s,
although it was facilitated by the legal status of such people as British
citizens. Unlike with the migrations considered above, the state was,
with one exception, not directly involved in recruitment. Rather, in
the context of a long tradition of emigration from the Caribbean (e.g.
Thomas-Hope 1986; Petras 1988), this migration was largely spon-
taneous and took the form of an informal chain migration, although
some employers did recruit labour directly in Barbados (Sivanandan
1982: 102; Layton-Henry 1984: 23).
Although the state did not actively recruit labour on a signicant
scale in the 1950s, it was not an absent force (Carter, Harris and
Joshi 1987). The state in fact intervened in two important ways. First,
the absence of state-organized recruitment of labour from the colo-
nies and ex-colonies was in itself a form of intervention. The decision
not to recruit such labour was a conscious decision which racialized
the migrants in such a way that they were deemed unacceptable.
According to a prominent civil servant (cited in Joshi and Carter
1984: 59):
recruitment
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Whatever may be the policy about British citizenship, I do not think
any scheme for the importation of colonials for permanent settle-
ment should be embarked upon without the full understanding that
this means that a coloured element will be brought in for permanent
absorption into our population.
Second, between 1948 and the mid-1950s, the British state inter-
vened directly in the process of colonial and ex-colonial migration
using various covert administrative measures, some illegal (Carter,
Harris and Joshi 1987: 336-7). The measures varied according to the
Commonwealth or colonial status of the potential entrants. In the
case of the West Indies, for example, Carter, Harris and Joshi have
documented that (1987: 336):
Governors were asked to tamper with shipping lists and schedules to
place migrant workers at the back of the queue; to cordon off ports
to prevent passport-holding stowaways from boarding ships and to
delay the issue of passports to migrants. This last measure was also
adopted by India and Pakistan where the ... Governments refused
passports if migrants had no rm prospect of establishing them-
selves. Police reports were carried out at the request of the Home
Ofce to establish the basis of these prospects.
Thus, well before the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962, the
state actively, although surreptitiously, intervened in the process of
migration. The 1962 Act, and the subsequent legislation, are now
well documented and need not be recounted here (Layton-Henry
1984; Miles and Phizacklea 1984). These interventions of the state
were the result of a complex of political and ideological processes,
and cannot in any direct way be attributed to the economic needs of
capital as is implied by the work of Castles and his various collabo-
rators (see also Miles 1985). For example, the state decided not to
recruit colonial British subjects in part precisely because their formal
status as British citizens meant that they could not be treated differ-
ently from the rest of the British working class and could not be dis-
ciplined with the sanction of deportation. Thus, it was because they
could not be allocated a position in production relations as unfree
wage labour that worked against their recruitment by the state. The
civil servant cited above put the matter in these terms in 1948 (Joshi
and Carter 1984: 59):
Unlike ex-prisoners of war or other aliens, I assume there could be
no authority for deporting coloured British subjects if they felt they
Commonwealth
Immigrants
Act of 1962
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wished to stay here and take their chance. If there were any assurance
that these people could in fact be sent away when they had served
their purpose, this proposition might be less unacceptable.
In addition, the state did not actively recruit in the Caribbean and
other colonial and ex-colonial formations because of its concern over
the creation of a race relations problem in Britain (Carter, Harris
and Joshi 1987: 345). State ofcials, along with the media and sec-
tions of the working class, constructed the imagined community
which constituted the English/British nation in terms of the idea
of race (Miles 1987a: 38-40). Coloured people were dened as an
alien race whose presence constituted a threat to the British way of
life.
In the light of all this evidence, what Castles et al. identify as the
beginning of the period of the British states intervention in the pro-
cess of migration, the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962, was
really the formal culmination of a process of state intervention (and
racialisation) which began soon after the end of the war. The state
did not restrict colonial and ex-colonial migration through a formally
codied and publically visible immigration policy, in part because of
an apparent continued commitment to the idea of a free and equal
Commonwealth of nation-states. Similarly, the British state inter-
vened in the process of migration through the recruitment, control
and provision of settlement assistance to Eastern European refugees,
practices which suggest that from the British states point of view,
not all of those people who were born outside of the spatial boundar-
ies of the British nation-state were dened as equally suitable sources
of wage labour.
More generally, comparative research on post-1945 migration to
Europe reveals important differences in the form and consequences
of state intervention to regulate migration ows (e.g. Freeman 1979;
Edye 1987). One of the more general conclusions to emerge from
these studies is that the state has not acted consistently in an instru-
mentalist fashion, seeking to serve only the interests of capital. This
is in part because there is no single interest of capital in relation to
labour migration and, in part, because the partially autonomous exis-
tence of the state is grounded in the necessity to mediate not only the
competing demands of different fractions of capital but also to guar-
antee the political and ideological conditions for the reproduction of
the capitalist mode of production within a given national territory.
For example, there was conict between Die Bundesvereinigung
der Deutschen Arbeitgeberverbaede (BDA), the West German employ-
ers federation, and the German state from the early 1970s. When
state intervention
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the German government halted the recruitment of foreign labour
in 1973, partly in response to concerns about the social and politi-
cal consequences of the increasing presence of foreign workers in
Germany, the BDA was strongly opposed. It objected to the sudden
implementation of the ban, arguing that at least those workers who
were already in the process of recruitment should have been allowed
to enter Germany. It also proclaimed the need for greater exibility,
especially with respect to the employment of seasonal labour under
contract, and argued that, because of the central role of foreign la-
bour in the economy, it would be necessary for the foreseeable fu-
ture. During the mid-1970s, the BDA reported that certain employ-
ers were unable to recruit the foreign labour that they needed. The
Deutscher Hotel- und Gaststaettenverband (DEHOGA) was especial-
ly active in its opposition to the recruitment ban of 1973 (Edye 1987:
88-90, 92-6).
Consequently, in a world which has been divided into nation-
states, the state is necessarily involved as a determinant actor, with
its own distinct (although not autonomous) interests, in mediating
international migration ows. Concomitant with the formation of
the nation-state has been the creation of nationality as a legal concept
and the creation and policing of national boundaries which consti-
tute a political barrier to human spatial mobility because each hu-
man being has been attributed with a legal status tying him or her
to that nation state. And within those boundaries, a central role of
the state is to reproduce social order, a process that entails both he-
gemonic practices and direct force. Hegemonic practices include the
reproduction of national identity, which includes a process of self-
identication with the state itself. This is constantly secured by the
identication of different Others outside and beyond the nation state,
and it can therefore be threatened by the migration of representatives
of these Others.
Constantly assured that its own national community is a supe-
rior economic and cultural force, it is not surprising that sections of
the working class within a nation state may become involved in agita-
tion against a migrant presence, a process that is further encouraged
by material scarcity. The process of international migration, especial-
ly when required by the need to expand the size of the labour force,
may therefore constitute a contradictory phenomenon in so far as
the state has to regulate both the entry of capitalists, non-manual and
manual labour as well as refugees and the social disorder that can
arise from agitation against that presence. We have shown above that
concerns about social order were prominent in the evaluation of the
British state concerning migration in the immediate post-war period
and did not emerge only after the migration ows had matured.
nationality
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Conclusion
The tradition of the political economy or migration, as represented
in the work of Castles and his various collaborators, and despite its
real strengths, has failed to highlight and explain certain signicant
international migrations, and to adequately specify the signicance
of the role of the state in organizing and regulating international mi-
gration ows since 1945. Thus, insofar as there is reason to believe
that the migration of refugees, of skilled non-manual labour and of
the bourgeoisie itself will continue during the epoch of postmodern
capitalism, we need to elaborate upon, in order to develop, this theo-
retical tradition, not only to explain the present and the future, but
also the past.
In order to do this, it is necessary to highlight the role of both the
nation as a spatial and political unit, and of the state as an institu-
tional complex in the analysis of international migration processes
(Miles 1987b: 181-6). In this respect, we reinforce the point made by
Zolberg that (1983a: 4):
it is the political organisation of contemporary world space into mu-
tually exclusive and legally sovereign territorial states which delin-
eates the specicity of international migration as a distinctive process
and hence as an object of theoretical reection.
But in so doing, we do not abstract political relations from econom-
ic and political relations in the way that he appears to do. This is
because the rise of the nation state was dialectically related to the
emergence of the capitalist mode of production, a mode of produc-
tion that had profound implications for spatial mobility as a result of
the new social relations of production. We therefore seek to explain
international migration ows in relation to the historical articulation
between the process of capital accumulation and the reproduction of
the nation state, an articulation which is mediated by the state, the
role of which is to guarantee the reproduction of the dominant mode
of production and, hence, the nation state itself.
In this context, refugee migrations appear far less anomalous. If,
following Zolberg, such migrations result from the historical process
of nation-state formation (l983b: 30), then that is a process medi-
ated by the emergence of the world economic system as structured
by the capitalist mode of production. Furthermore, it is mediated by
the interventions of national states as they seek to, in turn, mediate
the articulation between the reproduction of the mode of production
and the nation-state which provides the political and spatial context
historical
articulation
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for the interrelated activities of capital and labour. This is well illus-
trated by the example previously cited of the migrations of Kenyan
and Ugandan Asians to Britain, both of which resulted from a pro-
cess of nation-state formation after decolonization in the context
of the promotion of capitalist development by means of, inter alia,
Africanization. And the process of nation-state formation is still far
from complete in Africa, not to mention the Middle East, Southern
Africa and the Indian subcontinent. all spatial contexts which gener-
ate large refugee migrations.
But the articulations and mediations referred to can be, in specic
conjunctures. even more precise in advancing the interests of capital.
The massive movements of refugees within Europe immediately af-
ter the Second World War arose not only from the consequences of
fascism, but also from the processes of redrawing the boundaries of
nation-states and of giving a new political content to nation-state for-
mation in Eastern Europe. Yet the resolution of the problem of state-
less populations resident within Western Europe was to a signicant
degree facilitated by the new phase of capitalist accumulation that
was launched in the late 1940s, a process that required signicant
additions to the size of the national labour forces. In this conjunc-
ture, a large proportion of a relatively surplus (refugee) population
was constituted in the realm of political relations, and drawn into the
nation states of Western Europe in order to ll vacant positions in
the hierarchy of wage labour (Kay and Miles 1988: 231). The concept
of refugee-worker is helpful in conceptualizing this process (Kay and
Miles 1988: 215). Thus, what is new about the refugee crisis of the
1980s is not its existence per se, but rather that the scope for this new
surplus population to be drawn into the capitalist world economy is,
comparatively, considerably constrained.
A further context in which to examine the articulation and media-
tion of the capitalist mode of production. the nation-state as a spatial-
political structure and the state as an institutional complex, is the
interplay of different international migration ows. A more accurate
comprehension of these migrations would focus not only on the mi-
gration of semi- and unskilled manual labourers from the periphery
to the centre of the world economy, but also upon the migration of
skilled managers, technicians and professionals within the centre
and from the centre to the periphery. Arguably, the latter has be-
come more important than the former in the past fteen years, at
least in Europe, in the light of the fact that the export of capital has
to a signicant extent replaced the import of manual labour. Such
a focus returns us centrally to the task of analysing the process of
capital accumulation on a world scale, not in order to understand the
refugee-worker
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migration of labour but rather the migration of capital.
But we make a mistake if we counterpose the movement of sums
of money (to represent capital export) to the movement of peasants
and proletarians (to represent labour import) in order to understand
this dynamic. For not only are capital (in the sense of money) ows
from one spatial location to another dependent upon the permission
of the respective states, but so is the movement of those who own
those sums of money as well as those who manage, control and ser-
vice their utilisation. All these people have a national status, and their
international mobility is therefore also subject to the controls estab-
lished by the states which control entry into the space and the social
relations that they administer. We might be well advised to examine
much more closely the privileged terms on which such people are
able to move from one nation-state to another (alongside the scale of
such mobility) because, in so far as the ownership of capital serves
to mediate restrictions on entry and settlement (i.e. mediate the ties
of national status), this is the outcome of a political decision. In turn
this might tell us rather more about the patterns, processes and con-
sequences of exible accumulation than musing about the aesthet-
ics of the architecture of the ofces of the multinational rms that
such people use to exercise their control over us all.
This is also a dimension of the central task of contextualizing the
impact of racism (Miles 1989: 134). Specically, the British discus-
sion about immigration control has centred almost exclusively on the
manner in which it has been determined by racism and has thereby
ignored its class character. We have shown above that British immi-
gration controls facilitate the entry of persons engaged in business
activity, persons with capital in excess of 150,000 and managerial,
technical and professional employees of international companies.
Consequently, with respect to British immigration control, the ex-
clusion of black migrants seeking to enter wage labour, along with
those seeking to establish themselves as a petite bourgeoisie, is one
pole of a dialectic in which there is a simultaneous inclusion of mem-
bers and agents of the capitalist class.
The silence about this latter migration is of considerable signi-
cance in relation to the expression of racism within contemporary
Western European nation states. The articulation of that racism,
whether by the state itself or by sections of the working class, focuses
upon the presence and cultural consequences of those who migrated
with the purpose of selling their labour power. And there is no doubt
that these migrations have led to a range of cultural transformations
within Western Europe. But we might also begin to consider the cul-
tural transformations consequent upon the migration of capital, cap-
racism
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italists and their various agents. Thus, alongside the cultural trans-
formations initiated by, for example, the increased Muslim presence
in Western Europe, we might also begin to consider the transforma-
tions of Western European nation states that constitute the processes
of Americanization and Japanization.
To cite a single example, Western European city centres have been
transformed by, inter alia, the establishment of a range of fast food
outlets. Both the companies themselves, and the commodity that
they supply, constitute a major cultural transformation about which
there is a comparative silence in comparison with, for example, agi-
tation against the appearance of a mosque. Thus, the reasons why
certain cultural transformations consequent upon certain migrations
become the object of racist agitation while others consequent upon
other migrations are ignored is an important academic and political
question which leads us to consider both the nature of racism and
the role of the state in its reproduction. And as a prelude to such a
study, we need rst to undertake an analysis of the migration of the
bourgeoisie and its agents to assess the material foundation for these
hidden cultural transformations.
Note
1 This is a revised version of a paper prepared for a conference on Racism and
the Post-Modern City held at the University of Warwick, 29-31 March 1989.
We acknowledge the useful comments by conference participants and by the
Editors of Economy and Society but we take full responsibility for this draft.
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Class racism
Etienne Balibar
In the 1980s, the concept of racism was high on the academic agenda. The
philosopher Etienne Balibar published extensively on the issue. At that time,
many others treated this concept in a one-dimensional, monocausal sense.
They argued that racism was intrinsically rooted in the colonial project, often
starting from the assumption that the only or anyway, the most important
racism is that with black people as its object. Balibar was one of the rst to
demonstrate how the problematisation of some categories of non-black na-
tives e.g. the labouring classes or the dangerous classes has remark-
able congruence with those of some categories of blacks. By showing that
particular sections of the (native, white) working class can also be victims
of racism class racism in this case it became clear that the history of
colonialism is not a sufciently adequate starting point for theoretical discus-
sion about the nature and signicance of racism in Europe. In the same vein,
Balibar gave suggestions for a new theoretical approach to racism.
Academic analyses of racism, though according chief importance to
the study of racist theories, none the less argue that sociological rac-
ism is a popular phenomenon. Given this supposition, the develop-
ment of racism within the working class (which, to committed social-
ists and communists, seems counter to the natural order of things)
comes to be seen as the effect of a tendency allegedly inherent in
the masses. Institutional racism nds itself projected into the very
construction of that psycho-sociological category that is the masses.
We must therefore attempt to analyse the process of displacement
which, moving from classes to masses, presents these latter both as
the privileged subjects of racism and its favoured objects.
Can one say that a social class, by its situation and its ideology
(not to mention its identity), is predisposed to racist attitudes and be-
haviour? This question has mainly been debated in connection with
the rise of Nazism, rst speculatively and then later by taking vari-
sociological racism
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etienne balibar
ous empirical indicators.
1
The result is quite paradoxical since there
is hardly a social class on which suspicion has not fallen, though
a marked predilection has been shown for the petty bourgeoisie.
But this is a notoriously ambiguous concept, which is more an ex-
pression of the aporias of a class analysis conceived as a dividing
up of the population into mutually exclusive slices. As with every
question of origins in which a political charge is concealed, it makes
sense to turn the question around: not to look for the foundations
of the racism which invades everyday life (or the movement which
provides the vehicle for it) in the nature of the petty bourgeoisie,
but to attempt to understand how the development of racism causes
a petty bourgeois mass to emerge out of a diversity of material situ-
ations. For the misconceived question of the class bases of racism,
we shall thus substitute a more crucial and complex question, which
that former question is in part intended to mask: that of the relations
between racism, as a supplement to nationalism, and the irreducibil-
ity of class conict in society. We shall nd it necessary to ask how
the development of racism displaces class conict or, rather, in what
way class conict is always already transformed by a social relation
in which there is an inbuilt tendency to racism; and also, conversely,
how the fact that the nationalist alternative to the class struggle spe-
cically takes the form of racism may be considered as the index of
the irreconcilable character of that struggle. This does not of course
mean that it is not crucial to examine how, in a given conjuncture,
the class conditions [la condition de classe] (made up of the material
conditions of existence and labour, though also of ideological tradi-
tions and practical relationships to politics) determine the effects of
racism in society: the frequency and forms of the acting out of rac-
ism, the discourse which expresses it and the membership of orga-
nized racist movements.
The traces of a constant overdetermination of racism by the class
struggle are as universally detectable in its history as the nationalist
determination, and everywhere they are connected with the core of
meaning of its phantasies and practices. This sufces to demonstrate
that we are dealing here with a determination that is much more
concrete and decisive than the generalities dear to the sociologists
of modernity. It is wholly inadequate to see racism (or the national-
ism-racism dyad) either as one of the paradoxical expressions of the
individualism or egalitarianism which are supposed to characterize
modern societies (following the old dichotomy of closed, hierarchi-
cal societies and open, mobile societies) or a defensive reaction
against that individualism, seen as expressing nostalgia for a social
order based on the existence of a community.
2
Individualism only
class bases of racism
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exists in the concrete forms of market competition (including the
competition between labour powers) in unstable equilibrium with
association between individuals under the constraints of the class
struggle. Egalitarianism only exists in the contradictory forms of po-
litical democracy (where that democracy exists), the welfare state
(where that exists), the polarization of conditions of existence, cul-
tural segregation and reformist or revolutionary utopias. It is these
determinations, and not mere anthropological gures, which confer
an economic dimension upon racism.
Nevertheless, the heterogeneity of the historical forms of the rela-
tionship between racism and the class struggle poses a problem. This
ranges from the way in which anti-Semitism developed into a bogus
anti-capitalism around the theme of Jewish money to the way in
which racial stigma and class hatred are combined today in the cat-
egory of immigration. Each of these congurations is irreducible (as
are the corresponding conjunctures), which make it impossible to
dene any simple relationship of expression (or, equally, of substi-
tution) between racism and class struggle.
In the manipulation of anti-Semitism as an anti-capitalist delu-
sion, which chiey occurred between 1870 and 1945 (which is, we
should note, the key period of confrontation between the European
bourgeois states and organized proletarian internationalism), we
nd not only the designation of a scapegoat as an object of prole-
tarian revolt, the exploitation of divisions within the proletariat and
the projective representation of the ills of an abstract social system
through the imaginary personication of those who control it (even
though this mechanism is essential to the functioning of racism).
3

We also nd the fusion of the two historical narratives which are
capable of acting as metaphors for each other: on the one hand, the
narrative of the formation of nations at the expense of the lost unity
of Christian Europe and, on the other, that of the conict between
national independence and the internationalization of capitalist eco-
nomic relations, which brought with it the attendant threat of an in-
ternationalization of the class struggle. This is why the Jew, as an in-
ternally excluded element common to all nations but also, negatively,
by virtue of the theological hatred to which he is subject, as witness to
the love that is supposed to unite the Christian peoples, may, in the
imaginary, be identied with the cosmopolitanism of capital which
threatens the national independence of every country while at the
same time re-activating the trace of the lost unity.
4

The gure is quite different when anti-immigrant racism achieves
a maximum of identication between class situation and ethnic ori-
gin (the real bases for which have always existed in the inter-regional,
heterogeneity
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etienne balibar
international or intercontinental mobility of the working class;
this has at times been a mass phenomenon, at times residual, but
it has never been eliminated and is one of the specically proletar-
ian characteristics of its condition). Racism combines this identi-
cation with a deliberate confusion of antagonistic social functions:
thus the themes of the invasion of French society by North Africans
or of immigration being responsible for unemployment are con-
nected with that of the money of the oil sheikhs who are buying up
our businesses, our housing stock or our seaside resorts. And
this partly explains why the Algerians, Tunisians or Moroccans have
to be referred to generically as Arab (not to mention the fact that
this signier, which functions as a veritable switch word, also con-
nects together these themes and those of terrorism, Islam and so on).
Other congurations should not, however, be forgotten, including
those which are the product of an inversion of terms: for example,
the theme of the proletarian nation, which was perhaps invented
in the 1920s by Japanese nationalism
5
and was destined to play a
crucial role in the crystallization of Nazism, which cannot be left out
of consideration when one looks at the ways in which it has recently
reappeared.
The complexity of these congurations also explains why it is im-
possible to hold purely and simply to the idea of racism being used
against class consciousness (as though this latter would necessar-
ily emerge naturally from the class condition, unless it were blocked,
misappropriated or de-natured by racism), whereas we accept as an
indispensable working hypothesis that class and race constitute the
two antinomic poles of a permanent dialectic, which is at the heart of
modern representations of history. Moreover, we suspect that the in-
strumentalist, conspiracy-theory visions of racism within the labour
movement or among its theorists (we know what high price was to
be paid for these: it is tremendously to the credit of Wilhelm Reich
that he was one of the rst to foresee this), along with the mechanis-
tic visions which see in racism the reection of a particular class
condition, have also largely the function of denying the presence of
nationalism in the working class and its organizations or, in other
words, denying the internal conict between nationalism and class
ideology on which the mass struggle against racism (as well as the
revolutionary struggle against capitalism) depends. It is the evolution
of this internal conict I should like to illustrate by discussing here
some historical aspects of class racism.
Several historians of racism (Leon Poliakov, Michele Duchet and
Madeleine Rberioux, Colette Guillaumin, Eric Williams on modern
slavery, and others) have laid emphasis upon the fact that the modern
antagonistic social
functions
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571
notion of race, in so far as it is invested in a discourse of contempt
and discrimination and serves to split humanity up into a super-
humanity and a sub-humanity, did not initially have a national (or
ethnic), but a class signication. Or rather (since the point is to rep-
resent the inequality of social classes as inequalities of nature) a caste
signication.
6
From this point of view, it has a twofold origin: rst, in
the aristocratic representation of the hereditary nobility as a superior
race (that is, in fact, the mythic narrative by which an aristocracy,
whose domination is already coming under threat, assures itself of
the legitimacy of its political privileges and idealizes the dubious
continuity of its genealogy); and second, in the slave owners repre-
sentation of those populations subject to the slave trade as inferior
races, ever predestined for servitude and incapable of producing an
autonomous civilization. Hence the discourse of blood, skin colour
and cross-breeding. It is only retrospectively that the notion of race
was ethnicized, so that it could be integrated into the nationalist
complex, the jumping-off point for its successive subsequent meta-
morphoses. Thus it is clear that, from the very outset, racist repre-
sentations of history stand in relation to the class struggle. But this
fact only takes on its full signicance if we examine the way in which
the notion of race has evolved, and the impact of nationalism upon it
from the earliest gures of class racism onwards in other words,
if we examine its political determination.
The aristocracy did not initially conceive and present itself in
terms of the category of race: this is a discourse which developed
at a late stage, the function of which is clearly defensive (as can be
seen from the example of France with the myth of blue blood and
the Frankish or Germanic origin of the hereditary nobility), and
which developed when the absolute monarchy centralized the state
at the expense of the feudal lords and began to create within its
bosom a new administrative and nancial aristocracy which was
bourgeois in origin, thus marking a decisive step in the formation
of the nation-state. Even more interesting is the case of Spain in the
Classical Age, as analysed by Poliakov: the persecution of the Jews
after the Reconquista, one of the indispensable mechanisms in the
establishment of Catholicism as state religion, is also the trace of
the multinational culture against which Hispanization (or rather
Castilianization) was carried out. It is therefore intimately linked to
the formation of this prototype of European nationalism. Yet it took
on an even more ambivalent meaning when it gave rise to the stat-
utes of the purity of the blood (limpieza de sangre) which the whole
discourse of European and American racism was to inherit: a prod-
uct of the disavowal of the original interbreeding with the Moors and
race
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etienne balibar
the Jews, the hereditary denition of the raza (and the correspond-
ing procedures for establishing who could be accorded a certicate
of purity) serves in effect both to isolate an internal aristocracy and
to confer upon the whole of the Spanish people a ctive nobility, to
make it a people of masters at the point when, by terror, genocide,
slavery and enforced Christianization, it was conquering and domi-
nating the largest of the colonial empires. In this exemplary line of
development, class racism was already transformed into nationalist
racism, though it did not, in the process, disappear.
8

What is, however, much more decisive for the matter in hand
is the overturning of values we see occurring from the rst half of
the nineteenth century onwards. Aristocratic racism (the prototype
of what analysts today call self-referential racism, which begins by
elevating the group which controls the discourse to the status of a
race hence the importance of its imperialist legacy in the colonial
context: however lowly their origins and no matter how vulgar their
interests or their manners, the British in India and the French in
Africa would all see themselves as members of a modern nobility) is
already indirectly related to the primitive accumulation of capital, if
only by its function in the colonizing nations. The industrial revolu-
tion, at the same time as it creates specically capitalist relations of
production, gives rise to the new racism of the bourgeois era (histori-
cally speaking, the rst neoracism): the one which has as its target
the proletariat in its dual status as exploited population (one might
even say super-exploited, before the beginnings of the social state)
and politically threatening population.
Louis Chevalier has described the relevant network of signica-
tions in detail.
9
It is at this point, with regard to the race of labour-
ers that the notion of race becomes detached from its historico-
theological connotations to enter the eld of equivalences between
sociology, psychology, imaginary biology and the pathology of the
social body. The reader will recognize here the obsessive themes of
police/detective, medical and philanthropic literature, and hence of
literature in general (of which it is one of the fundamental dramatic
mechanisms and one of the political keys of social realism). For the
rst time those aspects typical of every procedure of racialization of
a social group right down to our own day are condensed in a single
discourse: material and spiritual poverty, criminality, congenital vice
(alcoholism, drugs), physical and moral defects, dirtiness, sexual
promiscuity and the specic diseases which threaten humanity with
degeneracy. And there is a characteristic oscillation in the presen-
tation of these themes: either the workers themselves constitute a
degenerate race or it is their presence and contact with them or in-
new racism
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deed their condition itself which constitute a crucible of degeneracy
for the race of citizens and nationals. Through these themes, there
forms the phantasmatic equation of labouring classes with danger-
ous classes, the fusion of a socioeconomic category with an anthro-
pological and moral category, which will serve to underpin all the
variants of sociobiological (and also psychiatric) determinism, by tak-
ing pseudoscientic credentials from the Darwinian theory of evolu-
tion, comparative anatomy and crowd psychology, but particularly by
becoming invested in a tightly knit network of institutions of social
surveillance and control.
10

Now this class racism is indissociable from fundamental histori-
cal processes which have developed unequally right down to the pres-
ent day. I can only mention these briey here. First, class racism is
connected with a political problem that is crucial for the constitution
of the nation-state. The bourgeois revolutions and in particular the
French Revolution, by its radical juridical egalitarianism had raised
the question of the political rights of the masses in an irreversible
manner. This was to be the object of one and a half centuries of social
struggles. The idea of a difference in nature between individuals had
become juridically and morally contradictory, if not inconceivable.
It was, however, politically indispensable, so long as the dangerous
classes (who posed a threat to the established social order, property
and the power of the elites) had to be excluded by force and by legal
means from political competence and conned to the margins of
the polity as long, that is, as it was important to deny them citizen-
ship by showing, and by being oneself persuaded, that they consti-
tutionally lacked the qualities of fully edged or normal humanity.
Two anthropologies clashed here: that of equality of birth and that of
a hereditary inequality which made it possible to re-naturalize social
antagonisms.
Now, this operation was overdetermined from the start by na-
tional ideology. Disraeli
11
(who showed himself, elsewhere, to be a
surprising imperialist theorist of the superiority of the Jews over
the Anglo-Saxon superior race itself) admirably summed this up
when he explained that the problem of contemporary states was the
tendency for a single social formation to split into two nations. In
so doing, he indicated the path which might be taken by the domi-
nant classes when confronted with the progressive organization of
the class struggle: rst divide the mass of the poor (in particular by
according the qualities of national authenticity, sound health, mo-
rality and racial integrity, which were precisely the opposite of the
industrial pathology, to the peasants and the traditional artisans);
then progressively displace the markers of dangerousness and he-
national ideology
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etienne balibar
redity from the labouring classes as a whole on to foreigners, and
in particular immigrants and colonial subjects, at the same time as
the introduction of universal suffrage is moving the boundary line
between citizens and subjects to the frontiers of nationality. In this
process, however, there was always a characteristic lag between what
was supposed to happen and the actual situation (even in countries
like France, where the national population was not institutionally
segregated and was subject to no original apartheid, except if one
extends ones purview to take in the whole of the imperial territory):
class racism against the popular classes continued to exist (and, at
the same time, these classes remained particularly susceptible to ra-
cial stigmatization, and remained extremely ambivalent in their atti-
tude towards racism). Which brings us to another permanent aspect
of class racism.
I am referring to what must properly be called the institutional
racialization of manual labour. It would be easy to nd distant origins
for this, origins as old as class society itself. In this regard, there is
no signicant difference between the way contempt for work and
the manual worker was expressed among the philosophical elites of
slave-owning Greece and the way a man like Taylor could, in 1909,
describe the natural predisposition of certain individuals for the ex-
hausting, dirty, repetitive tasks which required physical strength, but
no intelligence or initiative (the man of the type of the ox of the
Principles of Scientic Management: paradoxically, an inveterate pro-
pensity for systematic soldiering is also attributed to this same man:
this is why he needs a man to stand over him before he can work
in conformity with his nature).
12
However, the industrial revolution
and capitalist wage labour here effect a displacement. What is now
the object of contempt and in turn fuels fears is no longer manual
labour pure and simple (we shall, by contrast, see this theoretically
idealized in the context of paternalistic, archaizing ideologies in
the form of craft work), but mechanized physical work, which has
become the appendage of the machine and therefore subject to a
violence that is both physical and symbolic without immediate prec-
edent (which we know, moreover, does not disappear with the new
phases of the industrial revolution, but is rather perpetuated both
in modernized and intellectualized forms as well as in archaic
forms in a great many sectors of production).
This process modies the status of the human body (the human
status of the body): it creates body-men, men whose body is a ma-
chine-body, that is fragmented and dominated, and used to perform
one isolable function or gesture, being both destroyed in its integrity
and fetishized, atrophied and hypertrophied in its useful organs.
institutional
racialization of
manual labour
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Like all violence, this is inseparable from a resistance and also from
a sense of guilt. The quantity of normal work can only be recog-
nized and extracted from the workers body retrospectively, once its
limits have been xed by struggle: the rule is overexploitation, the
tendential destruction of the organism (which will be metaphorized
as degeneracy) and, at the very least, excess in the repression of the
intellectual functions involved in work. This is an unbearable process
for the worker, but one which is no more acceptable, without ideo-
logical and phantasmatic elaboration, for the workers masters: the
fact that there are body-men means that there are men without bodies.
That the body-men are men with fragmented and mutilated bodies
(if only by their separation from intelligence) means that the indi-
viduals of each of these types have to be equipped with a superbody,
and that sport and ostentatious virility have to be developed, if the
threat hanging over the human race is to be fended off
13

Only this historical situation, these specic social relations make
it possible fully to understand the process of aestheticization (and
therefore of sexualization, in fetishist mode) of the body which char-
acterizes all the variants of modern racism, by giving rise either to
the stigmatization of the physical marks of racial inferiority or to
the idealization of the human type of the superior race. They cast
light upon the true meaning of the recourse to biology in the history
of racist theories, which has nothing whatever to do with the inu-
ence of scientic discoveries, but is, rather, a metaphor for and
an idealization of the somatic phantasm. Academic biology, and
many other theoretical discourses, can full this function, provided
they are articulated to the visibility of the body, its ways of being and
behaving, its limbs and its emblematic organs. We should here, in
accordance with the hypotheses formulated elsewhere regarding
neo-racism and its link with the recent ways in which intellectual
labour has been broken down into isolated operations, extend the in-
vestigation by describing the somatization of intellectual capacities,
and hence their racialization, a process visible everywhere from the
instrumentalization of IQ to the aestheticization of the executive as
decision maker, intellectual and athlete.
14

But there is yet another determining aspect in the constitution of
class racism. The working class is a population that is both hetero-
geneous and uctuating, its boundaries being by denition impre-
cise, since they depend on ceaseless transformations of the labour
process and movements of capital. Unlike aristocratic castes, or even
the leading fractions of the bourgeoisie, it is not a social caste. What
class racism (and, a fortiori, nationalist class racism, as in the case of
immigrants) tends to produce is, however, the equivalent of a caste
aestheticization
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576
etienne balibar
closure at least for one part of the working class. More precisely, it
is maximum possible closure where social mobility is concerned,
combined with maximum possible openness as regards the ows of
proletarianization.
Let us put things another way. The logic of capitalist accumula-
tion involves two contradictory aspects here: on the one hand, mobi-
lizing or permanently de-stabilizing the conditions of life and work,
in such a way as to ensure competition on the labour market, draw
new labour power continually from the industrial reserve army and
maintain a relative over-population; on the other hand, stabilizing
collectivities of workers over long periods (over several generations),
to educate them for work and bond them to companies (and also
to bring into play the mechanism of correspondence between a pa-
ternalist political hegemony and a worker familialism). On the one
hand, class condition, which relates purely to the wage relation, has
nothing to do with antecedents or descendants; ultimately, even the
notion of class belonging is devoid of any practical meaning; all that
counts is class situation, hic et nunc. On the other hand, at least a sec-
tion of the workers have to be the sons of workers, a social heredity has
to be created.
15
But with this, in practice, the capacities for resistance
and organization also increase.
It was in response to these contradictory demands that the de-
mographic and immigration policies and policies of urban segrega-
tion, which were set in place both by employers and the state from
the middle of the nineteenth century onwards policies which D.
Bertaux has termed anthroponomic practices
l6
were born. These
have two sides to them: a paternalistic aspect (itself closely connected
to nationalist propaganda) and a disciplinary aspect, an aspect of so-
cial warfare against the savage masses and an aspect of civilizing
(in all senses of the term) these same masses. This dual nature we
can still see perfectly illustrated today in the combined social and
police approach to the suburbs and ghettos. It is not by chance that
the current racist complex grafts itself on to the population problem
(with its series of connotations: birth rate, depopulation and over-
population, interbreeding, urbanization, social housing, public
health, unemployment) and focuses preferentially on the question of
the second generation of what are here improperly called immigrants
with the object of nding out whether they will carry on as the pre-
vious generation (the immigrant workers properly so-called) the
danger being that they will develop a much greater degree of social
combativeness, combining class demands with cultural demands; or
whether they will add to the number of declassed individuals, occu-
pying an unstable position between subproletarianization and exit
anthroponomic
practices
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577
from the working class. This is the main issue for class racism, both
for the dominant class and for the popular classes themselves: to
mark with generic signs populations which are collectively destined
for capitalist exploitation or which have to be held in reserve for
it at the very moment when the economic process is tearing them
away from the direct control of the system (or, quite simply, by mass
unemployment, is rendering the previous controls inoperative). The
problem is to keep in their place, from generation to generation,
those who have no xed place; and for this, it is necessary that they
have a genealogy. And also to unify in the imaginary the contradic-
tory imperatives of nomadism and social heredity, the domestication
of generations and the disqualication of resistances.
If these remarks are well founded, then they may throw some
light on what are themselves the contradictory aspects of what I shall
not hesitate to call the self-racialization of the working class. There
is here a whole spectrum of social experiences and ideological forms
we might mention: from the organization of collectivities of workers
around symbols of ethnic or national origin to the way in which a
certain workerism, centred on criteria of class origins (and, conse-
quently, on the institution of the working-class family, on the bond
which only the family establishes between the individual and his
class) and the over-valorization of work (and, consequently, the vi-
rility which it alone confers), reproduces, within the ambit of class
consciousness, some part of the set of representations of the race
of workers.
17
Admittedly, the radical forms of workerism, at least in
France, were produced more by intellectuals and political apparatuses
aiming to represent the working class (from Proudhon down to the
Communist Party) than by the workers themselves. The fact remains
that they correspond to a tendency on the part of the working class to
form itself into a closed body, to preserve gains that have been made
and traditions of struggle and to turn back against bourgeois society
the signiers of class racism. It is from this reactive origin that the
ambivalence characterizing workerism derives: the desire to escape
from the condition of exploitation and the rejection of the contempt
to which it is subject. Absolutely nowhere is this ambivalence more
evident than in its relation to nationalism and to xenophobia. To the
extent that in practice they reject ofcial nationalism (when they do
reject it), the workers produce in outline a political alternative to the
perversion of class struggles. To the extent, however, that they proj-
ect on to foreigners their fears and resentment, despair and deance,
it is not only that they are ghting competition; in addition, and much
more profoundly, they are trying to escape their own exploitation.
It is a hatred of themselves, as proletarians in so far as they are in
self-racialization of
the working class
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578
etienne balibar
danger of being drawn back into the mill of proletarianization that
they are showing.
To sum up, just as there is a constant relation of reciprocal de-
termination between nationalism and racism, there is a relation of
reciprocal determination between class racism and ethnic racism
and these two determinations are not independent. Each produces its ef-
fects, to some extent, in the eld of the other and under constraints
imposed by the other. Have we, in retracing this overdetermination
in its broad outline (and in trying to show how it illuminates the con-
crete manifestations of racism and the constitution of its theoretical
discourse), answered the questions we posed at the beginning of this
chapter? It would be more accurate to say that we have reformulated
them. What has elsewhere been called the excess which, by compari-
son with nationalism, is constitutive of racism turns out at the same
time to be a shortfall as far as the class struggle is concerned. But,
though that excess is linked to the fact that nationalism is formed in
opposition to the class struggle (even though it utilizes its dynamic),
and that shortfall is linked to the fact that the class struggle nds
itself repressed by nationalism, the two do not compensate one another;
their effects tend, rather, to be combined. The important thing is
not to decide whether nationalism is rst and foremost a means of
imagining and pursuing the unity of state and society, which then
runs up against the contradictions of the class struggle, or whether it
is primarily a reaction to the obstacles which the class struggle puts
in the way of national unity. By contrast, it is crucially important to
note that, in the historical eld where both an unbridgeable gap be-
tween state and nation and endlessly re-emerging class antagonisms
are to be found, nationalism necessarily takes the form of racism, at
times in competition with other forms (linguistic nationalism, for
example) and at times in combination with them, and that it thus
becomes engaged in a perpetual headlong ight forward. Even when
racism remains latent, or present only in a minority of individual
consciousnesses, it is already that internal excess of nationalism
which betrays, in both senses of the word, its articulation to the class
struggle. Hence the ever recurring paradox of nationalism: the re-
gressive imagining of a nation-state where the individuals would by
their nature be at home, because they would be among their own
(their own kind), and the rendering of that state uninhabitable; the
endeavour to produce a unied community in the face of external
enemies and the endless rediscovery that the enemy is within, iden-
tiable by signs which are merely the phantasmatic elaboration of its
divisions. Such a society is in a real sense a politically alienated soci-
ety. But are not all contemporary societies, to some degree, grappling
with their own political alienation?
reciprocal
determination
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Notes
1 Pierre Ayoberry, The Nazi Question; An Essay on the Interpretation of National
Socialism (1922-73), transl. R. Hurley, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1981.
2 See the theorizations of Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (2
vols), 5th edn (revised), Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1966; and, more
recently, of Louis Dumont, Essays on Individualism: Modern Ideology in
Anthropological Perspective; University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1986.
3 The personication of capital, a social relation, begins with the very gure of
the capitalist. But this is never sufcient in itself for arousing an emotional
reaction. This is why, following the logic of excess, other real-imaginary
traits accumulate: life-style, lineage (the 200 families*), foreign origins, se-
cret strategies, racial plots (the Jewish plan for world domination), etc. The
fact that, specically in the case of the Jews, this personication is worked
up in combination with a process of fetishization of money is clearly not ac-
cidental.
* The idea that 200 families held most of the wealth of France and used it to
exert political power was current in France in the 1930s, being quoted by
Daladier at the Radical Congress of 1934. It seems probable that the gure
200 derived from the number of shareholders allowed to attend the annual
meeting of the Bank of France.
4 Matters are further complicated by the fact that the lost unity of Christian
Europe, a mythic guration of the origins of its civilization, is thus repre-
sented in the register of race at the point when that same Europe is embark-
ing upon its mission of civilizing the world, i.e. submitting the world to its
domination, by way of erce competition between nations.
5 Cf. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, Verso, London 1983, pp. 92-
3.
6 L. Poliakov, The History of Anti-semitism (4 vols), transl. R. Howard, Routledge
& Kegan Paul, London 1974; M. Duchet & M. Rberioux, Prhistoire et his-
toire du racisme, in P. de Commarond and C. Duchet, eds, Racisme et soci-
et, Maspero, Paris 1969; C. Guillaumin, Lidologie raciste. Gense et langage
actuel, Mouton, Paris-The Hague 1972; Caractres spciques de lidologie
raciste, Cahiers internationaux de sociologie, vol. LIII, 1972; Les ambigu-
ts de la catgorie taxinomique race, in L. Poliakov ed., Hommes et btes:
Entretiens sur le racisme (I), Mouton, Paris-The Hague 1975; Eric Williams,
Capitalism and Slavery, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1944.
7 And one which substitutes itself, in the French case, for the ideology of the
three orders, a basically theological and juridical ideology, which is, by con-
trast, expressive of the organic place occupied by the nobility in the building
of the State (feudalism properly so-called).
8 L. Poliakov, History of Anti-Semitism, vol. 2, pp. 222-32.
9 Louis Chevalier, Labouring Classes and Dangerous Classes in Paris during the
First Half of the Nineteenth Century. transl. F. Jellinek. Routledge & Kegan
Paul. London 1973.
10 Cf. G. Netchine, Lindividuel et le collect if dans les reprsentations psy-
chologiques de la diversit des tres humains au XIX
e
sicle, in L. Poliakov.
ed., Ni juif ni grec: Entretiens sur le racisme (II), Mouton, Paris-The Hague
1978; L. Murard and P. Zylberman. Le Petit Travailleur infatigable ou le
proltaire rgnr. Villes-usines, habitat et intimits au XIX
e
sicle, Editions
Recherches, Fontenay-sous-Bois 1976.
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etienne balibar
11 Cf. H. Arendt. Antisemitism, Part One of The Origins of Totalitarianism.
Andre Deutsch, London 1986, pp.68-79; L. Poliakov. History of Anti-semitism.
vol. 3. pp. 328-37: Karl Polanyi, Appendix II: Disraelis Two Nations and
the problem of colored races, The Great Transformation. Beacon Press,
Boston 1957. pp. 290-94.
12 Frederick Winslow Taylor, Principles of Scientic Management, 1911. See the
commentaries by Robert Linhart. Lenine, les paysans. Taylor, Seuil, Paris
1976; and Benjamin Coriat, LAtelier et le chronomtre. Christian Bourgeois.
Paris 1979. See also my study, Sur le concept de la division du travail manu-
el et intellectuel in Jean Belkhir et al., LIntellectuel, lintelligentsia et les manu-
els, Anthropos, Paris 1983.
13 Clearly, the bestiality of the slave has been a continual problem, from
Aristotle and his contemporaries down to the modern slave trade (the hy-
persexualization to which it is subject is a sufcient indication of this): but
the industrial revolution brought about a new paradox: the bestial body of
the worker is decreasingly animal and increasingly technicized and there-
fore humanized. It is the panic fear of a super-humanization of man (in his
body and his intelligence which is objectivized by cognitive sciences and the
corresponding techniques of selection and training), rather than his sub-hu-
manization or, in any case, the reversibility of these two which discharges
itself in phantasies of animality and these are projected for preference on to
the worker whose status as an outsider [tranger] confers upon him at the
same time the attributes of an other male, a rival.
14 See chapters I and 3 above.
15 Not only in the sense of individual liation, but in the sense of a population
tending towards the practice of endogamy; not only in the sense of a trans-
mission of skills (mediated by schooling, apprenticeship and industrial dis-
cipline) but in the sense of a collective ethic, constructed in institutions and
through subjective identication. Alongside the works already cited. see J.-P.
de Gaudemar. La Mobilisation gnrale. Editions du Champ Urbain, Paris
1979.
16 Daniel Bertaux, Destins personnels et structure de classe, PUF, Paris 1977.
17 C.G. Noiriel. Longwy: Immigrs et proltaires. 1880-1980, PUF, Paris 1985:
J. Fremontier, La Vie en bleu: Voyage en culture ouvrire, Fayard, Paris
1980; Franoise Duroux, La Famille des ouvriers: mythe au politique?, un-
published thesis, Universit de Paris VII, 1982.
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The ghetto and the ethnic enclave
Ceri Peach
This article is about the social process of assimilation and the spatial pattern
of concentration and dispersal. Ethnic concentrations are often associated
with segregation and regarded as a barrier for integration. The geographer
Ceri Peach, however, argues that this common-sense take on spatial concen-
tration is rooted in the early American literature on segregation. Peach gives
a critical review of this theoretical literature, arguing that it fails to make a
clear distinction between the ghetto and the ethnic enclave and presents
an alternative model for understanding spatial concentration. He also pres-
ents clear denitions and concrete operationalisations for the concepts of
the ghetto and the enclave, and discusses their theoretical implications.
This article is a good example of the kind of scholarship that does not take
common-sense notions for granted, but critically questions theoretical and
methodological issues.
This chapter examines the reasons behind the political fear of ethnic
concentrations. It asks the question: is segregation always bad? It ex-
amines how a confusion of terminology in the early American analy-
sis of ethnic and racial segregation has produced a malignant effect
on the literature, politics and policies affecting the ways in which
minorities are accommodated in west European cities.
The paper is, in a way, a piece of intellectual archaeology, but
it has a potent message for our current understanding of segrega-
tion and policies of minority accommodation. The key point is that
there is a major difference between the ghetto and the ethnic en-
clave. However, American sociology for a long time failed to make
this distinction and, worse still, linked the ghetto to the enclave to
the suburb as the rst of three spatial stages on the inevitable process
of ethnic assimilation. The problem of intellectual archaeology is to
separate (1) theory and methodology on the one hand from (2) mod-
els and application on the other. The theory and methodology devel-
segregation
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582
ceri peach
oped in the literature are correct; the model of application has been
far too restrictive. The truth of the matter is that there are two basic
models of minority incorporation: the assimilationist (melting pot)
and the multiculturalist (mosaic). The enclave is part of the assimi-
lationist model; the ghetto is conned to the multiculturalist model.
Multiculturalism is a necessary condition for the ghetto, but it is not
a sufcient condition.
The central theory in the study of the spatial patterns of ethnic
residential segregation is that there is a direct relationship between
the social process of assimilation and the spatial pattern of dispersal
(Park 1926; Duncan & Lieberson 1959; Peach 1975; Massey 1984).
This view is, I believe, correct. The problem is that assimilation is not
the only model for ethnic accommodation and integration.
However, taking the theory rst, seventy ve years ago, Robert
Park argued:
It is because social relations are so frequently and so inevitably cor-
related with spatial relations; because physical distances, so frequent-
ly are, or seem to be, the indexes of social distances, that statistics
have any meaning whatsoever for sociology (Park 1926: 18).
From this observation developed one of the most fruitful theories
of the Chicago School of the 1920s and 1930s and one of the few
examples of cumulative social science. The theory equated the statis-
tical levels of residential segregation of minority ethnic populations
to their levels of assimilation to the wider society. High levels of seg-
regation were equated with non-assimilation; low levels with high
levels of assimilation.
The key process involved was social interaction; cultural behavior
was modied according to whether one interacted more with ones
own ethnic group or with the charter population. This interaction
was controlled by proximity to, and intermingling with, the respec-
tive groups. Residential isolation was hypothesized to minimize
social interaction with outsiders while promoting social interaction
within the group. Within-group interaction was hypothesized to re-
inforce the groups identity, language maintenance and in-marriage.
Interpretation and operationalization
Although the general proposition of the relationship between resi-
dential segregation and social assimilation was clear, there were
problems of operationalization. Assimilation was difcult to de-
assimilation
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ne. Books were written on the topic (for example, Gordon 1964).
However, Lieberson (1963) provides us with a helpful denition: as-
similation has taken place when it is no longer possible to predict
anything about an individual or a group on the basis of their ethnic
origins than it is for any member of the population as a whole.
Operationalization meant taking multidimensional comparisons
of the minority population in relation to the target of the core soci-
ety. Structural assimilation, or the large scale entry into prime group
(close friendship circles) of the core society was regarded by Gordon
as the key step (Gordon 1964: 81). Thereafter, intermarriage and oth-
er identicational changes were seen by Gordon to follow inevitably.
Thus operationally, assimilation was treated as a multi-dimensional
phenomenon and its progress was measured by examining longitu-
dinal change of its many variables (Gordon 1964). Acquisition of the
English language, socio-economic status, out-marriage, citizenship
were some of the variables examined.
Segregation also proved problematic to operationalize, largely be-
cause of the different ways in which it was conceptualized (Peach
1981). Residential segregation is also a multidimensional phenom-
enon. A large number of different techniques, differing not only in
mathematical formula but in conceptualization of segregation it-
self have been suggested (Peach 1981). Massey and Denton (1993)
have suggested a battery of ve measures to measure what they have
termed the hyper segregation of African Americans. However, a re-
view paper by Duncan and Duncan (1955) effectively concentrated
most subsequent work on the Index of Dissimilarity (id). id mea-
sures the percentage of a population which would have to shift its
area of residence in order to replicate the distribution of the popula-
tion with which it is being compared. id is a measure of uneven-
ness with similar characteristics and values to the economists Gini
Index. Liebersons P* (Lieberson 1981), a measure of isolation, has
also come into more general use since the 1980s. Unlike id it is an
asymmetric measure. It recognizes that the degree of exposure of a
small group to a large group is different from the exposure of the
large group to the small group. Unlike id its use has tended to be
descriptive rather than analytical in correlation regressions.
Segregation and interaction
Duncan and Lieberson demonstrated for Chicago in the 1930s and
1950s that there was an inverse relationship between the level of seg-
regation of foreign national groups and the percent of the group able
multidimensionality
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ceri peach
to speak English. They also showed that high degrees of out-mar-
riage correlated with low levels of segregation (Duncan & Lieberson
1959; Lieberson 1963: 156-158). Their argument was taken further
by Peach (1980a; 1980b) who demonstrated that Kennedys (1944;
1952) triple melting pot (Protestants, Catholics and Jews) in New
Haven, Connecticut, did not exist. The Irish Poles and Italians in the
supposed Catholic melting pot were all highly segregated from each
other. Intermarriage rates between these groups were lower than
statistically expected while Irish intermarriage with the (Protestant)
British, Germans and Scandinavians, from whom they had low lev-
els of segregation, were higher than statistically expected. Residential
segregation was the clearest predictor of group intermarriage.
Thus, residential mixing was hypothesized as the key to social in-
teraction. If residential mixing is limited to ones own ethnic group,
then the values and taken-for-granted nature of the groups beliefs
will be reinforced. If mixing takes place with outsiders, then taken-
for-granted values, language and expected marriage partner choice is
likely to become modied. Residential mixing is a necessary but not
sufcient condition for social interaction. However, where residen-
tial mixing takes place, it is likely to promote social interaction.
The hypothesis formed itself into what we may conceive of as a
simple three stage cycle. The rst generation of immigrants clustered
together in high concentrations and high segregation in the central
city. There they were unassimilated, few spoke English; overwhelm-
ingly they married their own ethnic group. The second generation
moved a little away from their inner city port of entry; they were less
segregated; a higher proportion spoke English; a greater proportion
married out. The third generation suburbanized, spoke English and
intermarried fully. They were assimilated.
But assimilation is not the only model
However, one should not assume that assimilation was the desired
outcome for all groups. On the one hand, social assimilation is en-
hanced by residential dispersal, while on the other hand, residential
segregation has the opposite effect. Therefore, a group wishing to as-
similate will tend to disperse, whilst for a group wishing to maintain
its ethnic identity, clustering is an important strategy. It is also true
that a group that disperses tends to assimilate whether or not the
group as a whole is in favor of assimilation or not.
There are thus two basic ways in which minorities are accommo-
dated into a wider society: assimilation and integration. Assimilation
social interaction
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argues for the disappearance of difference either through conform-
ing to a dominant structure (as in Anglo conformism) or through
merging (as in the melting pot). Integration or plurality or multicul-
turalism means accommodation while maintaining a separate iden-
tity. Integration is often economic while maintaining social closure.
The two models will thus be expected to produce different spa-
tial outcomes. Assimilation requires spatial diffusion. The mi-
nority and majority become socially and residentially intermixed.
Multiculturalism or integration (as opposed to assimilation) posits
a plural society in which social encapsulation and residential con-
centrations and separation, through higher degrees of segregation,
remain.
Not all plurality is voluntary
However, the ghetto model may come about from totally different
causes. It may be either voluntarily embraced or negatively enforced
(Boal 1981). A hegemonic group wishing to separate itself from its
perceived inferiors will attempt to enforce segregation upon the low-
er group (Massey & Denton 1993; Lemon 1991).
There are therefore two diametrically different reasons for ethnic
segregation. Ethnic segregation may be either voluntarily adopted as
a strategy for group survival or else it may be negatively imposed
upon a weaker group.
While there are two different models of accommodation, key
points of the interpretation of the levels of social integration repre-
sented by the degree of spatial segregation of groups from one anoth-
er remain the same. Low levels of segregation indicate high degrees
of social interaction; high levels of segregation represent low degrees
of social interaction. Thus interpreting the probable outcomes of giv-
en levels of segregation, it is not critical to know whether those levels
are the net result of positive or negative forces.
The problem with the Chicago School
The central problem with the Chicago School was that while it cor-
rectly conceptualized the relationship between spatial pattern and
social process, it failed to recognize that the unidirectional transition
from the highly concentrated inner city to suburban dispersal was
not an inevitable process nor was it the only process. The Chicago
School did not distinguish between the melting pot and the mosaic.
imposition
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ceri peach
They did not distinguish between the assimilationist and the plural-
istic models. They did not distinguish between the ghetto and the
enclave. The ghetto and the immigrant colony were conceptualized
as interchangeable terms.
The Chinatowns, the Little Sicilians, and the other so-called ghet-
tos with which students of urban life are familiar are special types
of a more general species of natural area which the conditions and
tendencies of city life inevitably produce (...) the keener, the more en-
ergetic and the more ambitious very soon emerge from their ghettos
and immigrant colonies and move into an area of second immigrant
settlement, or perhaps into a cosmopolitan area in which the mem-
bers of several immigrant and racial groups live side by side (Park
1926: 9).
Worse still, not only did the Chicago School fail to distinguish be-
tween the ghetto and the enclave, but it believed that the ghetto was
a stage within the melting pot model. It saw the ghetto as the rst
stage of three generational progression of (1) ghetto, (2) enclave, (3)
suburb. In this fundamental misunderstanding the Chicago School
falsied the ethnic history of long settled groups, misunderstood the
processes affecting African Americans and mis-forecast their future
in American cities.
For the Chicago School, the terms ghetto and enclave were
not problematized. Furthermore, it was assumed that the outward
movement of minority ethnic populations away from the inner city
equated to dispersal. A series of researchers in the lower foothills
of the Chicago School busied themselves demonstrating the unstop-
pable outward diffusion of minority groups from their inner city seg-
regated ports of entry to their inevitable suburban diffusion (Cressey
1938; Ford 1950; Kiang 1968). However, while they demonstrated
the progressive shift of the center of gravity of ethnic groups away
from the cbd over time, in the case of African Americans, outward
movement did not always equate to dispersal. The ghetto moved out
with them like the tongue of a glacier.
Diagrammatically, Figure 1 shows the outward movement of the
centre of gravity of the ethnic populations of Chicago, over time,
from the cbd. The diagram also shows the decrease in the degree
of concentration as the suburbanizing process continues. The ex-
pected relationship between segregation, measured by the index of
dissimilarity and assimilation is shown in Figure 2. The combined
relationship between outward movement, decreasing segregation
and increasing assimilation is represented in Figure 3.
differentiation
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However, for the African American population, the level of segre-
gation remained obstinately xed on the high side of the assimilation
diagram, even when the center of gravity of the group showed move-
ment away from the central city (Figure 4).
The aws of the three generational model
While the basic hypothesis of the equation of high segregation with
non-assimilation remains valid, interpretations of the model were
awed by the mistaken belief that the hypothesis had universal valid-
ity, that all groups would conform to this three generational cycle.
Even in the 1950s it was condently declared by the Head of the
Chicago School, Philip Hauser, that African Americans would inevi-
tably follow this model.
The Negro migrant to the city will, without question, follow the
same pattern of mobility blazed by the successive waves of immi-
grants who settled our central cities. Just as the immigrant under-
went a process of Americanization the immigrant Negro is under-
going a process of urbanization. The Negro is already rising and
will continue to rise on the social-economic scale as measured by
education, occupation, income and the amenities of urban existence.
Furthermore, the Negro, in time, will diffuse through the metropoli-
tan area and occupy outlying suburban as well as central city areas
(Hauser 1958: 65).
This view was deeply mistaken. It equated upward mobility with spa-
tial diffusion. It regarded the process of ghetto formation and disper-
sal as the same as the three generation process of other immigrant
groups. It regarded time as the independent variable for ghetto dis-
solution. It was wrong on all counts.
In reality, the African American ghetto was different in kind from
the ethnic enclave of the European and other ethnics. Parks casual
equation of Chinatowns, Little Sicilys and other so-called ghettos
with the black ghetto (Park 1926: 9) was deeply awed. The black
ghetto was dually segregated; nearly all urban African Americans
lived in such areas; almost the whole population in such areas was
black. The enclaves, on the other hand, were dually dilute. Only a mi-
nority of ethnic lived in areas which were associated with them. Very
rarely did they form even a majority of the population of what were
universal validity
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Figure 1 Outward movement of minority groups, Chicago, 1890-1914
I II III IV V VI VII VIII XI X
0
4
8
12
16
20
24
28
32
36
40
44
48
52
56
60
Mile Zones
DISTRIBUTION OF PERSONS
BORN IN CHICAGO
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
0
4
8
12
16
20
24
28
32
36
40
44
48
52
56
60
Mile Zones
BORN IN GERMANY
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
0
4
8
12
16
20
24
28
32
36
40
44
48
52
56
60
Mile Zones
BORN IN POLAND
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
0
4
8
12
16
20
24
28
32
36
40
44
48
52
56
60
Mile Zones
BORN IN ITALY
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
0
4
8
12
16
20
24
28
32
36
40
44
48
52
56
60
Mile Zones
DISTRIBUTION OF NEGROES
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
0
4
8
12
16
20
24
28
32
36
40
44
48
52
56
60
Mile Zones
BORN IN IRELAND
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
1890
1940
Source: Ford 1950
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Figure 2 Hypothesized relationship between segregation (Index of
Dissimilarity) and assimilation over time
100 0
Start
High Segregation
Non Assimilation
Low Segregation
Total Assimilation
Finish
Exepected Relationship between Residential
Segregation and Social Assimilation;
Assimilation Model
100 0
City of Chicago, 1930, 1950 and 1960
Indices of Dissimilarity for Foreign-born Whites
born in Poland
1930
(58)
1950
(45)
1960
(38)
1990
(19)
supposedly their areas. Thomas Philpotts (1978) book The Slum
and the Ghetto, hammered the point home (Table 1).
It can be seen that while 92.7% of the black population lived in
the black ghetto and the African American population formed 81.5%
of the population of the black ghetto, only 3% of the Irish lived in
Irish areas and they formed only one third of the population of Irish
areas. The two most concentrated white groups were the Italians and
the Poles. Just under half of the Italians lived in Italian areas and they
formed just under half of the population of Italian areas. The Poles
were a little more concentrated: 61% lived in Polish areas and they
formed just over half of the population of Polish areas.
assimilation model
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Figure 3 Hypothesized relationship between decreases in segregation
and group outward movement from inner cities
100 0
C
h
ange over tim
e
First 70
generation
30 Third
generation
Second
50 generation
High segregtion
Non-assimilation
Non-English-speaking
High in-marriage
Wearing of traditional dress
Low segregtion
High assimilation
English-speaking
Low in-marriage
Degree of segregation, index of dissimilarity
100
0
First
generation
INNER CITY
Second
generation
Third
generation
SUBURB
%

e
t
h
i
n
i
c

g
r
o
u
p
C
h
a
n
g
e

o
v
e
r

t
i
m
e
Distance from centre
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Figure 4 Failure of the African American levels of segregation (ID) to
decrease over time, Chicago, 1930-1990
100 0
1970 (92)
1990 (85)
1980 (80)
1930 (76)
Black-White Segregation Chicago 1930 1990
(Ward/tract level)
Table 1 Ghettoization of ethnic groups, Chicago, 1930
Group Groups
City
Population
Groups
Ghetto
Population
Total
Ghetto
Population
Percentage
of group
Ghettoized
Groups
percentage
Ghetto
Population
Irish 169,568 4,993 14,595 2.9 33.8
German 377,975 53,821 169,649 14.2 31.7
Swedish 140,913 21,581 88,749 15.3 24.3
Russian 169,736 63,416 149,208 37.4 42.5
Czech 122,089 53,301 169,550 43.7 31.4
Italian 181,861 90,407 195,736 49.7 46.2
Polish 401,316 248,024 457,146 61.0 54.3
Negro 233,903 216,846 266,051 92.7 81.5
Source: Philpott 1978: 141, Table 7
However, even these levels of concentration were different in
kind rather than different in degree from the situation of African
Americans. All the European minorities lived in mixed areas. Hardly
any of the blacks did. While white ethnic enclaves dissolved over
time, black ghettos intensied and expanded territorially in a com-
pact form. Even in 1990, the massive concentration of the African
American population into black areas of Chicago continued (Table
2). Two thirds of the African American population were living in ar-
eas which were 90% or more black; 82% were in areas that were 50%
or more black.
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Table 2 Percentage of the African American population of Chicago
PMSA, living in tracts of a given black percentage, 1990
Black Percentage
of Tract
Black Population
living in such tracts
Percentage of the total Black
Population of Chicago
in such tracts
100% 111,804 8.4
99% or more 381,347 28.7
90% or more 884,725 66.5
50% or more 1,087,600 81.7
30% or more 1,163,969 87.5
Total Black
Population
1,330,636
Source: Based on data from GeoLytics Census cd +Maps us Census 1990 data
If one compares the Chicago situation in 1930 and 1990 with London
in 1991 (Table 3) the difference in kind rather than degree between
the situation of blacks in the US and Britain is vividly illustrated.
The column heading Percentage of Group Ghettoized simply cop-
ies Philpotts category, but refers to the proportion of a group living
in areas arbitrarily dened as those where they form 30% + of an
enumeration district (block).
By failing to distinguish between the ghetto and the ethnic en-
clave, the two distinct phenomena were linked together as the rst
two stages of the three generational model: ghetto enclave sub-
urb. From here it was an easy step to envisage groups occupying
these three positions as occupying places on an escalator. Those at
the bottom of the staircase, in the ghetto, were new arrivals; those
at the top, in the suburbs had been on the staircase longest and had
reached their destination. Those who were half way up had previ-
ously been at the bottom and were now on their way to the top.
From this conceptualization, it became easy to see time/space
substitutions in the three generational model. If, for the sake of ar-
gument, the Irish were suburbanized and the Poles were still in an
enclave and the African Americans in the ghetto, then it became pos-
sible to argue that a generation previously, the Irish were in the en-
clave and two generations ago, they were in the ghetto. The African-
Americans and the Poles were envisaged as representing the rst
two stages of the Irish past. In the same way, the contemporarily
suburbanized Irish, predicted the Polish future in the next genera-
tion and the African American future in two generations. This, af-
the ghetto-enclave
link
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ter all was what Hauser (1958) was predicting. However, while the
Polish/Irish time/space substitution was correct, the Irish future did
not exist for the black population. Nor did the contemporaneously
ghettoized black situation represent the Irish past. No other group
had experienced the hyper segregation of the African Americans.
Table 3 Ghettoization of ethnic groups at ED level in Greater
London, 30% cutoff
Group Groups
City
Population
Groups
Ghetto
Population
Total
Ghetto
Population
Percentage
of group
Ghettoized
Groups
percentage
Ghetto
Population
Non-white 1,346,119 721,873 1,589,476 53.6 45.4
Black
Caribbean
290,968 7,755 22,545 2.6 34.4
Black African 163,635 3,176 8,899 2.0 35.6
Black Other 80,613 . . . .
Indian 347,091 88,887 202,135 25.6 44.0
Pakistani 87,816 1,182 3,359 1.4 35.2
Bangladeshi 85,738 28,280 55,500 33.0 51.0
Chinese 56,579 38 111 0.0 34.2
Other Asian 112,807 176 572 0.2 30.8
Other Other 120,872 209 530 0.2 39.4
Irish born 256,470 1023 2,574 0.4 39.8
Source: Peach 1996
While Hauser in 1958 could condently predict the inevitability of
black diffusion and assimilation, seven years later the whole optimis-
tic edice collapsed with the publication of Karl and Alma Taeubers
book Negroes in Cities (1965). Using the rst large scale availability of
census block data from the 1960 census, the Taeubers demonstrated
the overwhelming segregation of African Americans in American
cities. On a scale from 0 (no segregation) to 100 (total segregation)
the Taeubers showed that the mean segregation index was 86.2 for
the 207 cities for which block level data were available in 1960. They
showed that the index was high in all regions (1965: 37), that it was
high irrespective of whether city populations were large or small,
whether the non-white population was large or small, whether the
non-white percentage was high or low. They showed that indexes had
Negroes in Cities
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been high in the past and had remained high. Hausers comforting
expectation of decreasing segregation with time was a delusion.
The Taeubers also dealt a death blow to another American dream.
This was that economic progress would dissolve racial segregation.
Using Liebersons (1963) technique of indirect standardization, they
calculated how segregated the black population of Chicago would be
from whites, if income differences were the only variable affecting
their distribution. This is achieved by applying the percentage that
African Americans form of each income band in the city population to
the appropriate number of person in each income band in each tract
in the city. For example, if blacks formed 10% of the middle income
group in Chicago, then 10% of the middle income group would be
expected to be black, wherever the middle income group lived and so
forth. Having calculated the expected distribution of black and white
in the city, the degree of segregation between the two groups could be
calculated and compared with the observed level of segregation. On
this basis, the observed level of segregation in Chicago in 1960 was
83 and the expected index was 10. In other words, only 10/83 or 12%
of the observed level of segregation could be attributed to differences
in income (Taeuber & Taeuber 1964). Blacks were segregated from
whites because black, not because they were poorer than whites.
Subsequent work by Massey and Denton (1993: 86) showed
that the intervening years since Taeuber and Taeubers work (pace
William Julius Wilson 1978) had not produced a decline in the signif-
icance of race. Massey and Denton demonstrated that irrespective of
income level, poor black were segregated from poor whites, middle
income blacks from middle income whites and rich blacks from rich
whites by the same massive amounts, with indexes over 80 almost
without exception (Table 4).
Table 4 Segregation by income in thirty metropolitan areas with the
largest black populations, 1970-1980
Income Category
Metropolitan area Under $2,500 $25,000-$27,500 $50,000 +
Northern areas
Boston 85.1 83.9 89.1
Buffalo 85.2 80.0 90.0
Chicago 91.1 85.8 86.3
Cincinnati 81.7 70.9 74.2
segregation
by income
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595
Income Category
Metropolitan area Under $2,500 $25,000-$27,500 $50,000 +
Cleveland 91.6 87.1 86.4
Columbus 80.3 74.6 83.4
Detroit 88.6 85.0 86.4
Gary-Hammond-E.Chicago 90.6 89.5 90.9
Indianapolis 80.8 76.6 80.0
Kansas City 86.1 79.3 84.2
Los Angeles-Long Beach 85.4 79.8 78.9
Milwaukee 91.3 87.9 86.3
New York 86.2 81.2 78.6
Newark 85.8 79.0 77.5
Philadelphia 84.9 78.6 81.9
Pittsburgh 82.1 80.6 87.9
St. Louis 87.3 78.4 83.2
San Francisco-Oakland 79.9 73.7 72.1
Average 85.8 80.7 83.2
Southern Areas
Atlanta 82.2 77.3 78.2
Baltimore 82.4 72.3 76.8
Birmingham 46.1 40.8 45.2
Dallas-Ft. Worth 83.1 74.4 82.4
Greensboro-Winston Salem 63.2 55.1 70.8
Houston 73.8 65.5 72.7
Memphis 73.8 66.8 69.8
Miami 81.6 78.4 76.5
New Orleans 75.8 63.1 77.8
Norfolk-Virginia Beach 70.1 63.3 72.4
Tampa-St. Petersburg 81.8 76.0 85.7
Washington, D.C. 79.2 67.0 65.4
Average 74.4 66.7 72.8
Source: Massey &: Denton 1993 (Table 4.1, p. 86)
Table 4 Continued
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ceri peach
Thus we arrive at the realization that there is not one model of
American minority integration but two: the assimilationist and the
pluralist, the enclave and the ghetto. The great error has been to force
the pluralist model of African American segregation into the assimi-
lationist framework and to graft on the contemporary ghetto model
onto the historical European settlement patterns in cities. The ghetto
was different in kind; the ghetto was distinct from the ethnic enclave.
We can summarise some of the differences (Table 5).
Table 5 Summary of differences between the African American
ghetto and the ethnic enclave
African American Ghetto Ethnic Enclave
Dually segregated: Large majority of
blacks are in it; large majority in it are
black
Dually dilute: only a minority of the
group are in it; they form only a mi-
nority of the population of the area
associated with the group
Negative Positive
Enforced Voluntary
Expanding Residual
Real Symbolic
Threatening Touristic
Permanent Temporary
Is all high segregation for negative reasons?
However, because the disproving of the universality of the Chicago
Schools three generational model was demonstrated through the ex-
ample of the African American ghetto, another error was created.
This error was the belief that all high levels of segregation were pro-
duced by negative discrimination.
The reason for this belief is not hard to nd. First, the expecta-
tion of decreasing levels of segregation over time led to the belief
that high segregation was an early and primitive feature of minority
settlement. Secondly, nearly all of the available examples of high seg-
regation related to groups which were disadvantaged. Thirdly, the
key minority group, the Jews, on whom the plural model of socioeco-
nomic-progress-but-continuing-ethnic-segregation could be tested,
were not counted in the US census as either a national origin group
nor as an ethnic group. Russian-born was treated by some analysts
negative
discrimination
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597
as a surrogate for Jewish origin (Lieberson & Waters 1988: 10-11) but
of course not all Jews were of Russian origin nor were all of Russian
origin Jewish. Nathan Kantrowitz (1969) hinted at segregation as a
viable strategy for groups that wished to maintain their ethnic identi-
ty, but in a fairly oblique way, arguing only that decreases in the level
of European segregation in American cities should not be expected
to continue for ever.
However, while US government identied the Jewish population as
a religious rather than ethnic group and therefore desisted the census
from enumerating them, the Canadian census harbored no such deli-
cacy. The Canadian census counts the Jewish population as both a reli-
gious and as an ethnic group. The levels of Jewish residential segrega-
tion in Canadian cities is markedly high (Table 6). In terms of the Index
of Dissimilarity, Jewish segregation is as high as African American seg-
regation in American cities. In Toronto and Montreal, which in 1991
contained the two largest concentrations of the Jewish population of
Canada, the ids were 75 and 82 respectively. The Canadian Jewish pop-
ulation is extremely successful on a socio-economic scale and although
anti Semitism exists in Canada, there is no indication that the levels
of Jewish segregation noted in the table are not the result of positive
wishes for association (Darroch & Marston 1972; Hiebert 1995).
Table 6 Indices of dissimilarity for the Jewish ethnic population of
Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Winnipeg, 1991
Toronto Montreal Vancouver Winnipeg Calgary
Jewish id 75.0 81.9 56.8 71.6 58.2
Jewish %
Pop
3.0 2.46 0.68 1.84 0.56
Jewish
Pop
114,735 76,780 10,930 11,980 4,240
Total Pop 3,893,046 3,127,242 1,602,502 652,364 754,033
Source: Authors calculation from StatsCanada data
Perhaps, even more interesting about the Jewish patterns of segrega-
tion is the suggestion that it has come about accompanied not only
by upward social mobility but by suburbanization as well.
However, the high indices of dissimilarity for the Jewish population
in Toronto and Montreal are similar to those for African Americans
south of the border, the Jewish population lives in enclaves rather
than ghettos on the black model. The highest percentage that the reli-
gious Jewish population formed of any Toronto tract was 70% in 1991
Index of
Dissimilarity
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ceri peach
and only 2% of the population lived there. Only a third of the Jewish
population lived in areas in which they formed a majority of the tract
population and all of these tracts held a mixed (i.e. non Jewish) popu-
lation as well (Table 7). In Montreal, the highest percentage which
the Jewish religious population formed of any tract was 90%. Like
Toronto, a third of the Montreal religious Jewish population lived in
tracts where they formed a majority of the population.
In London, although we do not have ethnic census data, it is appar-
ent from other sources that the Jewish population which originally set-
tled in the working class East End at the end of the nineteenth century,
suburbanized, notably to the north western outer fringes of the city
during the twentieth century, but remained concentrated (Newman
1985; Waterman & Kosmin 1986a, 1986b). Such patterns of ethnic
pluralism may be referred to as relocating enclaves (see Figure 5)
There is also evidence from European experience that some afu-
ent minority ethnic populations manifest high levels of segregation.
Glebes work on the Japanese in Dusseldorf (1986) and Whites work
on the Japanese in London (1998) both indicate ids in the seventies.
These groups differ, of course from settled minorities in that they
are largely composed of sojourners who are seconded by their rms
for a period of years. Such concentrations may be thought of as para-
chuted communities (see Figure 5).
On the other hand, there is considerable evidence that levels of
segregation in European cities do not approach the levels observed
for African Americans and that the European experience is closer to
the ethnic enclave model than to the ghetto (Amersfoort 1974, 1978,
1980, 1982, 1987; Amersfoort & Cortie 1973, 1994; Friedrichs 1998;
Gifnger 1998; Kempen & zekren 1998; Kempen & Van Weesep
1998; Kesteloot & Cortie 1998; Musterd et al. 1998).
Table 7 Percentage of the Religious Jewish Population of Toronto
living in tracts where they formed a given percentage of the
population
Jewish percentage
of tract population
Jewish population
living in such tracts
% of total Toronto Jewish
population in such tracts
70+ 3,135 2.1
60-69 20,470 13.5
50-59 29,300 19.4
40-49 14,955 9.9
Toronto 151,115 100.0 *
* = 3,9% of total Toronto population of 3,893,046
Europe
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Summary of types of enclaves and ghettos
We may now summarize a variety of enclaves and ghettos in a dia-
gram.
Model 1 is the traditional assimilation-diffusion model of the Chicago
three generational schemas. This is the most widespread and gen-
eral type. Settlement begins in the inner city; the second generation
moves out a little and becomes more assimilated; the third genera-
tion is suburbanized diffused and totally assimilated. Even in its ear-
ly days, the center is not the exclusive preserve of one group.
Model 2 is the American Ghetto Model. It is involuntary and plural
(nonassimilatory). It starts in the inner city, but with almost exclusive
concentration of the minority. Nearly all blacks are in it; nearly all in
it are black. It expands outwards in a segment shape over time, but
remains dually exclusive.
Figure 5 Diagrammatic representation of different spatial models of
assimilation and multi-culturalism
Model 1 Assimilation - Diffusion
(Examples: Europeans in US cities)
Model 2 Involuntary Plural (High Segregation)
(Examples: Chicago South Side Black Ghetto)
Model 3a Voluntary Plural in Situ
Persistent Ethnic Enclave, moderately
high segregation
(Examples: Turks in Berlin, Pakistanis
in Birmingham)
Model 3b Voluntary Plural: Relocation
(Example: London Jewish model)
Model 3c PARACHUTED SUBURBAN
Instant suburbanization, Affluent immigrants
(Examples: London Indian, Dsseldorf Japanese,
London Japanese, Brussels American)
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Model 3a is what we may call the voluntary plural, in situ, persistent
enclave. It is the San Francisco or New York Chinatown model. A
high proportion of the population of the areas may be of a given eth-
nic group, but the Chinese population in Chinatown forms only a
minority (often a small minority) of the total Chinese population of
the city. It is a symbolic or touristic center. It is an institutional or
market center. It may remain and persist over time, but it is not the
exclusive center of the ethnic group.
Model 3b is the voluntary plural relocated model. The Jewish inner
city location, which relocates en masse to the suburbs is the key exem-
plar. The London Jewish shift from the East End to the northwest-
ern suburbs is the best studied example. Although segregation levels
measured by the Index of Dissimilarity may be high, the areas are
not the exclusive preserve of the Jewish population, but are mixed.
Nor are all Jews living in such areas.
Model 3c is what I have termed the Parachuted Suburban model.
These are concentrated areas of afuent often transitory sojourners.
The Japanese in London and Dusseldorf or the Hong Kong Chinese
in Vancouver are good examples.
Discussion and conclusion
The United States has had an unparalleled, successful history of as-
similating minorities. Buoyed by this success, the theorization of this
process has been cast into a single model, which I have character-
ized as the three generational model. However, it has ignored the
multicultural or plural model and worse still, tried to make this es-
sentially contrasting model part of the assimilation model itself. Put
crudely, the assimilation model is a brick-in-the-pond model. The
group starts concentrated, segregated and unassimilated in the inner
city; it speaks a foreign language; it marries its own kind; it is unas-
similated. The second generation ripples out a little, mixes more with
the charter group, learns English and begins to marry out. The third
generation replicates the socioeconomic structure of the population
as a whole; it speak English; it is highly intermarried; it is suburban-
ized and assimilated.
The theory states that there is a direct relationship between the
degree of residential, spatial segregation and the degree of social dis-
tance: high spatial segregation, high social distance between groups;
low segregation, low social distance (and high degree of social inter-
action, marriage et cetera).
brick-in-the-pond
model
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601
The methodology of using the Index of Dissimilarity to measure
the degrees of spatial segregation is correct. High indices of dissimi-
larity give an excellent and consistent measure of group social dis-
tances.
The problem lies in assuming that there is only one model. The
single model argument is for an inevitable, unidirectional change
from high to low segregation over time. This model does work for
a large number of groups in a large number of situations. But, it is
not the only model. The African American population does not t
into this model, nor does the Jewish population. For a long time, at-
tempts were made to interpret the African American experience in
terms of the single model when the evidence pointed in a totally dif-
ferent direction. Black segregation was high and remained high. The
Jewish pattern escaped notice because the data were not collected in
the US. But, if we can extrapolate Canadian experience, where such
data exist, the Canadian data show an unmistakable pattern of high
and long-lasting segregation. But Jewish concentration does not con-
stitute a ghetto, but a voluntary enclave.
Because the us sociological analysis operated for so long on the
single model, it had a massively distorting effect on both historical
analysis and on contemporary policy. Historically, it was assumed
that all groups were previously as segregated as the contemporary
African American population. There was a mythological back-projec-
tion of current levels of black segregation onto the nineteenth centu-
ry history of European immigration. The ghetto came to be seen as a
stage through which all immigrant groups went. Hence the Chicago
School references to Irish ghettos, German ghettos et cetera. Since
there was only one model it was assumed that it was only a matter
of time before African Americans would diffuse through the urban
system and assimilate like the Irish and Germans. This process for
different groups was viewed as a time/space substitution, with old
groups representing the future positions of new groups and new
groups representing the past position of old groups.
However, the black ghetto was different in kind from the degree of
segregation experienced by other groups. It was massively more con-
centrated and dually segregated: nearly all blacks were in the ghetto
and nearly all of the ghetto population was black. The black ghetto
did not dissolve with time. The Jewish high levels of concentration,
also failed to dissipate over time. The precise locations did change.
There was movement from the inner city to the suburbs, but it was a
movement en masse: a relocation rather than a diffusion. Unlike the
black segregation, however, these concentrations were voluntaristic
and by no means as dually segregated as the black experience. Not all
single model
argument
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ceri peach
of the Jewish population lived in Jewish areas, nor was the popula-
tion of Jewish areas all Jewish. Both the African American and the
Jewish populations were following plural rather than assimilatory
models. The assimilation model was not the only one.
If we look at the contemporary experience of Britain, we can see
both the plural and the assimilatory models in existence. The Black
Caribbean population has followed the assimilatory trajectory. Its
levels of segregation in London have fallen, census by census since
1961. The areas of greatest concentration have experienced the great-
est losses of Caribbean population. The movement has followed
the classic pattern of outward movement from the center towards
the periphery. However, when we look at the Indian, Pakistani and
Bangladeshi populations, changes in population have tended to rein-
force rather than reduce existing areas of concentration.
Both the assimilation and the multicultural models equate disper-
sal, diffusion and low segregation with assimilation. However, the
dominant model of the Chicago School considered the assimilation
model to be the only one and considered its process to be inevitable.
It recognized the existence of the ghetto, but did not distinguish it
from the enclave. It conceptualized the ghetto as the rst stage of the
sequence of the three generational model. It incorporated its very
antithesis as part of the model itself.
The failure to distinguish between the ghetto and the enclave
has had a pernicious effect on the understanding of ethnic areas in
American cities. First, it has conceptualized the ghetto as a temporary
phenomenon. In reality the ghetto has become permanent. Secondly,
it envisioned socio-economic improvement as the mechanism for
the dissolution of the ghetto; in reality, rich African Americans are
as segregated from rich whites as poor blacks are from poor whites.
Economic differences are not unimportant but they do not explain
black segregation. Thirdly, it encouraged academics to identify the
ghetto as a product of wealth difference rather than race (Harvey
1973: 120-152; Wacquant 1997; Peach 1998). Fourthly it has falsied
our view of ethnic history in the United States by envisioning a ghet-
toized past for the early years of all groups; it has led to the assump-
tion that Irish, Italian and other ethnic enclaves were homogeneously
made up of the Irish, Italians or whatever. They never were. Fifthly it
encouraged the belief that the African American ghetto would dis-
solve in a natural and inevitable way. Sixthly, it encouraged the
belief that all segregation was bad and negatively superimposed on
groups. In reality, for those groups who choose it and for whom it is
not enforced, concentration has many benets. However, we need to
be able to recognize the difference between the chosen enclave and
the enforced ghetto.
Britain
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603
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About the editors
Marco Martiniello is research director of the National Fund for
Scientic Research (FRS-FNRS) in Belgium and a professor of so-
ciology and politics at the University of Lige, where he serves as di-
rector of the Center for Ethnic and Migration Studies (CEDEM). He
is also a member of the IMISCOE Executive Board and president of
the International Sociological Associations Research Committee on
Sociology of Migration. He has authored and edited numerous works
providing transatlantic comparative perspectives on migration, eth-
nicity, racism, multiculturalism and citizenship in the European
Union. Recent publications include The Transnational Political
Participation of Immigrants: A Transatlantic Perspective (Routledge
2009), Citizenship in European Cities: Immigrants, Local Politics and
Integration Policies (Ashgate 2004), Migration between States and
Markets (Ashgate 2004) and La nouvelle Europe migratoire: Pour une
politique proactive de limmigration (Labor 2001).
Jan Rath is a professor of urban sociology at the University of
Amsterdam, where he serves as director of the Institute for
Migration and Ethnic Studies (IMES). He is also the European chair
of International Metropolis and a member of the IMISCOE Board of
Directors. An anthropologist and an urban studies specialist, he has
authored and edited numerous works on the sociology, politics and
economics of post-migration processes. Recent publications include
Tourism, Ethnic Diversity and the City (Routledge 2007), Immigrant
Entrepreneurs: Venturing Abroad in the Age of Globalization (Berg
2003), Unravelling the Rag Trade: Immigrant Entrepreneurship in Seven
World Cities (Berg/New York University Press 2002) and Immigrant
Businesses: The Economic, Political and Social Environment (Macmillan
2000). For more information see www.janrath.com.
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List of Sources
Part I The migration process
1 Castles, S. & G. Kosack (1972), The function of labour immigra-
tion in Western European capitalism, New Left Review 73(May-
June): 3-21.
2 Hammar, T. (1985), Introduction to European immigration
policy: A comparative study, European Immigration Policy: A
Comparative Study, 1-13. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
3 Faist, T. (1997), The crucial meso-level, in T. Hammar, G.
Brochmann, K. Tamas & T. Faist (eds.), International Migration,
Immobility and Development: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, 187-
217. Oxford/New York: Berg.
4 Vertovec, S. (1999), Conceiving and researching transnational-
ism, Ethnic and Racial Studies 22(2): 447-462.
5 King, R. (2002), Towards a new map of European migration,
International Journal of Population Geography 8(2): 89-106.
6 Guiraudon, V. (2003), The constitution of a European immigra-
tion policy domain: A political sociology approach, Journal of
European Policy 10(2): 263-282.
7 Sayad, A. (2004), Immigration and state thought, in A. Sayad
(ed.), The Suffering of the Immigrant, 278-293. Cambridge: Polity
Press.

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610
list of sources
Part II Modes of incorporation
8 Van Amersfoort, H. (1982), Minority as a sociological concept,
Immigration and the Formation of Minority Groups: The Dutch
Experience 1945-1975, 10-30. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
9 Modood, T. (1983), Black, racial equality and Asian identity,
New Community 14(3): 397-405.
10 Brubaker, W. R. (1989), Introduction to immigration, immigra-
tion and the politics of citizenship in Europe and North America,
in W. R. Brubaker, Immigration and the Politics of Citizenship in
Europe and North America, 1-22. Lanham: University Press of
America.
11 Martiniello, M. (1993), Ethnic leadership, ethnic communities
political powerlessness and the state in Belgium, Ethnic and
Racial Studies 16(2): 236-255.
12 Wieviorka, M. (1994), Racism in Europe: Unity and diversity, in
A. Rattansi & S. Westwood (eds.), Racism, Modernity and Identity:
On the Western Front, 173-188. Cambridge: Polity Press.
13 Baubck, R. (1994), Changing the boundaries of citizenship: The
inclusion of immigrants in democratic polities, in R. Baubck
(ed.), From Aliens to Citizens: Redening the Status of Immigrants in
Europe, 199-232. Aldershot: Avebury.
14 Kloosterman, R. J. van der Leun & J. Rath (1999), Mixed embed-
dedness: (In)formal economic activities and immigrant business-
es in the Netherlands, International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research 23(2): 252-267.
15 Simon, P. (2000), The mosaic pattern: Cohabitation between
ethnic groups in Belleville, Paris, in S. Body-Gendrot & M.
Martiniello (eds.), Minorities in European Cities: The Dynamics
of Social Integration and Social Exclusion at the Neighbourhood
Level, 100-115. Houndsmill, Basingstoke, Hampshire/New York:
Macmillan/St. Martins Press.
16 Bousetta, H. (2000), Political dynamics in the city: Three case
studies, in S. Body-Gendrot & M. Martiniello (eds.), Minorities
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list of sources
in European Cities: The Dynamics of Social Integration and Social
Exclusion at the Neighbourhood Level, 129-144. Houndsmill,
Basingstoke, Hampshire/New York: Macmillan/St. Martins
Press.

17 Favell, A. (2003), Integration and nations: The nation-state and
research on immigrants in Western Europe, Comparative Social
Research 22: 13-42.
Part III Conceptual issues
18 Barth, F. (1969) Introduction to ethnic groups and boundaries:
The social organization of cultural difference, in F. Barth (ed.),
Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture
Difference, 9-38. London: George Allen & Unwin.
19 Rex, J. (1980), The theory of race relations: A Weberian ap-
proach, in UNESCO, Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism,
117-142. Paris: UNESCO.
20 Anthias, F. & N. Yuval-Davis (1983), Contextualizing feminism:
Gender, ethnic and class divisions, Feminist Review 15(Winter):
62-75.
21 Solomos, J. (1986), Varieties of Marxist conceptions of race,
class and the state: A critical analysis, in J. Rex & D. Mason
(eds.), Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations, 84-109. Cambridge:
22 Bovenkerk, F., R. Miles & G. Verbunt (1990), Racism, migration
and the state in Western Europe: A case for comparative analysis,
International Sociology 5(4): 475-490.
23 Miles, R. & V. Satzewich (1990), Migration, racism and post-
modern capitalism, Economy and Society 19(3): 334-358.
24 Balibar, E. (1991), Class racism, in E. Balibar & I. Wallerstein
(eds.), Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, 204-216. London:
Verso.
25 Peach, C. (2005), The ghetto and the ethnic enclave, in D.
P. Varady (ed.), Desegregating the City: Ghettos, Enclaves and
Inequalities, 31-48. Albany: State University of New York Press.
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43
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2
3
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5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
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18
19
20
21
22
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28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
A
Ackerman, B. A., 278
Africa, 7, 26, 50, 65, 78, 82, 122, 203,
204, 216, 452, 457, 462, 477, 541,
559, 572
Africanization, 544, 559
African Island of Runion, 26
Agrarverhltnisse in Altertum, 444
Alba, R. D., 240, 376
Albania, 112, 123
Alger, C., 98
Algeria, 48, 89, 97, 342, 459
Algiers, 485
Alibhai-Brown, Y., 376, 379
Aliens Act of 1905, 524
Aliens Act of 1973, 524
Althusser, L., 438, 493
Althusserian Marxism, 496
Alund, A., 380
Amendement 14
th
1868, 225, 226
America/Americas the, 14, 68, 100, 111,
203, 210, 267, 378, 438, 448, 450,
451, 453
Americanization, 561, 587
Amersfoort, H. van, 183, 598
Amicales, 366
Amsterdam, 143, 145, 148-152, 159, 315,
318, 326
Amsterdam Treaty, 150, 154, 158
Ancient Greece, 458
Andall, J., 125
Anderson, B., 350, 530
Anderson, P., 493, 508, 524
Antarctica, 284
Anthias, F., 124, 238, 392, 469, 480
Antwerp, 395
Anwar, M., 117
Appadurai, A., 95, 96, 99-101
Arab Gulf, 103
Arendt, H., 279, 300
Aristide, J. B., 100
Aristotle, 279
Asia, 7, 26, 49, 50, 216, 432, 462, 541
Asia-Pacic, 104
Assam, 452
Assimilation Model, 589
Associatie Marokkaanse Migranten
Utrecht (AMMU), 366
Association de Mineurs Marocains du
Nord, 364
Association de Travailleurs Marocains
en France (ATMF), 364
Atlanta, 595
Atlantic, 220
Atlas of International Migration, 116
Australia, 36, 295, 389, 390, 529, 546
Austria, 25, 46, 149, 272, 284, 372, 376,
546
Autonomy model, 494, 500, 511
B
Bachelard, G., 9
Bachu, P., 544
Back, L., 392
Baden-Wrttemberg, 29
Baetsen, P., 327
Baggara, 421, 422, 424, 425
Bagley, C., 195
Bakker, E. S. J., 326-328
Balibar, E., 266, 567
Baltic states, 552
Baltimore, 595
Baluch tribe, 422
Baluchistan, 418
Bamyeh, M. A., 91
Baneld, E., 87
Bangladesh, 112, 121, 199
Banton, M., 389, 493
Barbados, 455, 554
Barcelona, 128
Barkan, E., 262
Barker, M., 268
Index
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
614
index
Barrett, G., 316, 319, 324
Barret, M., 483
Barth, F., 241, 350, 359, 407, 414, 418
Barthes, R., 350
Basch, L., 92, 94, 100, 394
Base/superstructure model, 501
Basic Law of the Federal Republic, 222
Basic value-expectancy model, 62
Bastenier, A., 248
Baubock, R., 275
Baumann, Z., 104, 395
Baumgartner, F., 144
Beck, U., 98
Beijer, G. J., 543
Belgian law 1974, 363
Belgium, 25, 46, 237, 238, 239, 244-251,
253-255, 273, 301, 355, 357, 372, 375,
387, 393, 518, 519, 546
Belleville, 339, 341-345, 347-353
Belleville model, 352
Belleville cohabitation model, 348
Belleville quarter, 341
Bellevilleuse La, 351
Bendix, R., 186
Ben-Tovim, G., 490, 493, 494, 500-503,
505, 507, 508, 510, 511
Berger, J., 131
Berger, M., 9
Berghe van den, P. L., 192-194, 459, 545
Berlin, 545, 599
Berlin Wall, 158, 27
Bertaux, D., 576
Beveridge Report, 482
Bhabha, H, 99
Bigo, D., 142
Big Overseas Experience (BOE), 127
Birmingham, 494, 495, 595, 599
Bjorn, 411
Black feminist movement, 470, 483
Black Section movement, 201
Blalock, H. M., 438
Blankenburg, E., 322
Blommaert, J., 367
Bloom, L. 184
Blotevogel, H. H., 122
Boal, F. W., 585
Bodnar, J., 70
Body-Gendrot, S., 316, 324
Bogoras, W., 411
Bhning, R., 540, 547
Bolaria, S., 540
Bolivia, 103
Bonacich, E., 244, 493, 510
Bosnia, 103
Bosscher, A., 152
Boston, 594
Bouamama, S., 364, 365
Boulevard de Belleville, 345, 346, 348
Bourdieu, P., 9, 73, 143, 156, 168
Bousetta, H., 355, 380, 395
Bovenkerk, F., 517, 521, 533
Box, C., 453
Boyd, M., 65
Brah, A., 396
Brandt, W., 34
Bras, H. le, 391
Brass, P., 239, 241
Breckenridge, C., 95, 96
Brent, 209
Brent Community Council, 481
Breton, R., 250
Britain, 25-30, 33, 34, 36, 46, 47, 49-51,
57, 103, 104, 187, 202, 204, 206-
209, 216, 220, 224, 225, 322, 372,
375, 376, 378, 379, 381, 383, 387,
388, 391-393, 437, 465, 469, 470,
472, 473, 476, 477, 481-483, 485,
498, 505, 507-509, 512, 517, 521,
522, 524, 531, 538, 539, 541, 542,
544, 546, 550-554, 556, 559, 592,
602
Brittan, A., 490, 495
BBC (Britisch Broadcasting
Corporation), 201, 207
British Caribbean, 191, 522
British Commission for Racial Equality,
154
British Unions, 37
Brochman, G., 59
Brouwer, J. W. de, 148
Brown, R., 439
Brubaker, W. R., 215, 379, 387, 390, 532
Bruinsma, F., 322
Brussels, 128, 145, 153, 155, 157, 241,
248, 375, 381, 395
Bucher, K., 444
Budapest process, 149
Buffalo, 594
Buller, H., 128
Bundesvereinigung der Deutschen
Arbeitgeberverbaede (BDA), 556,
557
Burawoy, M., 490, 508, 512, 540
Burgers, J., 367
Burgers Report, 367
Burgess, E., 353
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
615
index
Burt, R. S., 66
Butcher Vocational Training, 329, 330
C
Caces, F., 85
Calgary, 597
Callovi, G., 152
Calvinism, 448, 453
Campani, G., 124
Canada, 7, 103, 202, 215, 216, 221, 226,
227, 389, 522, 546, 597
Cape Verdeans, 125
Capital, 472
Carby, H., 500
Carchedi, G., 492, 498
Carens, J., 216, 228, 229, 233
Caribbean/Caribbean Islands, 26, 68,
89, 191, 216, 225, 457, 541, 544,
554, 556
Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace or Metropolis, 375
Carpentier, A., 339
Carter, B., 518, 542, 554-556
Carter, T., 205
Cassarino, J. P., 323
Caste, Class and Race, 492
Castells, M., 92-94, 96, 98, 100, 320,
394, 492, 498
Castilianization, 571
Castles, S., 7, 21, 104, 114, 115, 375, 379,
519, 539-543, 546, 551, 552, 555, 556,
558
Catholicism, 448, 460, 571
CBD (Central Business District), 586
Census in France 1968, 29
Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek
(CBS), 317, 318
Central Africa, 459
Central European Initiative, 149
Centre of working-class culture, 499
Centre for Contemporary Cultural
Studies (CCCS), 490, 494-496,
498, 499, 501, 505-507, 509, 526
Centrum Partij, 518
Certeau de, M., 341
Ceylon, 452
Chairs of Committees, 205
Chamber of Commerce, 329, 330
Chambers, I., 118
Charbonnages de France, 364
Chevalier, L., 572
Chicago, 583, 586, 588, 589, 591, 592,
594
Chicago PMSA, 592
Chicago three generational schemas,
599
Chicago School, 11, 14, 340, 582, 585-
587, 596, 601, 602
Chile, 224, 522, 543
China, 103, 455
Chinatown, 586, 587, 600
Christianization, 572
Christian Reformation, 460
Choldin, H. M., 66
Chow, R., 96
Chuckchee, 411
inar, D., 382
Cincinnati, 594
Citroen, 30
City of Light, 339
Civil Rights Act 1866, 225
Civil Service Commission, 210
Civil War, 226
Clark, K., 187
Classical Age, 571
Class/race model, 492
Cleary, P., 543
Cleveland, 595
Clifford, J., 94
Coast Lapp area, 430
Code of Hygiene for Islamic Butchers,
328
Cohen, R., 66, 93, 95, 97, 99, 114, 119,
121, 124, 377, 394
Cohn-Bendit, D., 153
Coing, H., 343
Cold War, 68, 129, 147, 148, 545
Collective consumption role, 526
Columbus, 595
Commission Directorate for
Employment and Social Affairs, 152
Committee of Experts for Identity
Documents and the Movement of
Persons, 149
Committee for Islamic Butchers, 330
Commission for Racial Equality (CRE),
208-210, 526
Commodity Board for Cattle, Meat and
Eggs, 326
Commonwealth, 27
Commonwealth Immigrants Act of
1962, 543, 555, 556
Communist movement, 438
Communist Party, 577
Community Relations Council, 208
Comte, A., 437
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
616
index
CFDT (Confdration Franaise
Dmocratique du Travail), 37
CGT labour federation (Confdration
Gnrale du Travail), 33, 37, 38, 364
Connecticut, 584
Connell, J., 96
Connolly, W.E. 503, 511
Conseil consultatif des Immigrs de la
Ville (CCILg), 361-363
Conseil consultatif pour les Populations
dorigine trangre (CCPOE), 362
Conspiracy-theory, 570
Continental Europe, 11, 15
Control of Immigration Statistics, 550
Cornelius, W., 7, 85
Corrigan, P., 523
Cortie, C., 598
Costa del Sol, 116, 129
Costa-Lascoux, J., 375
Council of Europe Committee of
Experts on the Legal Aspects of
Territorial Asylum, Refugees, and
Stateless People, 149
Council Social Affairs, 155
Courbage, Y., 353
Couronnes metro station, 346
Cox, O. C., 184, 492-494
Craignos les, 363, 364
Cram, L., 153
Cressey, P. F., 586
Criminal Law, 321
Critical Theory, 438
Cromwell Cox, O., 455
Currency Reform 1949, 26
Cwerner, S. B., 126
Cyprus, 477, 551
Czechoslovakia, 544
D
Dallas-Ft. Worth, 595
Darfur, 421, 424
Darroch, A. G., 597
Darwinian theory of evolution, 573
Dassetto, F., 248
DaVanzo, J. S., 63
Dawa mosque, El, 367
Dayton Agreement 1995, 123
Deakin, N., 542
Debray, R., 464
Delors, J., 157
Delphy, C., 473
Demokratische Partei Deutschland, 270
Denmark, 25, 46, 151, 223, 303, 372,
376, 383, 388
Denton, N., 583, 585, 594, 595
Department of Education and Sciences
survey, 210
Depo-Provera, 481
Deschouwer, K., 386
Detroit, 595
Deutsche Institut fr Wirtschaft, 391
Deutscher Hotel-und
Gaststaettenverband (DEHOGA),
557
Deutsche Volksunions, 270
DGB (Confederation of German Trade
Unions), 38, 272
Dicken, P., 96
Diehl, C., 386, 391
Di Rupo, E., 249
Displaces Persons camp, 546, 552, 553
Disraeli, B. 573
Dissanayake, W., 95
Dobson, J., 133
Donselaar, J., 519
Douglas, J. D., 206
Dublin agreement, 149
Dublin Convention 1990, 145
Durkheim, E., 437, 439
Dutch Caribbean, 522
Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs,
325
Dutch National Bureau against Racism,
154
Duchet, M., 570
Dufeld, M., 554
Duncan, O.D. 582-584
Dusseldorf, 598
Dworkin, R., 300
E
East Africa, 452, 458, 459, 544
East Amsterdam, 395
East Europe/Eastern Europe, 23, 47, 48,
125, 216, 226, 277, 387, 522, 543,
545, 559
East Germany, 26, 47, 272, 441, 442,
538, 545
East Indies, 184
Ecolo, 361
Ecomienda, 450
Economic and Social Research Council
(ESRC), 91, 102, 104
Economic Control Service, 329, 330
Economic crisis of 1973/1974, 542
Economist, The, 97, 322
Economy and society, 441, 450
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
617
index
Ecuador, 103
Edholm, F., 480
Edmonston, B., 376
Edye, D., 556, 557
Egypt, 97, 481
Eidheim, H., 429, 430
Elias, N., 343, 351
Elkins, S., 462
El Salvador, 100
Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism
in 70s Britain, The, 495, 496, 498-
500, 506, 507
Employment and Social Affairs DG, 153
Engbersen, G., 320, 395
Engels, F., 22, 24, 473, 494
Engermann, S. L., 451
England, 221, 224, 273, 519
Epstein, R. A., 323
Equal Treatment Directive, 154
Erasmus, 127
Erasmus exchanges, 126
Erikson, R., 386
Eritrea, 103
Escriva, A., 125
Espace Intgration, 364
Esping-Andersen, G., 323
Esser, H., 62, 376, 386, 545
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 13, 91, 92,
200, 237
Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The
Social Organization of Cultural
Differences, 407
Ethnic School, 476
Ethnomethodology, 438
Europe, 7, 8, 10, 13-16, 26, 33, 45, 47,
50, 68, 70, 78, 91, 103, 104, 111, 112,
114, 119-122, 124, 125, 128, 129, 131-
133, 142, 144, 145, 151-153, 215, 217,
220, 221, 230, 243, 259, 260, 263,
265, 267, 270, 271, 289, 355, 369,
371, 372, 375-381, 383, 384, 386, 387,
389, 390, 393-397, 437, 446, 447,
460, 463, 469, 472, 521, 525, 529,
532, 544, 546-548, 553, 554, 559
European Commission, 126, 150, 153,
156
European Commissions Seventh
Framework Programme, 13
European Community (EC), 45, 142,
148, 149, 244, 247, 260
European Consortium for Sociological
Research, 386
European Council/Council of Europe,
298, 375, 379
European Council of Ministers
Tampere, 375
European Court of Justice (ECJ), 143,
145, 150, 152, 156, 158
European Economic Community (EEC),
27, 51, 145
European Economic Community (EEC)
countries, 550, 551
European Immigration Policy: A
Comparative Study, 45
European Monetary Union (EMU), 142,
153
European Parliament, 298
European Political Union, 248
ESE, 157
European Services Forum (ESF), 157
European Union (EU), 115, 119, 122,
125-127, 131, 141-146, 148, 149, 151,
152, 154-159, 298, 299, 357, 375,
379, 381, 383
European Union Studies Association,
141
European University Institute Florence,
237
EURODAC (European Dactyloscopie),
145
European Voluntary Workers, 26, 37,
546, 553
Eurostat, 130
Evans, P. B., 523, 524
EVWs (European Voluntary Workers),
553
Export Processing Zones, 538, 549
F
Fainstein, S., 320
Faist, T., 59, 65, 115, 377, 385, 395
Fanon, F., 464
Fargues, P., 353
Favell, A., 143, 153, 371, 375, 378, 380
Fawcett, J. T., 62, 66
Federal Republic of Germany, 216, 518,
519, 524
Fdration des Associations des Jeunes
de Quartier (FAJQ), 364
Feirabend, J., 366
Feminist Review, 469
Fennema, M., 330, 395
Ferdinand, K., 422
Ferguson, J., 93
Fermin, A., 376
Fielding, A. J., 388, 519
Fiji, 452
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
618
index
Findlay, A. M., 125, 548, 549
Finland, 47, 50, 223, 303
Finnmark, 430
First World War/World War I, 23, 199,
227, 302, 525
Flanders, 248, 249, 270, 273
Florida, R., 8
Fogel, R. W., 451
Foner, N., 99, 101
Forbes, I., 383
FO (Force Ouvrire), 37
Ford, R., 125
Ford, R. G., 586, 588
Ford of Cologne, 30
Fordism, 122
Foreigners Law 1965, 27
Foreign Origin Populations
Consultative Councils (FOPCC),
251, 252
Foundation for Population, Migration
and Environment (PME/BMU), 13
Fox, R., 253
Fox-Genovese, E., 490
France, 24-31, 33, 37, 40, 46, 47, 49-51,
57, 65, 87, 89, 126, 128, 144, 148,
149, 150, 173, 215, 216, 219, 221-
224, 233, 259, 264, 265, 270, 273,
301, 303, 341, 355-357, 360, 364, 365,
372, 375, 379, 381, 383, 387, 391, 518,
519, 521, 522, 524, 525, 546, 571,
574, 577
France Plus, 365
Frank, A. G., 461
Frankfurt, 128
Frankfurt Bureau for Multicultural
Affairs, 153
Frankfurt School, 438
Fraser, F., 206
Freedman, M. 500, 513
Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), 155,
270
Free labour movement policy, 27
Freeman, G. P., 157, 324, 519, 554, 556
Free Movement of Workers, Migrant,
Integration and Anti-racism, 152
French Caribbean, 522
French Community government, 249
French Positivism, 437
French Revolution, 186, 230, 524, 573
Freyer, P., 206
Friedrichs, J., 598
Frbel, H. J., 538
From Aliens to Citizens: Redening the
Status of Immigrants in Europe,
275
Front National, 270, 271, 518
Fur case, 421, 434
Furnivall, J. S., 190, 414
G
Gabriel, J., 490, 493, 494, 500-503,
505, 507, 509-511
Gans, H., 250, 349
Garbage can model, 141, 144, 147
Gardner, R. W., 64
Gary-Hammond-E.Chicago, 595
Gatekeeper role, 525
Geddes, A., 132, 153-155
Geisser, V., 365
Gellner, E., 267, 293, 294, 376
General Agreement on Trade in
Services (GATS), 157
Geneva, 38, 128
Geneva Convention, 68
Genovese, E. D., 490, 492
German Democratic Republic, 48
German Federal Republic, 34
German Foreigners Law of 1965, 33
German Marshall Fund, 216
German Reich, 24
Germany, 24, 25, 27-34, 36, 38, 39, 46,
47, 49-51, 57, 60, 89, 103, 116, 126,
144, 146-150, 156, 216, 219, 222,
270, 272, 284, 288, 303, 357, 360,
372, 375, 380, 381, 387, 391, 441,
525, 543, 544, 546, 557, 588
German Social Democratic movement,
464
Ghetto model/American Ghetto Model,
585, 599
Giddens, A., 377
Gifnger, R., 598
Gilbertson, G. A., 80
Gillespie, M., 96
Gilroy, P., 95, 206, 379, 396, 491, 499,
505, 511
Gini Index, 583
Giullaumin, C., 570
Gjessing, G., 411
Glazer, N., 15
Glebe, G., 598
Glick-Schiller, N., 89, 92, 94, 100, 115
Global Political Networks, 103
Goa, 68
Goffman, E., 414
Golbert, R., 132
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
619
index
Goldring, L., 86, 100, 101
Goldthorpe, J., 386
Gordon, M. M., 193, 583
Gouldner, A. W., 74
Gramsci, A., 438, 492
Granovetter, M. S., 80, 83, 323
Great Britain, 65, 102, 302
Great Depression, 55
Greece, 7, 47, 50, 117, 123, 149, 199,
263, 396, 574
Green, D. P., 500
Greensboro-Winston Salem, 595
Groenendijk, K., 519
Groeneveld-Yayci, A., 328
Gross National Product, 545
Guarnizo, L. E., 92, 94, 97, 101, 316,
394
Guillon, M., 340
Guiraudon, V., 141, 147
Gulf War, 122
Gupta, A., 93
Gurak, D. T., 80
Guyana, 452, 456-458
H
Haaland, G., 421, 424, 425
Habermas, J., 73, 438
Hague The, 315, 318, 326
Hailbronner, K., 216, 228
Haiti, 89, 100
Halder, J., 155
Hall, S., 95, 129, 378, 396, 480, 490,
495-499, 502, 507-509, 513, 526
Hammar, T., 45, 59, 216, 229, 306,
356, 379
Handboek Minderheden, 330
Handsworth, 204
Handsworth Harambee organization,
204
Hannerz, U., 92, 100, 102
Hansen, R., 380
Hargreaves, A. G., 357
Harris, C., 542, 553-556
Harris, J. R., 111
Harris, M., 185, 186
Hart-Celler Act 1965, 226
Hartmann, 445
Harvey, D., 602
Hatton, T. J., 68
Hauser, P., 587, 593
Haussmann, G. E., 341
Huermann, H., 316
Haut Conseil lIntgration, 375
Hear van, N., 93, 98
Heckmann, F., 381
Heisenberg, D., 141
Held, D., 277
Henry, L., 358
Herbert, U., 544
Here for Good: Western Europes New
Ethnic Minorities, 539
Hiebert, D., 597
High-Level Working Group (HLWG),
151
Hispanization, 571
History Task Force, 539
Hobbes, T., 275, 281, 290, 291
Hobsbawm, E., 294, 451
Hoffmann-Nowotny, H. J., 64, 65
Honger, C., 382
Hoggart, K., 128
Holland, 190, 192, 194, 195, 518
Hollield, J., 7, 141
Holmes, C., 543
Home Ofce, 550
Hong Kong, 225, 538
Hooks, B., 470
Houston, 595
Hoxha, E., 123
Hreblay, V., 146
Hugo, G., 70
Hungary, 522, 544
Husserl, E., 438
Huysmans, J., 147
I
Iglicka, K., 126
Iman mosque, El, 363
IMISCOE (International Migration,
Integration and Social Cohesion in
Europe), 16
Immigrant Workers and Class
Structure in Europe, 21
Immigrant Workers and Class
Structure in Western Europe, 539
Immigrants Communal Consultative
Councils (ICCC), 251, 252
Immigration and the Politics of
Citizenship in Europe and North
America, 215
Immigration Act of 1971, 28, 33, 51
Immigration Rules, 551
Independent The, 322
Index of Dissimilarity (ID), 583, 589,
597, 601
India, 47, 50, 89, 97, 103, 203, 217, 225,
455, 555, 572
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
620
index
Indian caste system, 425
Indian sub-continent, 522, 544, 559
Indianapolis, 595
Indonesia, 47, 86, 522
INED (Institut National Etudes
Demographiques), 391
Information Age, 93
INSEE (Institut National de la
Statistique et des Etudes
Economiques), 390
Intergovernmental Conference (IGC),
154, 158, 159
International Journal of Population
Geography, 111
International Labor Organisation (ILO),
68, 375
International Migration, Immobility
and Development: Multidisciplinary
Perspectives, 59
International Migration Review, 13
International non-governmental organi-
zations (INGOs), 98, 99, 143
International Organization for
Migration, 119
International Red Cross, 98
International Refugee Organization
(IRO), 545, 546
Iran, 34, 224, 543
Iraq, 121, 152, 224
Ireland, 7, 47, 128, 216, 224, 358, 380,
396, 588
Irish Republic, 26, 303, 552
Iron Curtain, 120, 126
Isaac, J., 552
ISI Web of Knowledge, 13
Island of Nevis, 451
Israel, 288, 481, 546
Italy, 7, 24, 27, 47, 123, 125, 149, 195,
247, 250, 272, 273, 376, 387, 393,
396, 522, 546, 554, 588
Itissam association el, 364
Itissam mosque, El, 363
Izikowitzs, K. G., 415
IDS (Index of Dissimilarity), 597
J
Jacobson, M. F., 99
Jackson, J., 210
Jackson, J. A., 540
Jacquemet, G., 342
Jamaica, 225
Jamieson, A., 124
Jansen, C., 112, 113
Jansen, S., 132
Japan, 522
Japanization, 561
Jeffcoate, R., 507
Jenkins, R., 375
Jenkins, S., 360
Jessop, B., 508
Joly, D., 360
Jones, B., 144
Jong de, G. F., 62
Jong de, W., 352
Joppke, C., 380
Joshi, S., 518, 542, 554-556
Journal of Ethnic and Migration
Studies, 13
Jura, 303
Justice and Home Affairs (JHA), 148,
151
K
Kaldor, M., 99
Kandre, P., 420
Kansas City, 595
Kant, I., 440
Kantrowitz, N., 597
Kastoryano, R., 153
Kay, D., 543, 546, 553, 554, 559
Keane, J., 524
Kearney, M., 100
Kelsen, H., 168, 169
Kempen, R. Van., 598
Kennedy, P., 377
Kenya, 544
Kepel, G., 346
Kerneis, P., 157
Kesteloot, C., 248, 395, 598
Keyes, C., 240
Keynsian economics/Keynesian
Economic Theory, 23, 55
Kiang, Y. -C., 586
Kibbutz, 485
Kimble, J., 484
Kindelberger, C., 541
King, R., 96, 111, 117, 121, 122, 129, 130
Kingdon, J., 144, 154
Kleivan, H., 432
Kloosterman, R., 315, 316, 318, 319, 323,
324, 332, 395
KnowNothings, 226
Knutsson, K. E., 425
Kockel, U., 121, 128
Kohistan, 421
Kohl, H. 147
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
621
index
KMAN (Komitee Marokkaanse
Arbeiders in Nederland), 366
Koopmans, R., 392
Korte, H., 545
Kosack, G., 21, 519, 539-541, 543
Koser, K., 122, 125, 130
Kosmin, B. A., 598
Kraal, K., 9
Kriesberg, L., 98, 99
Kritz, M. M., 60
Kymlicka, W., 373, 388
Kypraia, 479
K4 committee, 148, 151
L
Labour Party, 201
Laczko, F., 122
Lamy, P., 157
Landolt, P., 92, 94, 101
Lapeyronnie, D., 15
Latifundia, 441, 450
Latin America, 7, 47, 49, 78, 459, 462
Lavenex, S., 151
Law and order role, 526
Law on Economic Criminal Offences,
326
Layton-Henry, Z., 532, 553-555
Lazaridis, G., 123, 124, 125
Lazarsfeld, P. F., 438
Leach, M., 425
Leagues, 272
Lebanon, 482, 484
Lee, E. S., 61, 111
Lenin, V., 23, 24, 473
Lemon, A. 585
Le Pen, J. M., 222
Lessinger, J., 97
Lesthaege, R., 386
Leun van der, J., 315, 318, 324, 332
Lever-Tracy, C., 540
Levi-Strauss, C., 268, 351, 438, 439
Lewis, B., 347
Lieberson, S., 582-584, 594, 597
Liebersons P, 583
Liechtenstein, 49
Lige, 355, 360-365, 367, 368
Lier van, R. A. J., 190-192
Light, I., 317
Lijphart, A.,193, 194
Lille, 363-365, 368
Lille Sud mosque, 364
Lim, L. Y. C., 538
Limburg, 249
Lisbon Agenda, 8
Little Sicily, 587
Live, Y.S. 347
Liverpool, 502
Lloyd, C., 15
Lobkowicz, W. de, 148
Locke, J., 290, 291, 293, 302, 304
Lodge, D., 131
Logical Positivism, 438
London, 29, 128, 209, 316, 383, 550,
592, 598, 600, 602
Lord, C, 150
Lorenzo, P., 11, 12
Los Angeles, 7, 316
Los Angeles-Long Beach, 595
Lucassen, J., 525
Lukacs, G., 438
Lukes, S., 237, 243
Lutz, H., 122, 125, 130
Luxemburg, 49
Luxemburg, R., 473
Lyon, 30
M
Maastricht, 148, 153
Maastricht Treaty 1992, 298
MacDonald, I., 519, 524, 550, 551
Madrid, 8, 116
Magobunje, A. L., 65
Mahler, S. J., 100
Mahnig, H., 375
Majorca, 129
Malaya, 452, 457
Malaysia, 458
Ma Mung, E., 316, 324
Mann, M., 374
Mangrove case, 33
Marable, M., 490
March, J., 141, 142, 144, 147
Marches de Beurs 1983, 364
Marcinelle mine, 247
Marcus, G. E., 101
Marquez, G. G., 201
Marrus, M. R., 543-546
Marseille, 316
Marshall, D., 83
Marshall, T. H., 186, 187
Marston, W. G., 597
Martin, P., 7, 97
Martinelli, A., 317, 323
Martiniello, M., 7, 15, 237, 243, 247-
249, 361
Marx, K., 22, 24, 239, 439, 442-445,
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
622
index
455, 462, 465, 466, 520, 527, 528,
539
Marxism, 461, 462, 464, 471, 472, 489-
492, 494-499, 502, 505-507, 511,
512, 514
Marxist theory, 461, 489, 490, 508,
511-513
Marxist theories of migration, 539
Marxist theory of race and ethnic rela-
tions, 512
Marxist theory of racism, 510
Massey, D. S., 60, 84, 85, 117, 582, 583,
585, 594, 595
Mauritius, 452
May Events, 33
Maynard, M., 490, 495
Mazey, S., 154
McGrew, A., 277
McHugh, K., 126
Mc Intosh, M., 483
Mead, G. H., 383, 438
Meditteranean, 111
Meditteranean caravanserai, 130
Med TV, 96
Melanesian trade systems, 415
Member of European Parliament
(MEP), 153
Memmi, A., 347
Memphis, 595
Mnilmontant, 346
Merriman, J., 432
Messamah, K., 353
Mexican Bracero Program, 7
Mexico, 86, 89, 117
Mezzogiorno, 27
Miami, 595
Middle Ages, 444
Middle America, 432
Middle East, 424, 548, 559
Migrants Forum, 153, 154, 158
Migrant labour model, 494, 503
Migration Policy Group (MPG), 154,
157, 158, 381
Miles, R., 490, 493, 495, 503-506, 509,
513, 517, 521, 527, 529, 533, 539, 540,
542, 552-556, 558-560
Miller, M., 7, 216, 356, 369
Milward, A., 397
Milwaukee, 595
Minifundia, 450
Ministerial Order on Meat Inspection,
326
Ministry of Integration, 373
Ministry of Labour, 552
Ministry of Public Health and
Environmental Protection, 326
Minorities in European Cities, 355
Minorities in the New World, 185
Mitchell, K., 97, 99, 101
Modood, T., 201, 386, 392, 393
Molyneux, M., 484
Montreal, 597, 598
Moravcsik, A., 150
Morelli, A., 247
Morley, D., 96
Morocco, 47, 121, 195, 326
Mouahidin mosque, El, 363
Moynihan, D., 15
Musterd, S., 325, 598
Myrdal, G., 85, 251, 440
N
Nagel, J., 359
Nairn, T., 530
Narroll, R., 407
Natal, 452, 458
National Association of Asian Probation
Staff, 210
National Association of Local
Government Ofcers (NALGO),
205
National Front, 518
Nationality Bill, 473
National Union of Moroccan Students
(UNEM), 362
Nauck, B., 392
Nazism, 570
Near East, 50
Nee, V., 376
Nelli, H. S., 250
Netherlands, 7, 46, 47, 49-51, 57, 65,
126, 144, 183, 303, 315, 317-321, 324-
326, 330-332, 355, 356, 360, 366,
372, 376, 382, 387, 518, 519, 521,
522, 524, 525, 531
Neuchtel, 303
Nevada, 320
Newark, 595
New Community, 201
New Left Review, 21
New Haven, 584
New Jerusalem, 459
Newman, D., 598
New Opportunities for Research
Funding Co-operation in Europe
network (NORFACE), 13
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
623
index
New Orleans, 595
New World, 11
New World Order post-1989, 119
New York/New York City, 7, 80, 81, 87,
89, 316, 595
New York Chinatown model, 600
New Zealand, 302
Nikolinakos, M., 490
Noiriel, G., 10, 390
Nonini, D. M., 95, 98, 101
Non-Governmental Organizations
(NGOs), 69, 142, 143, 145, 153-155,
157, 158, 375, 381
Non-resident Indians (NRIs), 97
North Africa, 27, 49, 60, 216, 342, 346,
522
North America, 7, 104, 215, 217, 220,
230, 289, 529
Northern Ireland, 151, 192
Norfolk-Virginia Beach, 595
Northern Norway, 430
Northwest Europe, 111, 552
Norway, 25, 46, 223, 303
Nozick, R., 291
O
Ofce of Population and Censuses
Surveys (OPCS), 209, 210
Ogden, P., 519
gelman, N., 234
Oikos economy, 444
Oil crisis of 1973, 9
Olsen, J., 141, 142, 144, 147
Olzak, S., 359
Omvedt, G., 484
ONeill, O., 297
Ong, A., 95, 98, 101
Opel, 30
OReilly, K., 128
Organization for Economic Co-
operation and Development
(OECD), 130, 317
Organization for Security and Co-
operation in Europe (OSCE), 149,
375
OECD-SOPEMI report, 386
Oriol, M., 10, 14
Orthodox Marxism, 438
Oswald, I., 316
Ottoman Empire, 353
Oude Westen, Het, 352
Overseas Departments, 26
Oxford University, 102
zekrenA. S., 598
P
Pakistan, 26, 46, 47, 50, 97, 225, 555
Panat, L., 363
Papastergiadis, N., 377
Panjabis, 411
Parachuted Suburban Model, 600
Pareto, W., 243
Paris, 29, 128, 316, 339-341, 345-346, 353
Paris Commune, 342
Park, R. E., 349, 582, 586, 587
Parkin, F., 489-492
Parmar, P., 500, 505
Parsons, T., 75, 187, 438
Passel, J. S., 376
Pastore, F., 123
Pathan, 423
Pathan area, 420, 421, 425
Pathan case, 422
Pathan local social systems, 411
Pathan values, 411
Pathan value standard, 423
Peach, C., 581-584, 593, 602
Pelagic islands, 410
Penal Code, 171
Penninx, R., 9
Peters, L., 73
PEP study, 33
Praldi, M., 316
Pre Lachaise cemetery, 346
Petersen, W. 185
Petersen, W., 65
Petite, M., 149, 150
Petras, E., 540, 554
Pettigrew, T., 268
Phalet, K., 385, 386, 395
Phenomenology, 438
Philadelphia, 595
Philippines, 89, 97, 112
Philpott, T., 589, 591, 592
Phizacklea, A., 124, 394, 500, 503-506,
509, 540, 554, 555
Piore, M. J., 78
Pittsburgh, 595
Platform Marokkaanse Jongeren
Utrecht (PMJU), 366
Plato, 275
Plender, R., 524, 525
Pohjola, A., 80
Poland, 24, 47, 195, 538, 544, 552, 588,
589
Polanyi, K., 323
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
624
index
Poliakov, L., 570, 571
Policing the Crisis, 495, 496, 500
Polish Peasant in Europe and America
the, 70, 89
Pollack, M., 154
Poly-ethnic social systems, 414
Portal, M., 146
Portes, A., 60, 65, 73, 92, 94, 98, 101,
104, 115, 316, 320, 323, 328, 394, 395
Portugal, 7, 27, 47, 263, 344, 393
Portuguese Empire, 453
Positivist Empiricism, 438, 440
Potsdam, 544
Poulantzas, N., 492-494
Poutsma, E., 318, 319, 325
Powell, E., 35
Praag, C., 519
Prezworski, A., 493, 499, 521
Pries, L., 79, 115
Principles of Scientic Management,
574
Protestantism, 447, 449
Proudhon, P.J. 577
Prussia, 221
Pugliese, E., 132
Q
Quebec, 227
R
Race, Articulation and Societies
Structured in Dominance, 496
Race and Politics Group of CCCS, 495,
498
Race Relations Act, 205
Racial and cultural minorities, 184
Racism and xenophobia, 260
Racism, Modernity and Identity, 259
Ramadan, 346
Rastafarianism, 477
Rath, J., 7, 9, 315, 316, 319-324, 326, 332,
366, 385, 395
Ratnesarr, R., 122
Raulin, A., 345, 347, 353
Ravenstein, E. G., 61, 111
Rberioux, M., 570
Reconquista, 571
Reich, M., 490
Reich, W., 570
Relative autonomy model, 494
Relative Deprivation theory, 83
Renaissance, 260
Renault, 30
Renooy, P. H., 320
Republic of Ireland, 151, 518, 552
Republikaner, 518
Resnick, S. A., 512
Revue europenne des migrations in-
ternationales, 13
Rex, J., 184, 191, 359, 360, 375, 437, 493,
496, 497, 506, 512
Rhode, B., 121, 125
Ribas Mateos, N., 124, 130
Richardson, J., 154
Roberts, B., 320, 323
Robins, K., 96
Robinson, C., 498
Rodbertus, K., 444
Rokkan, S., 186
Roland, C. 342
Roman Catholic Church, 250
Roman Empire, 441, 453, 457, 460, 462
Roman Republic, 445, 457
Rome, 116, 128, 247, 250
Romeo and Juliet, 249
Rose, E. J. B., 187, 375
Rosenstein, C., 317
Ross, G., 141, 157
Rotterdam, 315, 318, 322, 326, 352
Rousseau, J. J., 279, 293
Rudder de, A., 345
Rue de Belleville, 347, 348
Rueschemeyer, D., 523
Ruggie, J., 147
Ruhr, 29, 221
Rush Portuguesa decision 27 March
1990, 156
Ruzza, C., 153
Rwanda, 297
S
Sabbath, 347
Safa, H. I., 538
Safran, W., 93
Sahlins, M. D., 75
Salt, J., 122, 125, 131, 537, 548-550
San Fransisco, 600
San Fransisco-Oakland, 595
Sanguinetti, A., 364
Sargent, T. J., 491
Sassen, A., 319
Sassen, S., 538
Sassen-Koob, S., 316, 320, 541
Satzewich, V., 537
Savona, E. U., 94
Sayad, A., 10-12, 165, 344
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
625
index
Sayer, D., 520
Segal, S., 464
Sensenbrenner, J., 320
Schechtman, J. B., 544, 545
Schengen, 143, 144, 149-151, 158, 159
Schengen agreement 1985, 146, 149,
152
Schengen Implementation Agreement
(SIA), 146, 147
Schengen Information System, 145, 147
Schengenland, 116, 119
Schermerhorn, R. A., 196, 200, 239,
473
Schierup, C.-U., 380, 383
Schmidtt, C., 281
Schnapper, D., 379, 381
Schoenenberg, A., 360
Schnpug, U., 392
Schuck, P., 216, 229, 230
Schumpeter, J., 282, 292
Schuster, J., 321
Schutz, A., 438
Schwarzenbach Initiative, 35
Schwarzenbach Referendum, 518
Scotland, 224, 273
Scotson, J. L., 343, 351
Scott, J. C., 71
Seattle, 157
Second World War/World War II, 24,
26, 68, 195, 249, 254, 262, 263,
284, 517, 559
Segal, A., 116
Senegal, 112
Seville, 159
Seville 2002 summit, 142, 159
Shah, N. M., 82
Sheffer, G., 93
Shell, 125
Shohat, E., 96
Shuttleworth, I., 121
Sicily, 27
Sieys, A., 221
Silj, A., 124
Simmel, G., 439
Simon, P., 316, 339, 342, 344, 388
Simpson, G. E., 184, 190, 197
Simpson Senator, 233
Sinization, 421
Sivanandan, A., 490, 492, 498, 509,
554
Siverts, H., 419
Sjaastad, L. A., 111
Sklair, L., 96, 97
Skocpol, T., 508
SLG (Starting Line Group), 158
Slum and the Getto, The, 589
Smith, J., 99
Smith, M. G., 191-194, 457
Smith, M. P., 94, 101, 394
Smith, R. C., 97, 101
Social Democratic parties, 465
Social-Economic Council, 330
Social system the, 438
Sociology beyond Societies, 131
Sociology of Migration or Race
Relations A, 504
Sociological Theories: Race and
Colonialism, 437
Socrates exchanges, 126
Soininen, M., 376
Solidarit Arabe, 362
Solomos, J., 489, 499, 542, 543, 552, 553
Sommerfelt, A., 432
SOPEMI, 130, 386
South Africa/Southern Africa, 184, 185,
432, 452, 454, 459, 461, 463, 484,
490, 497, 511, 529, 559
Southeast Asia, 103, 190, 353, 415
South-eastern Europe, 545
Southern Europe, 23, 25, 26, 50, 60,
120, 124, 125, 216, 226
Southern Italy, 87
Southern Pathan, 411
Southern States, 442
Southwest Asia, 415
Soviet Union, 116, 120, 217, 387, 538
Soysal, Y., 373, 380, 397
Space TV Systems, 96
Spain, 7, 24, 27, 47, 125, 128, 376, 393,
263, 387, 571
Spare Rib Collective, 483
Sparkbrook, 360
Spencer, S., 554
Spivak, G., 96
Sri Lanka, 522, 538, 543
Stam, R., 96
Stares, P. B., 94
Stark, O., 64
Starting Line Group (SLG), 154
Statham, P., 392
Statistisches Bundesamt, 60
Stein, J., 131
Stepick, A., 316
Stillwell, J., 133
St. Louis, 595
Stone, J., 200
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
626
index
Stone, D., 144
Structuralism, 438, 520
Structural-Functionalism, 438
Structure of social action the, 438
Sudan, 421
Sudanic belt, 424
Supreme Court, 233
Surinam, 190, 192
Swart, A. H., 525
Swat, 411
Swedberg, R., 323
Sweden, 25, 46, 47, 50, 51, 57, 215, 216,
219, 221, 223, 224, 302, 303, 376,
382, 524
Swiss unions, 37
Switzerland, 24-29, 31-35, 38, 46, 49, 51,
57, 149, 518, 519
Swyngedouw, M., 385, 386
Symbolic Interactionism, 438
Szanton-Blanc, C., 92, 94, 100
T
Taeuber, A., 593, 594
Taeuber, K. E., 593, 594
Taguieff, P. A., 268
Taj Mahal, 202
Tamas, K., 59
Tampa-St. Petersburg, 595
Tampere 1999 summit, 142
Tannahill, J., 553
Tap, L. J., 326-328
Tapia, C., 344
Targeted Social and Economic Research
(TSER), 381
Tarrius, A., 316, 320
Taylor, F.W. 574
Teune, H., 521
Texture, 364, 365
Theory of Power, 237
Theory of the Third World revolution,
464
Thesis on Feuerbach, 439
Thistlethwaite, F., 68
Third Reich, 268
Third World, 23, 277, 461, 462, 464,
465, 484, 485, 538
Thirld World feminist debate, 471
Thomas, B., 70
Thomas, W., 70, 71, 75, 87, 89
Thomas-Hope, E. M., 554
Thompson, B., 344
Thompson, D., 122
Three generational model, 587, 596
Tillaart van den, H., 318, 319, 325
Tillie, J., 330, 395
Tilly, C., 66, 88
Time on the Cross, 451
Todaro, M. P., 111
Todd, E., 379
Tllyan, K., 93
Tonnies, F., 439
Toronto, 597, 598
Torpey, J., 374, 377
Toubon, J. C., 353
Touraine, A., 264
Trade Commission, 156, 157
TUC (Trades Union Congress), 37
Trading Association of Butchers, 327-
330, 332
Training on Commercial Practice, 329
Trnhardt, D., 130
Transnational Communities
Programme, 100, 104
Transnational corporations (TNCs),
96, 103
Transnational Household Strategies,
103
Transnational Religious Communities,
104
Transnational Social Movement
Organizations (TSMOs), 99
Trevi group 1970, 146
Tribalat, M., 386, 391
Trieste, 126
Trinidad, 89
Tripartite Conference, 544
Tunderman, B., 329
Tunisia, 344, 345
Turk, A., 146
Turkey, 27, 46, 47, 50, 82, 89, 145, 152,
195, 199, 224, 326, 522
Tyson, A., 155
U
Ueda, R., 302
Uganda, 544
Ugur, E., 148
Ukraine, 552
UN Commission on Crime Prevention,
149
UNESCO (United Nations Educational,
Scientic and Cultural
Organisation), 437
UNHCR (United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees), 69
UNICE (Union of Industrial and
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
627
index
Employers Confederations of
Europe), 157
Unied Jewish Social Fund, 344
United Kingdom (UK), 9, 11, 89, 91,
114, 126, 127, 151, 203, 215, 225, 259,
273, 550
United Nations (UN), 28, 122, 284, 545
United Nations Convention on the
Reduction of Statelessness, 287
United States (US/USA), 7, 11, 14, 15,
71, 78, 79, 86, 89, 100, 117, 157,
192, 193, 202, 215, 216, 220, 221,
226, 227, 233, 301, 302, 324, 376,
377, 389, 390, 395, 442, 459, 465,
490, 522, 538, 544, 546, 592, 596,
600-602
United States Black Power Groups, 201
United States Department of Defense
(DoD), 94
United States Immigration and
Naturalization Service, 230
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
1948, 287
University of Utrecht, 367
Unterhalter, E., 484
Urry, J., 126, 131, 377
Utrecht, 315, 318, 326, 355, 364-368
V
Valenci, L., 353
Valk, I. van der, 366
Vancouver, 597, 600
Veenman, J., 386
Verbunt, G., 517, 519, 521, 533
Verein fur Sozialpolitik, 441
Vermeulen, H., 381
Verschueren, J., 376
Vertovec, S., 91, 93, 373
Vienna, 270
Vienna Circle, 438
Vienna Club, 149
Vienna Group, 149
Vietnam, 224, 485, 522, 538, 543
Visco, I., 132
Vlaams Blok, 254, 270, 518
Volkskrant de, 326-328
Volkswagen, 30
Voskamp, J., 327
W
Wacquant, L., 602
Waffen SS, 155
Wagley, C., 185, 186
Wakeman, F. E., 94
Waldinger, R., 320
Waldrauch, H., 382
Wales, 224
Wallerstein, I., 266
Wallonia, 249
Walton, J., 65
Walzer, M., 234, 301, 309
War of Independence, 225
Warnes, T., 129
Warren, B., 538
Washington, D. C., 595
Waterman, S., 598
Waters, M.C. 597
Weber, M., 241, 437-450, 453, 455, 457,
461-466
Weberianism, 438
Weesep, J. van., 598
Weil, P., 375, 380
Wentholt, R., 321
Werbner, P., 395
West German employers federation,
556
West German recession of 1966-67, 28
West Germany, 25, 27, 28, 47, 215, 222,
223, 233, 538, 544, 545
West Indies, 26, 47, 50, 555
West Midlands, 29
Western Europe/West Europe, 8, 21, 23-
26, 30-32, 34, 37-40, 48-50, 53, 122,
237, 282, 297, 371, 374, 517, 518,
521, 522, 524, 538-543, 547, 559, 561
White, P., 598
White, P. E., 96, 111
White Paper on Commonwealth
Immigration of 1965, 543
Wickens, E., 124
Wieviorka, M., 259, 260, 262, 264,
267, 269
Williams, A. M., 128, 129
Williams, E., 570
Williamson, J. G., 68
Williams, P., 94
Wilpert, C., 360
Wilson, E., 483
Wilson, R., 95
Wilson, W. J., 268, 594
Winn, N., 150
Winnipeg, 597
Wirth, L., 183-185, 189, 190, 196, 197
Withol de Wenden, C., 356, 357, 525
Wolff, R. D., 512
Wolpe, H., 490, 511
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
628
index
Wolverhampton, 502
Womens Committee of the Greater
London Council, 483
Wood, M. E., 511
Woods, R. I., 111
World Bank, 97
Wrench, J., 383
Wright, E. O., 492, 493, 508
Y
Yearbook of International
Organizations, 99
Yinger, J. M., 184, 190, 197
Young, J. 495
Yugoslavia, 27, 47, 50, 116, 344, 387
Yuval-Davis, N., 392, 469, 481
Z
Zee TV, 96
Zhou, M., 320
Zinn, D. L., 123
Zlotnik, H., 60
Znaniecki, F. W., 70, 71, 75, 87, 89
Zolberg, A. R., 68, 543, 558
Zontini, E., 125
Other
9/11, 8, 390
3/11, 8
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
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19
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38
39
40
41
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43
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Rinus Penninx, Maria Berger, Karen Kraal, Eds.
The Dynamics of International Migration and Settlement in Europe:
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2006 (ISBN 978 90 5356 883 5)
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Holger Kolb, Henrik Egbert, Eds.
Migrants and Markets: Perspectives from Economics and the Other
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Illegal Migration and Gender in a Global and Historical Perspective
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Citizenship in the Arab World: Kin, Religion and Nation-State
2009 (ISBN 978 90 8964 045 1)
Rainer Baubck, Bernhard Perchinig, Wiebke Sievers, Eds.
Citizenship Policies in the New Europe: Expanded and Updated Edition
2009 (ISBN 978 90 8964 108 3)
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A Continent Moving West? EU Enlargement and Labour Migration from
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2010 (ISBN 978 90 8964 156 4)
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Identity Processes and Dynamics in Multi-Ethnic Europe
2010 (ISBN 978 90 8964 046 8)
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Rainer Baubck, Thomas Faist, Eds.
Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories and Methods
2010 (ISBN 978 90 8964 238 7)
Raivo Vetik, Jelena Heleme, Eds.
The Russian Second Generation in Tallinn and Kohtla-Jrve: The TIES
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Migration and Citizenship: Legal Status, Rights and Political
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2006 (ISBN 978 90 5356 888 0)
Michael Jandl, Ed.
Innovative Concepts for Alternative Migration Policies:
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2007 (ISBN 978 90 5356 990 0)
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2008 (ISBN 978 90 5356 689 3)
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Migration and Irregular Work In Austria: A Case Study of the Structure
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Karen Kraal, Judith Roosblad, John Wrench, Eds.
Equal Opportunities and Ethnic Inequality in European Labour Markets
Discrimination, Gender and Policies of Diversity
2009 (ISBN 978 90 8964 126 7)
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2
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Globalisation, Migration and Socio-Economic Change in Contemporary
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2006 (ISBN 978 90 5356 873 6)
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The Immigrant Organising Process: Turkish Organisations in
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Narratives of Place, Culture and Identity: Second-Generation
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Practising Citizenship and Heterogeneous Nationhood: Naturalisations
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2
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Jrme Jamin
Limaginaire du complot: Discours dextrme droite en France et
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2009 (ISBN 978 90 8964 048 2)
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2009 (ISBN 978 90 8964 050 5)
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2009 (ISBN 978 90 8964 051 2)
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My Name Is Not Natasha: How Albanian Women in France Use
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2009 (ISBN 978 90 5356 707 4)
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Elaine Bauer
The Creolisation of London Kinship: Mixed African-Caribbean and
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2010 (ISBN 978 90 8964 235 6)
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Nahikari Irastorza
Born Entrepreneurs? Immigrant Self-Employment in Spain
2010 (ISBN 978 90 8964 243 1)

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Migration and ethnic studies are on the rise.

A body of literature has rapidly

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