Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- The logics and politics of post-WWII migration to Western Europe
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The Origins and Trajectory of Post-WWII Immigration
- 3 The Organized Nativist Backlash
- 4 Immigration and State Sovereignty
- 5 The Logics and Politics Of a European Immigration Policy Regime
- 6 The Domestic Legacies of Postwar Immigration
- 7 The Logics and Politics of Immigrant Political Incorporation
- 8 Conclusions
- References
- Index
1 - Introduction
Immigration and State Sovereignty
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- The logics and politics of post-WWII migration to Western Europe
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The Origins and Trajectory of Post-WWII Immigration
- 3 The Organized Nativist Backlash
- 4 Immigration and State Sovereignty
- 5 The Logics and Politics Of a European Immigration Policy Regime
- 6 The Domestic Legacies of Postwar Immigration
- 7 The Logics and Politics of Immigrant Political Incorporation
- 8 Conclusions
- References
- Index
Summary
Theoretically, … sovereignty is nowhere more absolute than in matters of emigration, naturalization, nationality and expulsion….
(Hannah Arendt, 1972: 278)If one views migration as a transnational phenomenon … and then problematizes the unitary-actor assumption, it becomes evident that migration is a factor that impinges on the nature of the state as an international actor.
(Rey Koslowski, 2000: 17)Few phenomena affecting Western Europe as a whole have been more far-reaching in their immediate effects or more potentially destabilizing to society and politics over the longer term than the accumulative experience of post-WWII immigration. Accelerating with the explosion in the number of asylum seekers, refugees, and illegal migrants gaining entrance to Western Europe during the 1980s and beyond, the phenomenon of post-WWII immigration has profoundly challenged states, governments, and societies in ways that could hardly have been anticipated when the first wave of foreign workers began to arrive in Western Europe a half century ago (Joppke 1999a). As a direct result of the sociocultural conflict between minority and majority populations and, in some countries, between the new ethnic minorities and the state, ethnicity has now become more salient as a political and social cleavage in Western Europe than at any time since World War II (Fetzer and Soper 2004; Modood and Werbner 1997; Wicker 1997). In Belgium, France, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, new ethnic cleavages have been superimposed over the old (Messina 1992).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007