¹ On the distinctive features of the phenomenon of large-scale immigration to the West in recent decades, and the debates to which it gives rise, see Orgad, Liav, The Cultural Defense of Nations: The Liberal Theory of Majority Rights, 19–50 (2015). See also, e.g., Stephen Castles & Miller, Mark J., The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in The Modern World (2009); Christian Joppke, Citizenship and Immigration (2010); Ian Goldfin, Geoffrey Cameron, & Meera Balarajan, Exceptional People: How Migration Shaped Our World and Will Define Our Future (2011).Google Scholar

² See e.g. Samuel p. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenge to America's National Identity (2004); Chaves, Leo R., The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens and the Nation (Second Edition, 2013) (arguing against the 'Latino threat narrative“).Google Scholar

³ For a comprehensive and balanced treatment of the subject of Islam's and Muslim immigrants place in the West see Joppke, Christian & Torpey, John, Legal Integration of Islam: A Transatlantic Comparison (2013).Google Scholar

⁴ See, e.g., Leiken, Robert, Europe's Angry Muslims: The Revolt of the Second Generation (2011).Google Scholar

⁵ The literature on multiculturalism, its dilemmas, and the tendency in recent years to retreat from it, is vast and growing; the extent of the retreat is contested. For a few examples see Glazer, Nathan, We are All Multiculturalists Now (1997); Brian Barry, Culture and Equality; An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism (2001): Christian Joppke, The Retreat of Multiculturalism in the Liberal State: Theory and Policy, 55/2 British Journal of Sociology 237–57 (2004): Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics Of Diversity (2009); Amnon Rubinstein, The Decline, but not Demise, of Multiculturalism, 40/3 Israel Law Review 763–810 (2007); The Multiculturalism Backlash: European Discourses, Policies and Practices (Steven Vertovec & Susanne Wessendorf, eds.) (2010); The Multicultural Dilemma: Migration, Ethnic Politics, and State Intermediation (Michelle Williams, ed.) (2013); Keith Banting & Will Kymlicka, Is There Really a Retreat from Multiculturalism Policies? New Evidence from the Multiculturalism Policy Index, 11/5 Comparative European Politics 577–98 (2013): Christian Joppke, The Retreat is Real—but what is the Alternative? Multiculturalism, Muscular Liberalism, and Islam, 21/2 Constellations 286–95 (2014).Google Scholar

⁶ Despite the growing tendency to disparage the term, it seems that most criticisms refer, in fact, to the more radical versions of ideological multiculturalism, and not to the legitimacy of cultural diversity as such. The critics still take for granted a much greater degree of cultural pluralism than would have been acceptable, in most countries, in the more distant past; no return to a “mono-culturalism” is envisaged. Cf. Alexander Yakobson, A Jewish State, Multiculturalism, the Law of Return, and Non-Jewish Immigration, in The Nation State and Immigrsation, The Age of Population Movements, 202–03 (Anita Shapira, Stern, Yedidia Z., Alexander Yakobson & Liav Orgad eds., 2014).Google Scholar

⁷ See Orgad, supra note 1, at 87–115. Christian Joppke holds that overall, despite some restrictive measures, the general long-term tendency of liberalization in access to citizenship has not been reversed in Europe. See, e.g., Joppke, Christian, Comparative Citizenship: A Restrictive Turn in Europe?, 2/1 Law &; Ethics Human Rights 1–41;Google Scholar

Christian Joppke, The Role of The State In Cultural Integration: Trends, Challenges and Ways Ahead, Migration Policy Institute (2012).Google Scholar

⁸ See Orgad, Liav, Illiberal Liberalism: Cultural Restrictions on Migration and Access to Citizenship in Europe, 58/1 Am. J. Comp. L. 53–105 (2010); How Liberal Are Citizenship Tests?, EUI Working Paper RSCAS 2010/41 (Rainer Bauböck and Christian Joppke, eds) (2010); cf. Sara Wallace Goodman, Controlling Immigration through Language and Country Knowledge Requirements, 34/2 W. European Politics 235–55 (2011); Andrew Mason, Citizenship Tests: Can They Be a Just Compromise?, 45/2 J. Soc. Philosophy 137–61 (2014).Google Scholar

⁹ See, e.g., Norton, Anne, On the Muslim Question (2013). The issue of the Muslim veil and the measures taken against it in recent years by several European countries has proved particularly controversial. It has provoked charges of cultural intolerance and, sometimes, Islamophobia disguised as defense of secularism and women's rights—not only on the part of radical critics. See e.g., Bowen, John R., Why the French Don't Like Headscarves; Islam, The State And Public Space (2006); Christian Joppke, Veil; Mirror of Identity (2009); Joan Wallach Scott, The Politics of the Veil (2010); Korteweg, Anna C. & Gökçe Yurdakul, The Headscarf Debates: Conflicts of National Belonging (2014).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Christian Joppke, Majorities Need No Rights: A Commentary on Liav Orgad's The Law of Majorities, Verfssungsblog on Matters Constitutional, 17 February 2016, http://verfassungsblog.de/maiorities-need-no-rights-a-commentary-on-liav-orgads-the-law-of-majorities Google Scholar

¹¹ See infra note 14.Google Scholar

¹² On Israel's formative years and the long-term ramifications of the mass immigration that characterized them see generally Israeli Identity in Transition (Anita Shapira ed.) (2004).Google Scholar

¹³ Orgad, supra note 1, 189. Cf. Azar Gat with Alexander Yakobson, Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism 351–52 (2013): “no democratic electorate is likely to accept things [in the field of immigration] that it regards as fundamentally altering the national and cultural character of the state,” though “accumulated changes over a long period of time may sometimes produce a result that is much more far-reaching than anything that could have been anticipated, or would have been accepted, from the outset.”Google Scholar

¹⁴ Orgad, supra note 1, at 204–29.Google Scholar

¹⁵ There seems to be no reason to assume that any number of naturalized German immigrants would lead to material changes in the Danish system of government; see more on this below.Google Scholar

¹⁶ See Kymlicka, Will, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights 94–99, 114–115 (Oxford 2000), (insisting on a clear-cut distinction between native peoples and homeland national minorities that are entitled to collective cultural rights, and immigrant communities that are not). In practice, such a distinction is sometimes difficult to maintain. “Cultural group rights—demands for linguistic rights, Sharia law, or exemptions from general laws relating to the school curriculum and food—are invoked nowadays by immigrant groups, mainly in Europe, even if their demands are more confined than those asserted by national minorities.” Orgad, supra note 1, at 177. Most of these examples relate to Muslim immigrants and would not be relevant under the scenario presented here. In any case, no cultural right that might be gained by the German—or any other—immigrant community in Denmark would change the national character of the state from the viewpoint of civic nationalism.Google Scholar

¹⁷ See Pedersen, Karen Margrethe, A National Minority with a Transethnic Identity: German Minority in Denmark, in German Minorities in Europe: Ethnic Identity and Cultural Belonging 15–28 (Stefan Wolff ed., 2000).Google Scholar

¹⁸ For a classic exposition of the traditional dichotomy between ethnic and civic nationalism, see Kohn, Hans, The Idea of Nationalism (1944); see also Hobsbawm, Eric, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (1990). This dichotomy has been subjected to repeated criticisms that question both the assumption that civic nationalism is inherently more liberal and inclusive, and the very notion of a national identity that is purely civic, or culturally neutral. See, e.g., Kymlicka, Will, Modernity and National Identity, in Ethnic Challenges to a Modern Nation State 11–41 (Shlomo Ben-Ami, Yoav Peled, & Alberto Spektorowski eds., 2000); Tim Reeskens & Marc Hooghe, Beyond the Civic–Ethnic Dichotomy: Investigating the Structure of Citizenship Concepts Across 33 Countries, 16/4 Nations & Nationalism 579–97 (2010). However, the distinction is certainly meaningful in the basic sense that a national identity can be perceived as either comprising the whole citizen body of the state or shared by only a part of it; in the latter case, the two or more national identities within a single state are naturally “ethnic,” “cultural,” or “ethnocultural”. Neither model is a guarantee against aggressive nationalism. Cf. Gat & Yakobson, supra note 13, at 328–379.Google Scholar

¹⁹ See Monkia Polzin chapter in this this volume, 18 German l.j.; see also Pietro Faraguna chapter in this volume, 18 German L.j.Google Scholar

²⁰ In the case of Scotland, such a prospect would very probably be relevant to debates on secession and independence.Google Scholar

²¹ I am grateful to Liav Orgad for raising this scenario and making this point in a private conversation.Google Scholar

²² Cf. Avishai Margalit & Moshe Halbertal, Liberalism and the Right to Culture, 71/3 Soc. Research, 529–548 (2004).Google Scholar

²³ Cf. Orgad, supra note 1, at 171 on the Covenant turning the right of self-determination from a “declaratory” general principle mentioned in the UN Charter into a “legal principle” and a “human right.”Google Scholar

²⁴ Deciding between the different notions of peoplehood for the purpose of the right to self-determination might, conceivably, become necessary under a scenario even more unrealistic than the one raised here: if the ethnocultural Danes were to become a minority and then wish to secede from the state. The incontestable civic self-determination would presumably have been exercised in the way suggested here long before things reached that point.Google Scholar

²⁵ Cf. Orgad, supra note 1, at 182. Orgad speaks, dealing with more realistic and less extreme scenarios, of “justifications for cultural majority rights [and] cultural defense of the majority irrespective of whether it can invoke self-determination; these justifications are based on similar rationales to those invoked for cultural minority rights—personal autonomy and the right to identity.”Google Scholar