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Immigration and Integration Studies in Western Europe and the United States: The Road Less Traveled and a Path Ahead

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Erik Bleich
Erik Bleich
Affiliation:
Middlebury College, [email protected].
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Abstract

This article examines the significant contributions of recent research on immigration and integration in Europe and North America and highlights the potential of such research to influence the social sciences. The first part of the article advances a framework for analyzing four types of scholarship and then applies that framework to the study of immigration and integration. Type 1 scholarship develops theoretical or conceptual insights for scholars within a subfield, type 2 tests or refines theories that are specific to a particular dimension of the subfield, type 3 imports broader comparative or social scientific concepts to reshape the study of a topic within a subfield, and type 4 uses evidence from a subfield to develop theoretical tools that can be applied more broadly in the social sciences. The second part of the article reviews four books that highlight the empirical frontiers of immigration and integration research. Each book tends to epitomize one of the four types of scholarship, but together they demonstrate the possibility of making contributions on multiple registers. The article concludes by suggesting promising frontiers within the immigration and integration subfield and by defining the concept of a comparative politics of identity and sketching out its terrain. Since immigration and integration researchers are centrally interested in the role of identity in politics, they have the potential to be pivotal in advancing this new arena of inquiry.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 60 , Issue 3 , April 2008 , pp. 509 - 538
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2008

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References

1 As such, the study of immigration and integration is what Mattei Dogan has termed a “hybrid specialty,” which includes enclaves of political scientists and their counterparts in many other social science disciplines. Dogan, Mattei, “Political Science and the Other Disciplines,” in Goodin, Robert E. and Klingemann, Hans-Dieter, eds., A New Handbook of Political Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)Google Scholar. A comprehensive attempt to review literature from multiple related fields has been undertaken in Brettell, Caroline B. and Hollifield, James F., eds., Migration Theory: Talking Across Disciplines (New York: Routledge, 2000)Google Scholar. This essay therefore focuses on recent contributions from political science and sociology where research questions have overlapped to a great degree.

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3 For the exchange to be productive, outreach by immigration and integration specialists has to be matched by other political scientists' increased attention to the subfield. While there are reasons to fault the discipline for ignoring existing immigration and integration scholarship, in this essay I focus on what scholars of immigration and integration can do to bridge the gap.

4 For one recent move in this direction see Abdelal, Rawi, Herrera, Yoshiko M., Johnston, Alastair Iain and McDermott, Rose, “Identity as a Variable,” Perspectives on Politics 4, no. 4 (2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Robert Putnam's two-level games analysis or Albert Hirschman's reflections on exit and voice are classic examples of type 1 contributions; they do not aim to predict outcomes, but rather offer a general framework for understanding important political dynamics. Putnam, Robert D., “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Levef Games,” International Organization 42, no. 3 (1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hirschman, Albert O., Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970)Google Scholar.

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25 Race relations studies in Europe fall more cleanly into the immigration and integration subfield tVian they do in the United States, where racial diversity is more often seen as divorced from (recent) immigration than linked to it.

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27 Ibid., 1. McAdam also identifies two other goals: a discussion of power in America and an assessment of the fit between the theories he tests and the historical facts of the black movement (pp. 1–4).

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35 In Denmark, a case used to understand whether the analysis can be extended, Terri Givens finds that a series of minority governments served the same role as the grand coalition in Austria—namely to decrease the impact of a vote for the far right on the ability of a least-favored party to govern, especially given that the mainstream right signaled that it was willing to govern with far-right support.

36 This is a term that both Lieberman and I use. It is not without drawbacks, however, especially in European countries that deny the existence of “race.”

37 For other contributions in this vein, see Bleich (fn. 29); Bleich, Erik, “Integrating Ideas Into Policy-Making Analysis: Frames and Race Policies in Britain and France,” Comparative Political Studies 35, no. 9 (2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Geddes, Andrew and Gutraudon, Virgime, “Britain, France, and EU Anti-Discrimination Policy: The Emergence of an EU Policy Paradigm,” West European Politics 27, no. 2 (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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40 Thought advocacy coalitions operate at an elite rather than a mass level. See Sabatier, Paul A., “Knowledge, Policy-Oriented Learning, and Policy Change: An Advocacy Coalition Framework,” Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization 8, no. 4 (1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Lieberman also makes this point when comparing U.S. Social Security to France's Social Insurance, saying “The key distinction that emerges from these cases is an institutional one: centralization” (p. 117).

42 For discussions of ideas, interests, and institutions in the fields of political economy and public policy and administration, see Peter A. Hall, “The Role of Interests, Institutions, and Ideas in the Comparative Political Economy of the Industrialized Nations,” in Lichbach and Zuckerman (fn. 2); and Giandomenico Majone, “Public Policy and Administration: Ideas, Interests and Institutions,” in Goodin and Klingemann (fn. 1).

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44 As the authors point out, these are the five most important immigrant-receiving countries in Western Europe, accounting for about four-fifths of its total immigrant population (p. 5).

45 Koopmans et al.'s framework also demonstrates that (in 2002) Germany was a much weaker case of assimilationism than Switzerland and that the Netherlands was closer to the extreme end of the multiculturalist spectrum than Britain.

46 For a similar effort to develop an empirically grounded citizenship policy index that allows fluctuation over time, see Howard, Marc Morje, “Comparative Citizenship: An Agenda for Cross-National Research,” Perspectives on Politics 4, no. 3 (2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Koopmans et al. also devote a chapter to the interesting use of “Muslim” as a common identify marker among claims-making migrants in Britain, the Netherlands, and most unexpectedly, France, demonstrating and analyzing the limitations of their own model (chap. 4)

48 It would also help overcome modest anachronisms such as their discussion of the Dutch treatment of minorities, which, as they admit, has shifted substantially since the late 1990s. See Entzinger, Han, “The Rise and Fall of Multiculturalism: The Case of the Netherlands,” in Christian Joppke and Morawska, Ewa, eds., Toward Assimilation and Citizenship (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)Google Scholar; and Joppke, Christian, “The Retreat of Multiculturalism in the Liberal State: Theory and Policy,” The British Journal of Sociology 55, no. 2 (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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50 For an overview of recent contributions to this debate in the American context, see Waters, Mary C. and Jimenez, Tomas R., “Assessing Immigrant Assimilation: New Empirical and Theoretical Challenges,” Annual Revteiv of Sociology 31 (2005)Google Scholar. For an attempt to develop comparative integration measures in the European context, see the European Civic Citizenship and Inclusion Index, published in 2005 by the British Council Brussels and available online at http://www.integrationindex.eu/ multiversions/2140/FileName/brussels-european-civic-citizenship-and-inclusion-index.pdf (accessed April 14,2008).

51 This is a point frequently made by James Hollifield.

52 Quoted in Rose, E. J. B., Colour and Citizenship (London: Oxford University Press for the Institute of Race Relations, 1969), 229Google Scholar.

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56 Lamont, Michele, The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2000)Google Scholar; idem, “Immigration and the Salience of Racial Boundaries among French Workers,” French Politics, Culture & Society 19, no. 1 (2001)Google Scholar; and Christopher A. Bail, “Diverse Diversities: The Configuration of Symbolic Boundaries toward Immigrants in Twenty-One European Countries,” American Sociological Review (forthcoming). On the construction of identities and hierarchies, see also the work of Hagendoorn, Louk, “Ethnic Categorization and Out- group Exclusion: Cultural Values and Social Sterotypes in the Construction of Ethnic Hierarchies,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 16, no. 1 (1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zolberg and Long (fn. 31); and Alba (fn. 31).

57 I draw a distinction here between the empirically grounded study of the comparative politics of identity and the normative study of the politics of identity, as exemplified in works such as Young, Ins Marion, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Taylor, Charles, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Gutmann, Amy, ed., Multiculturalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Calhoun, Craig, ed., Social Theory and the Politics of Identity (Oxford: Black-well, 1994)Google Scholar; and Kymlicka, Will, Multicultural Citizenship:A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar. While it will be fruitful for empirical social scientists to ground their studies in normative work, the comparative politics of identity does not focus centrally on normative debates.

58 Studies of class consciousness and party identification—less in vogue now than in earlier eras—may also provide useful insights into these issues.

59 Sides and Citrin have also presented evidence suggesting the relatively greater importance of cultural identities over material interests in shaping European public opinion about immigration. Sides, John and Citrin, Jack, “European Opinion about Immigration: The Role of Identities, Interests and Information,” British Journal of Political Science 37, no. 3 (2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 This draws on and adapts the framework I developed to analyze the origins of ideas in Bleich (fn. 29), 187–94.

61 In the realm of EU studies, Hooghe and Marks have connected identity to integration outcomes by arguing that shifting decision-making structures since the 1990s have given more power to the general public relative to elites, thereby creating an era of “constraining dissensus” that limits integration options. They term their perspective “postfunctionalist” because its emphasis on identity goes beyond the primary focus on economic interest underpinning both neofunctionalism and intergovernmen-talism. Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks, “A Postfunctional Theory of European Integration: From Permissive Consensus to Constraining Dissensus,” British Journal of Political Science (forthcoming).

62 Collier, Paul, “Ethnic Diversity: An Economic Analysis,” Economic Policy 32 (April 2001)Google Scholar; and Fearon, James D. and Laitin, David, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 This last question lies at the heart of Anthony Messina's latest book (fn. 12).

64 See Brubaker, Rogers and Laitin, David, “Ethnic and Nationalist Violence,” Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Horowitz, Donald, The Deadly Ethnic Riot (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 34–42Google Scholar.

65 For a “brush clearing” effort designed to facilitate movement toward general propositions about identity, see Abdelal et al. (fn. 4).