Liberal nationalism,immigration, and the problem of multiple national identities

ABSTRACT

Critics and defenders of liberal nationalism often debate whether the nation-state is able to accommodate cultural and political pluralism, as it necessarily aspires for congruence between state and nation. In this article, I argue that both sides of the debate have neglected a second homogenising assumption of nationalism. Even if it is possible for the nation-building state to accommodate multiple political and cultural communities, it is not obvious that is possible or desirable for it to accommodate individuals belonging to more than one nation. With the rise of international migration, and the growing number of multinational individuals, this flaw is a serious one. I advance an internal critique of liberal nationalism to demonstrate that, from within its own logic, this theory must either reject multiple national identities, or accommodate them at the cost of the normative justifications of nationalism it provides. By analysing David Miller’s influential analysis of national identity in divided societies, I demonstrate how this framework is unable to support an accepting attitude towards multiple national identities.     

How migration policies moderate the diffusion of terrorism

There is an ongoing debate among practitioners and scholars about the security consequences of transnational migration. Yet, existing work has not, so far, fully taken into account the policy instruments states have at their disposal to mitigate these risks, and reliable evidence is lacking for the effectiveness of such measures. This article addresses both shortcomings as whether and to what extent national migration policies affect the diffusion of terrorism via population movements are analysed. Spatial analyses report robust support for a moderating influence of states’ policies: while terrorism can travel from one country to another via larger migration populations, this only applies to target countries with extremely lax regulations and control mechanisms. This research sheds new light on the security implications of population movements, and it crucially adds to our understanding of governments’ instruments for addressing migration challenges as well as their effectiveness.     

Accommodating toleration: on Balint’s classical liberal response to the multiculturalism challenge

ABSTRACT

Peter Balint identifies three challenges to toleration, one of which is the multiculturalism challenge. This is the charge that liberal toleration fails to accommodate minorities adequately, which requires positive recognition rather than negative toleration. I discuss his response to the multiculturalism challenge and its connection to a classical liberal view of toleration. This involves Balint’s claim that liberal neutrality should be understood as reflective and ‘difference-sensitive’, which should be realised by the state being ‘hands-off’ in the sense of withdrawing support for privileged ways of life. I argue that Balint’s classical liberal view that the state needs to be ‘hands-off’ is in need of specification and that it does not fit well with his claim that neutrality needs to be reflective and difference-sensitive.     

Beyond reason: the philosophy and politics of immigration

In this paper, I critically address the role of arbitrary and contingent features in philosophical debates about migration. These features play a central role, and display the importance of ‘unreason’ in the debate and the limits of rational criticism. Certain elements of political thought have to be taken as given, as essential starting points or indispensable building blocks. As such, they cannot be exposed to rational criticism. Political arrangements such as national borders, nation-states and national identities constitute these building blocks, and justify coercive borders in order to sustain them. If we are to subject these arrangements to critical examination, then we move beyond the limits of liberal political philosophy. I examine theorists who take this kind of approach to the ethics of immigration: Michael Blake, Samuel Scheffler and David Miller. I argue that such approaches ask us to balance arbitrary and contingent features of the political world against the non-contingent moral equality of the migrant. If we are to recognize the migrant as an equal reason-giver in the moral contestation of borders, then we are compelled to theorize beyond these limits, and to theorize instead about a global community of equals, a post-national world made up of transnational belonging.     

Migrants into Members: Social Rights,Civic Requirements,and Citizenship in Western Europe

How do the states in Western Europe turn outsiders into insiders? This article examines that question by introducing a new qualitative framework that we term national membership conditionality structures (MCS). This framework includes not only status acquisition rules, such as those governing naturalisation and settlement, but also, crucially, civic integration requirements and social benefit eligibility standards. The article illustrates how linkages across these policy sectors shape different membership-making processes for third-country nationals by examining the MCS variation in Great Britain and Germany, two countries that both experienced significant migration inflows beginning in the first post-war decades. As a contrast to these two ‘mature’ MCS cases, a study of Spain is also included as a ‘nascent’ case, whose recent experience with large-scale immigration provides an opportunity to consider an MCS under active construction. The article concludes that while EU-level policies and institutions have extended their reach to cover ever more sectors, the components of national MCS remain largely outside supranational purview. As such, membership remains a core imperative of the contemporary nation-state.     

Explaining the immigration policy mix: Countries' relative openness to asylum and labour migration

Western democracies have developed complex policies to manage migration flows. Much of the scholarly literature and political discourse assume that countries have become increasingly selective and that they prioritise economic intakes. Despite clear efforts by policymakers to distinguish between refugees and migrant workers, we know surprisingly little about how countries combine different policy dimensions and which factors shape their relative openness to different target groups. In this article, we shed light on how countries combine two of the main admission channels, asylum and labour migration, by introducing the concept of the ‘immigration policy mix’. A comparative analysis of 33 OECD countries between 1980 and 2010 examines the pattern and drivers behind their immigration policy mix: Does the policy mix follow a pattern of convergence, is it subject to political dynamics or is it path dependent? The results reveal that despite a shift in political sympathies from asylum to labour migration, countries' immigration policy mixes have strongly converged into more liberal policies overall. The immigration policy mix primarily reflects governments’ limited room to manoeuvre due to competing political pressures. These insights demonstrate that the immigration policy mix serves to enhance our understanding of countries’ complex regulation of immigration.     

Immigration and French national identity under neoliberalism: Sarkozy's selective immigration politics as a performance of sovereignty

In 2007 then French president Nicolas Sarkozy established the Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Cooperative Development. Ocak investigates what the ministry wanted to achieve by promoting national identity and linking it with immigration. Focusing on the so-called selective immigration policies and the national identity debate, she examines the ways in which neoliberalization hollows out the nation-state and transforms its relations vis-à-vis citizens and, as a result, increases the need to perform sovereignty to counterbalance the crisis of the welfare state. The articulation of the undesired immigrant figure and the project to engage French citizens in the management of the immigrant operate, she suggests, as tactics to smooth this transformation and compensate for the losses that the French citizens experience as a result of the reign of neoliberal policies.     

Constitutional patriotism,migration and the post-national dilemma

This article addresses the challenges of justifying restrictions on migration given a rejection of nationalism as a defensible mode of political integration. Specifically, it focuses on constitutional patriotism, which is proposed as a means of making robust democratic practice possible in diverse contexts. Given that constitutional patriotism represents a commitment to universal principles as a source of attachment rather than the binding sentiment of nationalism, can we continue to rely on nationally defined and controlled migration practices? This article argues that, appropriately understood, constitutional patriotism implies a commitment to much freer movement of individuals across political boundaries than theorists have previously acknowledged. Applying such an approach, however, provokes some challenges to the sustainability of shared rule informed by principles rather than identity. This seeming paradox may mean that constitutional patriotism is more difficult to implement, and highlights practical challenges surrounding the liberalisation of border controls that are pertinent to theorists concerned with post-national citizenship more broadly conceived.     

The blind spots of liberal citizenship and integration policy

Governments across Europe have stepped up their efforts to manage social diversity politically, often specifically targeting Muslim populations. Lewicki interrogates the policy tools that the British and German governments deploy to ‘integrate’ an increasingly stigmatized and racialized population, zooming in on whether and how they problematize patterns of inequality. Complicating the ‘one country, one citizenship’ rationale of the citizenship regime literature that assumes a one-dimensional interpretation of history, cultural identity, political institutions or legal norms, she points to four salient liberal citizenship discourses that currently frame policies of diversity management. These are civic republicanism, multiculturalism, civic universalism and cosmopolitanism. Her analysis demonstrates that all four liberal citizenship discourses have blind spots when it comes to problematizing structural hierarchies and the logics of racism. Over the last two decades, liberal citizenship and integration policy frameworks have thus contributed to the retention of binary distinctions between superior citizens and inferior Others, distinctions that can now easily be exacerbated and used for mobilization by right-wing populist movements.     

International Peacebuilding and the Politics of Identity: Lessons from Social Psychology using the Bosnian Case

This article argues that international peacebuilding efforts must be understood as identity-building projects and applies what we know from social psychology about identity processes to post-conflict peacebuilding. It argues that international peacebuilders must pay careful attention to the relationship between the multiple sources of identity from which individuals draw their self-concepts, such as their ethno-national belonging and their citizenship. Using qualitative evidence from field research on international interventions in post-conflict education reform in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the decade following Dayton, the article contends that the international community's efforts on the ground entrenched ethno-national group boundaries while simultaneously challenging the distinctiveness of these ethno-national identities. As a result, rather than being sites of peacebuilding, the schools of Bosnia-Herzegovina became sites of heightened tensions and controversy.     

Parties,the state and society in Greece: Continuity within change

The new Greek party system which emerged after the restoration of democracy in 1974 is characterised by a combination of features indicative of both continuity and change in comparison with the party system that existed before the military coup of 1967. This article concludes that in the present phase the contribution of parties to institutional consolidation and the stability of party identification, though not negligible, remains uncertain. It is likely to be influenced by variables both internal and external to the political system, relating to party interaction and to the relationship of parties with state and society.     

Europe's migration crisis: Local contact and out-group hostility

Does a large influx of asylum seekers in the local community lead to a backlash in public opinion towards foreign populations? We assess the effects of asylum seeker presence using original survey and macro-level municipality data from Austria, exploiting exogenous elements of the placement of asylum seekers on the municipality level. Methodologically, we draw on entropy balancing for causal identification. Our findings are threefold. First, respondents in municipalities receiving asylum seekers report substantially higher exposure on average, but largely without the stronger contact that would allow for meaningful interaction. Second, hostility towards asylum seekers on average increased in areas that housed them. Third, this backlash spilt over: general attitudes towards Muslims and immigrants are less favourable in contexts with local asylum seeker presence, while vote intention for the main anti-immigration party is higher. Our findings go beyond existing work by examining contact directly as a mechanism, by showing a backlash effect in the medium term, and by focusing on a broad set of attitudinal and behavioural measures. Our results point to a need to design policy interventions that minimise citizen backlash against rapid migration inflows.     

Variation in policy success: radical right populism and migration policy

How do radical right populist parties influence government policies in their core issue of immigration? This article provides a systematic analysis of the direct and indirect effects of radical right anti-immigration parties on migration policy reforms in 17 West European countries from 1990 to 2014. Insights from migration policy theory serve to explain variations in the migration policy success of the radical right. While previous studies mostly treat migration policy as uniform, it is argued that this approach neglects the distinct political logics of immigration and integration policy. This article reveals significant variations in policy success by policy area. While immigration policies have become more liberal despite the electoral success of the radical right, when the radical right is in government office it enacts more restrictions in integration policies. Accordingly, anti-immigrant mobilisation is more likely to influence immigrants’ rights than their actual numbers.     

Security sector reform and the challenge of vertical integration

The poor performance of conventional security sector reform (SSR) programming, especially in fragile and conflict-affected states, has led to growing calls for the development of a new generation of reform strategies capable of transcending the state-centrism of earlier approaches and delivering sustainable security dividends to insecure populations. This paper reflects on the challenges of second-generation SSR, with a particular emphasis on the imperatives of reconciling different understandings of ownership, of rendering SSR processes more inclusive, and of acknowledging the realities of non-state security provision. The paper suggests that at its core, SSR is about strengthening state-society relations, and that second-generation SSR will ultimately be judged on how effectively it comes to terms with the argument that genuine and sustainable change can only emerge through an endogenous process of relationship transformation, in which insiders, not outsiders, are the primary agents of change.     

Citizenship,Migration and the Reassertion of National Identity

Faced with increasing and diverse migratory pressures in the post Cold War period, European states have created an increasingly complex system of civic stratifications with differential access to civil, economic and social rights depending on mode of entry, residence and employment. Now at the beginning of the twenty-first century, expansion and contraction of rights have occurred within a managerialist approach which, though recognising the need for immigration, applies an economic and political calculus not only to labour migration but also to forms of migration more closely aligned to normative principles and human rights, such as family formation and reunification and asylum. At the same time, states are demanding affirmation of belonging and loyalty, leading to greater emphasis on obligations in the practice of citizenship. The first part of the paper traces the evolution of a managerialist regime and its consequences for the reconfiguration of spaces of citizenship. The second section examines the development of new contracts of settlement and the management of diversity as the state reasserts its national identity and sovereignty.     

‘Strangers in their own Country’: Epideictic Rhetoric and Communal Definition in Enoch Powell's ‘Rivers of Blood’ Speech

This article treats Enoch Powell's ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech as an example of the epideictic rhetoric of blame and exclusion. Drawing on a framework proposed by Celeste Michelle Condit, the analysis explores the functions of the address for the speaker and for the audience. Of particular concern are Powell's self‐presentation as a statesman and prophet; his account of the impact and consequences of unrestricted immigration; and his portrayal of a community where ordinary, decent English people were being displaced and victimised by Commonwealth immigrants—a process in which he claimed the authorities were complicit. For the audience, the speech gave public expression to their concerns about immigration, though Powell's predictions of a dystopian future also aroused sentiments of anger and foreboding. Despite the controversy that ensued, the impact of ‘Rivers of Blood’ was far‐reaching, and its influence is still apparent in contemporary debates over immigration.     

Between continuity and change: The EU's mechanism of differentiated value integration

How does the European Union integrate new values into the text of its treaties? A growing body of literature indicates that, in the past three decades, new norms and values have entered the EU's discourse, resulting in what is usually termed ‘normative power Europe’. Yet the research and knowledge to‐date about the EU's discursive assimilation of new values and norms is surprisingly poor. As any institutional change, such integration has the potential to undermine the coherence of the EU's identity and thus also its objective to ‘speak with one voice’. This article explores the EU's discursive management of the continuity‐versus‐change imperative by analysing the integration of new values into the text of its treaties. This issue is addressed based on a quantitative content analysis on the full texts of European founding treaties between the 1950s and 2009. Findings show that the distribution of the EU's values in the text is not uniform: while the language of market economy and democracy is pervasive, the values of peace, European identity, rights and social justice are mentioned less frequently and in restricted linguistic environments. To account for the differences in the integration of values into the EU's treaty discourse, the article develops the notion of a discursive mechanism of differentiated value integration (MDVI). This rationale echoes the logic of differentiation in policy implementation employed by the EU. It is claimed here that, applied in the European discursive arena, MDVI allows radically different readings of the same text. This helps the EU to maintain a coherent value identity while at the same time enabling change.     

The Lion and the Eunuch: National Identity and the British Genius

The Lion and the Eunuch challenges the failures of British politicians to adequately understand the complexities, and the subtleties, of British national identity, and goes on to define it for them. It also explains reasons for our current confusions over who we are in the world. In 1940 Orwell wrote The Lion and the Unicorn as a rallying cry for a richly identifying country that was still able to imagine itself, and re‐imagine itself, as the need arose. This essay suggests that without a radical change of government policy and thought, that power will continue to decline with far reaching consequences for the peoples of these islands.     

Sex and the genuine marriage: consummation and conjugality in Canadian citizenship

The idea of consummation as definitive of a marriage seems antiquated today. Yet, consummation operates as a central criterion in determinations of a ‘genuine marriage’ in Canadian immigration law. Drawing on the marriage and migration literature, theorizations of sexual citizenship, and critical multiculturalism, we explore recent judicial considerations of consummation in Canadian family sponsorship adjudications. We searched the CanLII database (a Canadian database of legislation and judicial records) for the keywords ‘non-consummation’ and ‘genuine marriage’ and identified 68 cases. Of these cases, three primary themes emerged: the use of consummation as a ‘technology of love’ – a requirement for assessing the authenticity of the spousal relationship and hence the worthiness of sponsorship; the discursive construction of sexual and gendered norms in expectations around marital intimacy, and the articulation of liberal tolerance and the cultural other in the assessments of genuine marriages among primarily racialized Canadians or permanent residents and their foreign spouses. We challenge these discursive narratives and conclude by arguing that instead of consummation as the basis for genuine marriage, the Law Commission of Canada’s ‘close personal relationship’ model is a better way to assess the ‘genuineness’ of relationships for determining Canadian citizenship.     

Caught between two worlds: mainland Chinese return migration,hukou considerations and the citizenship dilemma

Issues about migrant rights and protection are raised in cases of return migration when the country that migrants return to prohibits dual citizenship although the migrant has naturalised elsewhere. This article explores the politics of membership and rights faced by former citizens returning to reside in the society they had left. Returning Mainland Chinese migrants with Canadian citizenship status have to navigate China's dual citizenship restriction and the impacts on their Chinese hukou status that confers residency, employment and social rights. This analysis also keeps in view their relationship with the country in which they have naturalised and left, namely Canada. Migrants shuttling between the two countries face a citizenship dilemma as they have limited rights in China whereas their status as Canadian citizens living abroad simultaneously removes them from some rights provided by the Canadian state. This paper thus introduces new and pressing questions about citizenship in the light of return migration trends.