In a world of mutually exclusive nation-states, international migration constitutes a fundamental anomaly. No wonder that such states have been inclined to select migrants according to their origins. The result is ethnic migration.
But Christian Joppke shows that after World War II there has been a trend away from ethnic selectivity and toward non-discriminatory immigration policies across Western states. Indeed, he depicts the modern state in the crossfire of particularistic and universalistic principles and commitments, with universalism gradually winning the upper hand. Thus, the policies that regulate the boundaries of states can no longer invoke the particularisms that constitute these boundaries and the collectivities residing within them.
Joppke presents detailed case studies of the United States, Australia, Western Europe, and Israel. His book will be of interest to a broad audience of sociologists, political scientists, historians, legal scholars, and area specialists.
Christian Joppke is Executive Director/Chair in General Sociology at the University of Bern.
Table of Contents
Preface
1. The Problem of Ethnic Selectivity
2. Toward Source-Country Universalism in Settler States: The United States and Australia
3. Europe's Postcolonial Constellations, Northwestern and Southwestern
4. Resilience versus Demise in the Diaspora Constellation: Israel and Germany
5. The Liberal State between De- and Re-Ethnicization
Notes
References
Index
What People are Saying About This
This well-written book makes a major contribution to scholarship about immigration and liberal democracy. Joppke succeeds in doing two things outstandingly well. First, he provides a cogent theoretical argument about the nature of ethnic migration and how it has changed over time, and the constraints now confronting any efforts to shift government policy towards greater selectivity, even though such illiberal pressures endure and are often created by liberal governments. Second, he provides a detailed and informed empirical account, rooted in comparative, historical analysis, of the three types of ethnic migration.
Desmond King
This well-written book makes a major contribution to scholarship about immigration and liberal democracy. Joppke succeeds in doing two things outstandingly well. First, he provides a cogent theoretical argument about the nature of ethnic migration and how it has changed over time, and the constraints now confronting any efforts to shift government policy towards greater selectivity, even though such illiberal pressures endure and are often created by liberal governments. Second, he provides a detailed and informed empirical account, rooted in comparative, historical analysis, of the three types of ethnic migration. — Desmond King, Oxford University and author of, Making Americans: Immigration, Race, and the Origins of the Diverse Democracy
Rogers Brubaker
This trenchantly argued exploration of the ways in which states use ethnicity to select among potential immigrants elucidates a basic tension between the universalist commitments of liberal democratic nation-states and the inescapable particularity of their histories, cultures, and populations. — Rogers Brubaker, The University of California at Los Angeles, and author of Ethnicity without Groups
