The Logics and Politics of Post-WWII Migration to Western Europe

The Logics and Politics of Post-WWII Migration to Western Europe

by Anthony M. Messina
ISBN-10:
0521528860
ISBN-13:
9780521528863
Pub. Date:
06/04/2007
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
ISBN-10:
0521528860
ISBN-13:
9780521528863
Pub. Date:
06/04/2007
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
The Logics and Politics of Post-WWII Migration to Western Europe

The Logics and Politics of Post-WWII Migration to Western Europe

by Anthony M. Messina

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Overview

Few phenomena have been more disruptive to West European politics and society than the accumulative experience of post-WWII immigration. Against this backdrop spring two questions: Why have the immigrant-receiving states historically permitted high levels of immigration? To what degree can the social and political fallout precipitated by immigration be politically managed? Utilizing evidence from a variety of sources, this study explores the links between immigration and the surge of popular support for anti-immigrant groups; its implications for state sovereignty; its elevation to the policy agenda of the European Union; and its domestic legacies. It argues that post-WWII migration is primarily an interest-driven phenomenon that has historically served the macroeconomic and political interests of the receiving countries. Moreover, it is the role of politics in adjudicating the claims presented by domestic economic actors, foreign policy commitments, and humanitarian norms that creates a permissive environment for significant migration to Western Europe.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780521528863
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication date: 06/04/2007
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 310
Product dimensions: 5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.71(d)

About the Author

Anthony M. Messina is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Race and Party Competition in Britain and is the editor of several books, including most recently (with Robert M. Fishman) The Year of the Euro: The Cultural, Political and Social Import of Europe's Common Currency. He has also written articles published in the Journal of Common Studies, Parliamentary Affairs, Political Studies, Policy Studies Journal, The Review of Politics, West European Politics, World Politics, and other scholarly journals and anthologies.

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The logics and politics of post-wwii migration to Western Europe
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-82134-6 - The Logics and Politics of Post-WWII Migration to Western Europe - by Anthony M. Messina
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1


Introduction

Immigration and State Sovereignty



      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 hasprofoundly 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).

   As innumerable scholars have observed, few policy makers in Western Europe were particularly concerned with the long-term economic, political, or social repercussions of the wave of labor migration when it commenced during the 1950s (Castles 1984:1; Hansen 2002: 260). Most assumed that the flow of immigrants could be politically manipulated and/or would be efficiently regulated by the impersonal mechanisms of the labor market. Fewer still anticipated that foreign workers would settle permanently within their host countries. Moreover, neither political nor intellectual elites foresaw the surge of popular support for anti-immigrant groups and parties across Western Europe (Betz 1994; Betz and Immerfall 1998; Carter 2005; DeClair 1999; Hainsworth 2000; Rydgren 2004; Schain 1988; Sniderman et al. 2000; Sully 1997).

   The political and policy origins of the aforementioned phenomena are generally not in dispute. Although the national stories vary, most foreign workers were actively recruited and embraced by governments and private employers during the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s to satisfy the demand for cheap, unskilled labor within the then booming economies of Western Europe. Implicit in their welcome was the expectation that most foreign workers would return to their country of origin once the demand for their labor abated. It was only when these expectations were dashed and, more importantly, when the oil shocks of the 1970s plunged Western Europe into a prolonged period of slow economic growth and recession that the governments of the region intervened to halt the flow of primary immigration. Paradoxically, as we will see in Chapter 2, the efforts to curb the migration of foreign workers stimulated a wave of secondary immigration, a wave predominantly comprised of the dependents and the extended families of the original foreign workers. As a result of political intervention, a migration that mostly began during the 1950s as temporary and economically inspired was transformed, by the late 1970s, into a pattern of significant and permanent immigrant settlement.

   It is this second wave of immigration, cresting during the early 1970s and continuing through the present, that ultimately laid the foundations for what might be called a second tier of ethnic conflict in Western Europe (Messina 1992). Not only did the second wave of postwar immigration substantially increase the size of the new ethnic and racial populations and embed them within European societies, but it made it perfectly evident to the domestic opponents of the original labor-based immigration that their respective societies were becoming increasingly multicultural and, in some cases, multiracial. The transparency of this new reality, a reality that could not be credibly denied or explained away by increasingly nervous mainstream politicians, in turn fertilized the soil in which the anti-immigrant groups of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s grew and occasionally flourished. As we shall see in Chapter 3, resentment among native citizens about the permanent presence of the new ethnic and racial minorities has fueled, at various points in time and to different degrees, the political advance of the Freedom Party in Austria, the Flemish Block in Belgium, the British National Party in Britain, the Progress Party in Denmark, the National Front in France, the Center Party and Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands, the Progress Party in Norway, the National Socialist Front in Sweden, the People’s Party in Switzerland, and a plethora of xenophobic groups in Germany (Kitschelt 1995: 3). Anti-immigrant and xenophobic political actors, indeed, have become an enduring fixture within the political and/or party systems of all but a few of the immigrant-receiving countries of Western Europe (Rydgren 2005; Schain et al. 2002a).

   Is the surge of popular support for xenophobic and racist groups a rational reaction to an objective threat? As Zolberg (1993) has posed the question, are the societies of Western Europe literally under siege? As measured against any yardstick, immigration to Western Europe has certainly been large. Castles (1984) estimates that approximately 30 million people entered Western Europe as workers or as their dependents from the 1950s through the early 1970s, making this wave of mass immigration one of the largest in human history. In Germany alone, some 31 million foreigners entered the country between 1950 and 2000, yielding a net immigrant population of approximately 9 million (Martin 2003: 48). While it is impossible to calculate the precise number of foreigners or noncitizens currently residing in Western Europe, it is probably in the vicinity of 20 million persons (Table 1.1). Although this population includes foreign workers and their dependents from North America as well as nationals from elsewhere across Western Europe and the European Union ( EU), it excludes many of the original non-European foreign workers and their families who are now naturalized citizens. Thus, if the latter group is added to the pool of “foreigners,” there are probably over 22 million persons of migrant origin residing in contemporary Western Europe.

   As Table 1.1 suggests, the political and social tensions post- WWII immigration have precipitated are founded not simply in the size of the immigrant population but also in its uneven geographical distribution. For example, the two major immigrant-receiving states, Germany and France, combined are home to approximately half of the total immigrant population within Western Europe. In Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Sweden, and Switzerland, immigrants currently equal or exceed 5 percent of the total population. By contrast, somewhat fewer foreigners reside in Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.Moreover, unlike immigrants elsewhere, most of these persons emigrated to Southern Europe only during the past two decades (Pérez-Díaz et al. 2001; Werth 1991).

   A second major characteristic of post- WWII immigration has been its disproportionate impact on the major conurbations of Western Europe. As we will underscore in Chapters 2 and 6, immigrants and other foreigners are disproportionately concentrated within the major metropolitan areas. In a familiar historical pattern, most foreign workers are settled within the industrial and population centers of the immigrant-receiving states, cities where opportunities for gainful employment are, or at least once were, most promising (Money 1999: 50).

TABLE 1.1. Foreign Population of Select Western European Countries, 1994–2002 (thousands)

Country199419951996199719981999200020012002
Austria713.5677.1681.7683.4686.5694.0701.8707.8707.9
% total pop.8.98.58.68.68.68.78.88.88.8
Belgium922.3909.8911.9903.2892.0897.1861.7846.7850.1
% total pop9.199.08.98.78.88.48.28.2
Denmark196.7222.7237.7249.6256.3259.4258.6266.7265.4
% total pop3.84.24.74.74.84.94.854.9
Finland62.068.673.880.685.187.791.198.6103.7
% total pop1.21.31.41.61.61.71.81.92.0
France3263.2
% total pop5.6
Germany6990.57173.97314.07365.87319.57343.67296.77318.67335.6
% total pop8.68.88.99.08.98.98.98.98.9
Greece762.2
% total pop7.0
Ireland91.196.1118.0114.4110.8117.8126.5155.0187.7
% total pop2.72.73.23.13.03.23.34.04.8
Italy922.7991.41095.61240.71250.21252.01388.21362.61512.3
% total pop1.61.72.02.12.12.22.42.42.6
Luxembourg132.5138.1142.8147.7152.9159.4164.7166.7170.7
% total pop32.633.434.134.935.636.037.337.538.1
Netherlands757.1725.4679.9678.1662.4651.5667.8690.4700.0
% total pop5.04.74.44.34.24.14.24.34.3
Norway164.0160.8157.5158.0165.0178.7184.3185.9197.7
% total pop3.83.73.63.63.74.04.14.14.3
Portugal157.1168.3172.9175.3177.8190.9208.0350.5413.3
% total pop1.61.71.71.81.81.92.13.44.0
Spain461.4499.8539.0609.8719.6801.3895.71109.11324.0
% total pop1.21.31.41.61.82.02.22.73.1
Sweden537.4531.8526.6522.0499.9487.2477.3476.0474.1
% total pop6.15.26.06.05.65.55.45.35.3
Switzerland1300.11330.61337.61340.81347.91368.71384.41419.11447.3
% total pop18.618.918.919.019.019.219.319.719.9
U.K.2032.01948.01934.02066.02207.02208.02342.02587.02681.0
% total pop3.63.43.43.63.83.84.04.44.5

Source: OECD SOPEMI 2005: 334.


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FIGURE 1.1. Populations in Europe Favoring the Repatriation of Immigrants, 2003.
Source: Éinri 2005: 45.

   Given the uneven geographical settlement of immigrant-receiving populations and the history of the Southern European and Mediterranean countries as traditional labor-exporting states, it is perhaps unsurprising that the surge of domestic xenophobic and racist political movements since the 1970s has predominantly been a Northern European phenomenon. As we will see in Chapter 3, every northern immigrant-receiving country has been afflicted with the scourge of anti-immigrant political movements to some degree. This said, there is cause for concern on Europe’s southern periphery. For example, in responding to a question about whether established immigrants from outside the EU should be repatriated in 2000, Greeks topped the poll of EU populations in agreeing that they should, while Italians fell just below the EU average (Thalhammar et al. 2001). Similarly, as Figure 1.1 demonstrates, despite having comparatively fewer immigrants, Greece, Italy, and Portugal ranked among the top EU countries in 2003 whose populations advocated the repatriation of legal immigrants. Moreover, as measured by the number of violent attacks on refugees, mass xenophobia is increasing in Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain (European Commission 1997: 71; Pérez-Díaz et al. 2001: 211–14).

   As we will argue in Chapter 3, mass xenophobia within both the major and minor immigrant-receiving countries is primarily a reaction by native citizens to the gradual integration of foreigners and, specifically, to the latter’s increasing presence in economic, social, and political arenas from which they were once excluded or did not previously seek to enter. Paradoxically, as the new ethnic and racial minorities inch closer to and exercise the prerogatives of full citizenship, and as they become more European and less directly linked to their countries of origin, they are often viewed as a greater threat than previously by natives who are already predisposed toward ethnic and racial intolerance.



FRAMING THE CORE PUZZLES OF POST-WWII IMMIGRATION

Against the backdrop of the profound impacts that post- WWII immigration has had and continues to visit upon West European societies and politics, two questions readily spring to mind. The first, best posed as an intellectual puzzle, can be simply put: Why have the major immigrant-receiving states of Western Europe historically permitted and often abetted relatively high levels of immigration (Geddes 2003: 193; Hansen 2002: 260)? Posing the question somewhat differently, how can the continuous stream of immigrants and other foreigners into the societies of Western Europe during the immigrant-receiving period be logically explained in a post–September 11th international environment and in light of the overwhelming evidence of the public’s hostility toward and, very often, organized political resistance to immigration (Betz 1994; Fetzer 2000; Schain et al. 2002a)?

   A second, related question can be framed in the context of a policy dilemma: To what degree can contemporary governments and states effectively regulate immigration flows and manage the social and political fallout that immigration inevitably precipitates in the domestic setting? Specifically, is the capacity of West European states to implement rational, self-serving immigration and immigrant policies severely constrained, as many scholars claim (Bhagwati 2003; Heisler 1986; Jacobson 1997; Sassen 1996; Soysal 1994)?

   Five theses, each of which will be discussed at length and scrutinized in Chapter 4, have proposed different answers to these questions. The first one, advanced most forcefully by Hollifield (1992, 2000), is the liberal state thesis.1 This paradigm underscores the subjective and structural problems that are inherent in executing national, interest-driven immigration and immigrant policies, problems that arise from the fact that the major immigrant-receiving states of Western Europe are, and have been throughout most of the postwar period, committed to increasingly open international economic markets as well as liberal political rights for all their permanent residents, regardless of their formal citizenship status. According to this paradigm, the ability of the immigrant-receiving states to control immigration flows and to develop a self-serving immigrant policy is constrained by domestic and international laws and institutions that are extremely difficult, although not entirely impossible, to revoke (Hollifield 2000: 150). As a result of powerful economic factors, the pervasiveness of extensive immigrant networks, and the ascension of rights, the volume of immigration is substantially greater than domestic policymakers would prefer.

   Closely related to the liberal state paradigm is the embedded realist paradigm, perhaps best represented by the scholarship of Joppke(1998a, 1999a).2 The embedded realist paradigm, as explained by Hansen (2002: 262), “is realist because it recognizes an interest among (rationally motivated) nation-states in limiting certain categories of immigration; it is embedded because it attends to the role of institutional constraints in limiting this aim.” Although overlapping with the liberal state thesis, the embedded realist thesis deviates from it in insisting that the state’s moral obligations to particular immigrant groups rather than to immigrants generally circumscribe policy. According to Joppke (1999a: 262), these moral obligations combine with the logic of domestic client politics3 and the autonomy of the legal process to constrain interdependence sovereignty (Joppke 1999a: 262). However, and most importantly, such constraints are largely “self-imposed and not externally inflicted.”

   In contrast to the liberal state and embedded realist paradigms, which assume the sovereignty of states and their predominance in the international system, the paradigm of globalization supposes that state sovereignty has substantially waned in recent decades as its power and authority have been severely circumscribed by transnational forces that exceed their reach and influence (Bhagwati 2003; Heisler 1986; Koslowski 2000; Sassen 1996). According to this paradigm, as the transaction costs of international migration have diminished, as national borders have become more porous, and as citizenship rights in the postindustrial polity have been reconfigured so that they are routinely exercised by “postnational” members, including migrant workers and other noncitizens, the prerogatives of individual states to regulate immigration flows and dictate the conditions under which immigrants are incorporated within the polity and society have been significantly and irreversibly compromised (Jacobson 1996; Soysal 1994).

   An alternative to the aforementioned explanations for the apparent loss of state control of immigration and immigrant policy is inspired by the social science paradigm of path dependency (Pierson 2000), which advances the notion that once a country or government follows a particular policy track, the “entrenchments of certain institutional arrangements obstruct an easy reversal of the initial choice” (Levi 1997: 28). Although not necessarily inconsistent with the liberal state paradigm, this explanation does not presume that Western European societies or the international economy have become increasingly liberal since 1945, although it does not challenge this assumption. Rather, it implicitly advances the view that the contemporary state’s inadequate control of immigration and immigrant policy is a consequence of long-established policy decisions, decisions that have precluded the pursuit of some policy options while making other alternatives especially unattractive (Hansen 2002: 271). Pushing the boundaries of this viewpoint, it can be inferred that the immigrant-receiving states of Western Europe have not necessarily or permanently lost control of all immigration and immigrant policy; rather, they are especially constrained with respect to immigration and immigrants originating from those countries with which they have had a long and special relationship. This explanation speaks most directly, but not exclusively (Hansen 2002: 278), to the examples of historical ties between the former colonial powers of Western Europe, most notably Britain, France, and the Netherlands, and their respective former colonies.

   A fifth explanation for the loss of state control of the politics of immigration and immigrant policy can be labeled the political institutional breakdown perspective (Betz 1991; Messina 1989; Schain 1987). This perspective assumes that the long-term erosion of political parties and other traditional political institutions as policy-making bodies and vehicles for popular representation in Western Europe, a decline precipitated by factors unrelated to immigration but accelerated by it, is primarily responsible for the surging popularity of anti-immigrant parties and the attendant loss of control of immigration and immigrant policy by governments and traditional political parties (Lawson and Merkel 1988). This perspective essentially denies or suspends the assumption that immigration and/or immigrant policy are inherently problematic. Rather, it links the failure of largely sovereign states to execute an economically rational and stable immigration policy and a humane and politically viable immigrant policy, especially after 1970, to the growing weakness of traditional domestic political institutions. In this version of events, the political weakness of institutions causes confusion, contradictions, and incoherence in state immigration and immigrant policy, difficulties that, in turn, politicize policy and exacerbate existing political, constitutional, and legitimacy problems. In the downward spiral of politicization, policy incoherence, and political weakness, domestic political institutions find it difficult to pursue a steady course (Guiraudon and Joppke 2001: 4–5). By default, they cede considerable influence over policy to other, more credible and authoritative actors both within and outside of the state.

   Finally, in a direct refutation of the aforementioned schools of thought, a critical minority of scholars rejects the supposition that the immigrant-receiving states have lost control of immigration or immigrant policy (Freeman 1994a, 1998, 2001; Guiraudon and Lahav, 2000; Zolberg 1993). Although those working from this assumption criticize the “loss of control” or “declining sovereignty” thesis from very different intellectual starting points, they unanimously agree that the capacity of West European states to forge and implement an effective immigration and/or immigrant policy has not significantly eroded over time. Indeed, depending upon the individual scholar, the capacity of the immigrant-receiving states to execute rational, self-interested immigration and immigrant policies has remained fairly constant (Zolberg 1993: 55); it has actually increased over time (Freeman 1998: 88; Lahav 1997a: 350); or, alternatively, to the extent that state sovereignty has been compromised by immigration, its erosion is relatively minor and/or largely self-imposed (Isensee, 1974). In every event, the traditional decision-making prerogatives of the state and its ability to pursue and execute its self-interested policies in the domain of immigration remain relatively undisturbed.



OVERVIEW AND ARGUMENT

As even this brief survey suggests, the scholarly literature on post- WWII migration to Western Europe is extensive and expanding rapidly. Given its increasing salience as an economic, social, and political issue, many new and important national and cross-national studies about immigration have appeared in recent years (e.g., Bleich 2003; Brochman and Hammar 1999; Cornelius et al. 2004; Faist 2000; Fetzer 2000; Fetzer and Soper 2004; Ireland, 2004; Joppke, 1998b, 1999a, 2005; Koslowski 2000; Lahav 2004; Vink 2005). Like these works, this book approaches the subject of postwar immigration from a cross-national perspective. It thus joins the recent scholarly trend away from single-country case studies.

   However, unlike many of the aforementioned books, this study analyzes postwar immigration within the context of each of its distinct phases (i.e. labor, secondary and illegal/forced immigration). More important, it considers both the downward (e.g., the surge of support for domestic anti-immigrant groups) and upward (e.g., the trend toward the communitarization of policy within the EU) linkages of immigration. In so doing, this study attempts to offer a balanced ledger of post- WWII immigration, one that acknowledges its well-known political and social costs while keeping in mind its less often recognized and less celebrated returns or benefits.

   The central purpose of this study is to address the previously cited questions and paradigms within the context of the comparative historical experiences of the major immigrant-receiving countries. In following its trajectory from the early post- WWII period through the present, this book presents immigration as both a political challenge and a policy opportunity for the immigrant-receiving states. Our intellectual starting point is that the recent proliferation of cross-national scholarship on postwar migration to Western Europe has contributed less to constructing a coherent picture of this complex phenomenon than reasonably might have been expected given its substantial volume. Thus, the core purpose of this book is to stitch together the various strands of postwar immigration in a manner that better illuminates its whole.

   Utilizing empirical evidence gathered from a variety of primary and secondary sources on the precipitating causes, geographical origins, and regional distribution of post- WWII immigration (Chapter 2), this study specifically explores the links between immigration and the recent surge of popular support for anti-immigrant groups (Chapter 3); the implications of postwar immigration for interdependence sovereignty (Chapter 4); the causes underlying its recent elevation to the policy agenda of the EU (Chapter 5); its legacies for the major immigrant-receiving states and societies (Chap-ter 6); and the logics underpinning the political incorporation of immigrants (Chapter 7). Taken as a whole, the evidence presented in these chapters refutes the belief that immigration is “out of control” or a cause or a major symptom of the “declining sovereignty” of the contemporary state. Challenged too is the thesis that the compromise of state sovereignty, however modest, is primarily self-imposed (Joppke 1998a).4 Rather, the central argument this study advances is that postwar migration to Western Europe can best be understood as an interest-driven phenomenon, a phenomenon that has been and primarily remains defined and governed by sovereign national governments and states (Zolberg 1993: 55). Despite its obvious social costs and the political convulsions with which it has been so often closely associated, post- WWII immigration has served and, largely continues to serve, the macroeconomic and political interests of the immigrant-receiving countries.

   Within the context of this interest-driven thesis, this study contends that as immigration has evolved as a policy challenge in each of its distinct but interrelated phases, that is, labor immigration, secondary immigration, and illegal/humanitarian immigration, it has been driven and dominated by a political logic, a logic that has superseded and trumped economic and humanitarian imperatives whenever these imperatives conflict with the goals and interests of politics. It is politics, and specifically the role of politics in ad-judicating the often competing claims thrown up by the domestic economy and domestic economic actors, foreign policy pressures and commitments, and humanitarian norms within the domestic and international arenas, that is primarily responsible for creating and sustaining an environment that allows significant migration to Western Europe.





© Cambridge University Press

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: immigration and state sovereignty; 2. The origins and trajectory of post-WWII immigration; 3. The organized nativist backlash: the surge of anti-immigrant groups; 4. Immigration and state sovereignty: implications of the British and German cases; 5. The logics and politics of a European immigration policy regime; 6. The domestic legacies of postwar immigration: citizenship, monoculturalism, and the Keynesian welfare state; 7. The logics and politics of immigrant political incorporation.
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