Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Preface and acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Toward a people's Europe: an institutional analysis of immigration policy in the European Union
- 3 An attitudinal portrait of a people's Europe: a comparative overview of public opinion and elite preferences
- 4 Immigration politics and the new Europe: organizing competing interests
- 5 The “European factor”: institutional and psychological constraints on immigration attitudes
- 6 Conclusions: the construction of a European immigration regime?
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Immigration politics and the new Europe: organizing competing interests
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Preface and acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Toward a people's Europe: an institutional analysis of immigration policy in the European Union
- 3 An attitudinal portrait of a people's Europe: a comparative overview of public opinion and elite preferences
- 4 Immigration politics and the new Europe: organizing competing interests
- 5 The “European factor”: institutional and psychological constraints on immigration attitudes
- 6 Conclusions: the construction of a European immigration regime?
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Act IV, Scene 1: We think that when vital interests are contradictory, it is the national interests which have the edge over all the others. In other words, we have a preferential philosophy. That is to say that we think that social life is made in concentric circles: the family, the city, the profession, etc., and that we have to look after ourselves first. There is a saying in the Front national, “I love my daughters more than my nieces, my nieces more than my cousins, my cousins more than my neighbors.” And I add happily that does not mean that I detest my neighbors, it means that I love them less than my daughters. Our adversaries say, “You are xenophobic; you do not want anyone but the French.” No, it is not true. But, we do think that there are hierarchies of affinity and tolerance.
(Jean-Marie Le Pen in interview with researcher, Strasbourg, June 10, 1992.)Immigration policy typifies issues caught between national and supranational domains. On the one hand, defining citizenship and deciding who should enter a country are a state's prime tasks, symbolizing national sovereignty and control. On the other hand, citizenship of a member-state now confers economic and social rights exercisable throughout the EU, and has consequently brought immigration policy under transnational regulation. As the EU attempts to integrate and manage these competing demands, attitudes toward immigration are swayed by country-specific and partisan/ideological interests.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Immigration and Politics in the New EuropeReinventing Borders, pp. 113 - 148Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004