The process of immigrant incorporation (or exclusion) is complex and shaped by many factors. Among the most important, are the characteristics of immigrants (their ethnic/racial characteristics, their human and social capital), the economic, social and political characteristics of sending and receiving societies, and the relationships between them. Recent theories and research has focused increasingly on the latter characteristic, in particular the creation and maintenance of transnational ties and transnational communities. While the transnational perspective has provided new insights into the changing contemporary reality, this perspective has tended to marginalise or simply exclude many of the variables deemed important in previous society-focused perspectives.

The question of whether transnationalism is a new phenomenon or just a newly discovered one, has been the subject of some debate. The purpose of this paper is not to contribute to this debate. I tend to agree that the transnational dimensions of immigration while not new, have become increasingly more salient for understanding immigration and its consequences in the 21st century. Yet, this need not imply that other variables have become marginal or irrelevant for our understanding of immigrant incorporation.

Indeed, it is not unusual that variables deemed important in previous perspectives are discarded or marginalised when a new perspective becomes more and more accepted, only to reappear at a later point. A good example for this process is the paradigm shift in the 1970s from the assimilationist model to the differentialist model of immigrant incorporation. In this case, we can observe a more recent return to an, albeit, revised assimilationist model.

This chapter is loosely based on an assimilationist/integrationist perspective, where integration is seen as a process, not a final state, and where integration is a matter of degree. Borrowing from Theda Skocpol's ‘bringing the state back in’, the broader purpose of this paper is to bring the host society back into the equation. I propose to do this modestly by focusing on one host society institution, namely trade unions.

TRADE UNIONS AND IMMIGRANTS

Among host country economic, social, political and cultural institutions, trade unions merit particular interest. They have been the chief champions and representatives of working class interests in industrial societies and the majority of immigrants to such societies have been, broadly speaking, members of the working class.