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Immigration and Integration Studies in Western Europe and the United States: The Road Less Traveled and a Path Ahead
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 June 2011
Abstract
This article examines the significant contributions of recent research on immigration and integration in Europe and North America and highlights the potential of such research to influence the social sciences. The first part of the article advances a framework for analyzing four types of scholarship and then applies that framework to the study of immigration and integration. Type 1 scholarship develops theoretical or conceptual insights for scholars within a subfield, type 2 tests or refines theories that are specific to a particular dimension of the subfield, type 3 imports broader comparative or social scientific concepts to reshape the study of a topic within a subfield, and type 4 uses evidence from a subfield to develop theoretical tools that can be applied more broadly in the social sciences. The second part of the article reviews four books that highlight the empirical frontiers of immigration and integration research. Each book tends to epitomize one of the four types of scholarship, but together they demonstrate the possibility of making contributions on multiple registers. The article concludes by suggesting promising frontiers within the immigration and integration subfield and by defining the concept of a comparative politics of identity and sketching out its terrain. Since immigration and integration researchers are centrally interested in the role of identity in politics, they have the potential to be pivotal in advancing this new arena of inquiry.
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References
1 As such, the study of immigration and integration is what Mattei Dogan has termed a “hybrid specialty,” which includes enclaves of political scientists and their counterparts in many other social science disciplines. Dogan, Mattei, “Political Science and the Other Disciplines,” in Goodin, Robert E. and Klingemann, Hans-Dieter, eds., A New Handbook of Political Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)Google Scholar. A comprehensive attempt to review literature from multiple related fields has been undertaken in Brettell, Caroline B. and Hollifield, James F., eds., Migration Theory: Talking Across Disciplines (New York: Routledge, 2000)Google Scholar. This essay therefore focuses on recent contributions from political science and sociology where research questions have overlapped to a great degree.
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36 This is a term that both Lieberman and I use. It is not without drawbacks, however, especially in European countries that deny the existence of “race.”
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51 This is a point frequently made by James Hollifield.
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57 I draw a distinction here between the empirically grounded study of the comparative politics of identity and the normative study of the politics of identity, as exemplified in works such as Young, Ins Marion, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Taylor, Charles, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Gutmann, Amy, ed., Multiculturalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Calhoun, Craig, ed., Social Theory and the Politics of Identity (Oxford: Black-well, 1994)Google Scholar; and Kymlicka, Will, Multicultural Citizenship:A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar. While it will be fruitful for empirical social scientists to ground their studies in normative work, the comparative politics of identity does not focus centrally on normative debates.
58 Studies of class consciousness and party identification—less in vogue now than in earlier eras—may also provide useful insights into these issues.
59 Sides and Citrin have also presented evidence suggesting the relatively greater importance of cultural identities over material interests in shaping European public opinion about immigration. Sides, John and Citrin, Jack, “European Opinion about Immigration: The Role of Identities, Interests and Information,” British Journal of Political Science 37, no. 3 (2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
60 This draws on and adapts the framework I developed to analyze the origins of ideas in Bleich (fn. 29), 187–94.
61 In the realm of EU studies, Hooghe and Marks have connected identity to integration outcomes by arguing that shifting decision-making structures since the 1990s have given more power to the general public relative to elites, thereby creating an era of “constraining dissensus” that limits integration options. They term their perspective “postfunctionalist” because its emphasis on identity goes beyond the primary focus on economic interest underpinning both neofunctionalism and intergovernmen-talism. Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks, “A Postfunctional Theory of European Integration: From Permissive Consensus to Constraining Dissensus,” British Journal of Political Science (forthcoming).
62 Collier, Paul, “Ethnic Diversity: An Economic Analysis,” Economic Policy 32 (April 2001)Google Scholar; and Fearon, James D. and Laitin, David, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
63 This last question lies at the heart of Anthony Messina's latest book (fn. 12).
64 See Brubaker, Rogers and Laitin, David, “Ethnic and Nationalist Violence,” Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Horowitz, Donald, The Deadly Ethnic Riot (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 34–42Google Scholar.
65 For a “brush clearing” effort designed to facilitate movement toward general propositions about identity, see Abdelal et al. (fn. 4).
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