Ethnicity And Integration

The theme of this volume is ethnicity and the implications for integration of our increasingly ethnically diversified population. New research findings from a range of census, survey and administrative data sources are presented, and case studies are included.

Seminar papers.

What does it mean to “fit in?” In this volume of essays, editors Günther Schlee and Alexander Horstmann demystify the discourse on identity, challenging common assumptions about the role of sameness and difference as the basis for inclusion and exclusion. Armed with intimate knowledge of local systems, social relationships, and the negotiation of people’s positions in the everyday politics, these essays tease out the ways in which ethnicity, religion and nationalism are used for social integration.

The United States is rapidly changing from a country monochromatically divided between black and white into a multiethnic society. The Paradoxes of Integration helps us to understand America’s racial future by revealing the complex relationships among integration, racial attitudes, and neighborhood life. J. Eric Oliver demonstrates that the effects of integration differ tremendously, depending on which geographical level one is examining. Living among people of other races in a larger metropolitan area corresponds with greater racial intolerance, particularly for America’s white majority. But when whites, blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans actually live in integrated neighborhoods, they feel less racial resentment. Paradoxically, this racial tolerance is usually also accompanied by feeling less connected to their community; it is no longer "theirs." Basing its findings on our most advanced means of gauging the impact of social environments on racial attitudes, The Paradoxes of Integration sensitively explores the benefits and at times, heavily borne, costs of integration.

This book examines the role of the military in encouraging or impeding social integration and the ways in which the military enter into ethnic cleavages and conflicts. It offers some conclusions concerning these and related topics based on studies of a variety of countries including the United States, Israel, Greece, Turkey, Ethiopia, Nigeria, India and the People's Republic of China. Each chapter utilizes a common framework of questions as a basis for analysis, facilitating cross-national comparisons. This book should prove of interest to students and observers of militaries around the world as well as anyone interested in questions of ethnicity and integration.