Hosts Immigrants And Minorities

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

By gathering analyses undertaken by experts on immigration politics in many of the key countries of immigration, an original and insightful approach to the analysis of immigration-related politics is presented in this work.

The resulting cultural differences can often create problems and conflict. In Europe alone, the sheer scale of migration is forcing the issue to the top of the political agenda. The Intercultural City brings together scholars from a range of disciplines - including urban studies, geography, planning, sociology, political science and spatial design - to explore both the failings of existing policies to manage diversity and to examine how one might begin to create ways to remove obstacles and enhance the integration of migrants and minorities. Combining fresh theoretical insights with studies from cities in Europe, North America, Asia and Africa, The Intercultural City offers a timely and important contribution to the challenge of managing diversity in the city of the twenty-first century.

During the last two decades, the debate on multiculturalism has been one-dimensional. It has deployed arguments related to cultural demands linked either to feminism, immigration, or national minorities. Little attention has been given to the relations between these dimensions, and how they affect each other. The purpose of this book is to set a research agenda around the interaction between cultural demands of immigrants and minority nations. The primary aim is to establish basic normative arguments while advancing an institutional analysis in three contexts: Quebec, Flanders and Catalonia. Each part contains two chapters that address the topic in terms of how immigration is seen from a self-government perspective, or how self-government is interpreted from an immigration perspective. The different chapters raise questions related to how this interaction challenges the idea of a culturally homogeneous nation-state, and also pushes us to other conceptualisations of «political community» and de-nationalised forms of citizenship. Current debates on diversity have failed to address these issues in societies where a dual belonging exists.

This article reviews the literature on ethnic/immigrant associations and minorities’ or immigrants’ voluntary participation in major developed countries that have experienced a significant increase of immigrants, particularly after the 1990s. In terms of ethnic/immigrant associations, the author reviews the historical background of research in this area, the size and scope, the formation and development, the memberships, and the financial well-being of these associations, the roles they play in helping immigrants acculturate into the host countries, and the classification of ethnic/immigrant associations. The author also reviews the literature that examines the factors influencing minorities’ and immigrants’ voluntary participation, their formal and informal volunteering, as well we immigrant youth’s voluntary participation.