Immigration And Ethnic Conflict

Immigration and Ethnic Conflict reviews the experience of post-industrial countries that have experienced large-scale movements of population since the Second World War, creating ethnically diverse multicultural societies in a context of rapid economic, technological and social change. The book uses a critical theoretical approach which emphasises the dynamic nature of the structural changes which have taken place and the interdependence of economic, political, social and psychological factors. The results of extensive comparative studies of Britain, Canada and Australia are reviewed, with special attention to questions of immigrant adaptation, refugees, racism, unemployment, ethnic nationalism and social conflict. Traditional views of immigrant assimilation are rejected in favour of one which treats immigrants and ethnic minorities as the catalysts of change in a global polity, economy and society, simultaneously united and divided by satellite communications, nuclear terror and the world population explosion.

Contemporary debates give the impression that the presence of immigrants necessarily spells strife. Yet as Immigration and Conflict in Europe shows, the incidence of conflict involving immigrants and their descendants has varied widely across groups, cities, and countries. The book presents a theory to account for this uneven pattern, explaining why we observe clashes between immigrants and natives in some locations but not in others and why some cities experience confrontations between immigrants and state actors while others are spared from such conflicts. The book addresses how economic conditions interact with electoral incentives to account for immigrant-native and immigrant-state conflict across groups and cities within Great Britain as well as across Germany and France. It highlights the importance of national immigration regimes and local political economies in shaping immigrants' economic position and political behavior, demonstrating how economic and electoral forces, rather than cultural differences, determine patterns of conflict and calm.

Immigration, Racial and Ethnic Studies in 150 Years of Canada: Retrospects and Prospects provides a wide-ranging overview of immigration and contested racial and ethnic relations in Canada since confederation with a core theme being one of enduring racial and ethnic conflict.

Myron Weiner's study of the relationship between internal migration and ethnic conflict in India is exceptional for two reasons: it focuses on intercultural and interstate migration throughout the nation, rather than on merely local or provincial phenomena, and it examines both the social and the political consequences of India's interethnic migrations. Professor Weiner examines selected regions of India in which migrants dominate the modern sector of the economy. He describes the forces that lead individual Indian citizens to move from one linguistic-cultural region to another in search of better opportunities, and he attempts to explain their emergence at the top of the occupational hierarchy. In addition, the author provides an account of the ways in which the indigenous ethnic groups ("sons of the soil") attempt to use political power to overcome their fears of economic defeat and cultural subordination by the more enterprising, more highly skilled, better educated migrants. In addressing the fundamental clash between the migrants' claims to equal access to their country and the claims of the local groups to equal treatment and protection by the state, Professor Weiner considers some of the ways in which government policy makers might achieve greater equality among ethnic groups without simultaneously restricting the spatial and social mobility of some of its own people. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.