Migration And Nationalism

This cutting-edge book presents a unique focus on nationalism and migration, exploring the relationship between these two concepts in countries throughout the world. Combining theoretical and empirical discussions from a range of disciplinary perspectives, the book interrogates the consequences of nationalism for migration in the 21st century.

This book explores attitudes towards migrants and refugees from North Africa and the Middle East during the so-called migration crisis in 2015-2016 in Poland. Beginning with an examination of Polish government policy and the discursive construction of refugees in the media, politics and popular culture, it argues that they identified refugees with Muslims, who were deemed to pose a threat to the Polish nation. This analysis establishes the Islamophobic public discourse which is shown to be variously reproduced, negotiated and contested in the nuanced study of Polish attitudes which follows. Drawing on original qualitative research and constructivist theory, the book examines differing stances towards refugees in the context of the lay understanding of the Polish nation and its boundaries. In doing so it demonstrates the influence of discourses that draw on an exclusionary concept of national identity and the potential for them to be mobilised against immigrants. This timely, theory-based case study will provide a valuable resource for students and scholars of Central and Eastern European politics, nationalism, race, migration and refugee studies.

Immigration is shaking up electoral politics around the world. Anti-immigration and ultranationalistic politics are rising in Europe, the United States, and countries across Asia and Africa. What is causing this nativist fervor? Are immigrants the cause or merely a common scapegoat? In Blaming Immigrants, economist Neeraj Kaushal investigates the rising anxiety in host countries and tests common complaints against immigration. Do immigrants replace host country workers or create new jobs? Are they a net gain or a net drag on host countries? She finds that immigration, on balance, is beneficial to host countries. It is neither the volume nor pace of immigration but the willingness of nations to accept, absorb, and manage new flows of immigration that is fueling this disaffection. Kaushal delves into the demographics of immigrants worldwide, the economic tides that carry them, and the policies that shape where they make their new homes. She demystifies common misconceptions about immigration, showing that today’s global mobility is historically typical; that most immigration occurs through legal frameworks; that the U.S. system, far from being broken, works quite well most of the time and its features are replicated by many countries; and that proposed anti-immigrant measures are likely to cause suffering without deterring potential migrants. Featuring accessible and in-depth analysis of the economics of immigration in worldwide perspective, Blaming Immigrants is an informative and timely introduction to a critical global issue.

The association of exclusionist and nationalist relations, termed ethnocentrism, has been previously explored within single-country contexts. Studies have shown that dispositional factors, such as social identity and personality traits, affect ethnocentric reactions and that attitudes differ between social categories. However, broader national and international explanations have been neglected in the literature. This book fills this major gap by providing a unique account of the relationship between nationalist attitudes and the exclusion of migrants across a range of European countries, the US, Canada and Australia. Drawing on a variety of comparative surveys, the authors assess whether ethnic exclusionist reactions and nationalist attitudes are indeed systematically related across countries, and whether variations in such attitudes reflect country-level as well as individual-level differences. The authors consider the multidimensionality of the concepts of nationalism and exclusionism as well as the empirical associations, and analyze the attitudes of both majority and minority groups within the countries studied.

In Border and Rule, one of North America’s foremost thinkers and immigrant rights organizers delivers an unflinching examination of migration as a pillar of global governance and gendered racial class formation. Harsha Walia disrupts easy explanations for the migrant and refugee crises, instead showing them to be the inevitable outcomes of the conquest, capitalist globalization, and climate change that are generating mass dispossession worldwide. Border and Rule explores a number of seemingly disparate global geographies with shared logics of border rule that displace, immobilize, criminalize, exploit, and expel migrants and refugees. With her keen ability to connect the dots, Walia demonstrates how borders divide the international working class and consolidate imperial, capitalist, and racist nationalist rule. Ambitious in scope and internationalist in orientation, Border and Rule breaks through American exceptionalist and liberal responses to the migration crisis and cogently maps the lucrative connections between state violence, capitalism, and right-wing nationalism around the world. Illuminating the brutal mechanics of state formation, Walia exposes US border policy as a product of violent territorial expansion, settler-colonialism, enslavement, and gendered racial ideology. Further, she compellingly details how Fortress Europe and White Australia are using immigration diplomacy and externalized borders to maintain a colonial present, how temporary labor migration in the Arab Gulf states and Canada is central to citizenship regulation and labor control, and how racial violence is escalating deadly nationalism in the US, Israel, India, the Philippines, Brazil, and across Europe, while producing a disaster of statelessness for millions elsewhere. A must-read in these difficult times of war, inequality, climate change, and global health crisis, Border and Rule is a clarion call for revolution. The book includes a foreword from renowned scholar Robin D. G. Kelley and an afterword from acclaimed activist-academic Nick Estes.

This anthology contributes to the still emerging theoretical debates in political theory and philosophy about multiculturalism, nationalism and immigration. It focuses on multiculturalism and nationalism as factual consequences of, and normative responses to, immigration and on the normative significance (or lack thereof) of the notion of culture.

A new introduction to contemporary nationhood that sets it apart from national identity, nationalism and diversity Drawing on extensive research in transnationalism and ethnic conflict around the world, Raymond Taras introduces the concepts of nation and nationalism as they now stand in light of major demographic changes brought about by global migration. The result is a framework for understanding the emergence of postmodern nationhood in the era of globalisation and beyond. Based on rich case studies of immigration worldwide, Taras shows that nationhood occurs when the receiving state negotiates ethnic differences to form a natural bond with immigrants, rather than insisting on blind loyalty to the majority culture. The goal is a broad, value-added society of diverse peoples and successful prevention of criminality, ghettoisation, extremism and even radicalisation through reasonable immigrant integration.

Clarifies, assesses and proposes answers for all of the politically toxic issues associated with large-scale migration of persons from the Global South to the Western liberal democracies.