Negotiating National Identities

A comparative study of immigration and ethnicity with an emphasis on the Chinese, Japanese, and Arabs who have contributed to Brazil's diverse mix.

Negotiating National Identities presents an empirically detailed and theoretically wide-ranging analysis of the complex political and cultural struggles taking place in contemporary Europe. Taking contemporary Austria and her controversial identity politics as its central case study in a discussion of developments across a variety of national and pan-European contexts, this book demonstrates that neo-nationalism has been one among several competing reactions to the processes and challenges of globalization, whilst inclusive notions of identity and belonging are shown to have emerged from the realms of civil society and cultural production. Shifting the study of national identities from the party-political to the social, cultural and economic realms, this book raises important questions of human rights, social exclusion and ideological struggle in a globalizing era, drawing attention to the contested nature of European politics and civil societies, in which existing configurations of power and exclusion are both reproduced and challenged. As such, it will be of interest to anyone working in the fields of race and ethnicity, national identity and media and cultural studies.

Immigration is even more hotly debated in Europe than in the United States. In this pivotal work of action and discourse analysis, Riva Kastoryano draws on extensive fieldwork--including interviews with politicians, immigrant leaders, and militants--to analyze interactions between states and immigrants in France and Germany. Making frequent comparisons to the United States, she delineates the role of states in constructing group identities and measures the impact of immigrant organization and mobilization on national identity. Kastoryano argues that states contribute directly and indirectly to the elaboration of immigrants' identity, in part by articulating the grounds on which their groups are granted legitimacy. Conversely, immigrant organizations demanding recognition often redefine national identity by reinforcing or modifying traditional sentiments. They use culture--national references in Germany and religion in France--to negotiate new political identities in ways that alter state composition and lead the state to negotiate its identity as well. Despite their different histories, Kastoryano finds that Germany, France, and the United States are converging in their policies toward immigration control and integration. All three have adopted similar tactics and made similar institutional adjustments in their efforts to reconcile differences while tending national integrity. The author builds her observations into a model of ''negotiations of identities'' useful to a broad cross-section of social scientists and policy specialists. She extends her analysis to consider how the European Union and transnational networks affect identities still negotiated at the national level. The result is a forward-thinking book that illuminates immigration from a new angle.

In this original study, Cynthia Cockburn takes us into three war situations to reveal how certain women have quietly chosen to cross the space between their differences with words instead of bullets.

Drawing from the study of the political development of the four states of the Maghreb, this book finds that the crisis of identity that has occurred in some of them is due to the lack of negotiation on the national identity, among elites at the time of independence.

This edited book explores the problems and challenges of negotiating the representation of ethnic minorities within history education. It investigates how states balance the (non-)acknowledgement of the reality of cultural or religious diversity, and the promotion of a point of convergence in history education to foster national identity. Shifting our attention away from the intractable challenges posed by post-conflict countries for reconciliation, the contributors draw attention to the need to explore ways to prevent or pre-empt conflicts and exclusion through history education, which could contribute to developing a more sustainable culture of peace. Drawing on a wide range of contexts and sources, this book asks how history education could contribute to forming critical, historically informed, and committed young citizens. The book will be of interest to students and academics working on themes such as nationalism, citizenship, ethnicity, history education, multicultural education, peace studies and area studies, as well as practitioners in the fields of history, social studies, civic or citizenship.