What Governs the Policies of Immigration?

Abstract

Negotiating Identities: States and Immigrants in France and Germany [La France, l'Allemagne & leurs immigres: negocier l'identite]. By Riva Kastoryano. Translated by Barbara Harshav. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. 248 pp., $55.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-691-01014-5), $24.95 paper (ISBN: 0-691-01015-3). Paired comparisons of France and Germany are a staple of comparative politics, particularly for the study of nationalism, citizenship, and the integration of migrants. There are good reasons for this. The two cases not only display quite similar immigration patterns and attendant social tensions, they also share the regulatory framework of the European Union, which allows for the effective control of a host of relevant variables. Yet, the two cases also contrast sharply with regard to concepts of nationality and citizenship—or so we are told (see Kohn 1944 for the classic formulation of this distinction). Indeed, the contrast between “ethnic” and “civic” nations has become one of the fundamental distinctions in nationalism research. In general, whether a nation becomes defined in civic or ethnic terms is thought to depend on different trajectories of nation-state formation. Specifically, when fully formed territorial states precede nationalism, as in France, civic nationalism is assumed to result. When nationalism precedes state formation, as in Germany and Italy, ethnic nationalism is assumed to result. (For variations on this causal argument, see Brubaker 1992; Greenfeld 1992; Habermas 1995; and Smith 1998.) The combination of similarity and difference between France and Germany provides almost ideal conditions for evaluating the degree to which the concepts of nationality and citizenship determine the ways in which nation-states approach the social, political, and cultural integration of immigrant populations. In Negotiating Identities , Riva Kastoryano conducts precisely such an evaluation, adding the United States as a background template to throw the two main cases into sharper relief. Using the US case in this way is not unprecedented, given the depth to which US discourses on assimilation, integration, and, most recently, multiculturalism have penetrated European thought on these issues—either as a model to be emulated or a mistake to be …