Immigrant-receiving Societies Research Articles

Honour, acculturation and well-being: Evidence from the UK and Canada.

Adopting a social psychological approach, across three studies (N = 927) in two western immigrant-receiving societies (UK and Canada), we examined the role of honour in acculturation variables (i.e., immigrants' heritage and mainstream cultural orientation and well-being), controlling for some of the commonly studied predictors of immigrant adaptation. We assessed honour as concern (Studies 1 and 2) and as a desired attribute for men and women (Study 3) and studied well-being in terms of acculturative stress (Study 1) and subjective evaluation of one's life (Studies 1 and 3). We examined our questions among groups of immigrants originating from honour (Studies 1 and 2) and dignity cultural groups (Study 1) and from first- and second-generation immigrants (Study 3). Overall, despite some significant associations at the bivariate level between honour and acculturation outcomes, findings provided mixed support for the claim that honour (measured as concerns and cultural codes) plays a significant role in immigrant acculturation above and beyond commonly studied predictors of immigrant adaptation.

Critical citizenship and civic participation in three generations of Russian Israelis

ABSTRACT Civic behaviour of immigrants reflects both their pre-migration political socialization and the exposure to new political realities in the host country. Jewish immigrants to Israel receive citizenship soon upon arrival and are endowed with all political and economic rights in their adopted country. This essay highlights the long-term dynamics of civic attitudes and participation in three consecutive generations of ex-Soviet Israelis: from adult migrants (Gen 1.0) to their USSR/FSU-born children socialized mostly in Israel (Gen 1.5), and the Israeli-born Gen 2.0. Drawing on the combined analysis of national surveys and qualitative studies conducted over the last 20+ years, we examine shifts in attitudes and practices of citizenship reflected in voting patterns, volunteering, feelings of belonging, and ethnic mobilization for common community causes. We discuss the shifting civic agendas of Russian-speaking Israelis: from mainly economically driven during the 1990s to mainly symbolic and ethno-national since the early 2000s. Our analysis contributes to theoretical discussions on critical citizenship and sub-politics in immigrant-receiving societies.

Immigration Threat, Partisanship, and Democratic Citizenship: Evidence from the US, UK, and Germany

Politicians and media frequently invoke immigration threats to shape public opinion. But how do outgroup threat frames affect norms of citizenship, including behavior, liberal value commitments, and national belonging? This paper presents evidence from an embedded vignette survey experiment in three immigrant-receiving societies: United States, United Kingdom, and Germany. I find immigration threats are filtered through partisanship in polarized settings, and asymmetrically affect norms of “good citizenship” among individuals on the partisan left. However, we see variation within this group: Democrats (US) de-value norms of behavior, like voting and being informed, while Labor supports (UK) repudiate liberal norms like tolerance and rally around national belonging. By contrast, in Germany, we observe more consensus in citizenship norm responses. The strong effect of immigration threat framing on the partisan left brings our attention to the strategic use of immigration discourse to move traditionally sympathetic citizens away from democratic civic ideals.

Personal and Contextual Foundations of Welfare Chauvinism in Western Europe

Europe has faced an increase in immigration during the past decades. This development has triggered public and political debate about the integration of immigrants, which includes immigrants’ access to social security systems. At the same time, a classical anti-immigrant narrative is that immigrants are “free-riders” who receive social benefits without having contributed adequately. Welfare chauvinism in the context of immigration entertains this belief, and refers to the individual perception that welfare state access should remain the preserve of native-born citizens. As such, welfare chauvinism is—in its core—about how group-based social inequality is perceived and justified. This chapter reviews personal and contextual foundations of welfare chauvinistic beliefs in immigrant-receiving societies in Western Europe. First, we focus on matters related to the conceptualization and measurement of welfare chauvinistic attitudes. Second, we review theoretical mechanisms and empirical evidence on individual-level factors that underlie welfare chauvinistic beliefs. This includes individuals’ social status, perceived deprivation, as well as value-related orientations. Third, we examine contextual determinants referred to in the literature. In addition to the presence of immigrants and asylum-seekers, which has been heightened as an influential factor in intergroup conflict approaches, we examine the role of economic, political and institutional factors. Fourth, we conduct an empirical analysis using two waves of the European Social Survey merged with contextual country-level information on economic, immigration-related and policy-related factors. The article concludes by referring to recent conceptual developments and methodological advances (e.g., longitudinal research and experiments), as well as open questions that should be addressed in future research on welfare chauvinism in immigrant-receiving societies.

Punishing Survivors and Criminalizing Survivorship: A Feminist Intersectional Approach to Migrant Justice in the Crimmigration System

Scholars have identified crimmigration – or the criminalization of “irregular” migration in law – as a key issue affecting migrant access to justice in contemporary immigrant-receiving societies. Yet the gendered and racialized implications of crimmigration for diverse migrant populations remains underdeveloped in this literature. This study advances a feminist intersectional approach to crimmigration and migrant justice in Canada. I add to recent research showing how punitive immigration controls disproportionately affect racialized men from the global south, constituting what Golash-Boza and Hondagneu-Sotelo have called a “gendered racial removal program” (2013). In my study, I shift analytical attention to consider the effects of the contemporary crimmigration system on migrant women survivors of gender-based violence. While such cases constitute a small sub-group within a larger population of migrants in detention, nevertheless scholarly attention to this group can expose the multiple axes along which state power is enacted – an analytical strategy that foundational scholars like Crenshaw (1991) used to theorize “structural intersectionality” in the US. In focusing on crimmigration in the Canadian context, I draw attention to the growing nexus between migration, security, and gender-based violence that has emerged alongside other processes of crimmigration. I then provide a case analysis of the 2013 death while in custody of Lucía Dominga Vega Jiménez, an “undocumented” migrant woman from Mexico. My analysis illustrates how migrant women’s strategies to survive gender-based violence are re-cast as grounds for their detention and removal, constituting what I argue is a criminalization of survivorship.The research overall demonstrates the centrality of gendered and racialized structural violence in crimmigration processes by challenging more universalist approaches to migrant justice.

Identity threat and identity multiplicity among minority youth: Longitudinal relations of perceived discrimination with ethnic, religious, and national identification in Germany.

The notion that ethnic and religious minority identities are inherently incompatible with the national identities of European immigrant‐receiving societies is popular in public discourse. Although findings documenting such negative associations seemingly support this claim, other research shows that the intergroup context matters for the extent to which minorities’ ethnic and religious identities are conflicting (i.e., negatively associated) or compatible (i.e., positively associated) with European national identities. However, previous research relied on cross‐sectional data and therefore could not capture the dynamic process through which minority youth come to develop compatible or conflicting identification patterns. We extend this work with a longitudinal approach by capturing developmental trajectories of identity multiplicity among ethnic minority early adolescents in Germany over three waves with 9‐month intervals. At each measurement point, participants reported their ethnic, religious, and (German) national identification and their experiences with discriminatory treatment. We estimate a cross‐lagged panel model to study how identification relates to perceived discrimination and how this affects (changes in) associations between ethnic, religious, and national identification of minority youth. Our results show prevalent positive associations between ethnic, religious, and national identification across minority youth in the sample. Those who report more frequent discrimination, however, lower their (German) national identification over time, which in turn predicts increased minority identification. We conclude that identity threat indeed triggers a development of more conflicting identification patterns.

The failures of ‘immigrant integration’: The gendered racialized production of non-belonging

The concept of ‘immigrant integration’ performs two kinds of discursive work: (1) it turns the gaze of social scientists, politicians, and the engaged public away from the actual ways in which those labelled ‘immigrants’ are full members of immigrant-receiving societies, both in terms of participation and of belonging, and (2) the focus on immigrant integration leads to a failure to attend to various political, social and economic troubles of ‘host’ societies, both those that are and those that are not related to the increased presence of those labelled ‘immigrant’. Historicizing the concept of immigrant integration in post-colonial and neoliberal social relations and drawing from over 10 years of research on headscarf debates, Sharia law, the social and economic participation of ethnic-minority women, and so-called ‘honour-based’ violence, I show how the notion of immigrant integration produces gendered and racialized non-belonging. In conclusion, I argue for a return to a focus on inequalities writ large to analyse the ways in which the problems that become attached to ‘immigrants’ cross-cut multiple groups in any given society.

The Contributions and Constraints of Contemporary Immigration and Citizenship: Commemorating Canada’s 150 Years

The Contributions and Constraints of Contemporary Immigration and Citizenship: Commemorating Canada’s 150 Years Evangelia Tastsoglou, Special Guest Editor (bio) Although neither selected as representative of the field of Canadian ethnic studies, nor comprehensive, the articles in this special issue of Canadian Ethnic Studies/Études ethniques au Canada, commemorating Canada’s 150 years, do provide a good sense of the contemporary state of ethnic studies in Canada. The articles consist of diverse perspectives, methodologies, substantive topics and disciplines, yet they also share common features and point to common directions. I will start from their diversity, representative of and continuing the historical diversity in the field of ethnic studies, then move on to their similarities and common directions which reflect broader scholarly, theoretical and policy preoccupations of the present time, and finally end with what I consider promising, more recent—though by no means new—perspectives and directions pushing the traditional boundaries of the field of ethnic studies. I will conclude this brief introduction with an overview of the articles in the volume. First, in terms of the articles’ diversity as a group, they are interdisciplinary, spanning the fields of sociology, literary studies, history, and policy studies. They make use of a great range of social science and humanities methodologies, from discourse analysis to multilevel regression and from the analysis of legal texts to qualitative interviews. They also derive from a healthy range of perspectives and dimensions within their respective disciplines, ranging from feminist perspectives to historical and legal dimensions; from positivist approaches to interpretative, constructivist and Critical Theory ones. In terms of the articles’ similarities which also shaped the title of this special issue, they consist first in a common emphasis on immigration and broadly defined citizenship issues and processes, as opposed to insular ethnic group issues, essentialized ethnic cultures and static ethno-cultural identities. Moreover, the articles are [End Page 1] about either contributions or constraints of immigration and citizenship, that is, they emphasize the dynamic interaction of diverse groups within Canadian society and with the Canadian state. An important similarity among these articles, in the midst of their said diversity, is the authors’ intent for intervention in order to make a difference, manifested in various degrees of explicitness. This intent to make a difference is expressed as recognition of a problem of exclusion, discrimination, omission, or gap, so that more inclusive and equitable policies and practices, at the appropriate level, can be put in place. The studies of this issue move beyond description to policy relevance, in the direction of expanding social justice in Canadian society for the 21st century. In so doing, while always mindful of the lessons from the dark periods in Canada’s 150 years, the present volume truly commemorates the country’s historical promise of freedom and justice to its immigrants and all Canadians. More specifically, in this volume the articles by Fernando and Rinaldi, and Kaya are about ongoing—albeit in new forms—processes of exclusion, i.e., obstacles to citizenship for immigrants. The article by Tastsoglou and Dobrowolsky is about obstacles but also possibilities for enhancing a sense of belonging for immigrants; Branker’s study is about obstacles but also venues or possibilities for finding work, that is, economic integration or socio-economic citizenship for English-speaking Caribbean immigrants in Toronto. Yixi Lu and Li Zong’s article is about historical processes of discrimination against the Chinese out of major metropolitan centres, while Chira’s work is about obstacles to, and possibilities for international students, i.e., often prospective immigrants, also outside of major, immigrant-attracting Canadian metropolises. Finally, van Dijk’s article is about contributions of Dutch-Canadian writers to Canadian multi-cultural and polyphonic identity. With respect to the more recent dimensions and directions, the latter consist in modernizing and expanding the field of ethnic studies outside of the historical settler societies, societies of immigration, immigrant-receiving societies, or nation-states in which ethnicities are created and ethnic identities are molded, to include the transnational level, in recognition of (i) the contemporary modality of migration as a dynamic transnational process and (ii) the role that the transnational field plays in identity negotiation, sense of belonging and citizenship. As a consequence...

‘A fair go for all?’ Australia’s language-in-migration policy

ABSTRACTAs the power of tests lies in their uses, language tests that are used to assess immigration eligibility exercise enormous power. Critical Language Testing calls for exposing the power of tests by examining the intentions of introducing tests and their effects on individuals and society, especially from the perspective of test-takers. This case study investigates the rationale for and impact of a particular language-in-migration policy in Australia, drawing on the experiences and perceptions of two skilled migration applicants. One of them was successful and the other unsuccessful, essentially on the ground of their language test results. Insights from the study challenge prevalent discourses about language tests and social integration, employability, economic efficiency, and national security. The article makes some policy recommendations for making the use of language tests more beneficial for immigrants and immigrant-receiving societies in a globalised world that has witnessed unprecedented flows of immigrants.

'Obstacles and Challenges to Migrant Organising in Global Economic Immigration Debates'

The regulation and control of international migration is a central issue for activists, including for organisers of immigrant background. Operating as immigration policy does from a basis of exclusion and differential rights it reinforces existing global class, ethnicity and gender-based stratification. Within this context, how do minorities within immigrant-receiving societies bring attention to race and gender issues within their organizing around immigration policy? How, if at all are the positions of immigrant activists (referred to in this paper as "diversity-seeking groups") responsible for shaping economic immigration policy debates? This paper argues that organizational and institutional factors within immigration countries are important in shaping the ultimate activism levels of such groups. Drawing upon a study of 25-years of organizing by immigrant activists and coalitional partners around the area of economic immigration policy in Australia and Canada, I demonstrate the relevance of three key factors: First, the extent of coalition building by diversity-seeking groups with broader social justice partners is central in shaping the successful engagement of those groups. Second, within hierarchical and umbrella arrangements, immigrant activists, particularly women, have been less efficient in having their voices heard over a longer period of time. Thirdly, in systems where there is a direct line of accountability between the immigration bureaucracy and funding of such groups, there is also a gradual reduction in the level of activism over time. Despite many shared challenges faced by activists in both countries, in Canada, a combination of coalition-building between immigrants and other social partners, a flatter organizing structure within the ethnic movement and a less direct line of funding from the immigration bureaucracy than in Australia buttressed enduring activist engagement over time.

The ‘headrag tax’: impossible laws and their symbolic and material consequences

Geert Wilders, the Dutch anti-immigrant politician, whose party received 15.5% of the vote in the elections of June 2010, made his name in part by focusing on the headscarf as an emblem of the Islamic threat in Europe. On 16 September 2009, he (in)famously proposed to levy a ‘headrag tax’ on women wearing a headscarf – a levy for their pollution of the public space. Connecting Islam to gender inequality, he further suggested that the €1000 tax would be donated to women's shelters. The ‘headrag tax’ is an example of what I call an impossible law – a law that would never pass parliament or stand up in a constitutional court. Yet, Wilders' reliance on such proposals shows how these impossible laws can have the power to shape public debate regarding the place of Islam in contemporary immigrant-receiving societies such as the Netherlands. I analyze the parliamentary debate during which Wilders made this proposal and the media responses to it, situating the discussion in larger debates regarding head covering and immigrant integration that have unfolded in the Netherlands over the past decade. I analyze the legal, symbolic and material discourses structuring these debates to show how they delineate the meaning of Dutch national belonging.

Immigrant Integration policies and perceived Group Threat: A Multilevel Study of 27 Western and Eastern European Countries

Although immigrant integration policies have long been hypothesized to be associated with majority members’ anti-immigrant sentiments, systematic empirical research exploring this relationship is largely absent. To address this gap in the literature, the present research takes a cross-national perspective. Drawing from theory and research on group conflict and intergroup norms, we conduct two studies to examine whether preexisting integration policies that are more permissive promote or impede majority group members’ subsequent negative attitudes regarding immigrants. For several Western and Eastern European countries, we link country-level information on immigrant integration policies from 2006 with individual-level survey data from the Eurobarometer 71.3 collected in 2009 (Study 1) and from the fourth wave of the European Value Study collected between 2008 and 2009 (Study 2). For both studies, the results from multilevel regression models demonstrate that immigrant integration policies that are more permissive are associated with decreased perceptions of group threat from immigrants. These findings suggest that immigrant integration policies are of key importance in improving majority members’ attitudes regarding immigrants, which is widely considered desirable in modern immigrant-receiving societies.

Managing sameness and difference: the politics of belonging among Irish-born return migrants from the United States

Contemporary immigration in Western countries spurs intense debates about immigrant–host society relationships, asking questions about who and what it means to belong in such immigrant-receiving societies. In the Republic of Ireland, the debate about belonging in the wake of large-scale in-migration during the ‘Celtic Tiger’ years placed the onus on newcomers to shed their ‘difference’ and conform to Irish society's norms of ‘sameness’ if they were to belong. Return migrants, however, complicate the terms of social belonging, positioned as they are somewhere between ‘newcomers’ and ‘natives’. Drawing on interviews with return migrants, I analyse returnees’ conceptualizations of belonging upon homecoming. I show how return migrants’ social positioning in the post-return context is complex, as they move between ascriptions of sameness and difference, at once blending with and challenging cultural norms set by the dominant group. This is important, suggesting that belonging in immigrant-receiving societies is not overdetermined by host society demands on immigrants to shed their difference and conform to dominant norms of sameness. Rather, even as they position themselves as the ‘same’ as the dominant group, my respondents also resist these norms, weaving moments of both sameness and difference in their everyday negotiations of belonging vis-à-vis the mainstream population.

Ensuring Proper Competency in the Host Language: Contrasting Formula and the Place of Heritage Languages

Background Context In most immigrant-receiving societies, an important question, both for researchers and policy makers, has been the weighing of the relative efficiency of different formulas in the learning of the host language by immigrant students, especially the potential impact of specific services on social integration and the role of heritage languages. Purpose Objectives Research Question Focus of Study This article tries to go beyond the most conspicuous elements of these controversies to look at the variety of practices that different societies have adopted. Given the questions just raised, a specific focus is given to the degree to which such endeavors follow an immersion or specific services formula on the one hand, and to the role that they grant to heritage languages on the other. Five major immigrant-receiving societies have been chosen, and their choices regarding either issue are contrasted: Britain, two Canadian provinces (Quebec and Ontario), the United States, and Belgium (Flemish Brussels). Research Design To ascertain the extent to which transferable conclusions about best models and practices can be drawn from international comparison, evaluation research on the strengths and weaknesses of each of these formulas is reviewed, with a focus on their short and middle-term linguistic outcomes given the paucity of data on their long-term educational and social outcomes. In conclusion, we identify the minimum threshold of consensus regarding the policy and program conditions that foster a proper mastery of the host language by immigrant students without jeopardizing other dimensions of their school or social integration. Conclusion/Recommendations Three recommendations for policy makers can be drawn. First, flexibility and diversity of formula, both regarding the specific-services-versus-quick-integration dilemma and the place of heritage languages, seems a much better option than the one-size-fits-all model given the great variety found within the immigrant student population. Second, regardless of the model adopted, a fundamental winning condition lies in the recognition that the linguistic integration of newcomers is a collective responsibility and thus necessitates the establishment of close links between specific services, whenever they exist, and regular classrooms. Finally, research points to the necessity of focusing attention on schools and classrooms, especially pedagogical practices and teaching strategies, instead of being obsessed with models and formula.

Integration and the negotiation of ‘here’ and ‘there’: the case of British Arab activists

Immigrant-receiving societies are increasingly emphasizing the need for immigrants to integrate into mainstream life. In Britain, this trend has manifested itself in ‘social cohesion’ discourses and policies. Discussions about social cohesion have often focused on the residential patterns of immigrant and minority groups in British cities, with the assumption that residential patterns are an indication of social integration. Integration, however, is also a socio-political process by which dominant and subordinate groups negotiate the terms of social membership. We explore the ways in which British Arab activists conceptualize their membership in and responsibilities to their places of settlement; we also consider how they reconcile notions of integration with their connections to their places of origin. Our study participants speak of the need for immigrants to participate actively in their society of settlement, but they reject the idea that integration requires cultural conformity or exclusive loyalty to Britain. Their definition of integration as a dialogue between distinctive but equal groups sharing a given place provides a normative alternative to social cohesion discourses.

Risking publicity: masculinities and the racialization of public neighborhood space

In this paper I examine the relationship between masculinities, public space and race in the context of Duisburg-Marxloh, an immigrant neighborhood in Germany. I propose that young Turkish and Kurdish men enact masculinities in relation to young Turkish women, Turkish and Kurdish political groups, and German residents, which shapes public neighborhood space in ways that can be characterized as masculine and exclusionary. These masculinist public spaces are frequently racialized as ‘Turkish’ by local German residents, politicians, and the media. I argue that these portrayals of ‘Turkish’ space read gendered spatial practices as racial practices. I conclude that it is necessary to carefully unpack the ways that Kurdish and Turkish men's masculinities are articulated with race, public space, and non-migrants' masculinities in order to better understand the spatial politics of difference in immigrant-receiving societies.

“We Turks are No Germans”: Assimilation Discourses and the Dialectical Construction of Identities in Germany

In this paper I examine the ways in which politicians, media, and native residents formulate assimilation discourses—that is, expectations for immigrants to adapt to prevailing norms and cultures—and the effects that such discourses have on social relations in immigrant-receiving societies. Archival and ethnographic research in Germany illustrates that assimilation discourses are central in the dialectical process of identity construction in which native-born Germans and immigrants from Turkey construct their respective ‘other’, and thereby themselves. I pay particular attention to the effects of assimilation discourses in negotiations over belonging and culture at multiple scales in Germany—from the national to the neighborhood level. Space figures prominently in these negotiations, as the spaces that immigrants occupy and create often become the focus of debates about difference, otherness, and the unassimilability of migrants in Germany.

Contesting sacred urban space:The case of the Eruv

Accommodating religious differences has proven to be a significant challenge for immigrant-receiving societies. This article examines conflicts that have arisen over attempts by Orthodox Jews to demarcate urban space for religious purposes through the establishment of an eruv. At once an intriguing blend of precisely bordered and creatively reimagined space, an eruv demarcates the urban space in which Orthodox Jews may carry on certain religious and communal practices on the Sabbath and Holy Days. Through case studies in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, this article explores the contested nature of minority religion in the public realm.